The Experience of Power in Medieval Europe, 950–1350

Robert F. Berkhofer III, Alan Cooper, Adam J. Kosto, Robert F. Berkhofer III, Alan Cooper, Adam J. Kosto

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351889964
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Taking their inspiration from the work of Thomas N. Bisson, to whom the book is dedicated, the contributors to this volume explore the experience of power in medieval Europe: the experience of those who held power, those who helped them wield it, and those who felt its effects. The seventeen essays in the collection, which range geographically from England in the north to Castile in the south, and chronologically from the tenth century to the fourteenth, address a series of specific topics in institutional, social, religious, cultural, and intellectual history. Taken together, they present three distinct ways of discussing power in a medieval historical context: uses of power, relations of power, and discourses of power. The collection thus examines not only the operational and social aspects of power, but also power as a contested category within the medieval world. The Experience of Power suggests new and fruitful ways of understanding and studying power in the Middle Ages.

PART I
THE USE OF POWER

Chapter 1

Heirs to the Apostles: Saintly Power and Ducal Authority in Hagiography of Early Normandy*

Samantha Kahn Herrick

Dudo of Saint-Quentin relates a story of evangelization that he places in the mid-tenth century. His tale concerns a group of savage pagans prowling the region of Evreux, in southeastern Normandy (see Figure 1.1). According to Dudo, the Christian faith was urged upon these marauders by the figure who had solicited and directed their violence, Duke Richard I of Normandy.¹ Richard called the Vikings to his aid against a neighbor’s perfidious attack on this key border region. Upon his victory, the duke then personally proselytized his Viking allies. With promises of abundant land and life eternal, he won them over to the faith of Christ, and to his own authority. After baptism, they settled in the region as his subjects.² Military action thus went hand in hand with evangelization, and the two processes subdued a formerly vulnerable region to the authority equally of Normandy and of Christ.

Dudo intertwines belligerence and evangelization to show Norman history as the fulfillment of the divine will by a virtuous and mighty ruler. Indeed, Richard I is merely one of a series of such leaders; Dudo portrays the whole lineage as uniformly righteous, strong, and dedicated to realizing the divine will. Although inventive and even idiosyncratic, Dudo’s plot and his heroes both resemble those of other contemporary Norman sources. In particular, they mirror stories of the territory’s apostles.

Three apostles to the future Normandy bear a striking resemblance to the dukes celebrated by Dudo. Their Lives credit saints Taurinus of Evreux, Vigor of Bayeux, and Nicasius of Rouen with the conversion, in the early Christian era, of different areas of what would later become Normandy.³ All three figures exerted themselves mightily to vanquish Satan and to incorporate the territory taken from him into the realm of Christ. Like Dudo’s Richard, they are warriors who pair conquest with evangelization to impose virtuous authority and to expand divine dominion.

Like Dudo’s history, moreover, the saints’ vitae were produced in the early eleventh century by supporters of the Norman dukes. Dudo, who claimed to write at the request of Richard I, probably completed his work around or shortly after 1020.⁴ A variety of evidence similarly locates the composition of the three vitae in the 1020s and 1030s.⁵ All these texts belong to an era that witnessed a significant expansion of ducal ambition, as the Norman leaders sought to impose their authority over an increasingly wide territory. The monasteries for which, and most likely in which, the three texts were produced played a role in this expansion. The houses of Saint-Taurin d’Evreux, Saint-Vigor de Cerisy, and Saint-Ouen, which nurtured, respectively, the cults of Taurinus, Vigor, and Nicasius, all enjoyed particular ducal attention and munificence. Saint-Ouen had been the leading monastery of Rouen for centuries before the Viking raids, and it regained this position after 911 by cultivating the Norman leaders. Both Saint-Taurin and Cerisy were ducal foundations and enjoyed close ties to the dynasty from their inception.⁶ The links between the dukes and the monasteries in which or for which the texts were produced suggest that, like Dudo, the hagiographers championed ducal authority. The contemporary portraits of dukes and saints all these writers envisaged thus reflect notions of power current among ducal supporters. The correspondence between these fictionalized heroes sheds light on the ideas that informed their portrayal, and suggests ways in which these ideas served to cultivate ducal authority. The image of the apostle thus merits attention, for it illuminates in turn the idealized duke of his supporters’ imagination.

To the territory’s apostles, this imagination attributed above all irresistible military prowess. The Vita Taurini, Vita Vigoris, and Passio Nicasii all present their heroes as models of divinely sanctioned, aggressive power, a portrait that arises from the insistently martial language and imagery the vitae employ. The exhortation that initiates the mission to Gaul in which Nicasius of Rouen takes part sets the tone common to all three: “since you are…an inflexible warrior of the Lord’s wars, go manfully into Gaul, and armed with the shield of the Lord’s protection, place yourself as a most strong wall for the house of Israel, and stand for it unvanquished in battle.”⁷ From the outset, Nicasius and his colleagues appear as warriors charged with a belligerent mission.

With similar rhetoric, the Vita Taurini likewise depicts its hero as a warrior embarked on a military campaign. The saint’s godfather commands him: “diligently guard the people entrusted to you by God…and act manfully, like a valiant soldier.”⁸ The taunts and recriminations of the saint’s enemy then echo this strain. The text recounts that Taurinus arrived at the city to which God had appointed him bishop and apostle, only to find the gate blocked by Satan. The devil harassed the saint in three successive beastly forms, but failed to thwart him. Having withstood the attacks, Taurinus chides his opponent: “Wretch, having abandoned the fellowship of your maker, you have assimilated yourself to unclean beings. Is this better for you? Does it bring you joy?” Angry and humiliated, Satan responds: “What joy can there be for me now that you have come…to overthrow my power, and to take away the residence only I possessed in this province?…I will enter battle with you.”⁹ The exchange sets the stage for a series of encounters, in which Taurinus vanquishes Satan time and again. The devil eventually admits defeat, saying: “When you came here, I thought that I would overcome you and kill you, now, however, you have gained strength and are stronger than I…for I had conflicts with many, and none overcame me as you have.”¹⁰ As Satan foretold, evangelization plays out in the text as a power struggle between good and evil. The saint emerges triumphant, having gained through belligerence power over the city, its region, and its inhabitants.

The people the saint evangelizes also view his mission as military in nature. The inhabitants of Evreux beg Taurinus to “liberate them,” and “relieve their lost city.”¹¹ The verb they employ in the latter instance, subvenire, connotes the military assistance offered by an army, as in a case of siege. The metaphor thus equates the city’s paganism with enemy siege and evangelization with military relief. As apostle, Taurinus fights to liberate Evreux from Satan’s siege and to subdue it to his own control, just as Richard would later fight, with Viking aid, to liberate the city from his Frankish neighbors.

The Vita Vigoris and Passio Nicasii echo the martial rhetoric of the Vita Taurini. Vigor and Nicasius fight their adversaries with the aid of armies both real and metaphorical. The Vita Vigoris relates that its hero suffered violent rebuff by stalwart pagans in an attempt to purge a local shrine. Aided by royal deputies, Vigor then returns to cleanse it and to convert the worshippers by force.¹²

Nicasius does not rely on an army lent by a king, but instead raises his own from the proselytes he converts. He rescues from a pernicious dragon a desperate populace whose “sole protection,” according to the text, lies with the saint and his faith. Like the author of the Vita Taurini, this hagiographer also employs a martial vocabulary. The protection offered by Nicasius is designated by praesidium, which also signifies a fortification.¹³ In conversion the proselytes find safety and acquire, moreover, the means to defend themselves from evil. Regarding the overpowered dragon lying prostrate at his feet, Nicasius instructs the terrified onlookers: “just as you will presently see this [beast] crushed by the sign of the cross, so arm your brows with the same sign of the holy cross, and know that every plot of the devil will be banished from you.” He then demonstrates the efficacy of this weapon by using it to smash the dragon to bits.¹⁴ Those Nicasius welcomes into the praesidium of his faith, and whom he teaches to wield the sign of the cross as a weapon, remain in his wake as a metaphorical garrison, while he proceeds towards his see. Nicasius establishes several such enclaves, which the Passio locates in genuine strategic sites, some of which were already fortified in the early eleventh century.¹⁵ The hagiographer’s rhetoric thus blurs the distinction between the metaphorical campaign he recounts and the military reality of his own era. He likewise fuses Normandy’s sacred history with the ambitions of its current rulers.

Contemporary images of these rulers—Richard and his lineage—offer a revealing contrast to the portrait of the belligerent apostle presented in the vitae. Although the dukes appear in Norman sources as mighty warriors, they also—and, in early sources, more promi...