#normans

it is fascinating to me, as someone who has never actually liked the Normans in principle, how much I have still internalised the idea that the introduction of Norman law and bureaucracy was, in some way... civilising?

like, it is a thread that runs SO deeply in pretty much any English history written before the 1980s, this idea of a progressive development where everything was chaos and despair (the "Dark Ages") for centuries after the Romans left, and then finally Alfred the Great came along and established England and that was Good, and then the Norman Conquest marks the real resumption of English civilisation

(and, I mean, that is where "Dark Ages" comes from. the idea that 1066, the start of the "Medieval" in traditional historiography, was an enlightening force which brought the Roman traditions of law, governance, and faith back to the benighted savages of Anglo-Saxon England)

and I don't consciously believe that! I have a lot of respect for the cultural and political complexity of both Saxon and Norse systems before the Conquest, and I have inherited my mother's lifelong love of Anglo-Saxon poetry and literature, so like. I know that pre-Conquest England wasn't a backwards place without art or philosophy.

but it's really hard not to be surprised by how much Norman incursion represents a backwards move in terms of literacy (the move from vernacular English back to Latin drastically lowered common literacy rates) and governance (the complex systems of hundreds/wapentakes and shires and ealdormen being replaced by an entirely king-down system) and formalised law (the re-introduction of Roman systems of "if the boss-man says it, it's law", the deprioritisation of the jury system in favour of trial by combat or ordeal)

and then you read about william the conqueror giving away land in winchester by pointing a knife at the abbot and everyone who isn't a norman is going "hey dude why didn't you just... what are you... we normally just sign the paperwork???" and it's like

oh

wow

Première croisade : Robert II, duc de Normandie, dit Robert Courteheuse, combattant un soldat musulman lors du siège d'Antioche en 1098