Public-domain ebook

The Normans in European history

Name: The Normans in European history
Author: Charles Homer Haskins

by Charles Homer Haskins

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Subjects

Great Britain -- History -- Medieval period, 1066-1485 Europe -- History Normans -- Europe

In: History - European

Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #72514.

About this book

Charles H. Haskins’s work is a scholarly collection of eight public lectures first delivered at the Lowell Institute in early 1915 and later at the University of California. The author frames the volume not as a chronological narrative of Norman deeds but as an analysis of how the Normans shaped the political and cultural landscape of medieval Europe. By subordinating biographical detail, Haskins seeks a panoramic view of Norman influence in France, England, Italy, and beyond, drawing on contemporary scholarship and his own research. The opening passage situates the book within the context of a thousand‑year celebration of Normandy, using vivid description of festivals, pageants, and the region’s geography to illustrate the enduring legacy of the Viking‑descended dukes and their descendants.

The prose reflects the erudite, lecture‑style voice of an early‑20th‑century historian, combining careful citation with occasional literary flourish. Its tone is formal yet accessible, making it suitable for students of medieval British and European history, as well as for general readers who appreciate a broad, thematic treatment of the Norman era rather than a detailed saga of individual figures.

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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.