The Evolution of Norman Identity, 911–1154

Bibliographic Data

ID9799597
AuthorsMarjorie Chibnall (University of Cambridge, corresponding author)
Year2005
Volume120
Issue489
Pages1417-1418
Publication date2005-12-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe English Historical Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0013-8266 • E-ISSN: 1477-4534
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/ehr/cei424
OpenAlexW1996546615
LanguageEN
Citations received9

The Evolution of Norman Identity, 911–1154, by Nick Webber (Woodbridge: The Boydell P., 2005; pp. 195. £45). In writing his book on the evolution of Norman identity, Nick Webber chose to base it on a doctoral thesis, and to keep it within the original limits of date, region and scope, while looking for an understanding of the meaning of ethnic identity. In the three parts he studies the Normans in Normandy, in the South, and in England after 1066, chiefly in narrative sources, analysing in each part the internal (mostly Norman) and external sources. By the time he reaches the twelfth century he wisely appreciates the need to break away from his model, which indeed is becoming something of a strait-jacket, and prefers to look for the different ways in which chroniclers, whether internal or external, considered ‘the other’. There are advantages and disadvantages in this method. The advantages are an increased subtlety in the analysis, which shows the influences on any individual chronicler and the change in his attitude over time. This is particularly marked when Webber examines Lombard and Norman influences in the south, Italian chroniclers such as William of Apulia, and notes the different conditions that affected writers in the Sicilian kingdom and on the mainland. The impact of crusading historiography is so vast a subject that it could be touched on only briefly and superficially. The disadvantages of Webber's method are in a certain tedium and verbosity that will deter many general readers, but will also help present-day students struggling through a mass of conflicting and confusing publications in divergent disciplines. Certain themes emerge slowly, but in the end forcefully, from the details. The dominant characteristics of the Normans, stressed by the earlier writers but never wholly forgotten, were their military prowess and their piety. The view expressed by Dudo of St Quentin, that their strength was due to their power of assimilation so that they brought together diverse races into one people, was perhaps less persistent. At the same time another change, at which Webber hints from time to time throughout the book, was taking place. In the north the dux Normannorum gave way to dux Normanniae and rex Angliae, who addressed his charters to his faithful Normans and English. It was a change from leader of a people to ruler of a land. Whereas in the earlier phases the strength and virtue of a gens was expressed in their leader, the social and ethnic make-up of the region ruled by a king required a change of interpretation. To some extent this new structure was handled by stressing the difference between the subjects of a king (whatever their ethnic identity) and ‘the other’. Webber recognises that the ‘identity models’ now in use are primarily focused on present-day conditions, but hints at the utility of such an approach even though eleventh- and twelfth-century writers might never have thought in such terms. Indeed, students of ‘nationalism’ seventy years ago would have looked primarily at nation formation in their own day, and at the importance of language and culture rather than blood. Nevertheless, this is a book that could very usefully be included in the course-reading recommended for a group of present-day students studying the Normans. One small matter of interpretation calls for questioning. A book depending on sources mainly in Latin inevitably approaches them through translation, and the ‘most perilous and enjoyable’ art of translation consists in expressing the meaning of a former writer in language that can represent it truthfully to a modern reader. The view held by Roger Mynors was that ‘humble translators don't always realise that they must adopt a more domineering attitude towards the style or syntax of their author, and bully him into writing English’. Webber's comment (p. 147 n. 56) that the inclusion by Mynors of pronouns (‘my’ country, ‘our’ history, ‘our’ native speech) in his translation of William of Malmesbury was ‘not entirely accurate’ as the words did not appear in the Latin, shows ignorance of Mynors's principles of translation. Literal rendering of the Latin would have produced the language usually described as ‘translatorese’. Printing errors in the book are few and usually not misleading, but surely the word ‘up’ in the statement (p. 65) that after his humiliating defeat at Civitate Pope Leo ‘finally gave up papal recognition of the Norman acquisitions in Italy’ should be deleted. Only at the end of the book did the apparently exhausted printers spoil their record by repeatedly eliding letters on pp. 178–9

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