LEGITIMACY THROUGH LITERATURE: POLITICAL CULTURE IN EARLY- ELEVENTH-CENTURY ROUEN A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements of the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Corinna MaxineCarol Matlis May 2017 © 2017 Corinna MaxineCarol Matlis LEGITIMACY THROUGH LITERATURE: POLITICAL CULTURE IN EARLY- ELEVENTH-CENTURY ROUEN Corinna Maxine Carol Matlis Cornell University 2017 This dissertation examines the interplay between early-eleventh-century Norman literature and the Norman ducal family’s project of establishing its legitimacy to rule. The dissertation considers Dudo of Saint Quentin’s arcane history of the Norman dukes, Warner of Rouen’s two esoteric satires, and two further anonymous satires produced in Rouen c. 996-1026 (the reign of Duke Richard II). These works constitute the secular Norman literature during this period. Although the texts’ audiences are unknown, it is clear that the ducal family, local clerics, and potentially nobility throughout the region and France were among the works’ addressees. Despite their obscurity to modern readers, these texts spoke to the interests of the highest echelons of Norman society. Throughout my dissertation, I show how these texts were understood in their own time and how they spoke to contemporary social and political issues. Common themes emerge throughout the texts, despite their different genres: most importantly, the ducal family’s strategic marriages, and the desire for the appearance of a cultured court in order to balance the Normans’ reputation of physical might. Reading these Rouennais texts together offers new views of Norman political culture that have not been available without a close look at this literature as a whole. The literature should also be considered in the context of contemporary monastic and ecclesiastical reforms. The growing interest in ecclesiastical celibacy and other reforms influenced these texts, especially where they portray religious debates or satirical bawdiness, but the reforms’ influence in curtailing the production of secular texts in the late 1020s should not be overstated. Instead, it was political concerns that dictated the writing of the Rouennais literature and also dictated the end of its production. This dissertation’s methodology is to discuss the convergences and divergences in style, theme, and content of the texts in order to discuss the context in which the pieces were written. I combine this approach at times with evidence from diplomatic sources. This dissertation offers more evidence for a recent trend in Norman scholarship that sees the early-eleventh-century as a time of political consolidation for the Norman ducal family. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Corinna Matlis will receive her PhD from Cornell University in Medieval Studies in May 2017. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of California, Berkeley in 2009, and she received a Master of Studies in Medieval History from Oxford University in 2010. She received her MA in Medieval Studies from Cornell in 2013. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First and foremost, I would like to thank my supervisor, Oren Falk, and the rest of my dissertation committee for the guidance they have given me on this project and throughout my studies at Cornell. Thank you to Andrew Galloway for his thoughtful guidance and enthusiastic encouragement regarding Norman literature, the correct formatting of Latin poetry, and even swimming for exercise. Thank you to Rachel Weil for guiding me through the complexities of early modern England during my pre-dissertation studies, and for stepping outside of her main period of study to advise me on my dissertation in order to offer important historical insights and perspectives. I am extremely grateful to Andrew Hicks, who has been wonderfully generous with his time during my whole stay at Cornell. From the weekly Latin reading sessions in my early years to later detailed comments on my dissertation, I would certainly never have been able to write this dissertation without his generosity. Finally, I offer much gratitude to Oren, who took a chance on me when he took me on as a student six and a half years ago and who has mentored me every step of the way since then. While I wrote this dissertation and also before, he has helped me to improve my clunky writing, my fuzzy thinking, my teaching, and my infernal habit of over-apologizing, and I am grateful for each and every critique. Secondly, I must thank Elisabeth van Houts, who supervised my work while I was a visiting student at the History Faculty at Cambridge University. She has been incredibly generous, sharing both her time and her insights. She read many drafts of these chapters, and I can only imagine how much less my work would have been without her help. I must also thank everyone else who worked with me during my year at Cambridge – especially Neil Wright, who helped me with my Latin translations. iv I have been lucky to have received a number of grants while I have been at Cornell, and I wish to thank the Cornell History Department for awarding me the Mommson Grant (2014- 2015), The Cornell Institute for European Studies at the Einaudi Center for awarding me the Michele Sicca Grant (summer 2012), and the Cornell Graduate School for its numerous travel grants and language-study grants. Of course none of these bodies should be held responsible for the results of my work. Still, I would not have been able to undertake the work without them. I presented portions of this dissertation at various conferences throughout the past six years, and I am grateful to the numerous panel organizers and the audience members for nudging me to think more deeply and express myself more clearly. I am extremely grateful to Pippa Byrne, a close friend, and Tommy Peterson, my mother, both of whom read through this thesis, gave me the benefit of their wisdom, and helped me catch typos and infelicities of style. Any errors and awkwardness are, of course, my own. This thesis would never have been written without the support of many Cornellians: fellow graduate students, my undergraduate students – many of whom pushed me to think in new ways, administrators (particularly Jim Utz), and librarians (especially Virginia Cole). I am also grateful to all of the professors, teachers, TAs, GSIs, and other instructors I have had from my time at Newton North High School, through Berkeley, Oxford, and Cornell. Of course I have to thank my friends and family who have stuck with me through this. I cannot name the number of friends whose kind words, well-timed phone calls and coffee breaks have cheered me along the way. In particular, thank you to Roisin Watson, Pippa Byrne, Ruth Mullett, Ruoji Tang, Brooks Swett, and Sarah Frank. Thank you to my parents, Tommy Peterson and Jan Matlis, who accepted, when I was in middle school, that I would someday want v to write a doctoral thesis in medieval history and helped me pursue that dream. Thank you to my husband, Maxim Polyakov, who has read many parts of this thesis over the years and has always helped me to believe that this dissertation was within my intellectual reach. Finally, I have to thank Chris Wickham, who supervised my master’s thesis at Oxford, parts of which made it into this dissertation. He was the one, in late 2009, who asked if I had ever read Dudo of Saint Quentin’s history of the Norman dukes. I fell in love with that text, and it is the basis of this dissertation. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iv INTRODUCTION 1 I. The Texts and the Ducal Family 4 II. Key Terms and Methodology: Literature, Politics, Political Culture 10 III. Historiographical Context 16 IV. The Rouennais Authors – Dudo and Warner: Who They Were 30 IV. Schools and Courts of Rouen 38 V. Why Rouen? Why not Fécamp? 45 Conclusion: The Literary Setting of Rouen 51 THE LITERARY AND AUTHORIAL COMMUNITY IN ROUEN: STYLE, COMPETITON, AND COHESION 52 I. Literary Portrayals of a Competitive Literary Community 54 II. The Hermeneutic Style, Invective, Simulated School Texts, and their Importance as a Marker of an Intellectual Community 67 III. Collaboration and Purity: Dudo’s Ethics of Writing 79 IV. Revision as a Civilizing Force 86 Conclusion 92 LITERARY DEPICTIONS OF NORMAN MEN: CONVERGENCE OF INTELLECT AND PHYSICALITY 94 I. Well-Spoken Pirates: Dudo’s Portrayal of the Early Norman Dukes 96 II. Words as Tools of Power 107 III. Forceful Words 122 IV. The Excoriation of Moriuht, The Amusement of Rouen 130 Conclusion: An Audience for Portrayals of Eloquence 136 vii LITERARY DEPICTIONS OF NORMAN WOMEN: SATIRIZED SEX AND POLITICAL LEGITIMACY 140 I. Cultured Outsiders: Strategic Links 142 II. Words Meddling in Power: Uncontrolled women with a Powerful Weapon 155 III. Aggressive Language and Witty Quips: Powerful Language and Ridiculous Topics 164 IV. Women as Legitimators: Sexual Power and the Power of Talking about It 174 Conclusion 182 THE RISE AND FALL OF SECULAR LITERATURE IN ROUEN 183 I. The Force Behind it All: Archbishop Robert (c. 990-1037) 187 II. Bishops Who Like Bawdy Poetry 196 III. The Influence of Monastic Reform on Rouennais Literature 205 IV. The Influence of Political Shifts on Rouennais Literature 212 Conclusion 216 CONCLUSION 220 I. A New Look at the Process of Consolidating Normandy 221 II. An Underground Tradition of Secular, Bawdy, Literature? 227 III. Literature and Politics 235 APPENDIX 1: 238 SIMPLIFIED DUCAL FAMILY TREE 238 BIBLIOGRAPHY 239 viii INTRODUCTION “You goat! May you completely eat the cunt of your nanny-goat and, in equal measure, her sexual organs and her buttocks, before the wise poems of our Virgil disappear and before (the syllables) ‘fo’ and ‘mo’ have two tempora, as well as (the syllable) ‘fex.’”1 As Warner of Rouen’s poem, Moriuht, includes discursive and obscene laments like this one, it is not surprising that scholars have been slow to integrate this work into the study of early Norman political history.