Transcriber’s Note: Italics are enclosed in _underscores_. Superscripts are indicated by caret symbols, such as ^e or ^{er}. Additional notes will be found near the end of this ebook. THE NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY THE NORMANS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY BY CHARLES HOMER HASKINS GURNEY PROFESSOR OF HISTORY AND POLITICAL SCIENCE IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY [Illustration] BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY CHARLES HOMER HASKINS ALL RIGHTS RESERVED INCLUDING THE RIGHT TO REPRODUCE THIS BOOK OR PARTS THEREOF IN ANY FORM _Published October 1915_ TO MY WIFE PREFACE The eight lectures which are here published were delivered before the Lowell Institute in February, 1915, and at the University of California the following July, and it has seemed best to print them in the form in which they were prepared for a general audience. Their purpose is not so much to furnish an outline of the annals of Norman history as to place the Normans in relation to their time and to indicate the larger features of their work as founders and organizers of states and contributors to European culture. Biographical and narrative detail has accordingly been subordinated in the effort to give a general view of Norman achievement in France, in England, and in Italy. Various aspects of Norman history have been treated with considerable fullness by historians, but, so far as I am aware, no connected account of the whole subject has yet been attempted from this point of view. This fact, it is hoped, may justify the publication of these lectures, as well as explain the omission of many topics which would naturally be treated in an extended narrative. This book rests partly upon the writings of the various scholars enumerated in the bibliographical note at the end of each chapter, partly upon prolonged personal investigations, the results of which have appeared in various special periodicals and will, in part, soon be collected into a volume of _Studies in Norman Institutions_. When it seemed appropriate in the text, I have felt at liberty to draw freely upon the more general portions of these articles, leaving more special and critical problems for discussion elsewhere. I wish to thank the authorities of the Lowell Institute and the University of California, and to acknowledge helpful criticism from my colleague Professor William S. Ferguson and from Mr. George W. Robinson, Secretary of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Harvard University. My indebtedness to Norman scholars and Norman scholarship is deeper and more personal than any list of their names and writings can indicate.