An Empire of Memory (38 page)

Normanni and Franci ‘ceased to be synonyms’ for the conquerors of England.27

William of Apulia, writing in the late 1090s and perhaps coming from Marmou-

tier,28 began his work by saying he will sing of the gens Normannica and generally

does so, even if the terminology he employed could be all over the place.29 Near the

end of his account though, William displayed his debt to Dudo, establishing a line

of continuity between the Franks of old and the Normans. Recounting Robert

Guiscard’s burial at Venosa, William claims that the earth had not seen such a man

as Robert since the time of Charlemagne.30

Yet another William, this one a monk of Jumièges (d. c.1070) who possibly worked

at the request of William I himself, relied heavily on Dudo to compose his Gesta

Normannorum Ducum. He made some significant changes though. If anything, the

Frankishness of the Normans is heightened in the account by William of Jumièges. Like

Dudo, at the very beginning of his text William laments how far the gens Francorum has

fallen. But William reaches back to the ninth century to explain why. As Nithard had

done more than 200 years earlier, William said that the Franks were the first to cast off

‘Roman savagery’ and raise up unconquered kings who allowed the ecclesia to flourish.

Then, again as Nithard had suggested, the fratricide of Fontenoy shattered the populus

christianus (the Franks). Northmen came and punished the Franks for their sins. But

now the Normans, after their conversion, have rejuvenated the Franks, intermarrying

and intermingling with them to become the new chosen people who have wrested

Frankish glory from the Capetians. Indeed, William’s narrative attitude towards the

Franks seems to change with the transition in kingship from Carolingian to Capetian.

For William of Jumièges, the true Franks were decended from the Carolingian reges

Francorum, not the Capetian reges Franciae.31 True Franks were Franci, not Francigeni.

27 Full text of embroidery reproduced at Lucien Musset, The Bayeux Tapestry, tr. Richard Rex

(Woodbridge, 2005), 270. See also Schneidmüller, Nomen patriae, 81–3; and Davis, Normans and

their Myth, 105.

28 William’s modern editor doubts that he was a monk at Marmoutier before coming south. Given my

discussion and his dedication of the work to Urban II (as well as Roger Borsa), this provenance does not seem problematic though. At the very least, it seems William was more closely attached to the papacy and Urban II than to the Norman nobility in Southern Italy. On his background, see William of Apulia, La

Geste de Robert Guiscard, ed. Marguerite Mathieu, Testi e monumenti (Palermo, 1961), 4: 11–25.

29 The northern armies William describes are often composed of Normanni, but are sometimes

called Galli, sometimes Francigeni, sometimes Franci, and sometimes christiani. See William, Geste de

Robert Guiscard, ed. Mathieu, Prologue l. 3, 1. 169, 371–2, 397–401, 2. 54–60, 174–6, 3. 98–105,

218–19, 242–5. These northerners are clearly distinct from the Byzantines, Muslims, and subjects of

the Salians, the last of whom are called Alemanni. Ibid. 1. 52–7, 95–9, 2. 80–92, 3. 284–8.

30 Ibid. 5. 405–9. Cf. similar language in La Chanson de Roland, ed. and tr. Gerard J. Brault, 2 vols.

(University Park, Pa., 1978), ii, ll. 1731–4.

31 William of Jumièges, Gesta Normannorum Ducum, ed. Elisabeth van Houts, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1992–5),

i. 10, 18; and i. 82, 124, ii. 26; respectively. On Nithard, see the beginning of Chapter 1 above.

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Bishop Guy of Amiens (d. 1074/5), who completed his poem on the battle of

Hastings just a few years after the event, alternated between referring to William’s

army as one of Gauls and one of Franks. Franci and Galli were not synonyms

though. Before Hastings, William of England spurs on his army of Normans,

Gauls, and Bretons collectively as Franks, a people chosen and beloved by God,

whose fame resounds around the world. Later, however, Guy makes his termino-

logical distinction clearer. He uses different names to describe different activities.

The Franks are skilled in the arts of war, while William is forced to chastise the

Normans and Gauls for shamefully fleeing. Later, Guy says that William entrusts

the Franci to continue the fight as he seeks out Harald.32 The difference is this: Guy

used ‘Gauls’ as a generic, geographic term to describe the collective regions from

which the army came. He used ‘Franks’, however, as a collective term used to

connote martial prowess and bravery in arms. Like Notker had said and Guibert

would say, being a Frank was something you earned. The Franks were warriors.

Throughout these Norman sources, as Notker had written not so long before,

Normans, Gauls, Bretons, and others earned the honor of also calling themselves

‘Franks’. Perhaps this is why, in an underutilized article, David Douglas observed that

‘it is . . . impossible to escape the conclusion that an eleventh-century Norman would

have had little difficulty in regarding himself as a Francus in the sense in which the term

is used in the Chanson [de Roland]’.33 In the c.1100 Oxford Roland, we see that

Charlemagne had conquered all the regions of Gaul, in addition to Flanders, Bavaria,

Normandy, England, Scotland, Iceland, Aquitaine, Provence, Italy, Saxony, Poland,

Spain, Brittany, and the Byzantine empire. His army reflected these conquests. When

Charlemagne draws up his battle-lines to confront Baligant, he divides his army into

divisions of (in order) Franks, Bavarians, Alamanns, Normans, Bretons, Poitevins,

Flemings and Frisians, Lotharingians and Burgundians, and Franks again. Finally,

back at Aix, Charlemagne summons his men to judge Ganelon and organizes them in

ranks of Bavarians, Saxons, Lotharingians, Frisians, Alamanns, Burgundians, Poite-

vins, Normans, Bretons, and Franks.34 But, of course, in all of these instances, they are

together an army of Franks. Baligant says he will fight ‘Charles and the Franks’. The

Franks taunt the pagans and cry out ‘Monjoie!’ together. The Franks strike hard blows

in battle and rout the enemy. The Franks cheer as one when Thierry defeats Pinabel in

32 Guy of Amiens, Carmen de Hastingae Proelio, ed. Frank Barlow (Oxford, 1999), ll. 159–60, and

250–4; then ll. 423–48, 533–6. We should be sensitive to the fact that neither the conquest of England nor that of Southern Italy and Sicily were exclusively Norman affairs. Although both armies were

primarily composed of men from Normandy, there were substantial contingents from Brittany, Maine,

and the Île-de-France. Ecclesiastics who filled newly created bishoprics could be from anywhere in

West Francia. On the conquest of Southern Italy, see Graham A. Loud, The Age of Robert Guiscard:

Southern Italy and the Norman Conquest (Harlow, 2000), 81–3; and Errico Cuozzo, ‘Les Évêques

d’origine normande en Italie et en Sicile’, in Pierre Bouet and François Neveux (eds.), Les Évêques

normands du XIe siècle (Caen, 1995), 67–78. On William’s army at Hastings, see the recent summary

with references in Thomas, English and the Normans, 33.

33 David C. Douglas, ‘The “Song of Roland” and the Norman Conquest of England’, French

Studies, 14 (1960), 110; and Davis, Normans and their Myth, 12. For more on the Norman connection

to the Oxford Roland, see Joseph J. Duggan, ‘The Generation of the Episode of Baligant:

Charlemagne’s Dream and the Normans at Mantzikert’, Romance Philology, 30 (1976/7), 59–82.

34 Chanson de Roland, ed. Brault, ll. 2322–34, 3026–95, 3700–4, respectively.

The Franks Return to the Holy Land

139

single combat.35 Although these men came from different regions, together they were

one. They fought together, celebrated together, conquered together, and together

they were Franks.

So, let us expand Douglas’s observation. Even if the earliest complete manuscript

of the Roland tradition is Anglo-Norman, the poem was popular across Europe and

peoples from numerous regions shared its understanding of what it meant to be

a Frank. They claimed these heroic Frankish predecessors as theirs, and clung to

them tightly. Paul Aebischer has found eleventh-century evidence of brothers

named Roland and Oliver at Angers, Marseilles, Saint-Pé in the Pyrenees, and

Béziers, while The Hague and San Millán de la Cogolla have preserved early

manuscripts of the Roland legend, both predating the Oxford manuscript. Numer-

ous façades of churches in Aquitaine from this period fondly reference the Roland

legend.36

The weight placed on Frankish martial exploits during the eleventh century had

precedent. Remember ninth-century sources and how peoples trembled on bended

knee before the power of the Franks. Think back on the Last Emperor legends,

especially those derived from the wildly popular De antichristo of Adso Dervensis,

and how the End of Time became a stage of Frankish history. The Frankish Last

Emperor would blaze forth at the head of Christ’s army––an army of Franks––

against his enemies just before the end of time. Charlemagne’s legendary founda-

tion (or refoundation) of the monasteries listed in Chapter 1 often occurred while

he was on campaign, fighting the Saxons, Lombards, or Muslims. Remember how

eleventh-century chronicles and hagiographies from all across Europe dreamt on

Charlemagne’s conquests, so that the Frankish empire seemed to blanket the entire

world. By the end of the eleventh century, the glorious Frankish past was a militant

one and was widely remembered as such.

C A L L I N G T H E F R A N K S T O H O L Y W A R :

I D E A S B E C O M E A C T I O N

Charlemagne appears, albeit briefly, in a few contemporary narratives of the First

Crusade. Three authors claimed that Godfrey de Bouillon’s army followed Charle-

magne’s road to Constantinople.37 Robert of Reims reported that Urban urged the

assembled Franks at Clermont to remember

35 Ibid., ll. 3287, 3299–3300, and 3931–3, respectively.

36 Paul Aebischer, ‘Les Trois Mentions plus anciennes du couple “Roland et Olivier”’, Revue Belge de

Philologie et d’Histoire, 30 (1952), 657–75; Ramón Menéndez-Pidal, La Chanson de Roland et la tradition épiques des Francs, tr. Fr. Irénée-Marcel (Paris, 1960), 372–81, 384–447; and Linda Seidel, Songs of Glory: The Romanesque Facades of Aquitaine (Chicago, 1981).

37 Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolymatinorum, ed. and tr. Rosalind Hill (London, 1962), 2;

Peter Tudebode, Historia de Hierosolymitano itinere, ed. John Hugh Hill and Laurita L. Hill (Paris,

1977), 31–3; and Robert of Reims, Historia Iherosolimitana, RHC Occ 3: 732. On the relationship

among the three sources, see my comments above at Ch. 2 n. 97.

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the glory and greatness of king Charles the Great, and of his son Louis . . . who destroyed the

kingdoms of the pagans, and extended the holy church to their lands. . . . Oh, most valiant

soldiers and descendants of invincible ancestors, be not degenerate, but recall the valor of

your progenitors.38

Ekkehard of Aura suggested that the men of the West could more literally follow their

predecessor’s example, noting rumors around 1095 that Charlemagne had risen from

the dead to lead the crusade. Ralph of Caen, writing in the first quarter of the twelfth

century, said that it was fitting for King Baldwin I (1100–18) of Jerusalem to sit on the

throne of the real David, as he was a descendant of the new David (Charlemagne).39

Charlemagne, often characterized by historians as an archetypal crusader, had long

been thought by modern scholars to have played a role in motivating men to join the

crusade, especially within a vein of (predominantly) French scholarship. But Jonathan

Riley-Smith has questioned whether the Charlemagne legend had much of an impact

on crusading at all, because Urban would have avoided invoking an exemplar of

Frankishness in front of the ‘southern French’ who attended Clermont and subse-

quently took up the call to crusade.40 Further, although Charlemagne himself as a

crusading archetype undoubtedly played a part in motivating some men to go on

crusade, we must concede that there are no extended meditations on Charlemagne in

any crusade chronicle and his name is mentioned, briefly, in only a few contemporary

sources. Also, although the earliest narrative of Charlemagne’s martial involvement in

the affairs of the East (the Descriptio qualiter) does predate the First Crusade, this text

was not well-known before the first decades of the twelfth century.

Some scholars have thus argued that Charlemagne’s influence on the first

crusaders was more indirect. Hannes Möhring has shown that the Charlemagne

legend underlay a late eleventh-century manifestation of the Last Emperor legend,

which was particularly influential on crusaders from the Rhineland. For Jean Flori,

Charlemagne did not serve as a literal archetype for the crusaders but they were

influenced by Charlemagne’s legendary wars, which represented the pretensions of

a universal Frankish empire.41 Marcus Bull believed that, because the First Crusade

38 ‘Moveant vos et incitant animos vestros ad virilitatem gesta praedecessorum vestorum, probitas et

magnitudo Karoli Magni regis, et Ludovici filii ejus . . . qui regna paganorum destruxerunt et in eis fines sanctae ecclesiae dilateverunt. . . . O fortissimi milites et invictorum propago parentum, nolite