Norman Rule in Normandy, 911–1144 by Mark Hagger (review)

Scholarship on the Norman period has been expanding rapidly in recent years. As well as increasing our knowledge of Norman activities in England, southern Italy, and elsewhere, the nature of Norman lordship and society within Normandy itself, both before and after 1066, has come under scrutiny. Mark Hagger's new study makes a significant and welcome contribution to our understanding of the development of ducal rule and is likely to become an authoritative statement on the topic. With its narrower but highly detailed focus on the duchy itself, it complements other recent volumes with a wider perspective, such as David Bates's The Normans and Empire (Oxford University Press, 2013) and the essays in Stringer and Jotischky (eds), Norman Expansion (Ashgate, 2013), or Bates's biography of William the Conqueror in the Yale English Monarchs series (Yale University Press, 2016).

The introduction offers an extended overview of the sources on which Hagger bases his study. The four major narrative sources (by Dudo of Saint Quentin, William of Jumièges, William of Poitiers, and Orderic Vitalis) are all familiar to scholars of the period. But in surveying recent historiography on these authors, Hagger offers new interpretations. For example, he hypothesizes that William of Jumièges composed the Gesta Normannorum ducum in part to reconcile rebellious nobles to their duke's rule (pp. 14–18). Indeed, one of the book's major themes concerns the way in which both narrative and administrative sources (especially the latter) are better understood as part of a dialogue between the dukes and their subjects. Since many of the surviving acta were produced not by ducal officials, but by those making requests of their ruler, they can tell us just as much about the 'reception of ducal power by the dukes' subjects and beneficiaries' (pp. 30–31) as they can about the motivations of the rulers themselves. For Hagger, charters and related documents 'provide views from the bottom up rather than the top down' (p. 37).

The book contains two large sections. The first offers three chronological chapters following the development of ducal authority from its origins in the early tenth century to the conquest of Normandy from King Stephen by his Angevin rivals in 1144, as well as chapters on ducal relations with the Church and with the neighbouring kings of France. The focus stays tightly on the expansion and expression of power within the duchy, as exercised through grants of land, military activity, marriage alliances, and the management of relationships with family members and aristocratic rivals. Consequently, Hagger deliberately avoids extensive coverage of better-known external events, including the campaign of 1066. By emphasizing local developments in the regions of Normandy and showing how individuals and families asserted their autonomy or benefited from ducal patronage at different times and in different ways, the author builds a careful and thorough argument suggesting that the establishment of full ducal control was a slower and more piecemeal process than has previously been thought. Normandy may have become a 'viable political entity' by the late tenth century but it was not until c. 1120, Hagger argues, that Henry I was able to gain full control over all parts of the duchy (p. 184).

The second section presents six thematic chapters on topics including justice, finance, and the military household. Each of these forms a substantial study in its own right. The chapter on courtly ritual and the performance of ducal authority is representative in the way it presents an eclectic mix of evidence. Hagger reexamines witness and signatory lists to show how petitioners at court were part of an elaborate system of ritual through which the dukes could 'broadcast and maintain their authority' (p. 364), even while attendees asserted their own claims to power, property, and recognition. A section on the 'political theatre of landscapes and buildings' (p. 381–94) draws on recent work on castles, architecture, and medieval urban spaces to argue that ducal...