Normans

Examples of Normans in the following topics:

• The Double Disasters

  • A number of wars between the Normans and the Byzantine Empire were fought from 1040 until 1185 when the last Norman invasion of Byzantine territory was defeated.
  • The Normans and their new land took the name of these "Northmen."
  • The Norman adventurer Robert Guiscard allied with the pope to drive the remaining Byzantines from southern Italy and replace them with a Roman Catholic Norman kingdom.
  • Even more dangerous than the Normans was a new enemy from the steppe: the Turks.
  • While the Normans were pillaging Italy, the Turks invaded Asia Minor.

• The Norman Invasion of 1066 CE

  • The Norman conquest of England was the 11th-century invasion and occupation of England by an army of Norman, Breton, and French soldiers led by Duke William II of Normandy, later styled William the Conqueror.
  • A few ships were blown off course and landed at Romney, where the Normans fought the local fyrd.
  • Norman cavalry then attacked and killed the pursuing troops.
  • Twice more the Normans made feigned withdrawals, tempting the English into pursuit, and allowing the Norman cavalry to attack them repeatedly.
  • The tapestry depicts the loss of the Anglo-Saxon troops to the Norman forces.

• William the Conqueror's Rule

  • Other effects of the conquest included the introduction of Norman French as the language of the elites and changes in the composition of the upper classes, as William reclaimed territory to be held directly by the king and settled new Norman nobility on the land.
  • There was little alteration in the structure of government, as the new Norman administrators took over many of the forms of Anglo-Saxon government.
  • William took over an English government that was more complex than the Norman system.
  • After a great political convulsion like the Norman Conquest, and the wholesale confiscation of landed estates that followed, it was in William's interest to make sure that the rights of the crown, which he claimed to have inherited, had not suffered in the process.
  • In particular, his Norman followers were more likely to evade the liabilities of their English predecessors, and there was growing discontent at the Norman land-grab that had occurred in the years following the invasion.

• The Anglo-Saxons

  • The Anglo-Saxon period denotes the period of British history between about 450 and 1066, after their initial settlement and up until the Norman Conquest.
  • Threatened by extended Danish invasions and occupation of eastern England, this identity persevered; it dominated until after the Norman Conquest.
  • This was the society that would see three invasions in the 11th century, the third of which was led successfully by William of Normandy in 1066 and transferred political rule to the Normans.
  • Almost every poem from before the Norman Conquest, no matter how Christian its theme, is steeped in pagan symbolism, but the integration of pagan beliefs into the new faith goes beyond the literary sources.

• The Great Schism of 1054

  • The main purpose of the papal legation was to seek help from the Byzantine Emperor in view of the Norman conquest of southern Italy and to deal with recent attacks by Leo of Ohrid against the use of unleavened bread and other Western customs, attacks that had the support of Cerularius.
  • Historian Axel Bayer contends that the legation was sent in response to two letters, one from the Emperor seeking assistance in arranging a common military campaign by the eastern and western empires against the Normans, and the other from Cerularius.

• Crisis and Fragmentation

  • In 1081 CE, with the attacks from the Normans and Turks reaching their height, a new emperor, Alexios I, came to the throne.
  • It was no comfort to Alexios to learn that four of the eight leaders of the main body of the Crusade were Normans, among them Bohemund.

• Italian Politics

  • In the south, Sicily had for some time been under foreign domination, by the Arabs and then the Normans.
  • Sicily had prospered for 150 years during the Emirate of Sicily and later for two centuries during the Norman Kingdom and the Hohenstaufen Kingdom, but had declined by the late Middle Ages.

• The Magna Carta

  • His Norman lands went to his eldest son, Robert Curthose and his English lands to his second son, William Rufus.

• The Justinian Code

  • Its influence on common law legal systems has been much smaller, although some basic concepts from the Corpus have survived through Norman law - such as the contrast, especially in the Institutes, between "law" (statute) and custom.

• The Vikings

  • The period from the earliest recorded raids in the 790s until the Norman conquest of England in 1066 is commonly known as the Viking Age of Scandinavian history.