Rouen (France) -- Description and travel; Rouen (France) -- History
The laws of Rollo and his descendants were
too strict for brigandage at home, so the more restless spirits
started over Europe in the guise of pilgrims, "gaaignant," as Wace
says, towards Monte Cassino, to St. James of Compostella, to the Holy
Sepulchre itself. It was as pilgrims that they travelled into Southern
Italy, where a poor Norman knight had been rewarded for his fighting
against the infidels by the County of Aversa. Tancred of Hauteville,
from the Cotentin, followed there. By 1002 the citizens of Rouen were
already admiring the oranges, or "Pommes d'Or" which their adventurous
"Crusaders" had sent back from Salerno, as the first-fruits of that
Kingdom of Calabria and Sicily which a Norman, Robert Guiscard, was to
make his own.
Meanwhile within the bounds of Normandy itself, the great religious
revival went on side by side with growing civic and military strength.
In 1004, Olaf, King of Norway, who had come over to help the second
Duke Richard, was baptised in the Cathedral of Rouen. Sweyn, King of
Denmark, and Lacman, King of Sweden, were in the city at the same
time, and doubtless felt the same impulse to profession of the
Christian faith when visiting their Scandinavian relatives. Rouen was
indeed a gathering place for all the northern royalties, for Ethelred
II. who had lost the Anglo-Saxon throne, was there as well, with his
wife Emma the daughter of the Duke. It seems in fact to have already
become the fashion for princes of the royal house of Britain to
complete their education by a little tour in France. A curious trait
of the manners of the time is recorded by Wace, who describes one of
the many banquets that must have been given so often during all these
royal visits. He speaks of the long sleeves and white shirts of the
barons, and relates the first instance of aristocratic kleptomania at
a dinner-table, when a knight took a silver spoon and hid it in his
sleeve (R. de R. 7030). The reign of this second Richard and of his
son the third passed without much incident, and then came the sixth
Duke, Robert the Magnificent as his courtiers called him, Robert the
Devil as his people knew him. He is chiefly famous as the father of
his mighty son, and he did little in his capital of Rouen that is of
interest beyond its walls, save the attempt to restore the Saxon
princes Alfred and Edward to their father's throne, which failed
because his fleet was stopped by persistent headwinds and could do
nothing more than thoroughly subjugate the neighbouring fief of
Brittany. After this, the Duke fell in, like all around, with the
dominant religious passion, took up the pilgrim's cross, and died with
his Crusaders at Nicaea.
"A Faleize ont li Dus hante,"
says Wace,
"Une meschine i ont amee,
Arlot ont nom, de burgeis nee."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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