3 The North in Universal Histories

The last two chapters have shown how a flexible and widely understood system of exegetical signification had been built around the cardinal points since the patristic period, and how over this same time they had cemented themselves as a basic vocabulary of geographical description. We are thus in a position now to see how they functioned as a conceptual vocabulary through which medieval historians constructed and engaged with the world in which they lived. The goal here is not to systematically describe the categories of space available to the medieval historian in abstract, but to understand the use of space as a category of thought and the cardinal directions as a conceptual vocabulary. To this end, I will be addressing individual historical texts on their own terms and following only the spatial categories that emerge within them.6See esp. Hans-Werner Goetz, ‘Historical Writing, Historical Thinking and Historical Consciousness in the Middle Ages’, Revista Diálogos Mediterrânicos 2 (2012): 110–28, and Lake, ‘Current Approaches’. The aim is not only to unpack how the use of this vocabulary reflects a particular image of the world, but more importantly how our authors were consciously engaging with these categories as rhetorical devices to further arguments in their texts, as analytical categories to understand the course of history and as prophetic signs that point towards divine agency within it.

Historians have often minimised the significance of space for medieval history-writers, regarding their attitude towards it as one of ambivalence and understanding history in the Middle Ages as a genre subjected to ‘the tyranny of chronology’.7Guenée, Histoire et culture historique, 22: ‘la tyrannie de la chronologie’. ‘Ambivalence’ is Goetz’s characterisation (Geschichtsschreibung, 176); cf. the more positive analysis in Gautier Dalché, ‘L’espace de l’histoire’, 287. Indeed, when people think about medieval history-writing, their first thought may well be of long lists of dates followed by short annotations or the tabulation of years that one finds not only in abbreviated monastic annals, but also in the great scholarly achievements of Marianus Scotus or Hugh of Saint Victor.8See, e.g., the Christ Church Annals: London, British Library, Cotton MS Caligula A XV, 132v–139r. Marianus Scotus: Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Pal. lat. 830, 26r–169r; Hugh of Saint Victor: Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Latin 15009, 1r–40v. Even narrative histories like those of Otto of Freising or Orderic Vitalis emphasise the importance of chronology and preserving the order of historical events, not to mention the ‘computistical fever’ that seized the Latin world across the long eleventh century.9Kempshall, Rhetoric, 81–120; Goetz, Geschichtsschreibung, 205–7; cf. Mégier, ‘Jesus Christ, a Protagonist’, 281–2. On computistical concerns, see Peter Verbist, Duelling with the Past: Medieval Authors and the Problem of the Christian Era (c. 990–1135) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), and C. Phillip E. Nothaft, Dating the Passion: The Life of Jesus and the Emergence of Scientific Chronology (200–1600) (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 103–54. Guenée, Histoire et culture historique, 152: ‘La fièvre computistique’. Compared with the often perfunctory treatment of geographical description, as we find at the beginning of Otto of Freising’s or Hugh of Fleury’s history, this charge of ambivalence is no great surprise.10Otto of Freising, Chronica 1.1, MGH SS rer. Germ. 45, 36–8; Hugh of Fleury, Historia ecclesiastica 1, ed. de Ruiter, 8. Of course, if we approach the role of geography within medieval history-writing in the way of many recent historians, in terms of the genre constraints and expectations, then indeed we find that it serves primarily as a topic of excursus or an often taken-for-granted backdrop to the historical work.11Kempshall, Rhetoric, 305–7; Goetz, Geschichtsschreibung, 154–5, 174–7; Guenée, Histoire et culture historique, 20–2, 166–78; Gautier Dalché, ‘L’espace de l’histoire’, 287–300. But the role of space within historical writing is not limited to the mere geographical description that has been so often the focus of discussion. It could serve a much wider array of important rhetorical and ideological functions within historical texts.12This has been addressed more clearly in the context of late antique history-writing. See, e.g., Merrills, History and Geography, and Peter Van Nuffelen, ed., Historiography and Space in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019). By reframing our discussion instead around broader geographical categories like the cardinal points, we can more readily appreciate how space had a more pervasive role to play within the medieval historical consciousness.

Our test-case for this will be a collection of universal histories, written around the first half of the twelfth century: the Chronica of Sigebert of Gembloux, the Chronicon of Romuald of Salerno and the Historia ecclesiastica of Orderic Vitalis. This may appear an idiosyncratic collection at first, but these three texts offer an important range of geographical perspectives as well as literary styles across which we can chart the same theme. As with most world chronicles of the period, considered in absolute terms their geographical vision is rather narrow, focused centrally on the contemporary western Europe of the author.13Hans-Werner Goetz, ‘On the Universality of Universal History’, in L’historiographie, ed. Genet, 247–61 (German trans. in Goetz, Geschichtsschreibung, 177–93). They are nevertheless grounded in a conception of universality, which situates contemporary events within a universal and often globalising framework.14On universal histories in general, see Michele Campopiano, ‘Introduction: New Perspectives on Universal Chronicles in the High Middle Ages’, in Universal Chronicles in the High Middle Ages, ed. Michele Campopiano and Henry Bainton (York: York Medieval Press, 2017), 1–18; on this notion of ‘globalising’, see Caroline Dodds Pennock and Amanda Power, ‘Globalizing Cosmologies’, Past and Present 238, supplement 13 (2018): 88–115. While the spatialities of these texts are naturally shaped by their locality, it is this globalising vision that will provide a foundation for us to evaluate the way that each adapts a shared understanding of the cardinal points to their own context and aims.

To this end, I will focus centrally on the most widely and overtly discussed direction by all three authors: the north. Previous scholarship has stressed its negative connotations. Since antiquity, the north had been associated with darkness, cold, violence and barbarous peoples.15See p. 000 above. Through the biblical and patristic tradition, aquilo in particular was associated with pagans and the devil, especially through the major prophets.16Fraesdorff, Norden, 40–2; Skånland, ‘Calor fidei’, 86–92; Coupland, ‘Rod of God’, 537–8; Palmer, Apocalypse, 176–83; Gabriele, ‘Frankish Kingship’, 29. In the narrowest sense, the north represented a source of chaos over and against order within the Christian world. In a closely related way, it also served as a locus of God’s punishment, especially against his own peoples.17Coupland, ‘Rod of God’, 537–8. But moving beyond the strictly negative, there is equally an important use of the north as that place from which the Christian nations of the Latin west emerged.18Rix, Barbarian North; more generally, see Plassmann, Origo gentis, and Magali Coumert, Origines des Peuples: Les récits du Haut Moyen Âge occidental (550–850) (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 2007). As we saw with exegesis, the use of such concepts is more flexible and narratively driven than these kinds of general, overarching associations might suggest. While these notions will all play an important role, our primary concern centres around how these authors engaged with these different ideas, built upon them or challenged them to further their own historical narratives. Through this analysis we will be able to see how ideas of space were more central to medieval historical narratives than has been typically assumed, even for such chronologically focused authors as Sigebert of Gembloux, and more broadly how the cardinal points served as a mutually intelligible framework for the conceptualisation and discussion of space in history.

Though a continuation of Jerome’s chronicle, Sigebert establishes his own historical vision right from the outset. The historical-theological framework of the Chronicle is immediately contextualised around the four world empires of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream: ‘I do not consider saying anything about the kingdom of the Romans except what the prophet Daniel expounded regarding the fourth empire: which, just as iron smashes, subdues and destroys all things, has thus beaten, subdued and destroyed almost all the kingdoms of the world’.23Sig., Chron. prol., MGH SS 6, 300: ‘De regno Romanorum non aliud dicendum puto, nisi quod Danihel propheta interpretatus est de quarto regno: quod, sicut ferrum comminuit, domat et conterit omnia, sic ab origine sui tutuderit, domuerit et contriverit omnia paene mundi regna’. On the relation of the terms regnum and imperium, see Chazan, L’Empire et histoire universelle, 288–91. Yet Sigebert has already subtly diverged from Jerome and the Vulgate in this very passage by qualifying the complete domination of the fourth empire, presenting it not as dominating ‘all’, but only ‘almost all the kingdoms of the world’.24Sig., Chron. prol., MGH SS 6, 300 (emphasis added): ‘quod, sicut ferrum comminuit, domat et conterit omnia, sic ab origine sui tutuderit, domuerit et contriverit omnia paene mundi regna’. Cf. Dn 2:40 and Jerome, Commentarii in Danielem 1.2, ed. F. Glorie, CCSL 75A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1964), 794: ‘regnum autem quartum, quod perspicue pertinet ad romanos, ferreum est, quod comminuit et domat omnia’ (The fourth kingdom, which clearly refers to the Romans, is iron, which smashes and subdues everything). In so doing he distinguishes the universal domination that is proper to the Roman Empire from its historical reality. This serves to set the Chronicle in expectation of the end times, when the iron of the fourth kingdom is mixed with the clay of human weakness and begins to fall.25Chazan, L’Empire et l’histoire universelle, 188–9; Sig., Chron. prol., MGH SS 6, 300: ‘novissimo vero tempore regnum illud, quod in tibiis suis ferreis diutissime et firmissime sine aliqua lassitudine steterat, tandem ferro suae fortitudinis commixto cum testa humanae imbecillitatis, ex alto dominationis suae gradu cum fragore terribili labare coeperit’ (But in the end times, that kingdom, which had stood most firmly and for a very long time on its iron legs without any strain, at last as the iron of its strength mixed with the clay of human weakness from the height of its power it began to collapse with a terrible crash). More broadly, the interplay of strength with fragility, and of universal aspiration with finite dominion in the relationship between empire and the peoples and kingdoms of the world, forms the central theme of Sigebert’s Chronicle and underscores the role of empire within the order of the world.

The finitude of the Roman Empire has important implications for Sigebert’s geographical vision. By qualifying its universal breadth, Sigebert highlights a geography beyond its boundaries. This is particularly evident when one compares the political scope at the point of transition from Jerome’s Chronicle to Sigebert’s continuation. From the destruction of the second temple to its end in 381, only one empire remains on Jerome’s synchronic list: Rome. By contrast, Sigebert begins his Chronicle in 381 with eight different regna, among which the Roman Empire is just one. Sigebert’s world is thus no longer that of the Roman Empire, but one of ‘Germanic’ kingdoms.26As Goetz, ‘Universality’, 255, highlights. This represents a coordinate change in geographical conception as well. No longer is this a geography that stretches from the Mediterranean to the nebulous ends of the world, but finds itself instead focused on a Carolingian Francia set against an increasingly present northern frontier.27Gautier Dalché, ‘Représentations géographiques de l’Europe’, 65–73; Wolever, ‘Post-Carolingian Geographies’, 153–63; see also Bartlett, Making of Europe, 5–23. Sigebert’s Chronicle is thus not only predicated upon the problem of the Roman Empire’s finitude, but it is immediately framed in terms of Rome’s relationship with various other regna and a geography beyond its bounds.

It is here that the idea of the north, and especially the northern peoples, enters into Sigebert’s historical vision. After introducing the Romans, Persians, Franks, Vandals, English, Lombards, Visigoths, Ostrogoths and Huns, he proclaims:

We can be a bit more precise as to what makes a group ‘northern’ in Sigebert’s estimation by considering the role that these explicitly northern peoples play in the first half of the Chronicle. The Chronicle’s central narrative focuses on the translation of imperial dignity within the former Roman Empire and can be divided roughly into two narrative arcs by the coronation of Charlemagne in 801.33Chazan, L’Empire et l’histoire universelle, 205–29. In the first section, focused on the demise of the Western Roman Empire, Sigebert presents the defeat of Julian the Apostate by the Persians as the crucial turning point in the introduction to the Roman regna, explaining that:34Chazan, L’Empire et l’histoire universelle, 190–2.

These incursions of northern peoples follow a fairly clear pattern through this first section of the chronicle. They can be characterised in terms of a set of typical narrative features that accompany their appearance and activity. To see how this works, we can take the clearest case in the Chronicle, and the only one where the north is explicitly invoked, the invasion of the Huns under Attila. Sigebert’s account, and its reference to northern peoples, is drawn from Paul the Deacon’s Historia romana, albeit through the intermediary of Landolf Sagax’s continuation.42On the relationship between these works, see Lars Boje Mortensen, ‘The Diffusion of Roman Histories in the Middle Ages. A list of Orosius, Eutropius, Paulus Diaconus, and Landolfus Sagax manuscripts’, Filologia mediolatina: rivista della Fondazione Ezio Franceschini 6–7 (1999–2000): 101–200. The actual account of Attila’s invasion is a fairly close, summary paraphrase. Sagax gives an extensive account of the various peoples under Attila, listing two kings and six other petty rulers along with ‘other barbarian nations beyond these dwelling in the north’.43Landolf Sagax, Historia romana 15.2, ed. Amedeo Crivellucci, Fonti per la storia d’Italia 49–50, 2 vols (Rome: Istituto storico italiano, 1912–13), 2:4: ‘alieque preter hos barbare nationes Aquilonis in finibus commanentes’. Sigebert abbreviates this list, leaving only the two major kings, of the Ostrogoths and Gepids – both regna highlighted in his introduction – and ‘many other northern peoples subject to him’, who all invade the Western Empire from Pannonia.44Sig., Chron. 453, MGH SS 6, 309: ‘multarum aquilonarium gentium sibi subiectarum’. What is more, to emphasise their northern nature and its influences on the text, Sigebert inflects this account both with authorial commentary and frames the Huns’ invasion with heavenly signs.

There are four specific characteristics of the Attila cycle which serve to highlight the function of the north more generally in the chronicle. First, there are heavenly signs. At the end of the year preceding Attila’s invasion, Sigebert records a long list of portents: the northern sky turns red as fire, almost constant earthquakes, an eclipse of the moon, comets and ‘many other’ signs. This prompts an authorial intrusion to explain that ‘the present progression of events reveals that these [signs] are not idle’.45Sig., Chron. 452, MGH SS 6, 309: ‘Luna obfuscatur, cometes apparet, et multa alia. Quae non esse otiosa, ostendit instans rerum consequentia’. Cf. Hydace, Continuatio chronicorum Hieronymianorum 149 (ed. Theodor Mommsen, MGH AA 11 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1894), 26). Second, it is framed around divine judgement. The devastating impact of their initial invasion of Gaul is specifically framed in terms of God’s wrath. Attila and the peoples who accompany him are described here as mere instruments of the true divine agency: ‘God’s indignation seethed through them so much that’ scarcely a fortification remained in all of Gaul.46Sig., Chron. 453, MGH SS 6, 309: ‘per totas Gallias, tanta per eos Dei efferbuit indignatio, ut nullam omnino civitatem, castellum vel oppidum aliqua a furore eorum potuerit tutari munitio’ (Throughout Gaul, God’s indignation seethed so much through them that no fortification could altogether secure any city, castle or town from their fury). Third, their invasion is exceptionally violent.47Cf. Coupland, ‘Rod of God’, 540–7. Sigebert emphasises the destruction they wreak on both east and west and highlights the martyrs they create.48Sig., Chron. 447, 450, 453–4, MGH SS 6, 309–10.

The fourth and final characteristic, defeat as the product of a rightly ordered empire, is more complicated in this case. Due to the lack of a virtuous emperor in the west and the weight of Paul the Deacon’s story about Attila and Pope Leo, Attila’s arc is in this respect somewhat atypical. Sigebert nevertheless manages to mould the narrative to fit his broader agenda. He follows Paul’s story, itself entirely repeated in Sagax, but shifts the emphasis away from the pope in several subtle ways. In Paul’s version, Attila is approached by Leo, a most holy man (vir sacrissimus), and, acquiescing to the priest of Christ, he departs from Italy. Attila then explains to his subordinates that he did not fear the person of Leo, but another figure beside him ‘in priestly garb, with a most majestic figure’ and bearing a drawn sword who threatened him with death.49Paul the Deacon, Historia romana 14.12, ed. Amedeo Crivellucci, Fonti per la storia d’Italia 51 (Rome: Istituto storico italiano, 1914), 197, and Landolf Sagax, Historia romana 15.8, ed. Crivellucci, 2:7–8: ‘in habitu sacerdotali … forma augustiore’. In Sigebert’s abbreviation, the positive adjectives around the pope have been left out and, more significantly, he has removed the broader priestly bearing from the vision of St. Peter, describing the figure as simply ‘a certain venerable old man’ with a sword. In Paul’s version, Attila dies of a nosebleed and on the same night God appears to the Eastern emperor Martian in a dream to announce his death. In Sigebert’s account these events are told in reverse. God appears to Martian to tell him that Attila’s stronghold is broken, ‘and this was not false’ for on that same night Attila dies of his nosebleed.50Sig., Chron. 453–5, MGH SS 6, 309–10: ‘senem quendam venerabilem’; ‘Nec id vanum est’. Cf. Chazan, L’Empire et l’histoire universelle, 240. Sigebert has thereby reversed the causality of the story, shifting the focus from Leo to God’s interaction with the emperor. A similar pattern emerges elsewhere. Various regna enter into the story, seize sections of the Roman Empire and often persecute the Church, before either passing out of existence or slowly assimilating into the Christian world.51Chazan, L’Empire et l’histoire universelle, 239–42. Likewise there is a pattern of virtuous emperors and, to a lesser extent, virtuous (mostly Frankish) kings, holding back these various peoples.52Chazan, L’Empire et l’histoire universelle, 207, 210.

With these features in mind, we can see how this all comes together in a cycle of violent incursions, which need not be reserved to one group or have such a clear-cut beginning and end. Consider, for example, the events between 398 and 414: in 398, following a terrible storm in Constantinople and internal division between the eastern and western Roman armies, the Visigoths break their treaty with the Romans. Two years later the Visigoths and Huns attack Roman provinces and a few years after that, in 403, a number of Christians are martyred by pagans. Next the Goths invade Italy from Scythia in 407, after which Sigebert proclaims: ‘from this a great clamour of the blasphemies bellows at Christ, and blaming the Christian times they extol the fortune of the pagans’.53Sig., Chron. 407, MGH SS 6, 305: ‘Ex hoc murmur multus blasphemantium infremit in Christum, et christianitatis tempora culpantes, felicitatem gentium attollunt’. Though the Romans push the Goths back in 410, at the instigation of Stilicho, the madness of the Vandals rages through Gaul – they destroy cities and churches, and martyr more Christians. In 412 the Visigoths debauch themselves throughout Italy until the western emperor, Honorius, grants them land in Gaul. The tide begins to turn in 413 when Alaric is finally defeated by the Franks and at last, in 414, for his faithfulness, God frees the Emperor Honorius from the threat of tyrants, whom Sigebert goes on to list.54Sig., Chron. 398–414, MGH SS 6, 304–6. Although somewhat compressed, this is very typical of the role of northern peoples in the first section of the Chronicle. It contains multiple characteristic aspects, such as the weakness of the emperors in 398 and natural signs foreshadowing the calamitous events. There are then successive incursions, particularly ones involving martyrdoms, until the cycle finishes through the work of a virtuous emperor.

This sort of cycle has clear resonances with biblical descriptions of the invasion of northern peoples, especially those of the major prophets. Although there does not seem to be a direct linguistic relationship with the Vulgate, the pattern bears a striking resemblance. Both Isaiah and Jeremiah, as well as Habakkuk (1:5–11), make use of an enemy from the north as a way of representing the cosmic struggle between chaos and the divine. These stories have a series of fairly typical elements, which doubtless lie at the background of Sigebert’s conceptualisation of the migration period specifically and the function of the north more generally. Both Isaiah and Jeremiah describe a series of invasions from the north (Is 14:31; Jr 1:14, 4:6, 6:1, 22) and distant lands (Is 5:26; Jr 4:16, 5:15, 6:22), by a foreign (Jr 5:15) and mighty (Jr 5:16) nation. They attack suddenly (Jr 4:20, 6:26) and swiftly (Is 5:26–8; Jr 4:13), without mercy (Jr 6:23), and are described especially through the use of storm metaphors.55Brevard S. Childs, ‘The Enemy from the North and the Chaos Tradition’, Journal of Biblical Literature 78, no. 3 (1959): 190–2. These invasions are likewise naturally predicated on a discussion of God’s judgement of his people for their iniquity (Is 5:25; Jr 4:4, 17, 27–8, 5:11–13, 6:6, 21). Though it is difficult to say to what extent Sigebert is intentionally alluding to this sort of dynamic, his quotation of Jeremiah 1:14 certainly highlights an evident intertextual connection between his Chronicle and this prophetic representation of God’s judgement. As such, the themes of the prophets resonate through the use of the north in Sigebert’s Chronicle.

Although the activity of northern peoples as northern, in the manner established in the introduction, is most evident in the Chronicle’s first arc up to 801, their activity is not restricted to this section. Given the above parameters, there are a number of peoples in the latter half of the Chronicle who also fit this formula. Following just one example, that of the Normans from 882 to 896, we can see how the idea of the north as a category of chaos, set against Christian order, functions generally as a historical principle throughout the Chronicle. Before continuing, however, we should stop for a moment to consider the meaning of Normanni for Sigebert.56The different spellings of Normanni in this paragraph reflect Sigebert’s inconsistent orthography. The term itself is ambiguous. Even in the twelfth century it can refer not only to the Normans, but also to Scandinavians generally; hence Ælnoth, an exile of the Norman conquest writing from Denmark, describes William the Conqueror as ‘duke of the southern Northmen’.57Ælnoth of Canterbury, Gesta Canuti Regis et martyris 11, ed. M. Cl. Gertz, Vitae sanctorum Danorum (Copenhagen: Gad, 1908–12), 96 [hereafter Ælnoth]: ‘Willelmus australium Normannorum dux’. Cf. Hugh M. Thomas, The English & The Normans: Ethnic Hostility, Assimilation and Identity 1066–c.1220 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 34. Likewise, for Carolingian authors of the mid- to late ninth century, Normanni and Dani were used indistinctly in reference to the Vikings.58Ildar H. Garipzanov, ‘Frontier Identities: Carolingian Frontier and the Gens Danorum’, in Franks, Northmen, and Slavs: Identities and State Formation in Early Medieval Europe, ed. Ildar H. Garipzanov, Patrick J. Geary and Przemysław Urbańczyk (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008), 115–25. Sigebert, however, appears to conceptualise the Normanni as a political entity distinct from the Danes. In 882 the Danes are described as joining the Northmanni in their invasion and while the Norman kings Christianise in 931, the Danes take until 966.59Sig., Chron. 882, 931, 966, MGH SS 6, 343, 347, 351: ‘Northmanni, adiuctis sibi Danis’. So while some of the ambiguity of the Carolingian period remains, as when once again in 958 ‘many Nortmanni were baptised with their leaders’, there is no significant discontinuity between the Nortmanni who found Normandy (Nortmannia) in 888 and the comes Nortmannorum who conquers England in 1066 or the crusaders who come from Normandy (a Normannia) in 1096.60Sig., Chron. 888, 958, 1066, 1096, MGH SS 6, 343, 350, 361, 367: ‘plures Nortmannorum cum principibus eorum baptizari’. There is an important sense, therefore, in which Normanni should be understand as ‘Normans’ throughout the text, as this underscores the late eleventh- and early twelfth-century context of Sigebert’s writing and historical vision, and the continuity that this implies.

Returning to the sequence of events, after a largely negative portrayal of Charles the Bald, who failed to rebuff the Normans twice (846, 853), Charles the Fat ascends the throne and receives the papal blessing as emperor in 882.61Sig., Chron. 846, 853, 882, MGH SS 6, 339–40, 343; Chazan, L’Empire et l’histoire universelle, 167–8, 233. This is immediately followed by a long and detailed account of the invasion of Francia and Lotharingia by the Normans, aided by the Danes.62Sig., Chron. 882, MGH SS 6, 343. The very next year they continue down to Trier and are set in explicit opposition to the Christians.63Sig., Chron. 883, MGH SS 6, 343: ‘ibique conserto prelio christianos vincunt’ (and having joined in battle they conquered the Christians there). Although in 884 the emperor forces the Normans to make a treaty and has one of their kings, Godfrey, baptised, they return again the next year and Francia is forced to call again upon the emperor. But, unlike 884, he instead subjugates the Franks and ‘achieves nothing worthy’ in battle against the Normans.64Sig., Chron. 884–5, MGH SS 6, 343: ‘nihil dignum fecit’. The invasions continue in 887, when they besiege Paris and butcher Duke Henry, who fell into a Norman pit trap; in 888 the emperor, unable to expel the Normans, is forced to concede a section of Francia to them. The reign of Charles the Fat culminates in his deposition in 890, where Sigebert proclaims that ‘the Roman Empire and the kingdom of the Franks are miserably mutilated’, and then discusses the tyranny throughout Italy and the political turbulence in Francia.65Sig., Chron. 887–90, MGH SS 6, 343: ‘Romanum imperium et regnum Francorum misere discerpitur’. With the ascension of Arnulf, order begins to be restored, as the Normans are repulsed from Paris in 891, 892 and 894 as well as Sens in 891 and Britain in 894.66Sig., Chron. 891–4, MGH SS 6, 343–4; Chazan, L’Empire et l’histoire universelle, 233–4. Nevertheless, they burn Troyes in 892 and ravage Lotharingia, martyring the archbishop of Worms in 895, until finally this cycle is brought to an end in 896 when their king, Hundeus, is baptised by Charles the Simple.67Sig., Chron. 892–6, MGH SS 6, 343–4. The Norman kings are then only fully Christianised after the translatio ad saxones with Henry the Fowler in 931.68Sig., Chron. 931, MGH SS 6, 347; cf. Chazan, L’Empire et l’histoire universelle, 231–6. From this point onwards, alongside the other nations who Christianised and established stable kingdoms, the Normans are also counted among the ‘western peoples’ who took up the sign of the cross in 1096.69Sig., Chron. 1096, MGH SS 6, 367. A similar pattern emerges for other pagan peoples, such as the Hungarians and Slavs, in the second section of the Chronicle.70Chazan, L’Empire et l’histoire universelle, 235. Just as with the unambiguously northern peoples in the first section, they variously irrupt onto the stage of Christian kingdoms, and their activities are in a general sense linked with the order, or lack thereof, of the Christian west. More importantly for Sigebert, it is disproportionally the duty of the emperor to defend Christendom against these people, either removing them from history or drawing them into the fold.

With the peoples of the latter section in particular, the Carolingian heritage of Sigebert’s vision of the world is set in clearer focus. The chronicle’s overarching concern for peoples external to the Roman Empire, who, besides the Persians, Saracens and Turks, are actually from the north, did not come out of nowhere. This section focuses on a specific collection of northern peoples – Scandinavians, Bohemians, Slavs and Hungarians – who had only (relatively) recently, or not yet fully, converted to Christianity and whose paganism would have still been fresh in the minds of eleventh- and twelfth-century Latin authors.71Lars Boje Mortensen, ‘Sanctified Beginnings and Mythopoetic Moments: The First Wave of Writing on the Past in Norway, Denmark, and Hungary’, in The Making of Christian Myths in the Periphery of Latin Christendom (c.1000–1300), ed. Lars Boje Mortensen (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum, 2006), 247–73; Bartlett, Making of Europe, 136–7, ch. 1; Robert Bartlett, Gerald of Wales 1146–1223 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1982), ch. 6; R. W. Southern, The Making of the Middle Ages (London: Grey Arrow, 1959), 27–8. Although the Chronicle is by no means a missionary record, the progressive Christianisation of the north is a key feature of the latter half of the chronicle, normally tied in some way to the activities of the emperors or major kings. This contrasts with the portrayal of the Muslims through the latter section, which is entirely one of armed confrontation culminating in the crusade.72Chazan, L’Empire et l’histoire universelle, 242–4, 251–3. Sigebert evokes this perception of the north as a sort of final frontier very clearly in his second life of St. Lambert. In a speech to some pagans in the vicinity of the provincia Tessandrorum (north-west of Maastricht), Lambert explains:

It is through the notion of order that these northern peoples develop a real historical significance for Sigebert. There is a clear relationship throughout the Chronicle between a rightly ordered empire and a rightly ordered world. Within this picture, the northern peoples serve as agents of disorder, attempting to undermine both Church and empire. We find a common correlation between the failure of emperors and the success of northern peoples, as well as between the success of emperors and the defeat and Christianisation of external peoples. This can be seen clearly in the decline of the eastern Roman Empire in preparation for the rise of Charlemagne. Under Justinian, the Persians (527, 541) and the Bulgars (539) are repressed and ‘on God’s command’ he has Africa liberated from the Vandals (533). He also institutes laws (532) and builds Hagia Sophia (533).75Sig., Chron. 527–39, MGH SS 6, 315–16: ‘ex iussu Dei’; Chazan, L’Empire et l’histoire universelle, 207. But from the seventh century, decline sets in for the Eastern Empire. When Heraclius moves to stem a series of Persian victories in 624, he receives a miraculous icon and wages a victorious campaign for six years, ending with the restoration of the cross to Jerusalem.76Sig., Chron. 624–30, MGH SS 6, 322–3; Chazan, L’Empire et l’histoire universelle, 207. However, falling into the heresy of monotheletism, Heraclius ‘confounds Church and empire’ and in the very same year the Muslims take up arms against Rome.77Sig., Chron. 633, MGH SS 6, 323: ‘confundit aecclesiam et imperium’. We see this failure again in the ninth century. Charles the Fat’s seizure of Francia, in the wake of the Norman assault of 885, signals the end of his ability to deal with the Normans and more broadly his inability to maintain order in the empire. This results in Sigebert decrying the permanent forfeiture of Normandy three years later.78Sig., Chron. 885–90, MGH SS 6, 343; Chazan, L’Empire et l’histoire universelle, 233. Though not the only force of disorder in the world, the northern peoples play an important role throughout the Chronicle, serving as instruments of divine punishment and trials for good Christian rulers to overcome.

It is in this context of empire and order that we can see the deeper resonances of the trope of the north for the investiture polemics of Sigebert’s era, where it was frequently employed by authors on either side. Sigebert himself was closely involved in this polemical literature during the reigns of Henry IV and V, at the same time as he was drafting the Chronicle, which was itself very much a part of this discourse.79Chazan, L’Empire et l’histoire universelle, 80–94, 110–21, 285–8; see generally Hans-Werner Goetz, ‘Geschichte als Argument: Historische Beweisführung und Geschichtsbewußtsein den Streitschriften des Investiturstreits’, Historische Zeitschrift 245, no. 1 (1987): 31–69. To get a sense of its relevance, we can compare Sigebert’s use of the north to a prominent pro-imperial polemic of his milieux, the Liber de unitate ecclesiae conservanda. Written at Hersfeld in the early 1090s, it represents not only a significant articulation of the pro-imperial position, but also a work that is closely, indeed probably directly, intellectually related to Sigebert’s writings, both historical and polemical.80Leidulf Melve, Inventing the Public Sphere: The Public Debate during the Investiture Contest (c. 1030–1122), 2 vols (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 2:423–6; Chazan, L’Empire et l’histoire universelle, 227. Comparing the work of Gregory VII to that of the devil, it states:

Sigebert himself also uses the vocabulary of the north at least once in one of his own investiture polemics, the Epistola adversus Paschalem papam. The text was written in 1102, in the context of a proxy conflict in which Pope Pascal II, in a letter to Robert II, count of Flanders, invoked the recently successful crusade to instruct Robert to take up arms against the ‘excommunicated pseudo-clerics of Liège’, who were themselves supported by imperial troops of Henry IV under the command of Otbert, bishop of Liège.82Chazan, L’Empire et l’histoire universelle, 86; Kupper, Liège et l’Église, 399–400; Paul Fredericq, ed., Corpus documentorum Inquisitionis, vol. 1 (Ghent: J. Vuylsteke, 1889), no. 10, 14–15: ‘Leodiensibus excommunicanicatis pseudoclericis’. Sigebert responds to this letter directly, line by line. In response to the pope’s benediction and exhortation of Robert as a crusader, who ‘returning from Syrian Jerusalem seeks to enter the heavenly Jerusalem through the works of the just soldier’, Sigebert compares Robert to some other ‘servants’ of God: Nebuchadnezzar, Absalom and Assyria.83Sigebert of Gembloux, Leodicensium epistola adversus Paschalem 1, 3, ed. E. Sackur, MGH Ldl 2 (Hannover: Hahn, 1892), 451–2, 454: ‘reversus ab Ierusalem Syriae in caelorum Ierusalem iustae miliciae operibus ire contendis’. Explaining, via Augustine and Isaiah, that God both ‘makes peace and creates evil’ (Is 45:7), he thereby queries whether merely acting as God’s punishment for his people really merits the heavenly Jerusalem. ‘God said through his prophet: I will call my servant Nebuchadnezzar from the north, that he may do all my will (Jr 25:9). What will is that, if not that he should destroy sinners? As due reward for such service God turned this his servant into a cow’.84Sigebert of Gembloux, Leodicensium epistola adversus Paschalem 3, MGH Ldl 2, 453: ‘Dicit Deus per prophetam: Vocabo ab aquilone servum meum Nebuchodonosor, quia faciat omnem voluntatem meam. Quam voluntatem nisi ut peccantes disperderet? Hunc servum suum Deus pro merito talis servitutis in bovem convertit’. This passage highlights once again the interconnection of the north and evil forces in the world, but it does more than that. Sigebert not only emphasises God’s direct authorship of history and establishes the diocese of Liège as God’s people, but also builds upon his broader conception of history. Through this explicitly polemical invocation of Babylon, Sigebert’s use of Jeremiah 1:14 as an introductory prophetic remark in the Chronicle can also be drawn into this polemical context. The introductory invocation of northernness can be seen not just as a prophetic foretelling of the beginning of the admixture of clay into the iron of the Roman Empire, but also as a warning to the papal partisans about the implications of their disruption of world order.

The idea of the north clearly holds a particular position in Sigebert’s historical vision. Unlike his contemporaries, he does not understand it as specifically demonic. Rather it is a category of evil activity in the world based upon the notion of God’s judgement of the nations and the rulers who embody them. The north stands, for Sigebert, as a sort of prophetic flag, marking instances of God’s interaction with the world and highlighting, if unsystematically, his overarching plan. This point is made openly in the introduction of the Chronicle in reference to the peoples who tore apart, and settled in, the lands of the western Roman Empire, where it is set explicitly in a prophetic context. But this pattern is generalisable throughout history, both in the decline of the Western Empire up to its renewal under Charlemagne and in its development under the Frankish emperors. Within this overall picture, the northern peoples serve as a chaotic and violent pressure against which it is the role of the emperor and the rightly ordered Christian society to bring peace.85Chazan, L’Empire et l’histoire universelle, 298–302. It is in this context of creating peace and expanding Christianity into the pagan lands that the northern people are ultimately brought back into the fold and take their place within Christendom, in this case becoming western peoples. This whole historical conception finally takes on a sharper edge within the context of the investiture controversy, as Sigebert is not merely passively theorising about the nature of historical progression, but is presenting a polemical argument on the basis of history about the right ordering of the world. For it is also his object to show that it is only within the correct relationship of ecclesia and imperium that these evils can be subdued, and that just as these previous evils were cast upon the Western Empire for its turn to paganism under Julian, so the admixture of clay continues to threaten the peace and stability of the west.

Even without such clear authorial asides or introductory framing, the Chronicle of Romuald clearly distinguishes itself from Sigebert’s both in its historical vision and Italian context. As with Sigebert, the account of Attila’s invasions of the west is a key event in the downfall of empire for Romuald. But even though both ultimately follow Paul the Deacon and emphasise the great number of barbarians irrupting into the Roman Empire from the north, these events have a notably different significance for Romuald.92Paul the Deacon, Historia romana 14.2, ed. Crivellucci, 191; cf. Romuald, 100. Sigebert reads these events through Landolf Sagax, who, following Cassiodorus, considered the emergence of the Goths and the death of Valens as the crucial moment for the end of the Roman Empire.93Landolf Sagax, Historia romana 12.14, ed. Crivellucci, 1:320; cf. Cassiodorus, Historia tripartita 8.13, CCSL 71, 485. See also Chazan, L’Empire et l’histoire universelle, 190–1. Romuald, on the other hand, follows Paul the Deacon directly and makes no such judgement on this point.94Romuald, 88; Paul the Deacon, Historia romana 11.10–11, ed. Crivellucci, 155–6. He instead presents the subsequent invasion of the Huns, and particularly the death of Flavius Aetius, as the crucial moment of decline for the empire, noting that: ‘thus the most warlike Aetius, and terror of the once most powerful king Attila, lay dead, together with whom the empire of the west and the health of the republic collapsed and could not be raised again thereafter’.95Romuald, 101–2: ‘Ita uir bellicosissimus Etius, et quondam Attile regis potentissimi terror occubuit, cum quo pariter Occidentis imperium, salusque reipublice corruit, nec ultra hactenus ualuit releuari’. Cf. Paul the Deacon, Historia romana 14.15, ed. Crivellucci, 199. This event marks a turning point. From here on emperors of the west are no longer presented as ruling a unified empire, but arẻ instead linked to particular cities. For example, after Avitus is drawn away from Italy, Majorian usurps the empire in Ravenna.96Romuald, 103. These internal tribulations soon give way to external invasions of Italy by Odoacer and then Theodoric. With the migration period, the Chronicle focuses especially on the Franks and Lombards, which are the only two gentes to receive an origin story. Most of the barbarian peoples either just appear or their place of origin is briefly noted. For example, the Goths, Saxons and Burgundians are noted together as emerging barbarian peoples, while the Saxons, Huns and Turcilingi are described as a coming from the shores of the ocean, lofty mountains and the farthest ends of Pannonia respectively.97Romuald, 87–8, 104. However, when the Franks and Lombards are introduced, the Chronicle specifically announces that their histories and deeds should be briefly recounted.98Romuald, 108. It provides the standard origin of the Lombards (Langobardi) in Scandinavia, following Paul the Deacon’s Historia Langobardorum, and has the Franks emerge from the Meotide swamps, following the Liber historiae Francorum.99Romuald, 108–9; cf. Coumert, Origines des peuples, 335–6.

As with Sigebert, the emergence of northern peoples predicates the shift to the next stage of European history leading to the reestablishment of empire in the west under Charlemagne. However, for Romuald this serves to establish a dominant theme for the remainder of the Chronicle: the history of Italy and its relations with empire. While the significance of the Franks, as proto-Carolingian, is fairly evident in the context of a twelfth-century universal chronicle, the focus on the Lombards is more unusual. Given the generally secular context of this Chronicle, almost certainly composed for the Norman aristocracy of southern Italy, the immediate point of departure ought to be portrayals of kingship among the Lombards.100Matthew, ‘Romuald’, 272–4; cf. Diego Zancani, ‘The Notion of “Lombard” and “Lombardy” in the Middle Ages’, in Medieval Europeans: Studies in Ethnic Identity and National Perspectives in Medieval Europe, ed. Alfred P. Smyth (Houndmills: Macmillan, 1998), 217–32. Although their conquest is described at points as bringing famine and death to Italy, their portrayal is broadly positive. A clear example of this is Liutprand, whose virtuous deeds as king are recounted by the chronicler upon his death: he established laws, was a man of much wisdom, exceedingly pious and a lover of peace.101Romuald, 118, 142. His actions fit clearly within a broader picture of the good Lombard kings and represent a model for Norman kingship in Italy. When he first enters the Chronicle, the Lombard king hears that Muslims have ravaged Sardinia, Saint Augustine’s resting place since the devastation of Hippo by ‘barbarians’; he immediately sends for the remains and, paying a great price, has them translated to Pavia.102Romuald, 139. Liutprand goes on to besiege Rome, but Gregory III, himself praised for his divine inspiration, sends for Charles Martel to liberate the papacy. After being made a godfather of his son Pepin through a haircutting ceremony, Charles asks Liutprand to lift the siege and he joyfully assents to the request of his ‘co-father’ (compater).103Romuald, 140–1; cf. Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum 6.53, ed. L. Bethmann and G. Waitz, MGH SS rer. Lang. 1 (Hannover: Hahn, 1878), 183. Liutprand goes on to support Charles against the Muslims in Gaul and, on his return, is petitioned by the pope to stabilise Italy, which he does.104Romuald, 142. As such, Liutprand serves as a sort of microcosm of the relationship of the southern Italian Normans to the papacy, if not to the empire. But this particular series of events can be contextualised within a broader spatial system underlying the chronicle at large.

The Chronicle is generally thoughtful about its use of the spatially located signs. While the interpretation of signa is tricky at the best of times, as we have seen already with Sigebert, they were an important tool for the chronicler not only to identify the significance of events but also to spatially inflect their history.105See Thomas Wozniak, Naturereignisse im frühen Mittelalter: Das Zeugnis der Geschichtsschreibung vom 6. bis 11. Jahrhundert (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020), and C. S. Watkins, History and the Supernatural in Medieval England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 47–55. It is no different here, and we can see how this chronicle manipulates the spatiality of signs in the story of Pope Donus. Drawing from the Liber pontificalis, the Chronicle recounts that during his reign a star appeared in the east. In the Liber pontificalis, the author is self-assured about the meaning of this sign: it occurred on the occasion of Donus’s election, ‘in the August while he was bishop-elect’, and, more pointedly, ‘after turning in its tracks it disappeared; on which count a very great mortality ensued from the east’.106Liber pontificalis 80.3, ed. L. Duchesne, 2 vols (Paris: E. Thorin, 1886–92), 1:348, trans. Raymond Davis, The Book of Pontiffs (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2000), 75 (emphasis added): ‘Hic dum esset electus, per augusto mense … Qui post semetipsa reversa disparuit; pro quo capitulo et maxima mors a parte Orientis subsecuta est’. In the Chronicle, however, both the italicised section and the entire second quotation have been omitted. Now the context is merely: ‘at this time in the month of August’.107Romuald, 130: ‘Huius temporibus mense augusto’. So although it is still found within the account of Donus, its relationship to his pontificate has been largely severed. The point of this change becomes clear when we look at its broader context in Romuald. The preceding episode in the Chronicle describes the eastern emperor Constans II’s unsuccessful attempt to wrest southern Italy from the Lombards. The story ends with Constans being murdered in the bath by his own soldiers.108Romuald, 130. This sign cannot be interpreted in reference to subsequent events either, as there is another sign immediately afterwards, during the pontificate of Agatho, for which the Chronicle follows the Liber pontificalis’s interpretation: ‘the moon underwent an eclipse and it was immediately followed by very grave mortality’, in this case only truncating the further detail that it was through ‘July, August, and September … in Rome’.109Romuald, 130: ‘luna pertulit eclypsim statimque mortalitas grauissima subsecuta est’; Liber pontificalis 81.16, ed. Duchnesne, 1:350, trans. Davis, 76: ‘Similiter et mortalitas maior atque gravissima subsecuta est mense suprascripto, iulio, augusto, septembri, in urbe Roma …’. We can see, therefore, how the Chronicle has manipulated this sign to change its historical reference, linking it to the relationship between the eastern emperors and the Lombards.

The Chronicle has a consistent interest in spatial signs. Almost whenever a heavenly sign is given a spatial designation, the Chronicle finds a plausible interpretation for its directionality. This can take some work, as when in the discussion of Gregory II, following the Liber pontificalis, a star appears in the west and shines to the north (aquilo).110Romuald, 138; Liber pontificalis 91.21, ed. Duchesne, 1:407, 14. While the Liber pontificalis does not ascribe any particular meaning to this event, the Chronicle creates one through its manipulation of the sign’s context. In the Chronicle, the material in the Liber pontificalis has been rearranged so that, right after the celestial sign appears, it reads: ‘through Boniface, a monk and bishop, the doctrine of light converted the German people, sitting in darkness and the shadow of death, to Christ’.111Romuald, 138: ‘Hic per Boniface monachum et episcopum gentem Germanorum sedentem in tenebris et umbra mortis doctrina lucis convertit ad Christum’. Cf. Liber pontificalis 91.3, ed. Duchesne, 1:397. These patterns become more evident as it draws closer to the twelfth century. In 1066 a comet appears in the east and a star in the west, the tails of which extended to the south. Right after this, the emperor of Constantinople dies and Robert Guiscard takes the city of Vieste.112Romuald, 186; cf. Chronica monasterii Casinensis 3.23, ed. Hartmut Hoffmann, MGH SS 34 (Hannover: Hahn, 1980), 390, and Annales Beneventani 1066, ed. G. H. Pertz, MGH SS 3 (Hannover: Hahn, 1839), 180. The point is reinforced by the fact that in this last example, the Chronicle appears to have added the directional designators to the comet. In all these cases, the chronicler takes significant interpretive liberties, attempting to discern or justify the course of history through these signs.

Given the attention that seems to be paid to the directionality of signs, it is significant that in both 1110–11 and 1117–18 the conflicts between Henry V and the pope (Paschal II and Gelasius II respectively) are prefaced by a heavenly sign to the north. In the first case a comet appeared to the north (septentrio), and although the very next sentence discusses the foundation of a castle in Miglionico, the following year begins with a long discussion of the invasion of Italy by Henry V, king of the Germans, with an army of Germans and Swabians.113Romuald, 204–5. In this case, again, the spatial designation is not found in other versions of the event.114Chronica monasterii Casinensis 4.35, MGH SS 34, 500; Annales Beneventani 1110, MGH SS 3, 184; Annales Casinenses 1110, ed. G. H. Pertz, MGH SS 19 (Hannover: Hahn, 1866), 308. In the second case, the year begins first with an eclipse, then, in the same month, the sky turns red from septentrio to arctos. The following month Paschal II dies and Gelasius II is elected, leading to another sudden intervention by Henry V.115Romuald, 208–9. In both cases the contest between Papacy and empire is followed by a reaffirmation of the Normans’ right to southern Italy.116Romuald, 207, 210.

The use of septentrio is interesting in this case as, if this is an intentional addition and meant as a polemic against Henry V, one might expect aquilo instead. But this is perhaps a convention of the particular chronicler or one peculiar to heavenly signs. For example, Sigebert never uses septentrio in his chronicle, but the first continuer uses it almost immediately to locate points of fire that appeared in the sky.117Anselm of Gembloux, Continuatio Sigeberti 1117, ed. Ludwig Konrad Bethmann, MGH SS 6 (Hannover: Hahn, 1844), 377. This is reinforced by the fact that, for this period from the late eleventh century to 1127, Romuald’s Chronicle is notably more methodical about historical minutiae, devoting unusual attention to ironing out the dating and chronology.118Matthew, ‘Romuald’, 250, 266–7. So the compiler of this section may have been trying to use the most technically ‘proper’ spatial terminology. This could also simply be a matter of individual variation, as septentrio sometimes also takes on the same negative associations as aquilo.119E.g., Frutolf of Michelsberg, Chronica De origine Saxonum, ed. D. G. Waitz and P. Kilon, MGH SS 6 (Hannover: Hahn, 1844), 178, in reference to the Nortmannos north of (old) Saxony as ‘gentes ferocissimas’ (most fierce peoples). Here it seems to have been used to emphasise the four cardinal regions neighbouring the Saxons. More broadly this sort of association of the German emperors with the north is in keeping with other polemical literature. For example, Bonizo of Sutri, in the late eleventh century, decries Antipope Honorius II, elected by Empress Agnes, mother of Henry IV, through the citation of Jeremiah 1:14.120Bonizo of Sutri, Liber ad amicum 4, ed. E. Dümmler, MGH Ldl 1 (Hannover: Hahn, 1891), 595. Similarly, in the context of Frederick Barbarossa’s invasion of Italy, John of Salisbury also equates him with the north (aquilo) and west in three letters.121John of Salisbury, Epistolae 220, 250, 273, ed. and trans. W. J. Millor and C. N. L. Brooke, vol. 2 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), 380, 504, 572. Though some peculiarities remain in this case, these signs seem to offer the author a means of locating themselves politically and spiritually vis-a-vis the Roman Empire through their history, without intruding into the narrative as an author.

Thus, even though, unlike Sigebert, Romuald’s Chronicle does not lay out any broader historical framework or principles, it still finds ways of spatially inflecting and commenting upon the history it presents. Central here is the identification of signa, a method that is well suited to its often annalistic tone. Through the use of heavenly signs, it depicts another side of the investiture debate, framed around the interests of the southern Italian Normans. Where in Sigebert the barbarian peoples inhabit the north, serving as agents of God’s judgement, and the empire stands against this threat to maintain the right order of the world, for Romuald, it is the empire itself that is identified with the north, unjustly invading Italy and disrupting the proper order of Christendom. Both authors draw upon the same shared ideas of the north and northern peoples, but adapt them to address their own particular theme. It is nevertheless difficult to demarcate a discrete tradition from which these notions are being drawn. The idea of ‘northern peoples’ is a tradition that predates Christianity and which passed down to the Middle Ages in a wide range of classical texts, not only historical, but geographical and medical as well, whose particular impact we will see presently. But for both Sigebert and Romuald, the central basis seems to be Christian, particularly the major prophets, whose influence on Romuald is evident in one of the textual variants, where Babylonis has been replaced with Aquilonie.122Romuald, 24. From B. This idea is so omnipresent that it may be misleading to think of it in terms of a particular source that informs each author. Rather, these ideas form part of a broader cultural system within which any given individual may encounter them through a wide variety of sources. And although both Sigebert and Romuald are quite traditional in their use of the north, as we shall see, this tradition offered more possibilities for twelfth-century authors.

Orderic Vitalis opens book three with a discussion of the purpose of his work, emphasising its role as a national history of the Normans:127The literature on Orderic as a historian of the Normans is vast. On Norman identity, see p. 000 below. For interpretations of Orderic’s history, see Leah Shopkow, History and Community: Norman Historical Writing in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1997), 96–105; Emily Albu, The Normans in their Histories (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2001), ch. 5; Amanda Jane Hingst, The Written World: Past and Place in the Work of Orderic Vitalis (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009); and Rozier et al., eds, Orderic Vitalis.

The traditional characteristics of the northern peoples are writ large in Orderic’s discussion of the Danes’ and Normans’ warlike nature. Since at least the ancient Greeks there had been a notion that human characteristics were determined by geography and climate. This tradition held that warm climates produced timid, unwarlike peoples who were naturally submissive to monarchies; colder climates were the polar opposite, producing hardy, warlike peoples, resistant to any sort of political domination. Though the Greek ethnographical writings themselves, at least prior to the reintroduction of Aristotle, had minimal direct impact on the Latin Middle Ages, these ideas permeated the Latin literature of the Roman Empire through late antiquity.129See generally Isaac, Invention of Racism, ch. 1. Vitruvius provides a particularly clear example of how this north-south distinction functioned: ‘those who are nearest the southern axis, subjected to the course of the sun … because of the meagerness of their blood … are more timid in resisting military attack … [While bodies born in the north,] because of their abundant blood resist military attack without fear’.130Vitruvius, De architectura 6.1.4, ed. Fritz Krohn (Leipzig: Teubner, 1912), 124, trans. Ingrid D. Rowland, Ten Books on Architecture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 76: ‘qui autem sunt proximi ad axem meridianum subiectique solis cursui … propter sanguinis exiguitatem timidiores sunt ferro resistere … corpora quae nascuntur sub septentrione … sanguinis autem abundantia ferro resistunt sine timore’. Cf. Lucan, 1.450–60, ed. Shackleton Bailey, 16, and Vegetius, Epitoma rei militaris 1.2, ed. M. D. Reeve (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004), 6–7. Furthermore, in Christian writings, northerners were presented as not only fierce and barbarous but also as pagan or gentile.131See, e.g., the portrayal of Scythians in Orosius, 1.4.2, ed. Zangemeister, 17; cf. Merrills, History and Geography, 56. The omnipresence of this idea is seen in Col 3:11: ‘Where there is neither Gentile nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian nor Scythian, bond nor free’. On the association of barbarians and pagans, see Fraesdorff, Norden, 187–200. Orderic uses ‘barbarian’ and ‘pagan’ liberally as terms of alterity throughout his history, particularly in reference to traditionally northern peoples like the Huns and Goths, but also Muslims and the peoples of the Holy Land as well as the peoples on the boundaries of England, like the Welsh and Scots.132OV, 3.–, 4.–; 4.–, 7.12; 3.–, 9.17, 11.26; 8.3, 13.37, ed. Chibnall, 2:188–9, 276–7 (Huns and Goths); 2:276–7, 4:56–7 (Turks); 2:56–7, 5:180–1, 6:114–15 (Muslims); 4:138–9, 144–5, 6:518–19 (Welsh and Scots). There is some overlap in the presentation of broadly amalgamated eastern peoples (Saracens/Turks/Persians) and northern peoples. But this is not systematic for Orderic in the way it is for Sigebert, who Orderic himself highlights for his useful treatment of ‘barbarian’ peoples and specifically the Goths, Huns and Persians.133OV, 3.–, ed. Chibnall, 2:188–9. For Orderic, however, the group most frequently described as barbarous is the Danes, whose portrayal is closely linked with that of the Normans.134OV, 4.–, 6.9, 10, ed. Chibnall, 2:208–9, 244–5, 340–1, 3:282–3, 302–5.

The Danes serve as the archetypical northern people in the first half of the History. Their link with the north is explicitly noted on a number of occasions, most clearly in Orderic’s account of Swein usurping the kingship from Æthelred the Unready in book four. Orderic notes that ‘in the time of Ethelred son of Edgar a terrible storm swept on the English from the north (aquilone), to winnow the wheat where numerous tares abounded’.135OV, 4.–, ed. and trans. Chibnall, 2:244–5: ‘ad expurgandum triticum ubi exuberantia zizaniorum nimis multiplicata est, iterum sub Egelredo rege filio Edgari grauissima tempestas ab aquilone Anglis oborta est’. With this the ‘fierce idolator Swein, king of the Danes’ descended like a ‘mighty whirlwind’ on the unsuspecting English, driving Æthelred to Normandy. Were this not enough, they also burned down Canterbury, martyred St. Ælfheath and, as will be relevant later, destroyed the books there.136OV, 4.–, ed. and trans. Chibnall, 2:244–5: ‘uesanus ydolatra Suenus rex Danorum … ut nimius turbo’. Orderic concludes: ‘the Christian flock everywhere suffered in the storms, and falling a helpless prey to heathen wolves was cruelly torn to pieces by them’.137OV, 3.–, ed. and trans. Chibnall, 2:244–7: ‘Grex quoque fidelium per diuersa tot procellis agitatus est, et luporum dentibus patens uariis modis horribiliter dilanitus est’. This is another classical use of the north as the locus of divine punishment, as the reference to the winnowing of the wheat and weeds in the field makes clear.138Mt 3:12, 13:24–43, Lk 3:17. The idea of invasions as divine wrath on the English is a typical theme, cf. Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum 1.4, 5.prol., ed. Greenway, 272–5, and Geoffrey of Monmouth, De gestis Britonum prol.5, ed. Michael D. Reeve and trans. Neil Wright, The History of the Kings of Britain (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2007), 6–7. There is also the relationship of storm imagery with the invasion of a northern people, in this case through the metaphor of turbo and tempestas.139Childs, ‘Enemy from the North’, 191; cf. Ez 1:4 (Glossa 3:184r). And, importantly for Orderic’s history more broadly, they are associated with wolves, one of Orderic’s favourite metaphors for violence and treachery.140Albu, Normans, 205–9. Although Orderic prefers the language of barbarism and paganism for the Danes, we can see how ideas of northernness fit into this broader nexus of vocabulary around geographically liminal peoples.141OV, 4.–, 6.9, 10, ed. Chibnall, 2:208–9, 340–1, 3:282–3, 302–5.

The Danes have a more specific function in Orderic’s history as a point of comparison by which to assert the ‘civility’ of the Normans. The barbarism inherent in the northern origin of the Normans is a problem for Orderic. He makes the point explicitly on a number of occasions, but it is seen most clearly in his discussion of the origin of the Norman gens. The origin story is notably set within book nine, itself devoted to the First Crusade. After the promulgation of the decrees of the Council of Clermont, Orderic discusses the lack of peace within the Church among the Normans, particularly decrying ‘a great stirring of evil throughout the land’.142OV, 9.3, ed. and trans. Chibnall, 5:24–5: ‘discolis per totam regionem grandis’. This leads to an excursus on the Normans’ untamed nature, a product of their northern origin. It begins with a supposed Scythian origin for the Trojans and the story of Antenor’s journey to settle on the shore of the northern (borealis) ocean, from whose son Danus the Danes would take their name.143OV, 9.3, ed. Chibnall, 5:24–5; cf. Hingst, Written World, 26–7, 161n42. In this way, Orderic establishes not only the northern and Trojan origin of the Danes and Normans, but through Antenor he links them with the Franks as well. The intersection of these ideas is reinforced in book four where he has Antenor settle in Denmark (Dacia), rather than Pannonia as in the Liber historiae Francorum, the original source of this myth.144OV, 4.–, ed. and trans. Chibnall, 2:274–5; Liber historiae Francorum 1, ed. Bruno Krusch, MGH SS rer. Merov. 2 (Hannover: Hahn, 1888), 241–2; cf. Sig., Chron. prol., MGH SS 6, 300. He explains how they were ‘always a cruel and warlike gens’, contrasting this with their ultimate, if late, acceptance of Christ, before finally noting that Rollo and the Normans, who would ultimately conquer Neustria to found Normandy, are of this stock (genus).145OV, 9.3, ed. Chibnall, 5:24, my trans.: ‘gens crudelis semper et bellicosa’.

Orderic takes this description of the origin of the Normans from the warlike Danes as an opportunity to reinforce his point through an excursus on the nature of the Norman gens itself. He explains the nature of the Normans on the basis of an etymology of their name ‘Normannus’:

Remaining with the etymology for just a bit longer, Orderic’s choice of words hints at a further, more specific reference. The characteristic immediately associated with the man of the north is austeritas. Chibnall translates this as ‘roughness’, though it may be better translated as harshness and severity, as of a ruler or the weather, or even cruelty.151DMLBS, s.v. austeritas; as describing wind, cf. Alan of Lille, De planctu Naturae prosa 8.5, ed. and trans. Winthrop Wetherbee, Literary Works (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), 92–3. The term is more typical of religious and exegetical texts than it is histories, and is not found in Henry of Huntington, Geoffrey of Monmouth or Bede’s Historia. The only exception among Anglo-Norman historians of the early twelfth century is William of Malmesbury, who uses it once in his Gesta Regum Anglorum for the harshness of fate, as well as a few times between the Historia novella and Gesta potificum.152WM, GR 1.10.1, ed. Mynors, Thomson and Winterbottom, 30–1. Among commentators on Orderic, only Albu picks up on the connection between austeritas and aquilo, suggesting that austeritas may be a pun on auster, the south wind.153Albu, Normans, 194. Beyond the clever word play, Albu is right to draw our attention to this particular association, as austeritas is an unusual pairing with aquilo. Although the north wind is frequently described as harsh, this is more often done with adjectives like durus (especially Jerome’s oft-repeated ‘aquilo uentus durissimus’), saevus or even asper, each of which furnishes an equally suitable noun.154Durus: Origen (trans. Rufinus), In Numeros homiliae 1.3, ed. Wilhelm Adolf Baehrens, Homilien zum Hexateuch in Rufins Übersetzung, pt. 2 (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1921), 7; Jerome, In Esaiam 6.14.31–2, CCSL 73, 253; Rabanus Maurus, De universo 9.prol., PL 111, 261B. Durissimus: Jerome, In Psalmos 106.3, CCSL 78, 197; Jerome, Zachariam 1.2.6/9, CCSL 76A, 766; Jerome, In Esaiam 6.14.13–14, CCSL 73, 241; Jerome, In Hieremiam 6.15, CSEL 59, 382. Saevus: Propertius, Elegiae 3.7.71, ed. Paolo Fedeli (Munich: K. G. Saur, 2006), 163; Prudentius, Apotheosis 658, ed. J. Bergman, Carmina, CSEL 61 (Vienna: Tempsky, 1926), 108; Boethius, De consolatione philosophiae 1.m6.9, ed. Claudio Moreschini (Munich: K. G. Saur, 2005), 22. Asper: Vergil, Aeneis 3.285, ed. Gian Biagio Conte (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019), 67; Gregory the Great, Moralia 29.31.73, CCSL 143B, 1485; Hildegard, Liber diuinorum operum 1.4.96, ed. A. Derolez and P. Dronke, CCCM 92 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1996), 25. ‘the north wind is the harshest wind’. But the use of austeritas in conjunction with aquilo is not entirely unprecedented, and there is at least one very important example in Bede’s influential commentary on the Song of Songs.155Bede, In Cantica canticorum 3.4.16, CCSL 119B, 270–1; cf. Rabanus Maurus, Allegoriae in universam sacram scripturam, s.v. aquilo, PL 112, 860A–B; Rupert of Deutz, In Zacheriam 2.6, PL 168, 740D. On Bede’s commentary and its influence, see Matter, Voice of My Beloved, 97–101, and Maurmann, Himmelsrichtungen, 123, esp. n27.

Bede deviates from the standard interpretation of Song of Songs 4:16, according to which the north wind is the devil being driven out by the Holy Spirit as the south wind.156Maurmann, Himmelsrichtungen, 117–28; e.g., Robert of Tombelaine, Commentarii in Cantica canticorum, PL 79, 516A–B, which is mentioned in OV, 8.1, ed. Chibnall, 4:116–17. On Robert of Tombelaine, see Matter, Voice of My Beloved, 206. See also p. 000 above. Instead, he reinterprets the north and the south wind as two different trials that the Church must face: ‘the north wind as referring to the terrifying harshness of the world (austeritas mundi terrentis) and the south wind as referring its deceitful charms (blanditia fallentis)’.157Bede, In Cantica canticorum 3.4.16, CCSL 119B, 270–1, trans. Arthur Holder, On the Song of Songs and Selected Writings (New York: Paulist Press, 2011), 138: ‘in aquilone austeritas mundi terrentis in austro blanditia fallentis accipi’. For Bede, these trials represent the sinfulness of humankind that God allows, as when he hardened Pharaoh’s heart in the Exodus story, and the holy men who are buffeted by these hardships as they spread the garden’s fragrance.158Bede, In Cantica canticorum 3.4.16, CCSL 119B, 270–1. These ideas of austeritas and blanditia/blandimentum are used elsewhere in a similar fashion by Orderic to highlight the moral disposition of different figures.159On morality and history-writing, see generally Sønnesyn, William of Malmesbury; on Orderic, see Sigbjørn Olsen Sønnesyn, ‘“Studiosi abdita investigant”: Orderic Vitalis and the Mystical Morals of History’, in Rozier et al., eds, Orderic Vitalis, 284–97. We have already seen the example of Bernard of Valence, but Peter the Venerable also strays into excessive austeritas, as he tries to outdo the Cistercian novelties.160OV, 13.13, ed. Chibnall, 6:426–7. On the other hand, blanditia causes the decline of the late Carolingians who, ‘yielding to the temptations of the world’, fell into vice after the reign of Louis the Pious and were ultimately defeated by the Danes.161OV, 3.–; cf. 5.19, ed. and trans. Chibnall, 2:4–7; cf. 3:192–3: ‘mundique blandimentis succumbens’. We can be confident that Orderic had access to this work as not only did Saint-Évroul have a copy of Bede’s commentary in the early twelfth century, but it is listed on a booklist that begins in Orderic’s own hand.162Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Latin 10062, 80v; Henri Omont, ed., Catalogue général des manuscrits des bibliothèques publiques de France: Départments, vol. 2, Rouen (Paris: Plon, 1888), 468; Charles C. Rozier, ‘Orderic Vitalis as Librarian and Cantor of Saint-Évroul’, in Rozier et al., eds, Orderic Vitalis, 65–6, and Jenny Weston and Charles C. Rozier, ‘Appendix 2: Descriptive Catalogue of Manuscripts Featuring the Hand of Orderic Vitalis’, in Rozier et al., eds, Orderic Vitalis, 391. Bede’s commentary is no. 65. There are, therefore, multiple levels to Orderic’s use of the north, drawn not only from classical ethnography, as seen most clearly through Isidore, but also in Bede’s description of the north as a source of violent, worldly persecution against the Church through which God achieves his end.

Returning once more to the Danes, the activity of early Normans in the period of Rollo is equally associated with Danish violence. During the late ninth-century invasions of the Carolingian Empire, for example, Orderic notes that, during the quarrel between Lothair and Louis the Pious, ‘for the first time, the Normans ravaged Brittany and other lands’.163OV, 5.9, ed. and trans. Chibnall, 3:76–7: ‘Tunc primitus Normanni Britanniam et alias terras uastauerunt’. I have adapted the translation, since Chibnall translates ‘Normanni’ as ‘Northmen’, which obscures the continuity between this invasion and those of Rollo one page later. Cf. Sigebert’s usage, above p. 000. And again, after the division of the kingdom between Louis, Lothair and Charles the Bald, the Normans sack Rouen. Soon after, Rollo appears and ravages Neustria to such an extent that Charles the Simple is forced to cede it to him, which is, as Orderic will go on to discuss in book nine, the origins of Normandy.164OV, 5.9, 9.3, ed. Chibnall, 3:78–9, 5:24–5. Of note here is the fact that Orderic is already referring to these invaders as Normanni prior to the emergence of Rollo, creating an unclear continuity between Danes and Normans in this early period.

This function of Danes and the early Normans as northern peoples is further highlighted in the original destruction of Évroul. There is an interesting ambiguity in Orderic’s treatment of this event, for while Orderic suggests initially that the decimation of Ouche was a result of the Danes, he goes on to explain how it was carried out by Hugh the Great, duke of Orleans.165OV, 6.9, 10, ed. Chibnall, 3:276–7, 308–17. Chibnall attributes the initial inconsistency to ‘a slip of the pen’ and suggests later in the context of Ascelic’s speech about the destruction of Évroul that Orderic changed his views on the matter due to the research he had carried out between his interpolations in William of Jumièges and the Ecclesiastical History.166Chibnall in OV, 3:277n, 326n. It seems implausible, however, that this is a mere slip of the pen, since Orderic consistently frames the issue around the Danes. First, he prefaces his discussion of Évroul’s destruction with a discussion of early Norman history and its historians, noting initially the devastation of monasteries by ‘pirates [who] came out of Denmark … led first by Hasting and then Rollo’.167OV, 6.10, ed. and trans. Chibnall, 3:302–3: ‘piratae de Dacia egressi sunt … prius Hastingo ductore ac postmodum Rollone’. Second, the immediate context of the events is the death of William Longsword and the resultant power struggle. King Louis was embroiled in this power struggle and, according to Orderic, attempted to seize Normandy through Hugh the Great. Bernard the Dane, the regent in Normandy, cunningly convinced the king to turn on Hugh, whose underlings sacked Évroul in response.168OV, 6.10, ed. Chibnall, 3:306–17. Of note here first is the negative portrayal of Bernard in his instigation of Louis. He is described as uersipellis and as tricking the king through blandis sophismatibus.169OV, 6.10, ed. Chibnall, 3:310–12. Once again, blandis is Bede’s blanditia, connoting specifically evil temptations. Versipellis, meaning literally skin-changing, is a term for sly or cunning that is likewise especially associated with the devil’s work.170DMLBS, s.v. versipellis 1; cf. the one use in the Vulgate, Pr 14:25. The only other characters in this story who receive a comparably negative portrayal are Herluin the chancellor and Ralph of Drachy, who are together, for Orderic, the Babylonians sacking the temple of Évroul.171OV, 6.10, ed. Chibnall, 3:316–17. Third, even though Ascelin explains in his speech after the fact that the Franks have served as God’s judgement on them, this judgement, and the speech itself, is framed around the destruction of Normandy by the Danes and early Normans, who serve as the archetype of divine judgement against which these present calamities can be compared.172OV, 6.10, ed. Chibnall, 3:326–7. So, although Orderic singles out individual Franks, the overall picture is contextualised in terms of God’s punishment through the Danes, not the Franks, and it is through the Danes that this element of chaotic violence exploits such a weakness in the rulership of Christendom.

Returning to Chibnall’s second suggestion, that Orderic changed his mind after editing William of Jumièges, it is worth considering a certain coherence between the Ecclesiastical History and the account found in Orderic’s redaction of the Gesta Normannorum ducum. The story presented in the Gesta is an entirely typical account of the judgemental function of barbarian peoples. In the fictive speech of William, son of Giroie, he describes the destruction of Èvroul specifically in terms of the Danes as agents of God’s judgement: ‘our Creator wished to punish the manifold crimes of his people living in that country. With his permission Hasting, that son of perdition, came to Neustria and [destroyed inter alia Évroul]’.173Gesta Normannorum ducum 7.(23), ed. and trans. Elisabeth M. C. van Houts, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992–5), 2:138–9 [hereafter GND]: ‘Conditor noster multiplicata plebis sue in his partibus consistentis crimina punire uoluit. Eius igitur permissu Hastingus, perditionis filius, in Neustriam venit, et … destruxit [coenobium Ebrulfi]’. Hasting’s function here as an agent of divine punishment is doubly reinforced by his description as filius perditionis, itself a crucial description of the Antichrist.174Th 2:3–4; cf. Glossa 4:1121v. See Palmer, Apocalypse, 2, and generally Bernard McGinn, Antichrist: Two Thousand Years of Human Fascination with Evil (New York: Harper Collins, 1994), 43–4, passim. Given the already noted framing of the event in the Ecclesiastical History, we can reasonably question whether Orderic really changed his mind. Rather, he seems to have consistently viewed the destruction of Èvroul as part of God’s judgement on Neustria through the Danes and early Normans. This does not mean that there is necessarily an overall coherence to every statement that Orderic makes on this point, but the narrative expectations for the role of the northern barbarians, which creep into Orderic’s interpretation of the events, at least explain the ease with which such an apparent contradiction may not have seemed so obviously contradictory to the twelfth-century author. As such, we should not be so quick to assume that Orderic himself would have considered his description of the destruction by both the Danes and the Franks as contradictory.

But Orderic’s history is not about the Danes. It is about the Normans, and how, from the time of William the Conqueror, they became a people no longer devoted to war but to books.175OV, 3.–, ed. Chibnall, 2:2–3. The Danes nevertheless play an important role in Orderic’s understanding of this transformation. Returning once more to the story of Swein, who drove Æthelred to Normandy and destroyed Canterbury along with its books, we can see how the Danes are central to Orderic’s account of cultural revival through the Norman Conquest. After recounting this story, Orderic explains that he made this digression into early annals ‘so that the patient reader may clearly understand why the Normans found the English a rustic and nearly illiterate people’.176OV, 4.–, ed. and trans. Chibnall, 2:246–7: ‘ut causa manifeste pateat studioso lectori, cur Anglos agrestes et pene illitteratos inuenerint Normanni’. Cf. Shopkow, History, 100n8. For although the English were once a learned and religious people, instructed in ‘the best customs’ by Pope Gregory, ‘when the Danes … had long raged through England, showing no respect for things divine or human, the law of God began to be shamelessly disregarded’.177OV, 4.–, ed. and trans. Chibnall, 2:246–7: ‘optimis institutionibus’; ‘dum Daci … diuino et humano metu carentes per Angliam diu debachati sunt, innumerae contra Dei legem praeuaricationes temere patratae sunt’. (Once again, one of the two trials the Church will face.) Orderic concludes that it was not until the Normans came that canonical discipline was restored to England. This serves as a way to transition into a discussion of Norman learning. Orderic describes the rise of Bec as an educational centre under Lanfranc, which concludes with Lanfranc being sent ‘by God’s will … to instruct the English’ as archbishop of Canterbury.178OV, 4.–, ed. and trans. Chibnall, 2:254–5: ‘diuinitus Anglis institutor datus est’. Thus the idea of northern peoples, here the Danes, provides a conceptual vocabulary around which to frame the activities of the Normans in history. It is against the shadow of unruly tyrants from Denmark and Norway that Norman rule in England is cast as just and reformative.

There is also a deeper ecclesiastical and monastic context to be found, when read in the context of the trials and flowering of the Church in Song of Songs, that extends beyond the mere rustication of the English in preparation for the Norman renovation. The entire excursus is originally framed around William the Conqueror’s love for true religion ‘on which the peace and prosperity of the world depend’.179OV, 4.–, ed. and trans. Chibnall, 2:238–9: ‘cui pax interdum et prosperitas mundi famulatur’. He defends Church property, opposes the ‘heresy of simony’ and appoints virtuous abbots to the monasteries of England to restore monastic discipline.180OV, 4.–, ed. and trans. Chibnall, 2:238–9: ‘Simoniacam heresim’. This description of William serves to launch Orderic on his story of English monasticism. It begins with Augustine and Laurence who founded many great monasteries that prospered for 200 years, through the reigns of numerous kings. And it ends when Edmund and two other English kings are martyred by the heathen Danes, who burnt monasteries and churches, and slaughtered the people of God like sheep. Religion was again renewed under King Alfred, at which time Oswald travelled to Fleury to adopt the monastic life at the site of St. Benedict’s relics, before returning to England to found Glastonbury and Abingdon.181OV, 4.–, ed. Chibnall, 2:240–5. Orderic therefore prefaces Swein’s invasion by noting that:

There is still more to Orderic’s account than kingship and learning, for as much as he opposes the violent nature of the Normans, this too is reformed through crusading. As Shopkow rightly notes, the First Crusade is a moment of moral clarity for Orderic.184Shopkow, History, 104. This is clearly evoked in the syntactic opposition of temporal disorder and eternal providence in the opening sentence of book nine, itself devoted to the First Crusade: ‘vicissitudines temporum et rerum aeternus conditor sapienter salubriterque ordinet’.185OV, 9.1, ed. and trans. Chibnall, 5:4–5: ‘The eternal Creator wisely and providently ordains seasonal and historical change’. So also, Orderic frames the crusade around his concerns about violence within Christendom. He begins this book with an invocation of the great troubles throughout the world in 1094, stressing their violent and evil nature. The council of Piacenza that year is described similarly in the context of the investiture contest, underscoring its intention to restore peace to the Church.186OV, 9.2, ed. Chibnall, 5:8–9. After an account of the council of Clermont, in the subsequent gathering of Norman bishops at Rouen, the problem of violence and peace is again emphasised by reordering the canons and their relative significance. Where the canons of Clermont are more concerned with reformist interests like investiture and clerical practice, the first half of the council of Rouen is devoted to the Truce of God, itself only briefly noted at Clermont. But Orderic concludes that this council at Rouen was ‘almost without effect’, whence his subsequent discussion of the unrest within Normandy.187OV, 9.2, 3, ed. and trans. Chibnall, 5:10–15, 20–5: ‘pene irrita fuerunt’. It is no coincidence, therefore, that this is the context for Orderic’s discussion of the etymology of Normannus as ‘man of the north’ – it explains their violent behaviour. It also provides a broader context for the book, since it is through the crusade that Orderic Christianises their violent nature.

Through his account of the First Crusade, drawn largely from Baudri of Bourgueil, the role of the Normans, and particularly Bohemond, is consistently stressed.188E.g., OV, 9.8–9, ed. Chibnall, 5:58–61, 62–3, 70–5. This is hardly surprising, given that Baudri’s account is based on the Gesta Francorum, itself written by a follower of Bohemond.189Rosalind Hill in Gesta Francorum, ed. and trans. Rosalind Hill, The Deeds of the Franks and the other Pilgrims to Jerusalem (Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1962), xi [hereafter GF]. Orderic’s more general descriptions of Bohemond, at least insofar as they relate to crusading and the meritorious function of violence in support of Christendom, are consistent throughout the rest of his Ecclesiastical History. Bohemond is a recurrent figure from book five to twelve. His prominence in Orderic’s mind can be seen in the fact that Orderic, perhaps unwittingly, repeats the story of Bohemond’s arrival in France in 1106 and subsequent marriage to Constance, daughter of Philip I of France, three separate times! Twice this event is preceded by a comet appearing in the west (occiduis/Hesperiae), with the last account noting its tail trailing towards the east (eoas). Similarly, his renown from the crusade is noted in each case, with the last one describing his fame ‘through the whole world’ and acclaim across ‘the three regions of the earth’.190OV, 5.19, 8.20, 11.12, ed. Chibnall, 3:182–3, 4:264–5, 6:68–73, at 6:70–1, my trans.: ‘per totum mundum … in tripartito climate orbis’. On his relevance to Christianised violence, we can compare Orderic’s criticism of Bohemond to his praise. Though he is at least implicitly critical of Bohemond for his involvement in ‘worse than civil wars’ through Italy, Orderic’s stronger criticism pertains to his lust for plunder, notably in his abortive campaign against Durazzo.191OV, 8.8, ed. and trans. Chibnall, 4:168–9: ‘plus quam ciuilia bella’. Marjorie Chibnall, The World of Orderic Vitalis: Norman Monks and Norman Knights (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1996), 127–8. Chibnall seems to imply a deep criticism of Bohemond by Orderic through the last three books, although we should also keep in mind the rhetorical function of combining criticism and praise (Kempshall, Rhetoric, 165–6). This point is made through Bohemond’s companions, who complain that: ‘no hereditary right drew us to this bold enterprise; no prophet sent from God roused us with a message from heaven; only lust to rule in the dominions of another’.192OV, 11.24, ed. and trans. Chibnall, 6:102–3: ‘Ad tantos ausus nec hereditarium ius nos illexit, nec prophetarum aliquis a Deo destinatus coelesti nos oraculo exciuit, sed cupiditas in alterius dicione dominandi ardua te incipere persuasit’. Cf. OV, 9.3, ed. and trans. Chibnall, 5:24–5: ‘ubicumque fuerint dominari appetunt’ (wherever they may be, [Normans] strive to rule). Nevertheless, in the context of crusading, he is presented as the standard-bearer of the Christian army and his release from captivity is described as being for the defence of Christendom (Christianitas).193OV, 8.20, 10.24, ed. Chibnall, 4:264–5, 5:354–5; on Christianitas, see p. 000 below. Through this example we see how the Norman’s violent, northern nature is ordered within the Christian world and turned to the greater benefit of Christendom.

For Orderic, the northern peoples play the opposite role as they did for Sigebert and Romuald. Where for the latter two the north was in some sense external to their point of reference, as the regna against Rome and the Germans against Lombardy, for Orderic the north is in the first place internal to his point of reference. So, while for Sigebert the north serves as an explanatory device in relation to his subject, the role of empire, for Orderic, represents a problem his history has set itself the job of solving: namely, how the barbaric Normans could be distinguished from their place of origin. We see a difference in the way that the north is conceived of as an explanatory device for Orderic. Although he does not explicitly describe it as such, his notions fall more clearly in line with classical notions of geographic determinism in that the violent activities of the Normans are explained by their physical origins in the north. There is of course also a biblical background to this notion, for the Danes serve as an instrument of God’s punishment. This intersection of classical and biblical thinking may be in keeping with Elisabeth Mégier’s suggestion that Orderic weights both the biblical and classical exempla equally in his history as giving meaning to particular events, rather than as prophetic or allegorical explanations of history more broadly.194Elisabeth Mégier, ‘Divina pagina and the Narration of History in Orderic Vitalis’ Historia ecclesiastica’, in Christliche Weltgeschichte im 12. Jahrhundert: Themen, Variationen und Kontraste. Untersuchung zu Hugo von Fleury, Ordericus Vitalis und Otto von Freising (Frankfurt aM: Peter Lang, 2010), 291–7. As such, in Orderic we see a clear example of the synthesis of the classical and the biblical at work. They are drawn upon together not so much as competing traditions but as equivalent expositions of the same truth about the world.

Each author must grapple in turn with the narrative expectations created by the north about the way that history is supposed to play out. For Orderic, it represents the problem of how the savage Normans could distinguish themselves from the tyrannical Danes in their rulership of England. Romuald also turns this northernness to the advantage of his protagonists, the Italian Normans, first through the prefiguration of the Normans in the Lombards, who themselves emerged from the north and came to hold Italy legitimately and second, by associating the German emperors with the north so as to contrast them with the positive relationship between the Normans and the papacy. Finally, for Sigebert, the northern peoples serve one of two positive functions, either forming the foundation of Christendom through conversion and the establishment of stable kingdoms or as a foil against which the rightly ordered empire can establish itself.

That such disparate authors can intelligibly engaged with such similar notions, often without much in the way of explanation, implies a shared cultural inheritance upon which all three authors are drawing. Yet even though these ideas are clearly found in both the classical and biblical traditions, it can be hard to determine to what extent exactly either one or the other is being drawn upon in any given instance. On the authors’ own accounts, Sigebert frames this presentation in terms of the Bible through Jeremiah, Romuald makes no explicit statement as to his sources for this tradition and Orderic gestures towards, inter alia, a geographical tradition through the proverbial analogy to the north wind. But these are mostly just scattered comments, not an intentional discussion of their sources. It is not clear, therefore, that we should conceive of this background as a unified entity or tradition, so much as a set of familiar elements that emerge within the broader cultural, literary and intellectual environment. Be they real places or only ideas, it is through this background understanding about what ‘goes on’ in different regions of the world that these authors are able to draw upon this shared conceptual vocabulary and make use of it not only to describe and explain, but to positively shape the histories they tell and the world in which they live.