ANGLO-NORMAN STUDIES

XXVII

PROCEEDINGS OF THE BATTLE CONFERENCE

2004

Edited by John Gillingham

THE BOYDELL PRESS

NORMANDY AND NORMAN IDENTITY IN SOUTHERN ITALIAN CHRONICLES

Ewan Johnson

In Book Eleven of his Ecclesiastical History Orderic Vitalis records the feelings of Robert of Montfort, who was in Italy after fleeing in 1106, upon discov- ering the presence of others from the duchy in the entourage of Bohemond, (1098-1111): `there to his joy [Robert] discovered some of his own fellow countrymen. Hugh of Le Puiset and Simon of Anet, Ralph of Pont-Echanfray and Walchelin his brother, and many others from North of the Alps were there with Bohemond'. ) The suggestion is that those from north of the Alps formed a separate group of countrymen to those of Norman descent now based in the South. The suggestion is all the more striking because it talks of Robert's feelings, suggesting that he was comforted by the presence of those familiar to him whilst in a strange land, and uses language, the word compatriotas, which Orderic often used to denote not just that two or more individuals shared a place of residence or ethnic origin, but specifically that they felt friendship and obligations to one another as a result of these link-s.2 Orderic therefore suggests that Robert felt some sense of shared identity with those from north of the Alps, but not to those of Norman descent then living in Italy. 3 Orderic is not a writer often credited with drawing a distinction between the different parts of the Norman world: 4 Although we should question the extent to which Orderic was informed about southern Italy, he was clearly interested in the deeds of those who went from the duchy to Italy in the eleventh century, and wove their adventures into a more general picture of Norman expansion.5 By the mid-1130s, when these passagesof the Ecclesiastical History were written, Orderic could, however, write as if these links were no longer perceived as sufficient to sustain a sense of shared identity between the inhabitants of the two regions when they Orderic, indeed, is happy break had actually met.6 to suggest that such a

1 Orderic vi, 100-1. Le Pulset is not in Normandy, perhaps suggesting that Robert felt closer the north- ern French generally than to the southern Normans. 2 Orderic ii, 68-9 (on feelings of the Norman Ansgot towards Abbot Thierry); Orderic ii, 222-3,258-9, 322-3.348-9 (on English loyalty to one another). 3A similar suggestion, making southern Italian Normans a group distinct in terms of kinship and home- land, occurs at Orderic v, 278-9. 4 As Marjorie Chibnall notes in her discussion of Orderic's technique and influence, the rediscovery of the text influenced both Haskins and Douglas in their portrayals of a unified Norman world: M. Chibnall, The Nonnarrs, Oxford 2000,114-17; .H. Haskins, The Normans in European History, Boston and New 1915; D. C. Douglas, The Norman Achievement, London 1969. Ralph Davis saw Orderic's influence as great but entirely distorting: R.H. C. Davis, The Normans and their Myth, London 1976,14-15. 5 On the limits of Orderic's information see .A. Loud, `The Kingdom of and the Kingdom of ', History 88,2003,540-67, at 546-8; Davis, Norman Myth, 63-4. 6 The two passageswere composed in their final form between 1135 and 1137. Orderic i, 47. 86 Anglo-Nonnan StudiesXXVII occurred as early as 1106 and, since he had been resident in Normandy for over 7 twenty years at that point, we might wish to believe him This break is not wholly due to the fact that Normans in the South had forgotten their origins in Normandy. The Normans in the South did indeed intermarry with existing elites, and by doing so enabled themselves to work alongside members of the Lombard aristocracies they had partially displaced. 8 Yet Italian charters from throughout the eleventh and twelfth centuries record a continual stream of individ- uals who refer to their Norman ancestry, albeit in diminishing numbers once the first immigrants die It is therefore Orderic Robert generation of .9 unlikely viewed of Montfort as isolated from southern Italian Normans simply because they had no knowledge of their Norman past, or because none of them could have described themselves as Norman. What I would instead argue is that what was understood to constitute Norman identity in the South had diverged from what was understood in the North, in much the same way as the Irish of Brooklyn have a fundamentally different ethnic identity to those of Dublin. This article concentrates on the construction of Norman identity within the two extant Latin histories of early Norman activity in Italy: of 's Gesta Roberti Wiscardi and Geoffrey of Malaterra's De rebus gestis Rogerii Calabriae et Siciliae cornitis et Roberti Guiscardi ducis fratris eius. 10 Both have featured in previous work on Norman identity, but always as texts in comparison with others from the corpus of Norman historical writing. The result has been that the similarities between them and texts from Normandy have implicitly been suggested as the central points in their portrayal of Norman identity. " On the other hand Kenneth

7 Orderic arrived at St Evroult in 1085: Orderic i, 5; vi, 552-3. 8 On intermarriage see: L. Buisson, 'Le piü antiche forme dell'organizzazione politica normanna', in I Normanni in Italia, ed. P. Delogu, Naples 1984,223-34; E. Cuozzo, 'Quei Maledetti Nonranni'. Cavalieri e organizzazione militare nel Mezzogiorno nonnanno, Naples 1989; V. D'Alessandro, 'Il nobile', in Condizione umana e ruoli social nel Mezzogiorno nonnanno-svevo,ed. G. Musca, 1991,405-21; J. Drell, Kinship and Conquest: Family Strategies in the Principality of Salento during the Norman Period, 1077-1194, Ithaca, NY, 2002; G.A. Loud, 'How "Norman" was the Norman Conquestof Southern Italy? ', Nottingham Medieval Studies25,1981,13-34, at 23; G.A. Loud, 'Continuity and Changein Norman Italy: the during the Eleventh Century', JMH 22,1996,313-43, at 325-32. V. von Falkenhausen 'I ceti dirigenti prenormanni al tempo della constitutzioni degli stati normanni nell'Italia meridionale a in Sicilia', in Forme di potere e stnrttura sociale in Italia nel Medioevo, ed. G. Rossetti, Bologna 1977, 321-77, at 326. On co-operation and mixed retinues see E. Cuozzo, ' "Milites" et "festes" nella contea normanna di Principato', Bullettino dell'Instituto storico italiano per it Medio Evo 88,1979,121-63; Loud, 'Continuity and Change', 332-3; G.A. Loud, The Age of Robert Guiscard, Harlow 2000,288-9. 9 For summaries of the evidence from the documents of La Cava seeJ. Drell 'Cultural Syncretism and Ethnic Identity: The Norman 'Conquest' of Southern Italy and Sicily', JMH 25,187-202, at 198-200; gen- erally L: R. Manager, 'Inventaire des families normandeset franques 6migrees en Italic meridionale et en Sicile (Xle-XIIe siecles)', in Relazioni e communicazioni Helle Prime Giornate Nonnanno-Svevo del Centro di Studi normanno-svevi,Bari 1973, Roberto Guiscanlo e it suo tempo, 1975,259-390. 10 M. Mathieu, ed. and trans., La Geste de Robert Guiscard, 1961. E. Pontieri, ed., De rebus gestis Rogerii Calabriae et Siciliae comitis et Roberti Guiscardifratris eins auclore Gaufredo Malaterra, Bologna 1927. Graham Loud's extremely useful English translations of theseand other key texts are avail- able at http: //www. leeds.ac. uk/history/webleaming/MedievalHistoryTextCentrelmedievalTexts. html. 11 Graham Loud and Laetitia Boehm use them to draw out common characteristics in descriptions of the Normans: G.A. Loud, 'The Gens Nonnannorum: Myth or Reality? ', ANS 4,1980 (1981), 104-16; L. Boehm, 'Nomen gentis Normannorum: Der Aufsteig der Normannen im Spiegel der normannischen Historiographie', in I Normanni e for expansione in Europa nell'alto medioevo, Settimane di studio del centro italiano di studia sull'alto medioevo 16,1969,623-704. Emily Albu views the pessimism with the Norman character she claims they share with other texts as critical: E. Albu, The Nonnans in their Histo- ries: Propaganda, Myth and Subversion,Woodbridge 2001,106-44. Marjorie Chibnall sees'essential ele- ments' of the broader Norman myth in the two texts: Chibnall, Normans, 117-19. Normandy and Norman Identity 87

Wolf's study of the Normans in these texts is to my mind overly cautious about relating their constructions of Normanness to the societies in which they were produced. 12It is an explanation of how Normanness is constructed in these texts, and what this might suggest about the portrayal of Norman ethnicity and political power in southern Italy, that this article seeks to offer.

William ofApulia's Gesta Roberti Wiscardi The Gesta Roberti Wiscardi is an epic poem written in dactylic Latin hexameters, which relates the history of eleventh-century Italy and its Norman conquerors in five books, the last two of which concentrate on Norman campaigns across the Adriatic. Its author was connected to the court of Borsa, whom William acknowledges as patron and whose position as duke of Apulia (1085-1111) the poem defends against the rival claims of his half-brother Bohemond. 13Although there is as yet no scholarly consensus, the internal evidence from the text suggests that William, whether a native of or immigrant to southern Italy, had spent considerable time there before writing his poem. '4 Internal evidence suggests the poem was being written in the summer of 1097, and was completed soon after that of 1099.15 The poem contains no description of Normandy, but rather sets out from the start its intention to concentrate on how the Norman people used their military skills against the Greeks to capture southern Italy from them. 16The idea that the focus of the work is the population and territory of the southern Italian mainland and the change in who controls it is no mere statement, but fundamentally influences the work's structure and content. Greek leaders are condemned specifically for their treatment of those who lived in these areas, which is contrasted with Robert Guiscard who `treasured those he made his subjects, and was himself loved by them'. 17The first three books of the work, those concerned with the conquest of the mainland, are

12 K. B. Wolf, Making History: The Nonnans and theirHistorians in Eleventh-Century Italy, Philadelphia 1995,123-68,172-5. 13 William of Apulia, Bk V, line 410, pp. 258-9; Bk IV, lines 186-92, pp. 214-15; Bk V, lines 345-51, pp. 254-5. Wolf, Making History, 124. For Bohemond's rebellion from 1087 to 1090, and the semi-recon- ciliation of the half-brothers see F. Chalandon, Histoire de la domination nonnande en Italie et en Sicile, 2 vols, 1907, i, 294-6; Loud, Guiscard, 255-8. 14 He pays considerableattention to the otherwise unimportant town of Giovinazzo. M. Manitus, Bildung, lVissenschaft and Literatur int Abendland von 800 bis 1100, Crimmitschau 1925,660; Wolf, Making History, 124; William of Apulia, Bk III, lines 540-605, pp. 94-7; Bk III lines 627-36, pp. 198-9. He also had good knowledge of Byzantium, probably obtained through Apulia: Albu, Nonnans in their Histories, 133-5; M. Angold, 'Knowledge of Byzantine History in the West: the Norman Historians (Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries)', ANS 25,2002 (2003), 19-33, at 24-8. The text's editor claims he was Norman on the grounds of North French motifs in his work (William of Apulia, pp. 22-3) although these could be present in a text written for a Norman court without the author himself being Norman. Chibnall, Nonnans, 117 follows suit. For a summary of the debatesand a review of Mathieu's hypothesis see M. Fuiano, Studia de storiografra inediovale ed unwnistica, 2nd edn, Naples 1984 1-91, esp. 1-6,93-103. 15 It mentions the opening of the way through Anatolia in 1097, but the not the capture of Jerusalem in 1099 (William of Apulia, Bk III lines 100-5, pp. 168-71); and omits Urban II from the epilogue when he had featured in the prologue, suggesting it was completed after the pontiff's death in July 1099 (William of Apulia, Bk V lines 410-15, pp. 258-9). See generally William of Apulia, pp. 11-13. 16 William of Apulia, Bk I, lines 1-5, pp. 98-9. On the peninsula before the Normans see B. Kreutz, Before the Nonnans: SoutheastItaly in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries, Philadelphia 1991; G.A. Loud 'Southern Italy in the Tenth Century', in New Cambridge Medieval History III, ed. T. Reuter, Cambridge 2000,624-45. 17 William of Apulia, Bk I, lines 445-60, pp. 122-5; Bk 111,lines 149-5 1, pp. 172-3. 88 Anglo-Norman Studies XXVII

Normans the most heavily classical in tone and language, normally referring to the as in Galli, so that they are portrayed as at their most classical when operating the heartlands of classical Rome. 18 Yet this tendency stops once the events described inappropriate for move across the Adriatic, as if these adventures are such an epic tone. 19Similarly, as Emily Albu has noted, there is a marked shift in the moral tone of the poem in Books Four and Five, and it becomes much more critical of the Normans 20 This structure, with its emphasis on the transference of the right to rule Italy from Greek Empire to Normans, is crucial to the construction of ethnicity that appears within the text. One immediate effect of this focus on conflicts between Normans and the is to downplay the conflicts between the incoming Normans and those indigenous to the peninsula, especially the Lombard princes. This focus is supported by the way the are described. William, unlike Geoffrey Malaterra, rarely describes the southern Lombards in negative terms; he clearly distinguishes them from the other Italian contingents at the battle of Civitate in 1053.21 When conflict between Normans and Lombards is mentioned, it is often only as it comes to an end. William writes, for instance, of the changes in the nature of Norman power which followed the marriage in 1058 of Robert Guiscard to Sikelgaita, the sister of Gisulf II (1052-77), the last Lombard prince of . After this, he tells us, it was no longer force which bound Lombards to Normans, but an acceptance of the legitimacy of power exercised by the family of more long-standing conquerors. 22 That this bond might lead to a certain blurring of the ethnic distinction between Norman and Lombard is confirmed by William's rendi- tion of the lament of Sikelgaita as her husbands dies in 1085. Her worries immedi- ately focus on the problems that will ensue for her, her son and his dynastic claim, and for those Robert's power has protected: `Behold, your wife and son are left to be torn apart by wolves, and your people will never be safe without you. You were the courage of our people, and without you they cannot be brave: 23 Who exactly `your people' might be is unclear, given that the passage is directed at the Norman Robert by a Lombard princess. The final slippage to `our people' (populi nostri), however, suggests that William's Sikelgaita saw her and Robert's people as including both Lombards and Normans, even if tacitly acknowledging that there are Norman wolves among those who threaten her. 24It is tempting to see this as more evidence to support the hypothesis advanced by Cassandra Potts that the Normans as a people were proud of their ability to assimilate with others and become one people25 Yet even if

18 Wolf, Making History, 129. 19 Kenneth Wolf unconvincingly suggestsWilliam grew bored of his framework: Wolf, Making History, 138. 20 Albu, Normans in their Histories, 132-6. 21 William of Apulia, Bk II, lines 100-11, pp. 138-9. 22 William of Apulia, Bk II, lines 436-41, pp. 156-7; Wolf, Making History, 127-8; H. Taviani-Carozzi, La Principaute Lombard de Salerne (IXe%le siecle): pouvoir et societe en Italie L.otttbarde meridianale, 2 vols, Rome 1991, ii, 918-45, suggestssuch legitimacy was both essential and led to the 'spiritual adop- tion' of the Normans by the Lombard princes. Her argument, however, is problematic, being based on the fourteenth-century French terminology of a translation of Amatus of Montecassino's original Latin text: V. de Bartolomaeis, Storia de'Normanni di Amato di Montecassino volgarizzata in antico francese, Rome 1935, IV. 18-25,194-9. 23 William of Apulia, Bk V, lines 312-15, pp. 252-3. 24 Albu, Normans in their Histories, 144. On the wolf motif as code for Northmen in other texts seeIbid., 41-5,62-4,91-105,205-10. 25 C. Potts, `Atque unum ex diversis gentibus populum effecit: Historical Tradition and the Norman Identity', ANS 18,1995 (1996), 139-52; C. Potts, Monastic Revival and Regional Identity in Early Normandy, Woodbridge 1997,2-4. Normandy and Nonnan Identity 89 the admission of mixed ancestry in other texts is an expression of pride, rather that an unavoidable statement of fact, the identity that results from such a blending conforms with the way other medieval peoples are described. 26 The Normans portrayed by Dudo of St Quentin might have ethnically mixed ancestry, but they are portrayed, by Dudo's time, as one cultural and political group, not as separate cultural groups owing allegiance to one political body. In this Dudo is conforming to the norms of both diplomatic and narrative writing, which saw medieval polities as populated by distinct peoples with their own customs. William's text as a whole, however, does distinguish between Lombard, Greek and Norman, using cultural factors such as dress or language. Sikelgaita's `people' cannot therefore represent a new hybrid yet homogenous identity, whether it is called Norman or not. What merging of peoples does take place is rather between the Normans and some of those they meet and teach their customs to, and between the Normans and other Franks, with all immigrants referred to throughout as Galli, Franci or Nonnanni. 27 Sikelgaita's conception of people can therefore only mean those over whom Robert has political control, and it is appropriate that it should be voiced by a Lombard princess so politically active in securing power for her Norman husband and their half-Norman son. 28 It raises the problem, however, of how the tensions between such a conception of a people, and those inherent in William's broader cultural understandings of Greek, Lombard or Norman to describe those in southern Italy, might be resolved. My argument here is that within William's text such terms are rendered politically neutral, and that a common political identity limited geographically to those in southern Italy is developed alongside other, more culturally based, definitions of an ethnic group. In examining Norman ethnicity in William's poem, and in Geoffrey's narrative, it is important to study not just the contents of the descriptions of the various peoples, but the various ways in which membership of a people is defined within the text. Any writer, modern or medieval, can choose to do this in a variety of ways, most obvi- ously by using parentage or place of birth, but also by using more temporary and transferable motifs such as a particular tendency in a people's character, or a tendency to dress or act in a certain way. 29Both logically, and in practice where these texts are concerned, the choices made in defining ethnicity affect the ways in which the relationship between an individual's ethnic identity and their political allegiance can be handled. Within William's text, ethnic terms, such as the words Norman or Greek, are asso- ciated with both birth and behavioural traits. The relationship between the transfer- able traits and those fixed at birth is, however, as problematic in the text as it is in life. There are, for example, a series of traits assertedas held by one group. Hence the first mention of the `Norman people' is as `warlike knights', and their bravery is a feature of their victories 30 The Greeks, by contrast, are `avaricious' and behave `like women' 31 The latter is linked to the Greeks' primary trait, that discovered by the Normans when they first encounter them, that is as people who `lacked strength and

26 Loud, 'Gens Normannorum'. 27 William of Apulia, Bk 1, lines 165-8, pp. 108-9. 28 P. Skinner, ' "Halt! Be Men! " Sikelgaita of Salerno, Gender and the of Southern Italy', Gender and History 12,2000,622-11. 29 Loud, 'Gens Normannorum', 109-15, discussesthe intellectual environment in depth. I differ here in examining how the tensions between each definition are acknowledged and mediated within the texts. 30 William of Apulia, Bk I, line 4, pp. 98-9. 31 William of Apulia, Bk I, lines 210-13, p. 110. 90 Anglo-Norman StudiesXXVII

32 identification is were identified not as brave fighters but as cowards' This specifi- Normans cally linked to the whole Greek gens in a later passage, where those who in encountered the Greek army during the invasion of Apulia 1040 are portrayed as 33 unafraid because although their `general had changed the people had not'. Yet these traits are not applicable to a gens in all situations. This is made clear when Exaugustus, the Greek general whose arrival did so little to frighten the Normans, encourages his troops to ` in the footsteps of their ancestors', in whose time no `people, hearing the name of the Greeks, dared to stand before them in the field' 34 It is also made clear that contemporary Greeks were not always weak. Indeed, the speech on Greek effeminacy quoted earlier was intended by the leader of the Normans in 1041, the Lombard Arduin, to rally them precisely because they `had previously been forced to leave Apulia by the valour of the Greeks' 35 Hence there is an open admission within the text that character traits, such as bravery, do not natu- rally accrue to individuals simply as a result of their being born a member of a particular people. This is equally true of a second group of factors used to identify ethnic groups, that is through markers such as dress or language. The Normans are defined by their `language and customs', although they teach these to others. 36 One of these Norman customs is later defined as placing a silk cloth over the face of the dead during buria137 It is possible to be clothed in a specifically `Greek style', which involves a wrap-round bonnet 38 In the description of the Apulian campaign of 1041 this costume is linked to Greek weakness by Arduin, the Normans' second Lombard leader, who claims that this `dress is unsuitable for battle'39 Yet when this Greek dress is first mentioned, it was being worn by the Normans' first leader, Meles, who is identified as an enemy of the Greeks and specifically as `born a Lombard, a noble citizen of Bari' 40 The identification of individuals as performers of the customs of one group and, explicitly, as members of another, could only be possible if performance of that one act alone did not define group membership. It is possible, since we are dealing with specific customs, that within the text membership of an ethnic group is defined through a cluster of behaviours, and that Meles remains a Lombard when dressedin Greek clothing becauseall his other behaviour could be described as Lombard. Yet the explicit textual explanation offered is not this, but the fact that Meles was `born' a Lombard. For such a descent-baseddefinition of ethnicity to have political conse-

32 William of Apulia, Bk 1, lines 78-9, pp. 102-3. The first encounter between Normans and Greeks in this text happensduring the revolt of Melus against Greek rule in 1017, for which see Chalandon, Histoire i, 54-8, and Loud, Guiscard, 67-8. There were Normans in Italy before this point, although the variety of Norman activities makesit difficult to reconcile the various chroniclers' accounts.For varying accounts of early Norman activity see H. Hoffmann, 'Die Anfange der Normannen in Unteritalien', Quellen and Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven and Bibliotheken. 49,1969,95-144; Loud, Guiscard, 60-6; J. , The Occasion of the Coming of the Normans to Italy', Jd1H 17,1991,185-205; E. Joranson, 'The Inception of the Career of the Normans in Italy -Legend and History', Speculum23,1948,353-96.1 find the first two the most convincing. 33 William of Apulia, Bk 1, line 370, pp. 118-19. For the Apulian 'campaign' of 1040-41, during which time the Normans were led by a Lombard named Arduin and then by another named Atenulf, see Loud, Guiscard, 92-4; Chalandon, Histoire i, 96-102. 34 William of Apulia, Bk I, lines 354-72, pp. 118-19, at lines 323-4 and 369. 35 William of Apulia, Bk IV, lines 229-30, pp. 110-11. 36 William of Apulia, Bk I, lines 167-8, pp. 108-9. 37 William of Apulia, Bk II, line 343, pp. 150-1. 38 William of Apulia, Bk I, lines 14-15, pp. 100-1. 39 William of Apulia, Bk 1, lines 228-9, pp. 110-11. 40 'Se Langobardum natu civemque fuisse ingenuum Bari': William of Apulia, Bk I, line 18, pp. 100-11. Normandy and Norman Identity 91 quences, to inspire group loyalty or disagreement, it would be necessary for individ- uals within the text to be shown as particularly loyal to members of their descent group. Yet this is not the case. Most obviously, Normans frequently fight one another without any suggestion being made that this represents disloyalty to the group as a whole 4' When descent does feature in a political sense, it is in terms of an individ- ual's breeding. In 1041 William poetically has the Normans elect Argyros, Meles' son, because of their memories of his father. 42 When Arduin defected to the Greeks, the Normans he had led instead elected from among themselves `twelve noblemen, distinguished by descent (genus), good character and age', to act as their leaders. 43 Descent here cannot have a meaning beyond the individual, for all are Normans and have the same degree of Normanness. The fact that descent within the text is used as a criterion only for the choice of leaders, not as a focus of group loyalty, suggests that the association between a political unit and a descent group is weak within William's text. The boundaries which seem to matter most in the text are, in fact, not those of blood between ethnic groups, but rather geographic ones between political groups, and specifically between the Greek Empire and Norman Italy. The easiest way for William to have maintained these political boundaries would have been to create a poetical fiction in which everyone behaved as a stereotypical member of a group, and in which groups are portrayed as unchangingly good or bad according to William's desired political outlook. Yet this is incompatible with the way in which politics is usually portrayed in epic verse, which makes individuals and their leadership the critical factor in success or failure. The poem describes a variety of the qualities good leaders should possess, but in no case are they particular to indi- viduals from one ethnic group. Courage, for example, is used to characterise Norman figures such as Richard (d. 1078) and Jordan (d. 1090), the son and grandson of Rainulf, the first Norman count of (d. 1045), and Guiscard, but also to charac- terise the Greek emperor Alexius (1081-1118). 44 The other leadership credential shared between Norman and Greek is the ability to use cunning and persuasion. Guiscard is praised for his ability to `overcome.... by cunning', as is Alexius 45 Neither is there ever any suggestion that any leader's appeal rests in ideals shared only by members of that leader's ethnic group. Indeed, the distinction between a leader's values and those of his people is made explicit at some points: Gisulf II, Sikelgaita's brother, acknowledges that Robert Guiscard is a praiseworthy man despite his own low opinion of the Norman people as a whole. 46 This stress on individuals exercising leadership also helps to minimise portrayal of conflict between the native Apulians and Calabrians and the conquering Normans. These groups never themselves compete for mastery in Apulia and , where Greeks fight Normans, but instead participate in and react to this conflict for leader- ship. This is especially true when the conquest involves the capture of fortified towns, whose leaders make `pacts' with both groups according to circumstance, so

41 For a summary of the extent and causesof conflicts between Normans see Loud, Guiscard, 133-4, 234-44. 42 William of Apulia, Bk I, lines 425-6, pp. 122-3. The reason was probably more pragmatic, namely to use Argyrus's position in the Adriatic coastal towns, especially Bari, to bring them to the Norman side. Loud, Guiscard, 95. 43 William of Apulia, Bk I, lines 233-4, pp. 110-11. The status of the twelve counts so chosen was to have important consequences,and their holders and their descendantsmaintained some grip on at least the titles throughout the Norman period. Loud, Guiscard, 97-8. 44 William of Apulia, Bk I, lines 175-8, pp. 108-9; Bk II, lines 297-307, pp. 148-9; Bk IV, lines 81-3, pp. 208-9. 45 William of Apulia, Bk III, lines 568-70, pp. 194-5; Bk IV, lines 96-114, pp. 208-11. 46 William of Apulia, Bk U, lines 424-8, pp. 154-5. 92 Anglo-Norman StudiesXXVII that Robert's conquest of Bari in 1071 is due to the support of Argyritos and to the latter's persuasive power over its other leading men, and then theirs over the popu- lace 47 This idea of Italian peoples of all kinds as groups who do not compete for leadership, but rather whose support is competed for by Norman and Greek leaders, is encouraged by an accurate portrayal of Lombard politics as too intrinsically divided to allow the Lombards to unite southern Italy. 48 The idea that political virtue is primarily an individual rather than a group trait, and the role given to Lombards, Apulians and Calabrians in choosing between Greeks and Normans, renders the creation of a distinct new people encompassing all those Guiscard ended up ruling over extremely problematic, for to do so would mean assigning the new group intrinsic political qualities and removing the Italian groups altogether since their role is never as political leaders. Political differences between peoples within the new polity are here diminished not by denying the existence of different peoples, but instead by describing all peoples as sharing similar political values. This is best illustrated by the slippage in the poem's description of Norman involvement in Lombard politics. Although it mentions the Normans as a `people (populus) who preferred battles to treaties', its main thrust is that `the major part of the evils which arise among mortals (mortales)' do so because of humanity's struggle for domination and vainglory in this world 49 The Normans are thus no worse than any other group, and prove to be considerably better once in power. Within the poem the stress on various behaviours as human or individual, rather than specific to any ethnic group, goes further than this and impinges directly on the cultural sphere. There are clearly cultural meanings inherent in its description of Greek dress and Norman language, which assert particular behaviours as normative for a particular group. Yet there is also clearly some undermining of any attitude which would make such tendencies central to understanding the new polity. The description of people who give too much credence to the ethnic behaviours cited above is overwhelmingly negative. Norman burial customs appear only as part of a deceitful attack. Here, the face is covered with a silk cloth to allow the Normans to smuggle weapons and men into a citadel since the Calabrians, who believe this to be a Norman custom, are thus prevented from recognising that the `corpse' is not, in fact, dead.50 Other characterswho give credenceto particular group traits are made to look foolish. Arduin's comments on the Greeks' natural weakness, and on their customary dress being unsuitable for battle, are immediately contradicted, for the very next sentence mentions the Normans having been driven back by Greek valour.51 The Greek Emperor Constantine believes reports in which he `had heard that the Norman people were prone to avarice', yet of all the attempts at bribery in the text, it is precisely this one that fails 52 Situations in which a behaviour is specifically identified as particular to one group are thus often accompanied by a negative comment on those who believe in this identification.

47 E. g. William of Apulia, Bk 1, lines 400-1, pp. 20-1. For Bari see William of Apulia, Bk III, lines 144-62, pp. 172-3. 48 William of Apulia, Bk I, lines 154-64, pp. 106-9. 49 William of Apulia, Bk I, lines 140-55, pp. 106-7. Wolf makes a similar point about post-lapsarian desire for domination in relation to Geoffrey Malaterra's text, but does not extend it to cover William's, even though William's uses the Augustinian phrasedominandi libido, to describe politics at Bk I, line 148. Wolf, Making History, 167-8. 50 William of Apulia, Bk II, lines 234-54, pp. 150-1. 51 William of Apulia, Bk I, lines 229-30, pp. 110-1. 52 William of Apulia, Bk II, lines 39-b, pp. 134-5. Nonnandy and Norman Identity 93

By implicitly raising the problems inherent in belief in strict, stereotypical behav- ioural boundaries between ethnic groups, William's broader purpose of justifying Norman rule is well served. This is done first by the use of a universalised concept of political good. The explicit textual contradiction of any stereotypical framework it plays with, so that Greek dress is not exclusive to Greeks, nor bravery to Normans, also contributes. Finally, there is the implication that characters who believe the rhet- oric that associates a form of behaviour with one particular ethnic group are exer- cising poor judgement. Terms such as Greek, Norman, Apulian, Calabrian or Lombard are thus drained of meanings which reliably associate them with behav- ioural norms or particular value systems. What values are asserted are instead the universals of good political behaviour. By draining terms associated with different ethnic groups of these cultural and political associations, and by stressing a shared political value system, the actual fractured political scene in Italy is unified within the text. It simply makes no sense, within the framework provided by the poem, to oppose Norman rule simply because it is Norman. This goes a long way to reconciling the almost wholly political use of `people' by William's Sikelgaita with the general cultural framework in which different ethnic groups exist. Yet one further problem remains, since even stripped of their broader cultural and political associations, the terms Norman, Lombard or Greek do not refer only to peoples within the new polity. When referring to the Normans, this problem can be side-stepped by excluding, in contrast to the other major chronicles which survive from the period, Norman history which took place outside Italy. 53Normandy itself is never described, and exists only as a land from which people come to Italy. The only general explanation of who the Normans were is an etymological derivation which rightly states them to be men from the North 54 This is cunningly vague, in that it remains true to an aspect of the Normandy tradition likely to be remembered by Normans, a Scandinavian origin, but gives no more detail and thus serves just as well as a simple description of their route to Italy. 55 Greek actions in Asia Minor are, however, referred to, as is Norman intervention on the Greek Adriatic coast. The text, however, exploits these tales to suggest a distinction should be drawn between southern Italy as a whole, and Greece, with the boundary defined by the Adriatic. Although the narrative is dominated by two Norman-Greek wars, one in Italy, between 1041 and 1072, and the other on the Adriatic coast between 1080 and 1085, it is notable that the two conflicts are treated differently. 56 In the second conflict, which takes place across the Adriatic against a Greek army commanded by Alexius, the two sides are better matched and the Normans are eventually comprehensively defeated. Thus Normans lose outside Italy, and Greeks lose when fighting in Italy, even though both groups are essentially the same.That danger to the `people of Italy' (Italiae populus) comes from across the Adriatic is even confirmed by mythical fish. After the fall of Bari and the end of a Greek presence on the peninsula, Guiscard catches a `huge fish, horrid of body and incredibly shaped' in the Adriatic, the sea which divides the Byzantine Balkans from southern Italy. This fish, which had previ-

53 E.g. Malaterra (see n. 10 above), Bk I, ch. 4, p. 9; Bk 1, chs 39-40, pp. 24-5; Amatus of Montecassino (see n. 22 above), 1.3-8,12-6; 1.20,23-4. 54 William of Apulia, Bk 1, lines 6-10, pp. 98-9. 55 On the ways in which Italian chronicles attached importance and meaning to the Northern origin to the Normans, see E. Johnson, `Origin Myths and the Construction of Medieval Identities: Norman Chronicles 1000-1200', in Textsand Identities in the Early , ed. R. Corradini, R. Meens, C. Possel, and P. Shaw, Forschungen zur Geschichte des Mittelalters 13, Vienna 2005 (forthcoming). 56 For the conflicts in Apulia see Loud, Guiscard, 92-137. On the Durazzo campaign, Chalandon, Histoire i, 265-71,278-81; Loud, Guiscard, 214-19,222-3. 94 Anglo-Norman StudiesXXVII ously terrorised the local population, is then used to feed Guiscard, his men and those from Calabria and Apulia. 57I find it hard not to see this as a reference to his defeat of the Greeks, particularly since it contrasts so strongly with the only other metaphoric use of the natural world in the text: a heavy snowfall upon the Norman's arrival, which is described immediately before the first battle between Greeks and Normans Italy. 58 All in Italy and affects all of - and only - southern this suggests that William is asserting geographic limits to the proper sphere of operation for his Norman patrons, and that the lands across the Adriatic are outside them. It is, specifically, Greeks from across the Adriatic, in the service of the Byzantine Emperor, that pose a threat to the Normans. This reinforces the sense of southern Italy as a political entity by providing it with a boundary and an enemy. It is more than likely that William inserted this geographically defined boundary simply to explain Norman failures outside Italy, and to suggest tacitly that the maintenance of proper order in, and the defence of their new realms from further aggression, should be his patrons' main concern. He must also have been aware of the serious problems the Normans had had in maintaining their hold over the coastal towns of Italy. Yet, in terms of the way ethnic identity has been constructed in the text, the boundary fulfils another purpose. The implication of the text is that within southern Italy there are no clear bound- aries between Greeks, Normans and Lombards in the political sphere. The conflict with the Greek Empire, however, draws attention to the Greek elements within southern Italy, and does so in a highly politicised context. Since the only term avail- able for these Greeks was `Greek', its use by William would have meant the collapse of the elaborate system by which he stripped ethnic terms of their meaning in order to justify Norman control. His approach was only saved by making a clear distinction between southern Italy and elsewhere, and hence between Greeks in Italy and elsewhere. To summarise, it is clear that the construction of ethnicity within William's text coincides closely with one of its political functions, which is to legitimise Norman rule, especially to those the Normans have recently conquered. It does so by suggesting that boundaries which might exist between ethnic groups within the new polity are politically unimportant, and that what matters instead is the geographic boundary between the new polity and the wider world. This territorial definition of the polity, that is as the duchy of Apulia and Calabria, was adopted by Pope Nicholas II (1059-61) in 1059 when he gave Guiscard licence to conquer it. From now on Guiscard and his successorswere styled `dukes of Apulia and Calabria' in charters.59 For Nicholas this break from the standard medieval practice of defining polities in terms of their peoples might have been due simply to the existing territorial division of the region into two Byzantine themes. For William, however, it becomes some- thing much more; it provides a solution to the problem of reconciling the cultural and political affiliations of those within the new polity. It was not, however, the only way in which the polity was defined by those writing in late eleventh-century Italy.

57 William of Apulia, Bk III, lines 167-81, pp. 172-5, quotes at lines 170 and 168-9. 58 William of Apulia, Bk I, lines 47-50, pp. 100-2. Other interpretations of the fish vary: Wolf, Making History, 124, seesit as portending the fall of Palermo; Albu, Normans in their Histories, 123, interprets it instead as a sign of Robert's cunning. 59 Malaterra places this immediately after Civitate: Malaterra, Bk I, ch. 14, p. 15. However, Geoffrey may not have been in Italy at the time, and all other sources suggest the title was granted later: William of Apulia, Bk 11, lines 400-5, pp. 154-5; P. Fabre and L. Duchesne, eds, Le Liber Censure de I'Eglise Romaine, 3 vols, Paris 1889-1952 i, 421-2. Nonnandy and Nonnan Identity 95

Geoffrey Malaterra's De rebus gestis Rogerii Calabriae et Siciliae comitis et Roberti Guiscardi ducis fratris eius

This prose account of the Norman conquest was, like William's poem, written in Italy at the time of the . 60 Its narrative recounts events up to July 1098, paying particular attention to the conquest of Sicily by Roger, the brother of Robert Guiscard, and it then stops abruptly. Its stated patron was Roger I of Sicily (1072-1101), by then in his sixties and perhaps seeking to use the text to legitimise his Sicilian conquests and ensure a smooth succession. 61 The author was a first-generation immigrant from across the Alps, and a monk, although Ernesto Pontieri's assertion that he came from St Evroult seems improbable. 62 He knew the work of Dudo of St Quentin, and so was most likely, although not provably, a Norman himself. 63 Roger's patronage of Geoffrey's work, and the fact it was composed in Sicily, meant that Geoffrey's immediate audience differed from William's, and this obvi- ously affected the way in which his work was constructed. The boundary between a history of the and a history of the Norman conquest of Italy is nowhere thinner than in Geoffrey's text, where Geoffrey's desire to please his patron led him to include several tales involving Count Roger's kin in Normandy, all of which are of little import either for the history of Italy or the duchy. 6MThis concentra- tion on the Hauteville family is central to Geoffrey's conception of the Normans. Immediately after his opening section, with its description of the Normandy and the Normans, he provides a similar description of the geographic origins and family history of the Hautevilles 65 Although Geoffrey suggests that Lombard malice lay behind various mainland revolts, Count Roger's use of Sicilian, and indeed Muslim, troops to support his nephew Roger Borsa and Richard of Aversa against these revolts is justified not in terms of Norman solidarity, but rather in terms of aid to kin, so that Count Roger became the `protector of all his family' (totins progeniei suae sustentator)66 The potentially hostile audience of particular concern to Geoffrey in legitimising Roger's conquest was thus not a non-Norman group who had previously

60 One passagetalks of Bohemond's departure, but not the capture of Antioch, suggesting this passage was composed in the summer of 1097. Malaterra, Bk IV, chs 24,20-6, p. 102. Wolf, Making History, 146-7. 61 Malaterra, Letter, 4; Wolf, Making History, 147. 62 Malaterra, iv. The assertion is echoed by L. T. White, Latin Monasticism in Nornian Sicily, Cambridge, MA, 1938,106,117; and by Marjorie Chibnall in Orderic ii, xxii. Orderic Vitalis failed to mention that Geoffrey had any connection with St Evroult when referring to his works: Orderic ii, 100-1. It is unlikely Orderic knew of such a connection and neglectedto mention it, and Orderic's spell at St Evroult began well within the lifetimes of those monks who would have known of Geoffrey had he emigrated to Italy from the monastery. 63 The text refers to 's (the first 'duke' of Normandy) past in Frisia, information which can only have come from Dudo's text, since William of Jumiegesremoved it from his re-working of the Gesta: Malaterra, Bk I, ch. 1, p. 7; J. Lair, ed., De Moribus et actis primonnn Nonnanniae ducunr auctore Dudone Sancti Quentini decano, 1865,11.9-10,149-51 (English translation: E. Christiansen, Dudo of St Quentin: History of the Nornwns, Woodbridge 1998); hunieges i, 47-51. Geoffrey gives the name of the French king at the time of Rollo's arrival in Normandy as Louis rather than Charles as in Dudo, and comments that this was a guess:Malaterra, Bk I, ch. 2, p. 7; Dudo, 11.27-8,167-70. This suggestshe did not have a copy of Dudo's text in Italy and that most probably he read Dudo in Normandy. Gerda Huisman, 'Notes on the Manuscript Tradition of Dudo of St Quentin's Gesta Nonnannonan', ANS 6,1982 (1983), 122-36, esp. 125. 64 Malaterra, Bk I, chs 38-40, pp. 24-5. 65 Malaterra, Bk I, chs 3-5, pp. 8-9. 66 Malaterra, Bk IV, ch. 26, p. 104 (line 10). More generally see Malaterra, Bk IV, ch. 1, p. 85; Bk IV, ch. 4, p. 87 and esp. Bk IV, ch.s 26-8, pp. 104-6. 96 Anglo-Nonnan Studies XXVII held power, but all those on the mainland who might use Count Roger's death to disinherit his young sons or who questioned the Sicilian count's increasingly active role on the mainland. Geoffrey therefore stated that Guiscard had granted Count Roger all of Sicily except for Palermo, and stressed the role played by Roger, as head of the Hauteville family, in ensuring Roger Borsa's succession and in settling disputes on the mainland 67 Moreover the Latin nobility of Sicily were of a different ethnic composition to William's audience on the mainland. Count Roger, who captured a non-Christian province, had no need or opportunity to legitimise his conquest through marriage to women drawn from the native aristocracy, and instead married high-status Norman emigrees such as Judith of Grandmesnil and Eremburga, daughter of the former count of Mortain. Roger reinforced his power over major landholders, nearly all of whom were from the duchy, by marrying them 68 to his own female relations. The highest-status noble women in Sicily were thus Normans, which in turn meant that the nobility as a whole was much more Norman than on the mainland. The fact that Geoffrey's narrative was written for a patron and a nobility who were in Norman, the main and that the greater part of the work deals with the conquest of a Muslim island by a Christian people, allowed Geoffrey to be much more conven- tional in his choices over how ethnicity could be constructed and exploited than had William been. His history opens with a description of Normandy, a brief history how Normandy be in of came to the hands of the Normans, and then a description of Normans. 69 the character of the The one certain model for Geoffrey's work, Dudo of St Quentin's History of the Nonnan Dukes, opens in a similar fashion: with a geographic description of the world and of in particular, a history of the mythical wanderings that brought the Danes to Scandinavia, and then a description of the customs and character of the Danish people 70 Dudo himself, however, had drawn late clearly on antique and early medieval models when writing his work. 71 Geoffrey was thus using a long-standing Latin historiographical tradition deemed for describing justifying appropriate and the actions of immigrant conquerors, and be one which assumed those conquerors to a culturally and politically distinct group from those they conquered. Geoffrey's is text seemingly straightforward in the way in which membership of an ethnic group is defined, and in the relationship between this and political loyalties. Exotic Saracen practices which intrigue Geoffrey, such as captured camels or the use of carrier pigeons, serve both to define Muslim groups, and to legitimise Roger's conquestby emphasisingthe othernessof those the Normans took Sicily from. 72The unproblematic stereotyping of cultural practices as specific to one group is not,

67 Malaterra, Bk II, 45, 53. ch. p. Both Amatus of Montecassino and Falco of portray Guiscard's grant as rather smaller: Amatus of Montecassino, VI. 21,283; E. D'Angelo, ed., Falco di Benevento: Chronicon Beneventwn,Florence 1998,68. 68 For for a summary of the evidence Roger's family see H. Houben, Mezzogiorno nonnanno-svevo Monasteri Naples 1996,106-13; e castelli, ebrei e musulmani, for Sicilian landowners see Loud, Age of Guiscard, 176-9; and for theseindividual families L: R. Menager, 'Inventaire', 312,323,353-4. 69 Malaterra, Bk 1, chs 1-3, pp. 7-9. 70 Dudo, I. 1-3,129-31. 71 Dudo used both Isidore's and Jordanes's Getica. W. M Lindsay, ed., Isidori Hispalensis episcopi Etymologiarum sive origimnn libri XX, 2 vols, Oxford 1910-11; Th. Mommsen, ed., Jordanis Romana et Getica, MGHAuctores antiquissimi 5, Berlin 1882,56-138. For more precise referencesto his use of these texts seenotes in Christiansen,Dudo of St Quentin: History of the Nonnans, 182-3; Jumiages i, 12-17. 72 Malaterra, Bk II, ch. 33, p. 44; Bk II, ch. 50. Normandy and Norman Identity 97 however, exclusive to Muslim groups. Particular clothing is identified with Greeks, and with the small population of Sclati'i, seemingly members of the small Slav popu- lation around Gargano. 73 Geoffrey tells how early in his career Robert Guiscard entrusted a vital mission to these Slav followers, but joined them in disguise, donning their traditional tunic and cloak, and only revealing his identity at a critical juncture by throwing the cloak back and speaking? 4 The Norman rebel Goscelin, appointed to a Byzantine command, likewise adopts a different form of clothing and returns dressed in the Greek clothes appropriate for such a commander. 75 Within Geoffrey's text, therefore, both Robert and Goscelin are able to exploit stereotypical associa- tions about clothing to denote with certainty their supposed roles and ethnicity. Hence whilst in William's text the framework which associated clothing with one ethnic group was weakened when individuals of another group adopted it - Meles in Geoffrey's it is could not pass as a Greek even when dressed as one - strengthened by the implication that Robert can pass as a Slav, and the stereotype is reinforced rather than weakened. As Robert Guiscard revealed his Norman nature by speaking and had to remain silent when in disguise, it is clear that Geoffrey portrays ethnic groups as having their own languages and, elsewhere, as having distinct religious practices and, linked to this, laws and dietary requirements 76 The explicit descrip- tion of the character of the Norman people includes not just character traits, but also forms of behaviour that would mark them out, such as hunting, hawking, fancy clothing and painted weapons. 77 There is also a clear link between descent, membership of an ethnic group and political loyalty within the text. Geoffrey suggests that Roger Borsa's naivety and mixed parentage were responsible for his decision to favour Lombards as well as Normans, despite the Lombards' supposed hatred of the Normans and their rule. Robert Guiscard accompanies his men in disguise precisely because he feared their ethnic ties to the local population made them untrustworthy. 78 Beyond such explicit statements, political actions are often described in terms of the character of a partic- ular people, with three groups being identified, in the same terms, as `always most treacherous' 79 Rebellions and plots were not uncommon among the Norman nobility of southern Italy, but attributing non-Norman rebels' actions to their ethnicity makes Geoffrey's tale one of competing peoples, and allows its author to use the norms of description inherited from Dudo and the wider Latin world. Geoffrey's description of peoples as having particular characteristics is most explicitly stated in his description of the Normans: They are a very astute people, keen to avenge injuries, looking to enrich them- selves from others rather than from the fields of their homeland. They are greedy and keen for profit and power, almost always pretending to be what they

73 For a brief history of the Slav population seeJ: M. Martin, La Pouille du We au X1I siecle; Rome 1993, 504-9. 74 Malaterra, Bk I, ch. 16, pp. 16-17. Slavs wore `viii veste et scarpis' (line 27). 75 Malaterra, Bk II, ch. 43, p. 51. Goscelin of Corinth is clothed 'graeco more' (line 31). 76 E. Greeks for bishop 'ex Graeci' 'latinus' g. the of wish a sua genre ... sibi rather than a (Malaterra, Bk IV, ch. 21, p. 100 [line 26]); the Muslim community of Palermo are allowed to live by their own laws (Malaterra, Bk III, ch. 45, p. 53 [lines 11-14]); Saracentroops accompanying Roger need differ- ent food (Malaterra, Bk IV, ch. 26,104 [lines 35-91). 77 Malaterra, Bk I. ch. 3, p. 8. 78 Malaterra, Bk IV, ch. 24, p. 102; Bk I, ch. 6, p. 16. 79 The phrase 'genus semper perfidissimum' is used of the Apulian Lombards (Malaterra, Bk I, ch. 13, p. 14 [line 251); of the Calabrians (Malaterra, Bk I, ch. 23,22 [line 4]) and of the Greeks (Malaterra, Bk II, ch. 29, p. 40 [lines. 2-3]). 98 Anglo-Nonnan Studies XXVII

between largesse are not or not to be what they are, occupying some mean and avarice. Yet their leaders are very liberal, since they want to gain a great reputa- tion held by the bonds of justice the people know no restraint at all. ... unless When circumstances require they can bear hard work, hunger and cold; they are addicted to hunting and hawking, and take pleasure in luxurious clothes and 80 elaborate trappings for their horses and other weapons. The ability to withstand hardship, and an unrestrained desire to enrich oneself, are the central components of the quality Geoffrey uses most often to describe both the Normans in general and the individual Normans within his text, namely strenuitas. This traditional military virtue, used as a personal epithet in Frankish charters and even, by William of Apulia, of the Greek leader Alexius Comnenus, becomes in Geoffrey's text the exclusive preserve of the Normans, ancestral pride in which can even rally them at times military crisis.81 In particular, the Hautevilles possessit in abundance,and have a `naturally ingrained habit' of being `greedy to rule' 82 Such a habit is, of course, a rather double-edged attribute, capable according to the circumstances of either causing trouble or driving the Normans on to great deeds of conquest. The fact that the merit of Norman actions depends on circumstance is inherent not only in the nature of strenuitas, however, but also in Geoffrey's descrip- tion of them more generally. Geoffrey's description of their character is far from simple flattery, and contains within it potential criticisms of the Normans and their actions. 83 It is also clear that Geoffrey artfully constructs this passage in order to exaggerate the tension between various aspects of the Norman character, and that this is obvious even without reference to other texts. He arranges his portrayal as a series of apparent contradictions: the Normans are not especially liberal, but are very liberal to gain a reputation; they are capable of withstanding extremes of hardship but love luxury; they want to avenge injuries but seek to conquer those who have done them no harm. This reaches its extreme in the simple use of a pair of opposites to describe their character: both sintttlatrix and dissimulatrix. None of these pairings are actual contradictions, and it is perfectly possible that the Normans are at different times all that Geoffrey says them to be. Neither do they represent good and bad sides of the Norman character: both display and an ability to withstand hardship are neces- sary virtues among a military aristocracy held together by personal ties. What the passage does, however, is draw the audience in and force it to think about the contra- dictions of the Norman character portrayed here, and how context specific certain actions are, even when described as natural and permanent. This is also true of passageswhere the Normans are contrasted with other peoples in southern Italy. When describing the response of the Lombards around Prince

80 Malaterra, Bk 1, ch. 3, p. 8. 81 Malaterra, Bk II, ch. 35, p. 46 (lines 11-17); William of Apulia, Bk IV, ch. 82, pp. 208-9. The term miles strenuus is sufficiently common for Michael Prestwich to treat it as an acceptedmilitary term in his, "'Miles in Armis Strenuus": The Knight at War', TRHS 6th ser. 5,1995,201 20.1 am grateful to Dr Kathleen Thompson for two specific instancesof its use to describe two membersof the comital family of Mortagne: Rotrou II (d. 1144) and his grandson Geoffrey III (d. 1202), for which see L. Merlet, ed., Cartulaire de 1'abbayede Tron, Chartres 1883, vol. ii, and Bibliotheque Municipale d'Alencon MS 112, Recueil sur la chartreusede Val Dieu, fol. 9. 82 Malaterra, Bk II, ch. 28, p. 48 (lines 6-7). 83 Wolf, Making History, 166-8, claims the criticism works for an 'educated' audience by reminding them of Sallust's description of the tyrant Catiline, and Augustine's description of the desire to dominate which is central to a post-lapsarian world. Normandy and Norman Identity 99

Guaimar IV of Salerno (1027-52) to the Normans in his employ, Geoffrey is scathing about their mistrust:

The race of the Lombards is indeed a most untrustworthy one, and always treats honest men with suspicion. They [the courtiers] secretly criticised those [Normans] in the prince's entourage, secretly suggesting that he drive them from him less any wicked person do harm to him in the future. With their innate malice they addedthis further calumny, suggestingthat a people who combined such astutenessand valour might by their cunning drive the prince out and seize his property.84 Here, as is typical in Geoffrey's text, we see political conflict described in ethnic terms, and peoples given innate qualities. Yet for any reader of Geoffrey's text, the Lombard suspicion is known to be valid, since the Norman Robert Guiscard did indeed, in 1077, drive out the ruling male Lombard prince of Salerno and seize his property. This passage thus casts doubt on the idea that the Lombards are in reality innately malicious, rather than merely politically astute, without ruling out the possi- bility that they are by nature malicious but just happened to be right on this occasion. Once again, the audience is forced to face up to and explain an apparent contradic- tion, and relate it to the Norman character. This second passagewould, for a reader who identified with the Lombard posi- tion, allow some criticism of the Normans into a text otherwise hostile to non-Norman groups. Seen within the context of Geoffrey's support for his patron, however, it also has a function for a Norman audience. If any criticism of the Normans is offered, it is of those `wicked men' who drove the prince of Salerno's descendantsout, namely Robert Guiscard and hence, by implication, his son Roger Borsa, who also suffers from associationthrough birth with the malicious Lombards. Geoffrey thus manages to reconcile implicit criticism of the actions of some Normans with a general pro-Norman framework, and to implicitly portray Count Roger, who conquered only non-Christians, as a good Norman. By forcing the audi- ence to understand how the Normans act differently in different circumstances, he manages to reconcile both his political aims of defending one emerging Norman polity against another, and the problems inherent in applying a simple oppositional framework to the mixed ethnic polities that emerged in southern Italy. It is a very different approach to William's, but one no less determined by the specifics of patronage, southern Italian politics, and intended audience.

Conclusion

Who precisely constituted such an audience is, however, almost impossible to deter- mine. Geoffrey states that Roger could read other histories, and that this motivated him to commission Geoffrey's text, but this topos is so common that we should not Roger it 85 Crucially, necessarily assume that ever read . there are no extant early manuscripts from Italy that would suggestwhere either work was being read, and the earliest traces of their influence are found instead in Normandy, where echoes of Geoffrey's description of the Norman character were used by Orderic Vitalis, and where Robert of Torigni incorporated William's etymologicial derivation of the

84 Malaterra, Bk I, ch. 6, p. 10. 85 Malaterra, Letter, 4. 100 Anglo-Norman Studies XXVII

Norman name into his continuations of the Gesta nonna nnonunducum. 86 These two writers' treatment of the texts illustrates a further problem, namely that medieval readers would not necessarily have read the whole works as I have done, but may instead have mined them for sections which seemedrelevant to the Norman identity they wished to illustrate. Yet both share features in their construction of ethnicity which must be related to how writers understood Norman identity in Italy. First, they both write as if origin is acknowledged, but is no longer a primary factor in determining political loyalty or response to the text. This is most obvious in William's text, but is also evident in Geoffrey's, for his construction too owes much more to the needs of Count Roger than to those of Norman origin as a whole within southern Italy. Linked to this is the relatively scant attention both pay to the history of the Normans outside Italy. The exception to this is the detail Geoffrey gives of the adventures of those Hautevilles who stayed in Normandy. Yet these are family legends, not attempts to explain the history of the duchy or of the Norman people in general. This is in sharp contrast to the history produced by Amatus of Montecassino only twenty years earlier, which uses tales of Norman adventures precisely to locate the expedition to Italy within a broader framework of Norman expansion. 87 The suggestion can only be that by the the was becoming less central to the identity of Italian Normans, and was coming to serve only as a point of origin remembered, not as a potent force for political identification. Second, both works define ethnicity using physical markers such as clothing styles. Anglo-Normanists will be aware of such definitions in differentiating between English and Norman in the descriptions of the conquest of 1066.88 Yet this is rare elsewhere within the tradition of Norman historical writing. It can only make sense in an Italian context, where being in Italy brought to the fore ways of defining Norman identity otherwise hidden by the similar material culture of the French prin- cipalities. Ultimately, the passing of a pressing political interest in the point of origin that united them, and the explicit definition of ethnicity through fluid and easily assumed markers such as dress, can only have made it easier for the Normans to interact peaceably with those about them. Although neither text can be proved to be influential in constructing Norman identity in Italy, the evidence from both suggests that it was William's vision, not Geoffrey's, that was most likely to come true in the long run.

86 William of Apulia, pp. 70-3; Malaterra, li-lvii; Orderic iv, 82-3; v, 24-5; hunieges i, 16-17. 87 Amatus of Montecassino, I. 1-15,9-20; Loud, 'Gens Normannorum', 105. 88 E.g. dress: Gesta Guillelmi, U. 42,176-7; Orderic ii, 256-7. On hair styles: D. M. Wilson, cd., The Bayeux Tapestry,New York 1985,177,185,193,208; Carmen, line 325,20-1; Gesta Gttillelmi, 11.44, 178-81; R. Bartlett `Symbolic Meanings of Hair in the Middle Ages', TRHS 6th ser. 6,1994,43-60, at 45.