In both popular memory and in their own histories, the Normans remain almost synonymous with conquest. In their relatively brief history, some of these Normans left a small duchy in northern France to fight with Empires, conquer kingdoms, and form new ruling dynasties. This book examines the explosive Norman encounters with the medieval Mediterranean, c. 1000–1250. It evaluates new evidence for conquest and communities, and offers new perspectives on the Normans’ many meetings and adventures in history and memory.
The contributions gathered here ask questions of politics, culture, society, and historical writing. How should we characterize the Normans’ many personal, local, and interregional interactions in the Mediterranean? How were they remembered in writing in the years and centuries that followed their incursions? The book questions the idea of conquest as replacement, examining instead how human interactions created new nodes and networks that transformed the medieval Mediterranean. Through studies of the Normans and the communities who encountered them — across Iberia, the eastern Roman Empire, Lombard Italy, Islamic Sicily, and the Great Sea — the book explores macro- and micro-histories of conquest, its strategies and technologies, and how medieval people revised, rewrote, and remembered conquest.
Dr Emily A. Winkler is Principal Investigator of an AHRC-funded research project on medieval historical writing. She is a Research Fellow at St Edmund Hall and the Faculty of History at the University of Oxford.
Liam Fitzgerald is a PhD candidate in History at King’s College London and the British Museum.
Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Normans and Conquest in the Mediterranean — EMILY A. WINKLER AND ANDREW SMALL
Part I. Motivations and Strategies
Norman Conquests: Nature, Nurture, Normanitas — MATTHEW BENNETT
Marriage as a Strategy for Conquering Power: Norman Matrimonial Strategies in Lombard Southern Italy — AURÉLIE THOMAS
The Changing Priorities in the Norman Incursions into the Iberian Peninsula’s Muslim-Christian Frontiers, c. 1018–c. 1191 — LUCAS VILLEGAS-ARISTIZÁBAL
Part II. The Implications of Conquest in Sicily and Southern Italy
Norman Change, Lords and Rural Societies — SANDRO CAROCCI
The Nobility of Norman Italy, c. 1085–1127 — GRAHAM A. LOUD
Shaping the Urban Landscape: The Normans as New Patrons in Salerno — MADDALENA VACCARO
Palermo and the Norman Conquest of Sicily — THERESA JÄCKH
Community and Conquest on Medieval Monte Iato, Sicily — NICOLE MÖLK
Part III. Perceptions and Memories
Holy War in the Central Mediterranean: The Case of the Zirids and the Normans — MATT KING
Hagiography and the Politics of Memory in the Norman Conquest of the Italian South — KALINA YAMBOLIEV