Part IV
Chapter 10
The coronation of Duke William of Normandy as king of the English on Christmas Day 1066 was the culminating event in the Conqueror's career. It also marked a turning-point in the history both of Normandy and England, and a stage in the development of medieval Europe. To England it gave spectacular illustration alike of the continuance of her identity, and also of the reorientation of her politics, whilst for Normandy its consequences were scarcely less profound, and no kingdom in western Europe was to be unaffected by the new political grouping which it symbolized. Again, the coronation took its place as a crucial episode in an interrelated process of Norman endeavour which within the space of a century was to stretch from Spain to Sicily, from Apulia to Constantinople, and on towards Palestine. Nor was the impact of the coronation restricted to secular affairs. Itself a religious act, it occurred at a moment when the papacy was beginning to effect a radical change in the structure of western Christendom, and when new ideas of political theology were being voiced with ever wider practical consequences. It is small wonder, then, that William's coronation commanded attention. Heralded, as it might seem, by celestial portents, consequent upon a notable feat of arms, and blessed by the Church, it fired the imagination of contemporaries.
Its full implications were not of course immediately apparent, and much of the importance of William's coronation was in fact to depend upon the controversial interpretations which were later placed upon it. In December 1066 the ceremony might well have been regarded as a simple recognition of existing fact: the inexorable result of a conquest effected by superior generalship, superior diplomacy, and superior force. Such, for example, was probably the dominant sentiment of those sorrowing English magnates who, before the Conqueror proceeded to Westminster, came to Berkhamstead, defeated and deeply moved, to make their submission, and who, it is said, were kindly received by William, who promised to be their good lord.1 Somewhat more complex sentiments are, however, suggested by the debates which are said to have followed. The English are reported to have urged William to take the crown, because they were accustomed to have a king for their lord,2 and this, as will appear, involved far more than a change of title: it invoked a complex of loyalties, some traditional and some religious, but all emotionally compelling.
To the Normans surrounding William the situation was inevitably different. These men, ruthless and astute, were naturally anxious to push the conquest to its conclusion, but some of them were doubtless apprehensive lest William as king might be able unduly to enlarge in Normandy the rights which he already exercised as duke. At all events, William himself thought it prudent to display some hesitation in the matter, and it is perhaps significant that in the debate which ensued the most strenuous argument in favour of an immediate coronation was made not by a Norman magnate but by the Poitevin, Haimo, vicomte of Thouars.3 In reality, the decision must have appeared to be almost implicit in the facts of the situation. No alternative course readily presented itself. Thus it was with the formal support of leading men both of Normandy and of England that William came at last to his crowning at Westminster. And there it was specifically as king of the English that he was consecrated.
The ceremony which then took place is of the highest interest, and it is fortunate that there have survived not only contemporary descriptions of what took place, but also a text of the Ordo4 which may reasonably be supposed to reflect that used on this occasion.5What, moreover, is of particular importance is that these proceedings followed the traditional English pattern so that William was hallowed according to a rite which was substantially the same as that which had been followed in the coronation of English kings from at least the time of Edgar.6 In this manner, at the solemn inauguration of his reign as king, every effort was made to stress the continuity of English royal rule. It was Anglo-Saxonici, it was the Populus Anglicus, who were ritually called upon to salute the king as he was consecrated to rule over ‘the Kingdom of the Angles and the Saxons’.7 The claim to be the inheritor of an unbroken royal succession was thus spectacularly made at the very beginning of William's English reign. It was to govern his policy until his death.
None the less, significant changes were made on this occasion. The circumstances of 1066 obviously called for some special acceptance of the new ruler, and it was forthcoming. Geoffrey, bishop of Coutances (speaking in French), and Aldred, archbishop of York (speaking in English), formally demanded of the assembled congregation whether they would accept the new king.8 This was an innovation imported from France,9 and it was to become in due course an integral part of the English coronation rite. Another interesting change occurred in the prayer Sta et Retine. In earlier times this had contained a reference to the new king's father, and in 1066 this was clearly inappropriate: the phrase ‘by hereditary right’ was therefore substituted. Similarly, the position of the queen had to be considered. Matilda was not to be crowned until 1068, but then she received more signal honours than had before been customary. She was acclaimed as having been placed by God to be queen over the people, and hallowed by unction as a sharer in the royal dominion.10
The most significant addition to English coronation ritual introduced by the Normans is, however, to be found in the litany which contained the liturgical acclamations known as the Laudes Regiae.11 These Laudes (which had been sung at the coronation of Charlemagne) had, before the Conquest, been sung in Normandy on the chief feasts of the Church, and therein, as has been seen, William received as duke the exceptional honour of mention by name.12 On the other hand, it is doubtful how far, if at all, theseLaudeshad been employed in pre-Conquest England.13 None the less they were sung, as it seems, at the coronation of Queen Matilda in Winchester at Pentecost 1068,14 and in due course they were to become a recognized part of the English coronation service. It is, moreover, very probable that they were sung at William's own coronation in 1066, and more certainly they were chanted before the king at the solemn crown-wearings which came to take place regularly at Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost, and which were noted as a characteristic feature of his rule.15
The form of these Laudes so far as they concerned William was, moreover, now most notably changed. In the pre-Conquest Norman Laudes, the duke is named only after the king of France. The saints invoked on his behalf come low in the sequence of the litany,16 and the salutation runs: ‘To William Duke of the Normans, health and perpetual peace.’17 By contrast, in the Laudes which were sung after 106618 there is no mention of the king of France; the saints now invoked are Our Lady, St Michael, and St Raphael. And the salutation is: ‘To the most serene William, the great and peacegiving King, crowned by God, life and victory.’19 The change is in every way remarkable. Vita et Victoria is an old imperial formula, and serenissimus is a very old imperial designation.20Moreover, the salutation as a whole is one which in the middle of the eleventh century was accorded to no other lay ruler in western Europe save the emperor and the king of France. The implication is clear. In the liturgy of the Church, Duke William of Normandy has now been recognized as a rex. He is saluted as of equal status with the French king: one of the chief secular rulers of western Christendom.
The coronation of William gave sanction to the kingship he had won by arms, and was designed to glorify the regality into which he had entered. It was of course true – and it was everywhere apparent – that a revolution had taken place, and that this had been brought about by invasion and battle. But William and those who spoke for him were never content to leave the matter at that point. By contrast, it was continuously argued that William was the legitimate successor of Edward the Confessor after an interregnum caused by usurpation, and that he was king of England not only de facto but also de jure. The claims put forward by William in this matter are, moreover, not to be dismissed as merely specious arguments designed to justify spoliation after the event. They deserve consideration both for their effect on contemporaries, and in relation to the achievements of William between 1066 and 1087.
The arguments adduced by William to show that the factors normally operating in the succession of a king of England applied to his own situation thus demand attention. Most curious of these was his emphatic assertion of hereditary right. ‘Right of blood’ (jus sanguinis) was, in fact, placed in the forefront of his justification by William of Poitiers, who buttressed the contention by reference to the Conqueror's relationship with Emma, the daughter of Duke Richard I, and the mother of Edward the Confessor.21 The argument was, in truth, weak, but it probably appeared less specious in the eleventh century than it would today. Hereditary right lay at the basis of Anglo-Saxon royalty, but it was a hereditary right of the family as a whole, and not specifically of any one of its members.22 In asserting jus sanguinis for himself William was therefore paying deference to ancient Anglo-Saxon (and indeed Germanic) tradition, without necessarily weakening his position against such men as Edgar Atheling who by modern theory were so much closer in the succession.
The royal family's right to the throne was held to be as inviolable as the right of any individual prince to succeed was weak. To belong to the royal stock (stirps regia) was an indispensable condition of legitimate kingship. Consequently, William felt constrained to stress at whatever hazard his connexion with the English kingly house, which derived, as it might seem, from Woden himself. That is why the phrase ‘by hereditary right’ appeared so strangely in the ritual of his coronation. And for the same reason the claim was reiterated in some of his earliest formal acts as king. In a vernacular writ issued between 1066 and 1070 the new king confirmed to the abbey of Bury St Edmunds the rights which had been held by the abbey in the time of Edward ‘my kinsman’.23 And in a charter which was given to Jumièges about the same time, William, using a title derived from the eastern empire, solemnly declared: ‘I, William, lord of Normandy, have become King (Basileus) over the fatherland of the English by hereditary right.’24
In all primitive monarchies dependent upon the rights of the kindred, it was of course necessary to devise some means whereby the undisputed claim of the family to the throne could be translated into the right of a particular individual to succeed. In Anglo-Saxon England two considerations seem here to have been particularly influential. The one was the expressed wish of the reigning king respecting his successor within the royal family; the other was the acceptance of an individual (also within the family) by the magnates, and the recognition of reciprocal rights and duties between them as ratified by oath. Both these notions were to have some bearing on the legitimacy of the William kingship, and to both of them he was to pay overt respect.
There is no reasonable doubt that, as has been seen, in or about 1051 William received formal designation by the Confessor as his heir, and the question before contemporaries was whether this nomination had ever been formally rescinded. Within a few years of the Confessor's death, it was asserted that Edward on his death-bed had bequeathed the throne to Harold Godwineson, and there is very strong evidence to suggest that this in fact occurred. The matter is not, however, entirely removed from doubt; nor can the possibility be ignored that this promise may have been extracted by duress from a dying man during the last confused moments of his life by the interested group which is known to have surrounded his bedside.25 Nor is it certain what weight would have been given by contemporaries to a bequest made at such a time to one who was emphatically not of the stirps regia, or whether this would have been generally regarded as invalidating the earlier promise to William. At all events, whatever may in fact have happened on 5 January 1066 around the Confessor's death-bed, William never ceased to claim that he had been formally designated by the king as the legitimate successor to Edward the Confessor.
In the matter of recognition by oath he was placed, however, in a more equivocal position. His acceptance as king by the Norman nobles at Berkhamstead followed recognized practice, but in the case of the English magnates it was obvious that he was dealing by constraint with men whom he had recently beaten in battle. None the less, both at Berkhamstead and at Barking, English notables had sworn loyalty to him, receiving in return a promise of good government, and these transactions could be construed, albeit with some difficulty, as following the English tradition that is exemplified, for instance, in the oaths which had been given and exacted by Edmund in 940–946. It is, however, the procedure which was deliberately adopted at the coronation which is here significant. The noteworthy innovation of the questions by the prelates was certainly introduced as an appeal to tradition, and these questions were preceded by the Conqueror pronouncing a coronation oath which is almost identical with that which had been employed at English royal hallowings since the tenth century. It was apparently delivered ‘in a clear voice’.26
The character of William's kingship was to depend not only on such respect as he could assert for English tradition, but also on such religious sanctions as he could invoke for the royalty he acquired. The coronation of 1066 has in short to be placed in its proper setting of contemporary political theology. In the eleventh century, the notion of Christ-centred kingship was generally accepted in western Europe.27 Thus Otto II had been depicted in the Aachen Gospels (c. 990) as set high above other mortals and in direct communion with the Godhead, whilst Conrad II had later been hailed as the Vicar of Christ on earth. Nor were such attributes, derived and developed from the age of Charlemagne, restricted to the emperors. In France the house of Capet, similarly adapting Carolingian tradition, formally claimed to rule by the ‘grace of God’, and their sacred mission was widely asserted.28 Such sentiments had in fact become so pervasive that William in 1066 by exchanging his title of dux for that of rex was, by implication, demanding an exaltation of his authority.
For nowhere had the divine right of monarchy been more forcibly emphasized than in England. If William was to be accepted as a lawful king it was as the true successor of Edward the Confessor, and the sacred character of Edward's kingship is notably asserted in his earliest biography. There, for instance, it is stated that Edward ruled ‘by the grace of God and by hereditary right’ whilst the crown he wore is described as ‘the crown of the kingdom of Christ’.29 ‘Let not the King be perturbed even though he has no son, for God will assuredly provide a successor according to His pleasure.’ Edward, in fact, had been ‘divinely chosen to be King even before his birth, and had therefore been consecrated to his kingdom not by men but by God’.30 Such statements are not to be dismissed as mere rhetoric. They represent a view of kingship, which was soon to be challenged, but which in the middle of the eleventh century was widely accepted and politically influential. By assuming English royalty, William in 1066 was in fact laying claim to a position which was generally recognized as possessing attributes specially delegated to it by God.
The prestige to which he thus aspired could be further illustrated by reference to the thaumaturgic powers attributed to eleventh-century kings.31 There is no doubt that preternatural powers of healing had been claimed for Robert II of France, and the Vita Edwardirecounts several miraculous cures as effected by Edward the Confessor.32 Later, Philip I of France was credited with the limited power of healing scrofula by touch, and it would seem that the same power was ascribed to Henry I of England.33 The precise nature of the power thus exercised was, it is true, ill-defined. In the earlier half of the twelfth century the efficacy of the ‘touch’ of Louis VI was attributed to his heredity as king of France, and that the power was inherent in royalty came later to be accepted in both France and England.34 During the Investitures controversy, on the other hand, many ecclesiastics were quick to deny any such supernatural attributes to the kingly office, and in consequence to assert that the healing miracles of Robert I and Edward the Confessor were due not to their royalty but to their personal sanctity.35 No such distinctions were drawn, however, in popular opinion, and William of Malmesbury, writing for sophisticated readers about 1125, was constrained to chide the large public who believed that it was specifically as king that Edward the Confessor had performed his miracles of healing.36
The royal state into which William entered was surrounded by a strange atmosphere of veneration. Whether he himself ever ‘touched’ for scrofula must remain uncertain, but, set as he was between Edward the Confessor and Henry I (both of whom were later credited with thaumaturgic powers), it is not impossible that he did so.37 Indeed, there is indirect testimony which points, albeit doubtfully, towards this conclusion. About 1080 Goscelin, a monk of Saint-Bertin, who came to England in 1059, composed a Life of St Edith, the daughter of King Edgar, which he dedicated to Lanfranc. In this work, he describes a posthumous miracle performed by the royal saint whereby Ælviva, abbess of Wilton from 1065 to 1067, was cured of a malady affecting her eyes (one of the signs of scrofula), and the disease is described as ‘the royal sickness’.38 Evidently, towards the end of the reign of William the Conqueror, something like the disease later held to be specially susceptible to the royal ‘touch’ was already being described in England as the ‘King's Evil’. And, equally certainly, the crown-wearings which William made a regular feature of his English reign, and at which the laudes regiae were sung, could have supplied appropriate occasions whereat such ceremonial acts of healing might have been performed.
Whatever place may be assigned to William the Conqueror in the curious history of royal healing there can be no question of the religious attributes of the royalty which was henceforth to be his. It was thus inevitable that he should claim that his kingdom had come to him as a gift of God. The ecclesiastical support accorded to his expedition could be cited in favour of such a view, and Hastings itself might be likened to a trial by battle in which God had delivered a just verdict. William of Poitiers developed this idea,39and if he must be regarded as a prejudiced witness, no such criticism can be levelled at Eadmer. Yet Eadmer comments on the battle of Hastings in exactly the same sense. So heavy were the losses inflicted on the Normans, he says, that in the opinion of eyewitnesses William must have been defeated but for the intervention of God. Therefore (concludes Eadmer) William's victory must be considered as ‘entirely due to a miracle of God’, who was not willing that Harold's perjury should go unpunished.40 The idea was capable of wide development. As early as 1067 William is formally described in a charter for Peterborough as ‘king of the English by the grant of God’.41 And the claim that William's royalty had in a special way been granted to him by God was not allowed to die.
It was here that the unction accorded to him at the coronation became important, since it emphasized the religious nature of his office, and at the same time indicated the manner in which his power might perhaps in the future be circumscribed. Unction was reserved for priests and kings. No Norman duke had hitherto been anointed. William's unction therefore marked a stage in the growth of his authority, and it thus attracted the attention of contemporaries. The Anglo-Saxon chronicler confines himself to the statement that William was hallowed, but Eadmer calls emphatic attention to the unction, and William of Poitiers insists that it was performed by a prelate of unblemished reputation.42 The Carmen was later to glorify the act in rhetorical verse,43 but among contemporaries it was William of Jumièges who perhaps best summed up what took place. Not only (he says) was William accepted by the Norman and English magnates; not only was he crowned with a royal diadem; but he was also ‘anointed with holy oil by the bishops of the kingdom’.44 In this manner was the change of dynasty in England formally legitimized by one of the most solemn of the rites of the Church.
There was, moreover, a special importance attaching to the anointing of William in 1066. If unction in the eleventh century was regarded as an essential feature of every royal inauguration, it was particularly apposite at a time of dynastic change, since it was part of ecclesiastical doctrine that suitability to rule rather than strict hereditary right must in the last resort be held to justify any sacramental sanctions bestowed by the Church.45 At the time of the coronation of Pippin in the eighth century, Pope Zacharius is reported to have declared that it were better that he should be called king who possessed the power rather than he who had none, and a parallel might now profitably be sought between Edgar Atheling and Childerich III. In the interval Adémar of Chabannes had stated much the same principle in favour of Hugh Capet,46 and Gregory VII was himself to repeat the doctrine with perfect clarity.47 The notion that dynastic change might be formally and solemnly ratified by consecration, and more particularly by unction, was thus peculiarly applicable to the English situation in 1066.
The precise implications of the unction were, however, liable to dispute, and they were later to form part of a great controversy. Two contrasted interpretations of the unction might in fact be made.48 It might be regarded as a recognition of existing rights pertaining to the divine institution of royalty, or it might be held as the source of those rights. It gave the king a place apart from the laity, and might even vest him with sacerdotal powers. But it might also be held to make his status dependent upon a religious service performed by the clergy. These questions were to loom large in the arguments on the relations between secular and religious power in western Europe which were to begin before the close of William's English reign, and which were to be developed during the Investitures Contest. It is, therefore, appropriate to consider what was William's own situation in this matter on the day on which he was solemnly anointed in Westminster Abbey ‘by the tomb of Edward the Confessor’ on Christmas Day 1066.49
It was inevitable that at the time of the Investitures Contest, those ecclesiastics who were concerned to subordinate secular authority to the Church should seek to deny that royal unction was an indelible sacrament, giving the king the status of priest, and though the papalist case in this matter was not to be fully set out until the time of Innocent III, most of the arguments he reviewed had been stated by Hildebrandine writers during the previous century.50 A denial that royal unction was a sacrament was, indeed, implicit in the claim of Gregory VII to be able to depose anointed kings, and it is therefore not surprising that when in the course of the twelfth century the sacraments of the church were defined, graded, and limited to seven, royal unction found no place among them, though the consecration of priests of course remained. Consequently, there was towards the end of the twelfth century a consistent attempt made to minimize, in the case of kings, the dignity of the anointing ceremony itself. Such contentions indicate the strength of the later ecclesiastical opposition to the notion of the priest-king, which in fact was to wane in political importance during the twelfth century. But they also suggest how general must have been the support for that notion during the previous century.51
There can, indeed, be little question of the strength of these ideas in England in the time of King William. It was, in fact, Norman writers who, in all Europe, were to be the most prominent in developing the notion of the priest-king in favour of the Anglo-Norman monarchy he founded. The famous tractates formerly attributed to the Norman ‘Anonymous of York’52 are now generally believed to have been compiled in Rouen about the end of the eleventh century, and it is not impossible that their author was William Bonne-Ame who in 1079 became archbishop of Rouen with the Conqueror's approval.53 In these tractates, as is well known, the royal office was exalted to extraordinary heights. By unction (it is there asserted) the king is sacramentally transformed; he becomes a Christus domini; he becomes a sanctus; and there may even be found in his office a reflection of the authority of God Himself. It must of course be remembered that this author was writing at the beginning of the Investitures Contest, and with the fervour of a controversialist supporting the secular power. But his ideas are generally regarded as having been traditional,54 and, as has been seen, they reflected sentiments which had been widely current at an earlier date, and particularly in the early biography of Edward the Confessor. They may reasonably be held therefore to represent the view of the English royalty that was in 1066 acquired by the Norman duke, and the effect of such ideas on popular sentiment in both England and Normandy must have been considerable. Lanfranc (it is said) was once constrained to reprove a clerk who, watching William seated in splendour at one of his crown-wearings cried out: ‘Behold I see God.’55
It would of course be difficult to assess the effect of such sentiments on William's authority, but it might be easy to underestimate their force. They must certainly have contributed to the consolidation of his power during the early years of his English reign, and from the start he attempted to translate them into practice. Claiming the loyalties inherent in English kingship, he began his administration specifically as an English king. An interesting group of charters has survived which were issued very early in his reign. The most famous of these was in favour of the city of London,56 but others were addressed to various churches: to Westminster, for example, and to Chertsey Abbey; to Saint Augustine's Abbey at Canterbury; to Giso, bishop of Wells; and to Baldwin, abbot of Bury St Edmunds.57 It will be noted that all these grantees belonged to southern England beyond which the new king's power did not extend. Already, however, the purport of all these charters was that the customs which prevailed under Edward the Confessor are to be preserved. The reign of Harold Godwineson is treated as an interregnum. The Conqueror is made to appear as the direct successor to the Confessor: as the legitimate, and consecrated, holder of all the royal rights of the ancient English dynasty.
Nor can there be any question that the special qualities of the royalty he thus assumed would affect his policy towards the Church at a time when the relations between secular and ecclesiastical authority throughout western Europe were becoming increasingly controverted. Many of his English predecessors had ruled specifically ‘by the grace of God’;58 most of them, including Edward the Confessor, had intervened in the detailed administration of ecclesiastical affairs;59 and indeed one of them had actually been likened to the Good Shepherd whose sacred duty it was to tend the flock of the faithful. Now, in the coronation Ordo which was sung in 1066, it was once more prayed that this new Norman king would foster, teach, strengthen, and establish ‘the church of the whole kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons, committed to his charge, and defend it against all visible and invisible enemies’.60 Such a position, so notably reasserted at a time of violence and change, was fortified by tradition. Not only did it derive strength from the religious sanctions of Old English royalty, but it harmonized with the long-standing claims of Canterbury to leadership over the whole ecclesia Anglicana – a term which not only embraced the provinces both of Canterbury and York but might even stretch into Scotland or Ireland. On this matter William, the great king, and Lanfranc, the great archbishop, were to find themselves at one.61 And in a wider sphere also the impact of these ideas was to be felt. They offered a counterpoise to rising theories, which, while seeking to diminish the sanctity of royalty, at the same time claimed complete freedom for the Church from secular authority. One of the greatest practical advantages which accrued to Christ-centred monarchy was that it legitimized the control by a king over the Church throughout all his dominions.
The chief effects of William's coronation were of course to be felt in England. But its consequences extended to Normandy also. It was not merely that his personal standing was thereby increased so that a wider gulf was henceforth to separate him from even the greatest of the Norman nobles. Nor was it solely that the feudal arrangements of Normandy were to be altered (as will be seen) in William's favour as a result of the conquest of England. It was, also, a matter of prestige. No Norman duke had ever been anointed.62No Norman duke had hitherto been saluted with such impressive Laudes, and certainly the faithful in Normandy had never before heard their duke mentioned by name as William now was, as king, in every recital of the Canon of the Mass.63 William brought the glory of medieval regality to the Norman ducal dynasty, and his authority in Normandy was inevitably enhanced by the fact.
There was, moreover, a particular reason why in Normandy, at this time, William's acquisition of the kingly dignity must have been especially influential. The manner in which the English expedition had been blessed by the Church was only part of a process whereby during these critical decades the Normans had adopted the notion of a holy war and exploited it in their own interests. Again and again the same theme had been stressed. In 1062–1063 Pope Alexander II had given his blessing and a banner to Norman knights fighting in Sicily. In 1064 the Normans were prominent in the ‘crusade’ at Barbastro.64 In 1066 William himself fought in Sussex under a papal banner, and with dedicated relics round his neck. In 1068 Norman knights such as Roussel of Bailleul and Roger Crispin, whose exploits seem to have been known to William of Poitiers,65 were serving with the eastern emperor against the Turks.66 In 1070 the religious character of William's own expedition was proclaimed afresh at Windsor, and in 1071 Norman warriors were engaged with the emperor at Manzikiert.67 In 1072, while William was advancing into Scotland, Roger son of Tancred captured Palermo from the Saracens,68 and, however mixed the motives which inspired it, the Norman conquest of Sicily resulted in the most important triumph of Christians over Moslems in the eleventh century. These events so closely connected in time were also intimately related in spirit for, as must be emphasized, they were undertaken by men who were brothers and cousins of one another, fully conscious of their kinship, and conscious also of their common and militant purpose. And now this self-styled ‘crusading’ endeavour which involved so many lands had been crowned by the assumption of divinely sanctioned royalty by a Norman duke.
How potent might be the effect of these ideas is suggested by a comparison between some of the literary and liturgical texts of this time. The continuous sequence of events of which the Norman conquest of England may be said to have formed a part, is generally held, for instance, to have inspired the Song of Roland, which probably assumed its present form towards the close of the eleventh century, or at all events before 1124.69 But in the Song of Roland not only is the notion of the Holy War glorified, but also the conception of the divinely sponsored monarch who is himself both priest and king. The fabled Charlemagne is, there, a man of supernatural age, and of supernatural sanctity; St Gabriel watches over his sleep, and when he fights, the angel of God goes with him. Moreover, he is certainly the priest-king. He gives the priestly blessing; like a priest, he signs with the cross; and, as only a priest can, he pronounces absolution.70 Now, it is not impossible that the Roland assumed its present form under Norman influence,71 but whether this be so or not, its relevance to the contemporary idea of the Holy War as exploited by the Normans, and to the Christ-centred monarchy to which William aspired, is evident. Indeed, in respect of the latter notion, the closest parallel to the Roland in contemporary texts is to be found in those tracts by the Anonymous of Rouen (or of York) which were certainly of Norman origin, and which equally certainly reflected the same ideas of kingship.
The direct bearing of this on the question of William's royalty could be further illustrated by renewed reference to those Laudes which were sung before him, most probably at his coronation, and certainly at his subsequent crown-wearings. In 1068 theseLaudescontained the invocation: ‘To all the lords of the English, and to the whole army of the Christians, life and prosperity.’72 Now, the hail to the ‘army of the Christians’ is entirely appropriate to the fabled Charlemagne of the eleventh-century Roland. And it may have been brought to England by the Normans. Moreover, its particular relevance to the circumstances of 1066 as envisaged by the Normans is made clear by the subsequent history of the Laudes in England. For while these continued to be sung in honour of the kings of England until at least the early thirteenth century, yet by the middle of the twelfth century the phrase ‘army of the Christians’ had been replaced by ‘army of the English’.73 The special ‘crusading’ sentiment characteristic of the Normans in the eleventh century had departed, and its disappearance shows by implication how strong had been that sentiment at the time of William's coronation.74
These considerations indicate from a new angle the effect of William's coronation not only on Normandy but on the wider Norman world. For that world towards the end of the eleventh century was in a real sense a unity. Norman prelates such as Geoffrey of Coutances and Odo of Bayeux received contributions from their kinsfolk in Italy to enable them to build their cathedrals at home. The Norman Laudes with which England was made familiar after 1066 were to pass on to Apulia,75 and it was noted as a source of pride that the chant of Saint-Évroul rose to God from the monasteries of Sicily. Not for nothing was Rouen soon to be hailed as an imperial city – as a second Rome – for (as was said) the Norman people had gone out from thence to subdue so many other lands.76These were sentiments of the mid-twelfth century, but they reflected an earlier tradition. The Conqueror, it is said, was wont to confirm his courage by recalling the deeds of Robert Guiscard,77 and his contemporary biographer boasted that the troops he brought to England belonged to the same race that took possession of Apulia, battled in Sicily, fought at Constantinople, and brought terror to the gates of ‘Babylon’.78 Certainly, the Norman world of this age was a reality, proud of its asserted Christian mission, and proud also of its armed might which by 1072 had been made to stretch from Abernethy to Syracuse, from Barbastro to Byzantium, from Brittany to the Taurus. And within this vast zone of interconnected endeavour, William between 1066 and 1087 occupied a special place. He was the only Norman rex; he was the only Norman Christus Domini. As such, throughout the self-conscious Norman world of the eleventh century he might claim – and he might sometimes be accorded – a unique prestige.79
Herein lay the peculiar importance to Normandy and the Normans of the act of 1066 by which William, using all the Old English precedents in his support, laid claim to Christ-centred kingship. And for these reasons, also, the same act was to foster a common purpose in both parts of his realm. In England he could call to loyalties which had long been centred on an ancient royal house. In Normandy, as the duke who had risen to royalty, he could appeal to the particular patriotism of a unique province, and also to Norman pride in a far-flung military endeavour that had been linked to a self-asserted Christian purpose. And these sentiments, distinct in England and Normandy, were in some measure fused together by the central religious act of Christmas Day 1066.
In this sense therefore it is appropriate to apply the term ‘Anglo-Norman kingdom’80 to those dominions on both sides of the Channel which, between 1066 and 1087, were united under the rule of King William. Some important qualifications must, however, always be borne in mind when the term is used in this sense. William was not only king: he was more specifically king of the English; and after 1066, as before, he was also duke of the Normans. In charters of Norman provenance between 1066 and 1087 both titles are normally used,81 and if the ducal style is made to yield precedence to the royal, the double description remained and its implications are not to be ignored. Nor were its political consequences to be negligible. They were at the last to find expression after William's death, when the Conqueror's realm became divided for nineteen years before it was reunited under the rule of one of his sons.82
Nevertheless, when all proper qualifications have been made, it remains true that in a real sense the dominions of King William between 1066 and 1087 constituted a single realm and a political unity. Duke William II of Normandy was now King William I of England, but it was equally true that the Norman duchy was now under the rule of a king. And this was to affect his position in Normandy scarcely less than in England. It was as king that he was to hold his courts which, on both sides of the Channel, comprised much the same set of people. It was as a consecrated king that he, and he alone, between 1066 and 1087, attended and dominated the ecclesiastical councils which met both in Normandy and in England. And it was under a single king that a single aristocracy, predominantly Norman in composition, controlled the administration of his conjoint realm. As a result, during this period Normandy and England were to exercise a continual and reciprocal influence on each other, and the transformations which then occurred were always dependent upon the duke who had become a king, and whose royal status was essential to his subsequent achievement. Thus it was that William's coronation in 1066 accurately foreshadowed many of the special characteristics of the realm he ruled, and indicated much of its future history.
1 AS. Chron., ‘D’, s.a. 1066.
2 Will. Poit., p. 216.
3 Ibid., p. 218.
4 Printed in Three Coronation Orders, ed. J. Wickham Legg (Henry Bradshaw Soc., vol. XIX (1891), pp. 54–64).
5 P. E. Schram, English Coronation, p. 234.
6 Ibid., p. 28.
7 Wickham Legg, loc. cit.
8 Will. Poit., p. 221.
9 Schram, op. cit., p. 151.
10 Ibid., p. 29.
11 E. H. Kantorowicz, Laudes Regiae (1946).
12 Ibid., pp. 63, 166, and above, pp. 153, 154.
13 Ibid., p. 178. But see also Richardson and Sayles, Governance of Medieval England (1963), pp. 406–409.
14 See W. G. Henderson, Surtees Soc., vol. LXI (1875), pp. 279 et seq.; Maskell, Monumenta Ritualia (1882), vol. II, pp. 85–89.
15 AS. Chron., ‘E’, s.a. 1087; Kantorowicz, op. cit., pp. 178, 179.
16 Saint Maurice; Saint Sebastian; Saint Adrian.
17 ‘Guillelmo Normannorum duci, salus et pax continua.’ This beautiful litany is printed in J. Loth, La Cathédrale de Rouen (1879), in Le Graduel de l'église de Rouen au XIIIème siècle, ed. Loriquet and others (1907), and in Kantorowicz (op. cit., pp. 167, 168).
18 The text of this second litany is difficult to reconstruct since it derives from Brit. Mus. Cott. MS. Vitellius E. xii, which in 1731 was much damaged by fire. I follow the version given by Henderson in his edition (op. cit., p. 279).
19 ‘Wilhelmo serenissimo a Deo coronato, magno et pacifico regi vita et victoria.’
20 Kantorowicz, op. cit., p. 29.
21 Will. Poit., p. 222.
22 Kern, Kingship and Law (trans. Chrimes), pp. 12–21.
23 Douglas, Feudal Documents, p. 48, no. 3.
24 Charles de Jumièges, vol. I, no. XXIX: Ego Wuillelmus Normannie dominus, jure hereditario Anglorum patrie effectus sum Basileus.
25 Above, pp. 181, 182.
26 Schram, op. cit., p. 184.
27 Kantorowicz, The King's Two Bodies (1957), chap. III.
28 M. Bloch, Les Rois thaumaturges (1924), pp. 185–215.
29 William the Conqueror ‘had a crown made for himself by a Greek which with its arc and twelve pearls resembled that of Otto the Great’ (Leyser, R. Hist. Soc, Transactions, series 5, vol. X (1960), p. 65). Was this the crown which was apparently in Normandy in 1087 (‘Monk of Caen’ – Will. Jum., p. 146), and which was given to William Rufus by the Conqueror on his death-bed? On the Conqueror's crowns, see further Schram, Herrschafszeichen und Staats-symbolik, vol. II, pp. 393 et sqq., and Barlow, Vita Edwardi, p. 117.
30 Vita Edwardi (ed. Barlow), pp. 9, 13, 27, 59.
31 Bloch, op. cit.
32 Vila Edwardi, pp. 60–63.
33 Bloch, op. cit., pp. 31, 46–49.
34 Ibid., p. 31.
35 Ibid., pp. 45, 120.
36 Gesta Regum, p. 273.
37 R. W. Southern, ‘The First Life of Edward the Confessor’ (Eng. Hist. Rev., vol. LXII (1943). p. 391).
38 A. Wilmart, Analecta Bollandiana, vol. LVI (1938), pp. 294, 295.
39 Will. Poit., pp. 171, 206.
40 Eadmer, Hist. Novorum (ed. Rule), p. 9: ‘absque dubio soli miraculo Dei ascribenda est’.
41 Mon. Ang., vol. I, p. 383: ‘Dei beneficio Rex Anglorum.’ The phrase has feudal connotations.
42 AS. Chron., ‘D’, s.a. 1066; Eadmer, Hist. Novorum, loc. cit.; Will. Poit., p. 220.
43 Carmen (Michel, Chroniques, vol. III, p. 38).
44 Will. Jum., p. 136.
45 Kern, op. cit., pp. 37–43.
46 Ed. Chevanon, pp. 150, 151.
47 Monumenta Gregoriana (ed. Jaffé), p. 458.
48 Bloch, op. cit., pp. 69–74; Kern, op. cit., pp. 27–61.
49 Ord. Vit., vol. II, p. 156.
50 Kantorowicz, King's Two Bodies, p. 36; Schram, op. cit., p. 120.
51 Even in the twelfth century, John of Salisbury could complain that ignorant people still thought that kings had the spiritual authority of priests (Southern, Making of the Middle Ages, p. 94).
52 See G. H. Williams, Norman Anonymous of 1100 (1951).
53 Ibid., pp. 24–82, 102–127.
54 Kantorowicz, King's Two Bodies, pp. 42–61.
55 Milo Crispin, Vita Lanfranci (Pat. Lat., vol. CL, col. 53); cf. Williams, op. cit., p. 161.
56 Liebermann, Gesetz, vol. I, p. 286, and elsewhere.
57 Mon. Ang., vol. I, pp. 301, 431; Elmham, Hist. monasterii S. Augustini Cantuariensis (ed. C. Hardwick), p. 36; Douglas, Feudal Documents, p. 49, no. 4.
58 Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 537, 538.
59 Apart from his appointment to bishoprics, note his treatment of the nunnery of Leominister (Freeman, Norman Conquest, vol. II, note N).
60 Wickham Legg, op. cit., pp. 54–64.
61 Below, pp. 321–323.
62 Schram, op. cit., p. 47; Bloch, op. cit., pp. 496, 497.
63 There seems no doubt of this. The king is mentioned by name in the Canon in the Sarum and Hereford rites after the name of the bishop (Maskell, Ancient Liturgy of the Church of England, pp. 82, 83). This is also the formula of the ‘Missal of Robert of Jumièges’ (Henry Bradshaw Soc., vol. XL, 1896), so presumably it goes back in England before the Norman conquest. For the French practice, see R. Fawtier, Capetian Kings (1950), p. 76. The connexions between the rites of Rouen, Salisbury, and Hereford are discussed with a wealth of learning in E. Bishop, Liturgica Historica, pp. 276–301.
64 Setton and Baldwin, History of the Crusades, vol. I, p. 21; R. Dozy, Recherches sur l'histoire de la litterature de l'Espagne, vol. II, pp. 335–353. The Annals of Saint-Maxence of Poitiers (Rec. Hist. Franc., vol. XI, p. 220) call particular attention to the participation of the Normans in the affair at Barbastro.
65 Ord. Vit., vol. II, p. 199.
66 Schlumberger, in Revue historique, vol. XVI (1881), pp. 289–303.
67 Runciman, Crusades, vol. I, pp. 66, 67.
68 Setton and Baldwin, op. cit., p. 64.
69 Bédier, Légendes épiques, vol. III, pp. 183 et sqq. Many of the details of Bédier's magnificent exposition have been questioned, but the central fact seems established.
70 Ibid., vol. IV, pp. 458, 459.
71 Cf. Douglas, ‘Song of Roland and the Norman Conquest of England’ (French Studies, vol. XIV (1960), pp. 99–114).
72 Omnibus principibus Anglorum et cuncto exercitui Christianorum, vita et salus.
73 Kantorowicz, Laudes Regiae, p. 236.
74 Ibid., p. 179.
75 Ord. Vit., vol. II, p. 91; L. T. White, Latin Monasticism in Norman Sicily, p. 48.
76 E. M. Jamison, ‘The Sicilian Norman Kingdom in the Minds of Anglo-Norman Contemporaries’ (Brit. Acad., Proceedings, vol. XXIV (1938), pp. 249–250).
77 Will. Malms., Gesta Regum, p. 320.
78 Will. Poit., p. 228. Where is ‘Babylon’?
79 As early as the eleventh century, chroniclers were saluting William the Conqueror as if he had been in this sense lord not only of Normandy and England but even in some sense also of Apulia and Sicily (Kantorowicz, Laudes Regiae, p. 157).
80 The term is, of course, also used to designate, and with perfect propriety, ‘The Kingdom of England under the Norman Kings’.
81 Rex Anglorum followed by Dux (or sometimes Princeps) Normannorum. Any charter of Norman provenance purporting to have been issued by William between 1066 and 1087 without the royal style is for that reason highly suspect.
82 Below, pp. 360, 361.