9 - Competing Visions of the Past: Norman Identities in the Thirteenth-Century Chronique de Normandie

Summary

Scholars traditionally end their studies of ‘the Normans’ in the late twelfth century, if not earlier. Seemingly uncertain of their place within the wider Angevin realm and deprived of a duke by the loss of Normandy in 1204, the Normans receded from the historical record. In England, southern Italy and the Crusader states historians have claimed that they gradually ‘adapted themselves out of existence’. In Normandy itself, the conquerors became the conquered; Norman identities were subordinated first by the Angevin realm and then the burgeoning Capetian state. Nick Webber has suggested that by the late twelfth century ‘it was seemingly rare for the inhabitants of Normandy to need to express their difference from their neighbours’. Studies that do extend into thirteenth-century Normandy have often focused on the governmental and administrative changes that accompanied the loss of Normandy, supporting the view that the duchy was easily integrated into the French kingdom. As the studies of John Baldwin and Joseph Strayer have shown, this was undoubtedly a time of increased centralization and a critical period in the formation of the French state.

Recent scholarship, however, has raised questions about some aspects of this process. The complexities of the expansion of the Capetian state and its negotiation with the aristocracy and regional powers resist easy characterization, particularly in the case of Normandy. This essay addresses the significant cultural and literary evidence for the endurance of distinct regional Norman identities. These vernacular literary works highlight a narrative in competition with that of growing Capetian royal and ‘national’ ideology.

This essay explores a previously understudied vernacular history, the Chronique de Normandie, to provide a more nuanced picture of the way Norman societies rationalized their experiences post-1204, shedding new light on how Norman identities competed with French identities. The Chronique provides a history of the dukes of Normandy; emerging c. 1200 it is a continuation of the Gesta Normannorum Ducum, extending the narrative of Norman history into the reign of the Angevin king-dukes, Henry II, Richard I, and John. The lack of a continuation to the historical narratives of the Normans is often cited as one of the major symptoms of their declining identity.