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\centerline{THE PIOUS PIRATE}\bigskip
            
   For more than 300 years, Norman, Capetian, and
Plantagenet apologists engaged in a communal effort to
fabricate for their royal patrons an ascendant line of
courtly Christians, thereby justifying the distribution of
land and power in what is now, roughly, north-central and
north-eastern France. Annalists, historians, biographers,
hagiographers, and poets worked with nearly intractable
material -- gangs of brutally effective pirates preying upon
perpetually squabbling natives loosely pledged and
discontinuously loyal to a Carolingian identity -- and the
results of their efforts demonstrate again that history in
the Middle Ages existed not as a separate discipline, but as
a branch of rhetoric. Chronicles, histories, even annals,
were political, not historical in the sense to which modern
historians aspire (Grundmann, p. 1; Guen\'{e}e, p. 25,  \emph{et
passim}).\bigskip

   The story of William Longsword provides a particularly
good example of the conspiracy, supported by ecclesiastical
and secular writers alike, to cook an embarassingly raw
past; the short and violent life of a polygamous, ruthless,
briefly excommunicated tenth-century pirate provided a
series of medieval writers with a few useful incidents, and
enough provocative lacunae to concoct a tentative solution
for a problem that grew out of the fact that medieval
panegyric required some elementary competence at least in
the problems of Christian theology.\bigskip

   Christian theology, of course, generated many problems,
but one in particular had to be solved, at least
provisionally, before a medieval Christian historian could
write at all.  As Pickering represents the problem, a
medieval writer had to determine whether his sympathies lay
with a Boethian rejection of the possibility that events in
the sublunary world  had any permanent significance (in
which case he could scarcely compose a line on events in his
own time), or with the Augustinian affirmation that God's
will is worked out in human history.  A secular figure,
then, could safely command Christian attention only by
working out God's will through providentially pious acts;
only the most naive reader, then, would be surprised to find
that medieval historians bestow the words and deeds of a
devout athlete of God upon figures and groups in whom they
have emotional, material, and sometimes intellectual
investments.\bigskip

   Arnaldo Momigliano points to Eusebius' life of
Constantine as the first attempt to offer the life of a
secular ruler as the model for a life of Christian piety,
but he dismisses the attempt not only as a failure, but as,
"an experiment not to be repeated -- historigraphically a
blind alley" (p.119).  Sanctifying Constantine was certainly
no easy task, even if Burckhard's description of the ruler
credited with converting Rome to Christianity as a
"murderous egoist" (p. 293) who could be credited only with
an "alleged "Christianity" (p. 298) needs to be tempered
(Barnes, pp. 268ff.). Although no writer used Eusebius'
Life of Constantine as a formal model for panegyric,
nevertheless, the image fabricated by Eusebius remained
sufficiently vivid in the minds of later chroniclers for
Gregory of Tours (II.31) to recall it in describing Clovis'
baptism at the end of the fifth century, and for Aimon and
others who reworked Gregory's material through the centuries
to preserve the comparison, until well into the thirteenth
century, when Primat translated the passage as he said he
found it in the chronicles of St. Denis:   li rois descendi
es fonz ausi com uns autres Constantin (Viard, I, p.71;
Aimon I.xvi; LHF XV; Fred. III.xxi).  Furthermore, the
problem of praising political leaders both for their
military competence and for their Christian piety remained
central for writers of historical literature in the Middle
Ages as perhaps the ultimate rhetorical challenge;
Charlemagne, Edward the Confessor, Godfrey of Boulogne,
Thomas Becket, and Saint Louis were the objects of
relatively successful efforts to produce paradigmatic
figures, in whom sacred and secular virtues were congruent.\bigskip
  
William Longsword was the object of the same kind of
efforts to make the rage for earthly real estate harmonious
with immortal longings, but the results in his case were
finally less effective, partly because his actual
accomplishments were too few, partly because those who
devoted their efforts to sanctifying and gentrifying the
pirate may have lacked the necessary competence, partly
because William's story proved less useful than others to
later times, and partly because of the general falling off
in the production of saints between 751 and 1000
A.D.[Poulin, p. 3, n. 6].  In spite of these negative
conditions, however, some hagiographers were capable of
meeting extraordinary rhetorical challenges; the first king
of Hungary (ruled from 997-1038), for example, in the course
of insuring the succession of his sister's son, blinded
another nephew, banished the nephew's sons, and yet became
St. Stephen (Leeper, p. 176).\bigskip

   To gentrify and sanctify the pirate required diabolizing
his enemies, and consequently conceiving of the historic
process in terms of clear, vivid antitheses  -- a habit of
mind that Levi-Strauss, among others, has taught us to
consider characteristic of mythic thought. Specifically
medieval articulations of mythic thought as described by
Dumezil and developed by Duby fall into the three categories
of Warrior, Priest, and a function more difficult to define,
in the area of labor and fecundity. As Dumezil describes the
difficulties of delimiting the domain of the third function,
he seems to be describing Joyce's Molly Bloom:\medskip

      Il est moins ais\'{e}  de cerner en quelque mots
      l'essence de la troisi\`{e}me fonction, qui couvre
      des provinces nombreuses, entre lesquelles des
      liens \'{e} vidents apparaissent, mais dont l'unit\'{e}
      ne comporte pas de centre net: f\'{e} condit\'{e}  certes,
      humaine, animale et vegetale, mais en m\^{e}me temps
      nourriture et richesse, et sant\'{e} , et paix ... et
      souvent volupt\'{e} , beaut\'{e} ...   (l'id\'{e} ologie etc.,
      p. 19).\medskip

Richer, the first writer who devoted himself to converting
William Longsword into a significant figure in the history
of northern France, concentrated on the first function in
his attempt to convert William from a ruthless pirate into a
roughly Carolingian warrior; later writers, like Dudo, Wace,
and Benoit, whose task was to convert the pirate into a
satisfying ancestor for their Norman patrons, invoked all
three functions for the task. His military accomplishments,
his intellectual activity (almost exclusively in religious
terms), and his sexual conduct were essential, since
military and ecclesiastical problems were regularly
congruent in Northern France in the ninth century, and
generally expressable in terms of real-estate, while sexual
conduct determined who and how many would inherit the real
estate.\bigskip

   On the basis of the few documents that survive from a
period that is regularly described as the most obscure and
confused in French history, modern historians are willing to
assert that William was one of the five most powerful men
jockeying for power, more frequently as brokers than as
warriors, in northern France in the middle of the tenth
century; Hugh the Great, Herbert of Vermandois, Arnold the
Old, and Hugh the Black were the other four. In an attempt
to vitiate their inability to get along with each other,
they invited Charles the Simple's son, Louis d'Outre-Mer, to
return from England to take up the crown. As Lauer describes
the invitation it was, if not exactly quixotic, peculiarly
paradoxical:
     
Ainsi fut accompli cette restauration d'un
      enfant exil\'{e}, rejeton d'une dynastie d\'{e}chue,
      rappel\'{e} par les pires ennemis de sa race (pp.
      14-15).

Restoring the Carolingian, of course, did not restore order,
but merely added another aggravating vector to the internal
forces already at work. In addition, and sometimes in
collusion with one or more of the internal factions, the
Holy Roman Emperor and marauding Hungarians provided
significant external threats.
   Internal politics, however, were further complicated by
the interpenetration of secular and ecclesiastical
interests, since both warrior and priest tended to measure
success in terms of acquired real estate. Hugh the Great,
for example, the most powerful of the Northern French
nobility, endowed ten ecclesiastical institutions, in return
for which he bore the title of \emph{abbas}, while Artaud, during
his tenure as Archbishop of Rheims, was made a count by
Louis d'Outre-Mer, in a transaction that was not without
precedent. The most dramatic illustration of the confusion
between functions in the middle of the tenth century is
probably the battle for the Archbishopric of Rheims, waged
between Louis' candidate, Artaud, and Herbert of Vermandois'
candidate, his own son, who was five years old in 925, the
year in which his father arranged his election.  Caught in
the middle of this battle -- which lasted for approximately
a generation, with Artaud in office for the first fifteen
years-- was the historian, hagiographer, and ecclesiastical
functionary, Flodoard of Rheims, who offers us the earliest
details about William Longsword.\bigskip

   When Herbert of Vermandois finally succeeded in
installing his son Hugh, by means of military and political
maneuvering, as Archbishop, a general purge of those who had
held office under Artaud took place, and Flodoard was
deprived of his offices and held a virtual captive for five
months. Lauer suggests that fear of his notes falling into
the hands of Herbert made Flodoard more objective as an
historian, but a tenth-century ecclesiastic in such a
position might as easily become paralysed with prudence. In
any event, Flodoard's other major works, the \emph{History of
the Church of Rheims}, and the versified hagiographies he
composed, are written in a far more elaborate and
judgemental style than the  Annales.  Perhaps a more useful
symptom of reliability, Dumezil's three functions have, at
best, a skeletal presence in Flodoard's entries involving
William Longsword, permitting us to describe his text as
less mythic, if not more accurate, than the texts of Richer,
Dudo, and the others.\bigskip

   William Longsword is only a slender thread in the pattern
of events with which Flodoard concerns himself, although the
fragmentary organization of the \emph{Annales}, and the absence
of interpretation by the author himself make for difficulty
in determining exactly what the intended pattern may be. No
prologue (or  \emph{exordium}) has survived; instead, the first
entry abruptly reports that in the year 919 A.D., in the
area of Rheims, a remarkably large hen's egg was laid, wine
was scarce, and the Vikings were a-harrying. However, in the
sequence of references to William Longsword, a pattern, to
be revised and obscured by later writers, emerges.\bigskip

   First mentioned in the entry for 927, William is
identified as \emph{filius Rollonis}, engaged in an elaborate
transaction engineered by Herbert of Vermandois, involving
Charles the Simple and Raoul, who had replaced Charles as
king. In Flodoard's text, William pledges himself to Charles
and affirms his friendship with Herbert, thus aligning
himself with those unfriendly to Raoul. In the entry for
933, William receives a maritime section of Britanny in
return for homage to Raoul; since Charles had died in 929,
Williams shift of allegiance represents no dramatic
betrayal.\bigskip

   William next appears in the entry for 939, aligned with
Hugh, opposed by Louis and Arnulf. For the damage he has
done to Arnulf's land, William is excommunicated by Louis'
bishops, in another illustration of the complicity between
warrior and priest:\medskip
     
      Anno DCCCCXXXVIII, Ludowicus rex Hugoni, filio
      Ricardi, profiscitur obviam; cum quo de
      Burgundia revertens, pergit contra Hugonem,
      filium Rothberti, et Willelmum Nordmannorum
      principem.  Qui, quoniam villas nuper Arnulfi
      comitis quasdam praedis incendiisque vastaverat,
      excommunicatur ab episcopis qui erant cum rege,
      simul cum Heriberto etc. (p.71)\medskip

Again, Flodoard makes no judgment about the events and
characters he describes; whether he thought the use of
excommunication justified in this instance will remain a
mystery forever. In the same year, Otto, William, Hugh,
Herbert, and Arnulf concluded some sort of pact, as a result
of which the Emperor withdrew to the other side of the
Rhine; Louis' absence may be significant, but the text
itself does not indicate the significance.\bigskip

   In 940, William pledges fealty to Louis, as he had to
Charles the Simple and to Raoul (\emph{se committit} in each
case), in this case in exchange for what Charles the Simple
had given to the Normans:\medskip

      Anno DCCCCXL, rex Ludowicus abiit, obviam
      Willelmo, principi Nordmannorum, qui venit ad
      eum in pago Ambianensi et se illi comisit. At
      ille dedit ei terram quam pater eius Karolus
      Nordmannis concesserat, indeque.... (p. 75)\medskip

In the same year, Flodoard, again without comment, numbers
William Longsword among the besiegers of Rheims who oust
Artaud, Louis' appointment, and install Herbert's son as
Archbishop:

      Hugo princeps, filius Rothberti, junctis sibi
      quibusdam episcopis tam Franciae quam
      Burgundiae, cum Heriberto comite et Willelmo,
      Nordmannorum principe, Remensem obsidet urbem,
      sextaque obsidionis die etc...(p.76)

Hugh, Herbert, and William Longsword then go off to lay
siege to Laon, again opposing Louis.

   In Flodoard's entry for 941, William is present at two
more conferences with the other magnates of the north, and
in the entry for 942 he receives Louis  regaliter in
                           - 6 -
Rodomo, sends hostages to Otto, and is assassinated by order
of Arnulf. The assassination is actually the first entry for
943, in an apparent chronological error by Flodoard, for
whom its major significance, to judge merely by the sequence
of sentences in the text, is that it leads directly to Louis
granting the right of succession to Richard, William
Longsword's bastard by an unnamed woman from Britanny:
      Anno DCCCCXLIII, Arnulfus comes Willelmum,
      Nordmannorum principem, ad colloquium evocatum
      dolo perimi fecit; Rex Ludowicus filio ipsius
      Willelmi nato de concubina Britanna terram
      Nordmannorum dedit... (p. 86)
What Louis' motivations were for granting the land to a
bastard, who had not reached the age of majority, cannot be
determined from the entry for 943; later writers, however,
will fill this gap amply, although Louis may merely be
following the principle enunciated by Gregory of Tours in
his criticism of Sagittarius' argument that Guntar's bastard
may not inherit the kingdom:   praetermissis nunc generibus
feminarum, regis vocitantur liberi qui de regibus fuerant
procreati (H.F.   V.20; as quoted and discussed in
Reydellet, p. 356)
   On the basis of Flodoard's entries, then, a reasonable
man might conclude that William's behavior was standard
operating procedure for tenth-century politicians --
scheming, treacherous, and brutal -- and that he received
payment in kind from Arnoul (see Fliche, p. 180, for the
lowest imaginable judgment of 10th-century aristocratic
morality).  However, the cryptic, inscrutable quality of
Flodoard's text (which somewhat resembles the text of the
Bible as Auerbach describes it in  Mimesis, pp. 1 -20)
provoked and invited later writers to supply and to invent
motivations, images, scenes, sounds, rhythms, even
characters, by means of which William might be made to
conform to the needs of succeeding generations.
   Richer, the next historical writer to concern himself
with Northern French politics, writing in the last decade of
the tenth century, takes no pains to disguise his
partiality, demonstrating in the course of his  History
strong sympathies for the Carolingians and for Artaud. A
self-conscious intellectual, categorized by Beryl Smalley
with Liudprand and Widekund, among the "classicists,
entertainers, partisans" (p. 79), he represents himself as
the continuator of Hincmar, as well as one who improves upon
Flodoard, by treating his subject matter  dilucide
breviterque.  Like many a medieval historian, Richer claims
to be a specialist in abbreviation  (in dicendo enim
recusans effluere, plurima succincte expediam;  Latouche,
p. 4), but he often lost sight of this objective, going on
at great length about his father's achievements, about the
brilliance of his teacher, Gerbert, and sometimes about
                           - 7 -
himself. In addition, he mythologizes, makes outright errors
(Latouche, p. 10), and when he does abbreviate, he often
does so not out of consideration for his audience, but to
give his story a shape, not merely for the sake of form
itself (as Latouche suggests), but also to conform to his
partisan political vision; as D.C. Douglas remarks:  "Before
970, Richer is an unreliable guide whenever he glosses
Flodoard" (p. 426). All of his imaginative effort, however,
did not protect him from being charged with an intolerably
archaic style by Ferdinand Lot (p. xviii).
   His treatment of William Longsword conforms in broad
outline to Flodoard's entries, but with significant
additions and elisions; like his predecessor, Richer first
mentions William in connection with his pledge to Charles
the Simple in 927. Flodoard's version, in spite of its
note-like style, is sharply specific with political detail:
      Heribertus comes Laudunum ingredit voluit.
      Praevenit autem eum rodolfus rex, missis illo
      militibus, ad custodiam loci; ipse denuo
      subsecutus, idem castellum ingressus est. At
      Heribertus Karolum de custodia ejecit secumque
      in pagum Veromandinsem, scilicet ad Sanctum
      Quintum, deduxit. Rodolfus vero in Burgundiam
      revertitur, Rotgarii filiis cum uxore sua ad
      custodiam Lauduni relictis, qui egredientes loca
      quaeque devastant circa Codiciacum, episcopii
      Remensis castrum. Karolus igitur cum Heriberto
      colloquium petit Nordmannorum, ad castellum quod
      Auga vocatur, ibique se filius Rollonis Karolo
      committit et amicitiam firmat cum Heriberto.
      Metus interea falsi rumoris Hungarorum et fugae
      per regnum Lothariense agitantur et Franciam.
      (Lauer, pp. 39-40)
Herbert, then, frees Charles to distract Raoul; the son of
Rollo (William Longsword's most significant identity at this
point) pledges himself --  se committit -- to Charles, and
establishes  amicitia with Herbert.
   In abbreviating the passage, Richer considerably reduces
the complexity of the political transaction, although he
does make explicit some of the motivation that was only
implicit in Flodoard; Richer also provides a more cosmically
theatrical texture for the event, by providing descriptions
of an eclipse of the moon, fiery armies in the sky, and
rampant disease, presumably as harbingers of significance.
By subtracting much of the geographic specificity, and, most
significantly, by removing the connection between the pirate
prince and the bane of the Carolingian faction, Herbert of
Vermandois, Richer reduces the historicity of the scene, and
begins to rework William in the direction of a factional
figura:
                           - 8 -
      Cum his quoque et litium tumultuatio inter regem
      ac Heribertum qui Karolum sub custodia
      detinebat, non modica exorta est, subsecuta
      atque agitata est, eo quod Heribertus ab rege
      nimia expetebat, rex vero utpote insatiabili
      nihil accomodabat. Regi ergo minas Heribertus
      intendens, Karolum regem a carcere eductum in
      pagum Veromandensem deduxit, non ut regno
      fidelis eum restitueret, at ut ex ejus
      educatione aliquam suspectis formidinem
      incuteret. Nortmannis itaque accersitis atque
      apud oppidum Augum collectis, eum deducit,
      ibique filius Rollonis pyratae, de cujus
      interfectione jam relatum est, regis manibus
      sese militaturum committit fidemque spondet ac

      sacramento firmat.  (Lat. I. p. 104)

   By identifying him as the son of Rollo the pirate, whose
death had been reported earlier (and inaccurately) in the
History, Richer has roughened William's image somewhat; by
devoting three clauses to delineating the nature of
William's pledge to Charles, he has intensified the
significance of the fealty; the result of this rhetorical
exercise is to give Louis' Carolingian father credit for
taming the leader of a group of pirates, who were led,
Richer had remarked earlier, by a congenital brutality
(paterna...sevitia ducti; Latouche I. 14).
   In addition, Richer further elevates Charles' dignity and
"purifies" the pirate somewhat, by disconnecting him from
the Carolingians'  bete noire, Herbert of Vermandois. From
his first mention, then, of William, Richer begins the
process of bringing the pirate's son into high relief, in
this instance by supressing the full complexity of the
political transaction in which William was engaged, as well
as by heightening the Carolingian connection.
   A minor illustration of this rhetorical process occurs in
Richer's next mention of William; when Erluin takes
Montreuil back from Arnulf in 939, Flodoard says that he did
it with the assistance of a body of Norman troops,
collecta Nordmannorum non modica manu (p. 72). Richer
replaces this brief phrase with a scene in which Erluin
successfully pleads for William's help, although the plea is
reported in indirect discourse, thereby perhaps qualifying
as  plurima succincte (Lat. p. 148). Unlike some later
writers, however, Richer does not place William among those
who are present at the retaking of Montreuil; moved by
Herluin's plea, the "Norman prince," as Richer calls him in
this passage, merely sends  auxilium and  militum copiam
(p. 142, Lat.).
                           - 9 -
   When next mentioned, however, William is again  pyratum
dux, in a passage which contains a significant, if not
outrageous error; in recording the journey made to Amiens by
Louis d'Outre-Mer in 940, Richer substitutes Rollo's son for
Rollo. Where Flodoard reported that Louis gave to William
what Charles the Simple had given "to the Normans," Richer
replaces  Nordmannis with  ei, referring, then, to William
Longsword himself:
      Cum etiam dux praedictus obvius venit,
      exceptusque a rege decenter, provinciam quam ei
      pater Karolus rex contulerat, ab eo etiam
      accepit. Unde et regis factus, tanto ei consensu
      alligatus est, ut jam  jamque aut sese
      moriturum, aut regi imperii summam restituturum
      proponeret. (I., p. 156, Lat.)
Since Richer's Latin was not particularly weak, the chances
that he misunderstood Flodoard's text are small; instead the
error may have been part of his deliberate strategy to
fabricate a warrior of great force, whose allegiance to the
Carolingian dynasty was of truly  longue haleine.
   Having made so much of William's fealty to Louis, Richer
would seem to have had no alternative to removing the pirate
from the list of those besieging Rheims in the same year
(940). Therefore, when he describes and denounces Herbert
and Hugh for chasing Artaud from Rheims, in spite of
Flodoard's testimony, Richer subtracts Rollo's son from the
siege (Lat., pp. 158-160), as well as from the subsequent
siege of Laon (p. 160), which is conducted in Richer's text
exclusively by Herbert and Hugh (see Prentout, p. 309).
   While supressing the treacherous aspects of William's
character, Richer also wants to preserve and magnify the
pirate's primitive vitality as a warrior; for this purpose,
in the next scene he resorts to myth, fabricating a dramatic
encounter in which William, symbolically and
single-handedly, restores order, if only temporarily, to
northern France.
    Reworking a scene from Sallust,
Richer imagines a scene in the royal quarters at Attigny,
where Hugh, Herbert, Arnulf and Louis assemble, having
excluded, for some mysterious reason, the pirate prince:
      Et die constituta rex ibi cum provinciarum
      principibus affuit, Hugone videlicet cognomento
      Magno, Arnulfo Morinorum, Wilelmo piratarum
      ducibus, ac Heriberto tiranno; nec defuit
      Saxoniae rex Otto. Ludovicus rex, cum in
      conclavi sese cum Ottone rege ac principibus
      recepisset, consilio incertum an fortuitu, solus
      Wilelmus dux admissus non est.
Understandably, William Longsword grows angry, and literally
breaks into the meeting:
                           - 10 -
      Diucius ergo afforis exspectans, cum non
      vocaretur, rem animo irato ferebat. Tandem in
      iram versus, utpote manu et audatia nimius
      foribus clausis vim intulit ac retrorsum
      vibrabundus adaegit.
The sight that greets his eyes displeases him mightily,
since Otto, not Louis has the seat of honor; the pirate
proceeds first to establish his right to be present, and
then to put the two men in their proper places:
      Ingressusque lectum conspicatur gestatorium. In
      quo etiam a parte cervicalis Otto editior, rex
      vero in parte extrema humilior residebat. In
      quorum prospectu Hugo et Arnulfus, duabus
      residentes sellis, consilii ordinem
      exspectabant. Vuilelmus regis injuriam non
      passus: "An," inquit, "his interesse non debui?
      Desertorisne dedecore aliquando sordui?"
      Fervideque propinquans: "Surge," inquit,
      "paululm rex!" Quo mox surgente, ipse resedit.
      Dixit indecens esse regem inferiorem, alium vero
      quemlibet superiorem videri; quapropter oportere
      Ottonem inde amoliri regique cedere. Otto pudore
      affectus surgit ac regi cedit. Rex itaque
      superior, at Vuilelmus inferior consederunt.
      (pp. 170-172)
Whether  fabula (neither true nor credible) or  argumentum
(what might have happened, not what did happen), the
anecdote performs three tasks.  First, it encodes a
political fact:  breaking the doors down, and ordering the
Emperor to cede the seat of honor to Louis, Richer's
William, identified in this passage as the  pirate leader,
(notice that Richer, relentlessly Carolingian, calls Herbert
"tyrant") supplies the forceful energy --  manu et audatia
nimius -- that the Carolingians, who preferred negotiating
to fighting, characteristically lacked. Second, Richer deals
with the accusations of treachery that might arise from
reading Flodoard by the silence that greets the pirate's
questions, "Do I not deserve to be among those here? When
have I been soiled with the dishonor of treachery?" Third,
the scene encodes an additional historical-political truth
about tenth-century politics in northern France: the faction
to whom the Normans threw their support would win.
   In addition to its mythic function, however, William's
balancing act, in Richer, is directly responsible for his
death, since Otto promptly decides to avenge the insult by
instigating Hugh and Arnulf to murder the pirate prince.
Where Flodoard had provided one dispassionate sentence, with
no mention of an instigating Otto, Richer imagines a
sequence of two scenes in which he amplifies what Flodoard
had left merely as  colloquium and  dolus (see p. 86 of
Lauer's edition).
                           - 11 -
   In the first scene, Hughes and Arnulf discuss
dispassionately whether to kill William, and when they have
decided in the affirmative, because his death will weaken
Louis and will save lives, they set about planning the
killing.  Richer offers, then, characters with at least
rudimentary capacities for introspection, who are practical
politicians, not demonic killers.  Their practicality is
emphasized in the second scene, where they fabricate two
scenarios, one to be used if the pirate comes by boat, and
the other if he comes by land.
   When William comes by boat, the conspirators carry out
the plan developed for such a contingency; in addition to
supplying more geographic detail than Flodoard, Richer
supplies three additional figures: a sailor and two boys to
row William's boat, presumably necessary to preserve, or to
create a sense of the pirate's status. In later versions of
the scene, the three figures will disappear, to heighten the
possibilities of creating a tragic isolation for William,
but the boys,  inermes, provide a motif of wounded
innocence that will be transferred in some of the later
texts to William himself. In addition, Richer represents the
murder as an immediate violation of  amicitia and  fides
-- the basis of the heroic code:
      Locus quoque in pago Ambianensi secus fluvium
      Summam ubi est insula Pinchinea conceditur;
      negocioque peracto, legati redeunt. Tempore ergo
      contituto, Arnulfus terra, Wilelmus aqua in
      locum destinatum conveniunt ac de amicia multum,
      plurimum de fide utrimque servanda, collocuti
      sunt atque post nonnullos sermones a se soluti.
      Arnulfus reditum simulans aliquantisper
      digreditur. Vuilelmus vero ad classem rediit,
      naviculamque ingressus dum per pelagus
      navigaret, a conjuratis multo strepitu
      inclamatus, proram obvertit, remigansque ad
      litus, quid vellent sciscitaturus, redit.  Illi
      mox quidam praeocissimum se deferre asserunt,
      quod a domino suo oblivione suppressum fuit.
      Dux, navicula litori apulsa, illos excepit; a
      quibus etiam mox gladiis eductis interimitur.
      Duobus quoque puberibus, qui cum eo inermes
      aderant, et nauta sauciatis, a navicula
      facinorosi exiliunt ac post conscium dominum in
      fugum feruntur. Qui autem jam per pelagus
      navigebant, conversi litus relictum repetunt ac
      dominum interemptum duosque puberes et nautam
      sauciatos inveniunt; sumptumque domini corpus
      lamentabili obsequio sepulturae deportant. (p.
      180)
   Like Flodoard, Richer now goes on to describe the
transfer of power to William's bastard son; unlike Flodoard,
                           - 12 -
however, Richer provides some motivation to account for
Louis' choice of Richard: the king is struck by the
elegantia of the pirate's son:
      Nec multo post et ejus filium de Britanna
      concubina, nomine Richardum, regi deducunt,
      gesti negotii ordinem pandentes. Rex
      adolescentis elegantiam advertens, liberaliter
      exciepit, provinciam a patre pridem possessam,
      ei largiens.  Potitiores quoque qui cum
      adolescentulo accesserant, per manus et
      sacramentum regis fiunt; multaque regis
      liberalitate jocundati, recedunt Rodomum. Alii
      vero Normannorum, Richardum ad regem transisse
      indignantes, ad Hugonem ducem concedunt.  (p.
      180)
The process of gentrifying pirates, then, involves improving
their physical appearance, although Richer offers only the
spark of an  effictio here; in addition, the more
elaborate, ceremonial language used to describe Louis'
committment also magnifies, or at least burnishes the
Carolingian "image." For Richer, however, no attempt need be
made to apply rhetorical cosmetics to William's mother, who
remains, as she was in Flodoard, a Breton concubine.
   Richer goes beyond Flodoard, however, by describing the
Northmen as  indignantes at Louis' grant, thereby
providing, or at least implying a motivation for the king's
action: Richard was young, and therefore weak, and the
irregularity of his birth might factionalize the pirates,
reducing their political and military influence in Northern
France. Richard's next appearance in the  History occurs
many years later, with the report of his death by apoplexy;
as a Carolingian supporter, Richer naturally supresses the
incidents later writers offer to illustrate Louis' attempts
to use and to abuse the pirate's bastard.
   Less than a generation after Richer had finished his
History, the far more rhetorical, shamelessly partisan Dudo
of Saint Quentin produced an elaborate set of panegyrical
biographies, in a mixture of prose and verse, designed to
praise the Normans, and particularly the more recent rulers;
"the theory guiding the discourse" (Hayden White, p. 115) is
even more transparent in Dudo than in Richer, who together
with Flodoard, is among the writers never mentioned by Dudo.
Instead, Raoul, the brother of Dudo's patron, Richard of
Normandy, is named as the exclusive historical source, in a
short poem among the prepatory verses, (Lair, pp. 125-126).
As a result, Dudo can compose a text that avoids comparison
with the earlier texts, permitting him to add  fabula and
argumentum, while subtracting  historia, according to the
needs of his genre.
                           - 13 -
   His major subtraction from the life of William Longsword
involves removing Archbishop Artaud and the embarrassing
ambiguity between military and ecclesiastical functions
brought about by the battle for the see of Rheims in the
first half of the tenth century.  However, Dudo will recall
those events, encoding them mythically when his William
Longsword and the abbot of Jumi\`{e}ges discuss the necessity of
separating the first two functions, in a scene fabricated
out of material supplied to him partly by contemporary
history, and partly by earlier texts by Adalberon, Odo of
Cluny, and perhaps by Eusebius on Constantine and Ermoldus
Nigellus on Louis the Pious. The scene is part of the
apparatus by means of which Dudo composed his excercise in
failed hagiography, if we assume that success is not to be
measured exclusively by the number of manuscripts that
survive in twentieth-century libraries (the implication of
Guenee, pp. 248-274); for the panegyrist with hagiographical
tendencies, the inclusion of some version of his text in the
 Acta Sanctorum would seem to be the necessary sign of
success.
   In addition to his rhetorical inventions, Dudo clearly
used sources earlier than Raoul, both historical and
literary, including popular  geste.  His own text, however,
clearly distinguishes itself from Flodoard and Richer by a
constant verbal excess, that places it unambiguously in a
tradition of panegyric that goes back at least to Augustus'
Rome [Syme, pp. 459-475]. In feudal, Christian societies,
however, an additional complexity arose:  "La biographie est
souvent concue comme un panegyrique, sinon comme un texte
hagiographique... Le passage du heros au saint se fait
aisement" [Rousset, p. 626]. Church fathers, of course were
sufficiently familiar with traditional panegyric [Aigrain,
p. 120] to carry out such a task competently, and Dudo was
well equipped to praise, to gentrify, and to sanctify his
patrons and their antecedents, as the textbook schemes and
tropes characteristic of ninth and tenth-century rhetorical
training that proliferate throughout the  De moribus,
together with more than twenty kinds of prosodic schemes
(Lair, p. 23), amply demonstrate.  History then becomes not
a process, but a performance, by an author who was also a
skilled political negotiator and a successful ecclesiastical
politician (Lair, pp. 18-19).  The result, according to
Prentout, is a masterpiece, not of historical narrative, but
of  habile politique (p. 136).
   An additional result, however, is the production of a
text, or a series of texts, that partially fills a lacuna
that Petit-Dutaillis described 50 years ago:
      The pagan pirates who, in the ninth century, had
      ravaged Gaul, terrifying peasants and clergy
      alike, and contributed to checking the
      Carolingian renaissance, became, during the
                           - 14 -
      tenth and eleventh century, landowners fully
      qualified to get the best returns from their
      lands. They supported the growth of an extremely
      powerful regional church and a brilliant
      monastic civilization; above all they accepted
      the authority of a powerful duke. We have no
      evidence of the causes and methods of this
      transition.  (p. 51-52)
On the evidence of Dudo's text, and that of Wace and Benoit
afterwards, rhetoric was one of the methods employed to ease
this transition.
   Of these three attempts to write an official Norman
history, Wace's  Roman de Rou gives the most complex vision
of historical reality, partly because of the nature of the
genre in which he worked --  chanson de geste -- and, to an
extent impossible to determine with any certitude, because
of Wace's own temperament. Perhaps as a result of his more
comprehensive vision, as well as, "une certaine malice," as
Gaston Paris described the tone of the Roman de Rou (p.
149), he lost his job as official verse-historian to Benoit.
[See ll. 1141ff. of the  Rou].  Peter Dronke, in  The
Medieval Poet and his World, p. 283, considers the reasons
for Wace losing his job:  because of his close connection
with Eleanor of Aquitaine (Rita Lejeune, "R*le litt\'{e} raire
d'Alienor d'Aquitaine et de sa famille,"  Cultura neolatina
14 (1954) 5-57; because he took too long (U. Broich, in W.F.
Schirmer and U. Broich,  Studien zum literarischen Patronat
im England des 12 Jahrhunderts,  Cologne-Opladen, 1962,
86-88), or as Dronke argues (283) "Henry was a perceptive
enough critic to know how much better a poet Benoit was than
Wace." The question is not finally aesthetic, but political.
Both Dudo and Benoit are relentless panegyricists,
idealizing their patrons' progenitors shamelessly, but in
different styles, reflecting a difference between the
eleventh and twelfth centuries, as well as differences
between what is possible in Latin and what is possible in
French.
   For example, from the opening panegyrics addressed to
Adalbert and to Richard I, Dudo performs pyrotechnical
feats, importing references from philosophy, theology,
music, and rhetoric, to lend resonance and dignity to the
brutal achievements of the pirates. As George Duby describes
the purpose, Dudo's perspective was Augustinian (in
Pickering's sense of the term):
      What our clerk meant to say was that the Norman
      chiefs had emerged from the depths of barbarism
      and had by degrees risen to Christian culture
      and to the divine grace conveyed therein.  At
      first they had relied on the monks, and later
      had concluded their civilizing works with the
      help of the secular church.  (p. 85)
                           - 15 -
Dudo's reinvention reflects as well the change from pirate
to landowner, with the consequent emphasis on labor, the
means of production, and on women, the means of perpetuating
ownership of land and labor beyond the life of an
individual.
   William, then, once again must be seen as a thread in a
larger pattern; in Flodoard, he was one of five Northern
magnates, whose behavior could not meaningfully be
distinguished from the others; Richer begins the process of
converting him for partisan purposes, to a mythic figure,
embodying primitive, pirate energy in the service of
legitimitizing Carolingian hegemony. Dudo's William becomes
a much more finished, civilized product, whose uncomfortably
barbaric qualities may be displaced onto figures from
previous generations, although Dudo preserves a bit of
roundness for his character, by retaining a touch of
brutality in the remarks with which WL insults the Duke of
Poitier, when the duke seeks the pirate's sister's hand in
marriage, and a touch of incompetence in the first function,
when Bernard the Dane must rouse WL from apparent military
sluggardry.
   To aid in the process of permitting negative qualities to
regress in time, Dudo departs from the chronological order
observed by Flodoard, and roughly observed by Richer,
choosing instead a biographical order, with frequent
panegyrical cadenzas, both in prose and in verse. As a
result, the characters move from relatively "realistic" to
"iconic" figures [Spiegel's terms]. Before considering what
happens to the figure of William Longsword in  de moribus,
then, we must consider what Dudo did with some of the
pirate's avatars, in his attempt to pursue what he and the
later Encomiast of Emma set as their task: "to find a middle
way between obvious lies and truths unpalatable to their
employers" [Campbell, p. xxxv].
   To represent the worst of the barbaric past, Dudo
retrieves the figure of Hastings, mentioned neither by
Flodoard nor by Richer, heaping upon this shadowy figure,
who may be a conflation of at least two ninth-century
pirates, every conceivable abhorrent quality, in spite of
the fact that, as Prentout points out [p. 97], "... de tous
les faits relatifs a Hasting que mentionnent les annales
franques, il ne s'en trouve pas un qui concerne la
Normandie." William's father, Rollo, becomes an equivocal,
transitional figure, playing approximately the role that
William himself had played in Richer's  History.
   In an antithesis as clear as that proposed by the poet of
the  Song of Roland, when he insists that,  Paien unt tort
e chrestiens unt dreit, Wace makes Hasting's function as an
antithesis to Rollo and his descendants explicitly clear:
      Amdui furent Danoiz, mez moult furent divers,
                           - 16 -
      Rou fist auques a droit, Hastains fist a envers,
      Rou fu amiables, Hastainz fier et divers
      [ll. 12-14 of Holden I, p. 15].
   If the figure of Hastings becomes the locus of all pirate
vices, and William's father, Rollo, the transitional figure,
then William and his son, Richard are free to absorb as many
positive  qualities  as  Dudo  can  invoke  from  the  early
eleventh-century  storehouse   of  panegyric   commonplaces.
Rollo, however, in spite of Dudo's best efforts,  remained a
difficult pill  to swallow  for later  writers;  William  of
Jumi\`{e}ges, for example,  focuses on the treatment of Rollo as
an example of Dudo's tendencies to fawn (Marx,  p.  2).   In
spite of  his dedicatory epistle  to William  the Conqueror,
whom  he compares  for   fortitudo  to Samson,   and for 
sapientia to Solomon [Marx, p.1],  William refuses to engage
in dishonest adulation of his ruler's pirate avatar:
      Sane geneologiam Rollonis,   a paganis majoribus
      nati,   et multa  etate sua  in paganismo  acta,
      tandem  ad sanctam  infantiam saluberrimo  fonte
      renati,   necnon somnium  ejus  cum pluribus  id
      generis    ab    historica     serie    desecui,
      animadvertens ea penitus adulatoria, nec speciem
      honesti vel utilis pretendere.  [p. 2]
William of Jumi\`{e}ges' firm statement, however, was undermined
by the interpolations of Robert de Torigny, who reintroduced
some of the material on Rollo, in yet another example of the
vulnerability  of medieval  texts to  the  demands of  later
times.   Moreover,  if Rollo is  the Rolf-Gangr mentioned by
Snorri Sturlson  (Heimskringla:  Sagas  of the Norse Kings,
III.  xxiv) as  a powerful Viking,  instrumental in settling
Normandy,  then Dudo  has supressed most of  the information
about Rollo that Norsemen might have made available to him.
   Nevertheless, undeterred by too faithful adherence to the
facts, and after an extensive preface,  both in prose and in
verse,  complimenting  secular and  ecclesiastical notables,
piously brought to a climax by  a series of variation on the
theme of the  Trinity,  Dudo devotes the first book  of  de
moribus to Hastings.  To indicate the universal significance
of his subject matter, however,  he first delivers a lecture
on world geography,  then he narrows the focus to the Trojan
ancestry  of   the  Danes,    some  of   whom,   driven   by
overpopulation in Scandinavia, emigrated to France.
   According to  Dudo,  the  early Danes  tended to  scatter
their  maker's image  through the  land with  indiscriminate
vigor (as the Carolingians, judging by Charlemagne  -- three
wives  and   at  least  as   many  concubines  --   and  his
descendants, had also done; see also Lauer, p. 10):
      Concretis  igitur   humana  connubii   stuprique
      copula  plurimis   Dacigenarum  pubium   turmis,
      illisque  bellorum  incendia inter  se,   et  in
                           - 17 -
      patres,  et  avunculos frequenter  suggerentibus
      [p. 141]
The uncontrolled sexuality,  then,  is  both a symptom and a
cause of general political  turbulence;  Wace represents the
situation from a more practical perspective,  connecting two
aspects of  the third function --  sex and food,   as sexual
overproduction leads to a  Malthusian predicament,  that can
only be  solved by lottery.   Wace also adds  a specifically
Christian moral judgement at this point:
      fiere fu et preissant, gaie et luxuriouse,
      nus hons ne se tenoit a une fame espouse.
      De plusors fames ourent a merveilles enfanz,
      mout y out de petiz et mout y out de granz;
      tant y out fiz et filles et fames et serjanz,
      ne poout sa gent paistre trestout le plus mananz.
      [ll. 19-24]
To correct the problem,  Vikings selected   par sort are to
be   driven  from   the  country,    to  settle   elsewhere.
Eventually,   two  brothers,   Rollo  and  Garin,   lead  an
unsuccesful revolt against this policy;  Garin is killed and
Rollo flees first to Scotland,  then through England and the
Low Countries to Normandy.
   One group  of exiled pirates  is led by  Hastings,  whose
negative qualities  provoke Dudo  to an  immediate burst  of
vituperative hexameters:
      Hic sacer et ferox nimium crudelis et atrox.
      Pestifer, infestus, torvus, trux, flagitiosus.
      Pestifer inconstansque, procax, ventosus et exlex.
      Lethifer, immitis, praecautus, ubique rebellis.
                                           (Lair, p. 130)
Benoit  also   despises  him,    representing  Hastings   as
universally abhorrent  [ll.  841ff.],  and  as,    le Judas
(1218).   Most damning,  however,   is Hastings' behavior at
Luna,  where he submits to a Christian baptism,  not to save
his soul,  but as  part of a ruse to take  the Italian city,
which he believes,  presumably with pirate stupidity,  to be
Rome.   Claiming to  be  mortally ill  and  desperate to  be
baptized,  Hastings  is brought on  a litter to  a cathedral
within  the city  walls,  where  his men  proceed to  murder
everybody in sight.  Dudo's  representation of the slaughter
is conventional,  and significant  mostly as a dramatization
of the violation of the second function by those momentarily
in command of the first function:
      Participant omnes Christiani  mystico sacrificio
      Jesu Christi.   His  missarum solemniis decenter
      expletis,    paulatimque  paganis   congregatis,
      jussit  praesul  corpus ad  sepulturam  deferri.
      Pagani cum magno clamore  petebant feretrum,  et
      dicebant alternatim non eum sepeliendum. Stabant
      igitur   Christiani   super    responsis   eorum
      stupefacti.   Tunc Alstignus  feretro  desiluit,
      ensemque  fulgentem  vagina  deripuit.   Invasit
                           - 18 -
      funestus praesulem librum manu tenentem. Jugulat
      praesulem,   prostrato  et  comite,   stantemque
      clerum in ecclesia inermem.  Obstruxerunt pagani
      ostia  templi,   ne posset  ullus  elabi.   Tunc
      paganorum rabies  trucidat Christianos  inermes.
      Traduntur omnes neci, quos furor reperit hostis.
      Saeviunt  infra delubri  septa,   ut lupi  infra
      ovium caulas.   Corde premunt  gemitum mulieres,
      lacrymasque  effundunt   inanes.   Juvenes   cum
      virginibus loris concatenantur simul. (Lair, pp.
      134-135)
      All  the Christians  were  participating in  the
      mysterious sacrifice of Jesus  Christ.  When the
      ceremonies  of   the  mass  had   been  properly
      completed,  and the pagans  had little by little
      assembled,  the  priest ordered  the body  to be
      brought  forward to  be  buried.   With a  great
      shout,  the pagans declared,  one after another,
      that he was  not to be buried.    The Christians
      were astonished by this response.  Then Hastings
      leaped forth from the   feretro,  snatching his
      shining sword from its sheath, and attacking the
      unfortunate  bishop,   who  was  standing  there
      holding  the  book  in his  hand.   He  cut  the
      bishop's throat,  his retinue having been struck
      down, and he cut the throat of an unarmed cleric
      standing next to him in  the church.  The pagans
      blocked the doors of the church,  so that no one
      could  escape.   Then  the fury  of  the  pagans
      slaughtered   the  unarmed   Christians.    They
      slaughtered  everyone they  came  upon in  their
      madness, raging among the ???  like wolves among
      the ?  of sheep.  The  women groaned deep within
      their hearts, pouring forth useless tears.  They
      bound together young men and women with reins.
To produce this incident, Dudo may be recollecting a passage
from Einhard's  Life of Charlemagne, in which,  immediately
after  describing the  precautions taken  by Charlemagne  to
reduce the  damage done by Norse  pirates and by  the Moors,
Einhard lists two exceptions to the success of Charlemagne's
policy; Civita Vecchia was destroyed by the treachery of the
Moors, and certain Frisian islands were harried by Vikings:
      Ac per hoc nullo gravi damno vel a Mauris Italia
      vel Gallia  atque Germania  a Nordmannis  diebus
      suis  adfecta  est,   prater  quod  Centumcellae
      civitas Etruriae per proditionem  a mauris capta
      atque vastata  est et in Frisia  quaedam insulae
      Germanico   litori    contiguae   a    Normannis
      depraedatae sunt. (pp. 52-54)
[No serious  damage was done to  Italy by the Moors,   or to
Gaul and Germany by the  Northmen.  The only exceptions were
Civitavecchia,  a city  in Etruria,  which was  captured and
                           - 19 -
sacked by the Moors as the result of treachery;  and certain
islands in  Frisia,  near to  the German coast,   which were
looted by the Northmen] Thorpe, p. 72.
Dudo seems  to have melded  the Moorish and  Viking threats,
and on the hint of Morrish treachery, filled in a background
by reinventing  the stories  of treacherous  pirate baptism.
Earlier chroniclers had confused  invaders also,  though not
with such an elaborate,  blatant intention of fabricating an
anti-paradigm  (see Viard  II,  p.228  on  the confusion  of
Vandals and Arabs at the battle of Sens in 725).
   Pagans raging  against helpless  Christians is  the image
firmly  established  by the  scene,   that  is based  on  no
incident in  Flodoard or  in Richer,   although Richer  does
offer a scene of pirate baptism that offers violence,  but
to rather  than  by a  pirate (Latouche,  p.  26)   In both
cases,   the  stories  encode  Christian  suspicion  of  the
earnestness  of  pirates' baptisms;   Einhard  records  such
suspicion,  Notker  Balbus (I.19)  tells an  elaborate comic
anecdote  about a  pirate  who  becomes weary  of  sartorial
fashion in baptisms, and Richer tells a story of appropriate
suspicion  of   pirate  conversions.     To  dissipate   his
audience's well-founded suspicion of the notion that pirates
made good Christians in the  early tenth century,  Dudo goes
to  great  lengths  to  prepare  a  convincing  baptism  for
William's father,  Rollo,  preparing a scene in which feudal
submission,   marriage,   and  baptism   (i.e.,   all  three
functions) follow each other in rapid succession.
   In the  dodecasyllabic fragment  of the   Roman  de Rou,
Wace makes no mention of Hastings' behavior at Luna,  but in
the 750-line  fragment printed by  Holden as an  appendix to
his edition,  Wace devotes a  significant number of lines to
the incident. He takes the shine from Hasting's sword, makes
him a  decapitator rather  than a  cut-throat,  and  expands
Dudo's commonplace comparison, involving wolves and sheep to
include peasants, and a rudimentary farm-scene:.
      Quant vint a le biere porter,
      que l'en dut le corps enterrer,
      Hastainz de la biere sailli,
      s'espee traite fist un cri;
      au premerain coup qu'il donna
      a l'evesque le chief coupa,
      a son parrain coupa la teste
      com se fust une vil beste.
      Paienz, touz trai(s)tes lor espees
      et lez chapes des cols jetees,
      les portes coururent fermer,
      que nus n'en peust eschaper;
      dez chetiz font tel tueiz
      comme li leu fet de brebiz
      quant il peut entrer en teit,
      que li villainz ne s'aperchoit;
      estrangle moutons et brebiz
                           - 20 -
      et aigniaux touz granz et petiz.
      Ensement firent li paien
      du dolent peuple crestien... [693-712]
Benoit,  at  this point  in his text,   uses no  such homely
cliche, restores Hastings as a cutthroat, and adds,  perhaps
reinventing  Wace's decapitation,   the  mutilated arms  and
breasts  of  weeping  women,   thereby,   to  expand  Duby's
intuition (p. 279), feminizing horror:
      E Hastenc est em piez sailli,
      Enz en son poign s'espee nue.
      Com male deserte a rendue
      A saint evesque, som parrein!
      Tot le fendi deci qu'eu sain;
      Mort l'a e le conte ensement,
      S'a il des meillors plus de cent.
      Paine unt les portes serrees,
      Les eisues e les entrees.
      Li clerjez est enz desarme
      E tuit icil de la cite;
      Nunt desfense, nen unt od quei.
      Fu mais oiz si fait deslei?
      Detrenchent les, n'os sai plus dire.
      Alas! com doleros martire!
      Hauz criz crient e angoissos,
      De nule part ne sunt rescos.
      Braient dames, plorent puceles
      Cui l'en cope braz e mameles.
      Soz les autex les escervient,
      Toz detrenchent e tot ocient. [1712-32]
   After such horror,   then,  to make Rollo  more appealing
than Hastings  would not  be the  most difficult  rhetorical
task imaginable.  To prepare for the conversion of the rough
pirate, Dudo provides an appropriate past for Rollo;  first,
his father was a powerful man, who had successfully resisted
feudal subjugation:
      qui  nunquam  colla suae  cervicis  cuipam  regi
      subegit,  nec cujuslibet manibus gratia servitii
      manus  suas  commendando   commisit...Erat  enim
      omnium    Orientalium   praestantiore    virtute
      praestantissimus. (p. 141)
The  superlative,   though  anonymous   father  has  equally
superlative children,  at least in strength and beauty,  and
in  accordance  with  classical   epideixis  (Curtius,   pp.
180-182):
      armis   strenui,    bellis    edocti,    corpore
      pulcherrimi, animositate robustissimi...etc. (p.
      141)
Both Wace (ll. 71-94) and Benoit (ll. 2355-2410) provide the
same kind of idealized paternity for Rollo, although Benoit,
as  usual,   goes on  at  greater  length about  the  Dane's
virtues;  in any event,  the brutal Catillus whom Richer had
identified as Rollo's father has completely disappeared.
                           - 21 -
   Eventually,  Rollo and his brother  Gurim are defeated by
the trickery of  the Dacian king;  D.C.   Douglas' [p.  422]
convincing argument that Rollo was Gangr-Rolf,  a Norwegian,
and not  a Dane allows us,   therefore,  at this  point,  to
detect an element of   fabula in Dudo's fabrication.  Gurim
dies in battle, and Rollo, somewhat like Aeneas,  leaves his
city  burning behind  him,  to  wander as  an exile  through
Europe.  First he  travels to the British  Isles,  directed,
again like  Aeneas,  by  a divine  voice,  whose  message is
interpreted both literally and  figuratively by a convenient
Christian:
      "Rollo,   velociter surge,   pontum  festinanter
      navigio transmeans, ad Anglos perge:  ubi audies
      quod ad patriam  sospes reverteris,  perpetuaque
      pace in ea sine detrimento frueris." Hoc somnium
      cum   cuidam  sapienti   viro  et   Christicolae
      retulisset, hujusmodo sermone interpretatus est:
      "Tu vergente venturi  temporis cursu sacrosancto
      baptismate      puricaberis,       praedignusque
      Christicola efficieris: et ab errore fluctuantis
      saeculi ad Anglos, scilicet Angelos,  usque olim
      pervenies,  pacemque perennis  gloriae cum illis
      habebis." (Lair, pp. 144-145)
Combining the Augustinian commonplace of  the voyage of life
and Gregory's  pun on the beauty  of the English  (Bede II.1
and  De Doctrina Christiana IV),  Dudo presents a vision of
a providential divinity,  preparing  to convert the barbaric
pirate into a soldier of Christ.
   Wace supresses the dream, perhaps to keep his pirate free
of any  meddling with  the second  function for  as long  as
possible;   When  Rollo  first appears  in  Normandy,   Wace
emphasizes his unconverted nature:
      Rou vint en Normendie a Jumi\`{e}ges tout droit:
      n'iert mie crestien ne baptizie n'estoit,
      neporquant en son cuer amoit Dieu et cremoit,
      dez songes qu'ot songie sovent le sovenoit,
      esperance avoit bonne qu'a bien li torneroit. (ll. 403-407)
Benoit,  on the other hand,  devotes considerable rhetorical
energy to  the dream,   and his   voiz  divine expands  the
phrase,  perpetuaque pace in ea sine detrimento frueris, to
emphasize that Rollo's reward will  be not merely in heaven,
but on earth as well,  particularly in the area of the third
function:
      Neu te porra tolir ne fraindre
      Nule genz vive qui seit nee.
      Tex i sera ta destinee
      Qu'od fine paiz i renneras
      Trestoz les jorz que tu vivras,
      Hauz e riches enorez
      E pleins de granz beneurtez. (ll. 3164-70)
In the  course of interpreting  the dream,  Dudo's  holy man
uses a pious cliche,    ab errore fluctuantis seculi,  that
produces a set of more specific details in Benoit:
                           - 22 -
      De la non fei, de l'erreiance
      Ou tu avras mes de t'enfance,
      Des pechez orribles e maus
      Que an siecle faiz criminaus
      Seras mundes et toz assous. (ll. 3197-3201)
 Error  and  seculum,  then,   become  l'erreiance  and
siecle,  while  the other five  lines replace and  amplify
fluctuans.
   The dream,   however,  would  not survive  Benoit's text,
since William  of Jumi\`{e}ges chose  not merely to  supress it,
but to make its supression a sign of his own integrity as an
historian.   Since  Primat relies primarily  on him  for his
version of Norman history, the last Capetian vision of Rollo
will be closer to that of Richer than to Dudo.
   A  Christian  prisoner  interprets the  second  dream  of
Dudo's  Rollo,  this  time  of a  mountain  and a  purifying
fountain,  as a  vision of the Church and  of baptism.  Even
more dramatically,  during a storm at sea,  Rollo composes a
prayer  of   eleven  hexameters,    resonantly  nasal   [See
Wilkinson, pp. 62-63, where the examples of euphonious lines
of Latin poetry consist predominately,  perhaps exclusively,
of resonating  n's and m's]  acknowledging the power  of the
Christian deity:
      O Deus omnipotens, coelestia lumine complens,
      Qui coelum terramque tenes per secula, cujus
      Numen et aeterno complectens omnia giro,
      Infectum vitiis peccati et faece repletum,
      Qui me Christicolam fieri vis munere visi
      Temporis exiguo cursu volvente futuri:
      Suscipe vota libens, precibusque faveto benignus,
      Fluctus sedatisque feros compesce ruinis,
      Casibus eripiens istis nos atque labore,
      Comprime demulscens, mitescens, atque serena
      Undantem nimium violente turbine pontum. (Lair, p. 149)
The sea,  of course,  immediately subsides.  Flodoard's text
certainly  contains   no  such  rhetorical   and  prosodical
sophistication;  Richer's speeches are often elaborate,  but
his Rollo delivers  no such speeches.  Dudo's  Rollo,  then,
like Eusebius' Constantine and Ermoldus' Louis the Pious, 
inter  alia,    shows  rhetorical   skill  in   manipulating
theological, liturgical language,  in a sense,  anticipating
St.  Louis,   as Jacques  Le Goff  describes the  process of
sanctification:  "la saintete se  manifeste...dans la parole
royale" [p. 97].
   Wace supresses Rollo's prayer at  sea,  but Dudo's eleven
hexameters  in  Benoit  grow  into  a  59-line  exercise  in
octo-syllabic  couplets;  the  three  lines  on God's  power
become thirty,  and the two-line confession of guilt becomes
approximately 10 lines.
                           - 23 -
   Once he  arrives in France,   Rollo achieves a  series of
military victories, with only one setback, and that requires
a miracle, which,  of course,  contributes to converting the
pirate.  Dudo  gives a restrained,   sketchy version  of the
harrying done  by Rollo and  his men,   supressing incidents
like the one reported in the   Annales of St.  Bertin,  for
843 (RDH VII), which depicts Rollo burning a church.  In the
course of ravaging France, Rollo suffers his first defeat at
Chartres,   when  the  Archbishop  marches  forth  from  the
besieged town with a set of  holy relics,  singing,  as Dudo
evokes a  commonplace that  can be  traced through  Nithard,
Ermoldus Nigellus,  Gregory of Tours,  and back into the Old
Testament (Graus, p.456), with the most direct model perhaps
St.  Germain  interceding against  the Normans  in Abbo's 
Siege of Paris (p. 86, II, ll. 271ff.).   No matter what the
model,  however,  the combination of relics and song strikes
terror in the heart of Rollo, who flees, followed closely by
his men.  Thus the military  power of Christianity,  and the
pious potential  of the  pirate reveal  themselves[1].   The
incident  would  seem to  be  a  development of  the  defeat
described  with  so  much   satisfaction,   and  inaccuracy,
although without any divine intervention, by Richer.
   Dudo,  however,  expresses sympathy  for Rollo,  breaking
into verse to insist on the pirate's competence in the first
function,  pointing to the supreme  competence of the second
function, with an interesting ambiguity,  since the power of
the second  function is expressed  by an  efficacious female
[therefore, of the third function] relic -- Mary's tunic:
      Rollo potensque valensque asperrimus armis,
      Ne verecunderis si jam fugitivus haberis,
      Non te Franco fugat, te nec Burgundio caedit,
      Concio multimodae gentisque utriusque phalangis:
      Sed tunica alma Dei genitricis Virginis, atque
      Reliquiae simul, philateria, cruxque verenda. (p. 163)
Wace and Benoit  both give the incident,   with Benoit again
going to  greater rhetorical  lengths,  composing  a lengthy
speech of discouragement by Rou, designed to coat the Norman
progenitor  with  a  twelfth-century  equivalent  of  tragic
grandeur.  Even William of Jumi\`{e}ges expresses some sympathy,
attributing Rollo's  defeat not to  his incompetence  at the
first  function,  but  to  the  providential nature  of  the
decision:
      et   provido  consilio,    non  timida   ignavia
      declinavit a certamine (p. 26).
   One of the most significant  differences between Wace and
Benoit in their versions of the defeat of Rollo is that Wace
is socially  more inclusive;  in describing  Chartres,  Wace
paratactically  lists  Chartres' advantages  as  age,   rich
citizens, an authoritative church, and Mary's  chemise:
      La ville estoit moult bonne de grant antiquite,
      borjoiz y avoit riches et d'avoir grant plente,
      yglise y avoit bele de grant auctorite;
                           - 24 -
      de la sainte Virge marie, mere de De
      y estoit la chemise tenue en grant chierte. [818-822]
The implication seems  clear -- the wealthy  bourgeoisie and
the  church  support  each  other,   as  Wace  continues  to
emphasize  by describing  the citizens  preparing to  defend
their city [ll.  823ff.].   Benoit, at the comparable point,
gives no socially comprehensive vision of the city,  instead
(relentlessly "feminizing" his  material)  concentrating his
energies on describing  the frightened women weeping  in the
streets:
      Por la grant perte de lor fiz
      E por le deol de lor mariz
      Vunt les dames eschevelees
      Parmi la vile, forsenees. (7363-66)
   The  pirates recover,   however,   from their  miraculous
defeat,  to  continue on  their destructive  ways until  the
French are brought to their knees.  When the nobles assemble
to urge Charles  to make peace with the  pirates,  Dudo uses
the occassion to compose yet another encomium of Rollo, as a
chorus of Frenchmen heap honorific epithets upon him:
      Rollo  superbo  regum ducumque  sanguine  natus,
      corpore pulcherrimus,  armis fervidus,  consilio
      providus, aspectu decorus, contra suos mansuetus
      (p. 166)...
The relentless panegyric continues for  ten more lines,  and
contrasts sharply with  Wace's version of the  scene,  which
allows far more of historical  reality to break in.  Instead
of a  chorus of  undifferentiated aristocrats,   Wace offers
several distinctive perspectives,  each  of which emphasizes
the destructive powers of the pirates; describing the damage
done several times, not as an exercise in "epic repetition,"
but to provide several perspectives,   again produces a more
comprehensive  vision  of  historical   reality.   First  he
describes  the  destruction  from  the  perspective  of  the
narrator,   then from  the perspective  of  the notables  in
general, and then, dramatically, from the perspective of the
negotiating Archbishop.
   As the narrator,  he locates  the geographical limits and
the damage to property and to  human beings:  old and young,
men and women, the great and the small,  husbands and wives,
all suffer,  paradoxically alike in pain,  though members of
conventionally antithetic categories:
      Le plain pais gasterent, de Bleiz jusq'a Saint Liz,
      les hommes ont destruiz et lez avoir raviz,
      n'i remaint bourc a fraindre qui tant fust bien garniz
      se il ne fust bien clos de murs ou de palis;
      dexz hommes voissiez merveilloux tueiz,
      n'en ont nule pitie plus que lou de brebiz,
      tuent jembles et viex, tuent granz et petiz,
      veuves font les moilliers, orfelinz font les fiz,
      et porgiessent les dames dejouste lor mariz;
      icelle honte suffre nul franz homs a enviz. (ll. 1056-1065)
                           - 25 -
From the perspective  of the clergy and  the nobility (i.e.,
the first two functions), the king is to blame for the major
problem caused by Norman aggression  -- a fall in production
and distribution (third function):
      Voient la felonnie, voient la crualte
      dez Normanz et de Rou qui le regne ont gaste:
      de Bleiz jusqu'a Saint Liz n'a un arpent de ble,
      marcheant n'osent aler n'a chastel n'a cite,
      villainz n'osent en vingne laborer ne en pre,
      si ceste chose dure moult avront grant cierte,
      ja tant com guerre soit nen avront grant plente;
      face pais as Normanz, trop a cest mal dure. (ll. 1073-80)
   However,  although  Dudo is concerned  for the  most part
with producing  unrelieved panegyric,   he acknowledged  the
destructive activities of  the pirates in an  earlier scene,
that, significantly,  takes place in another country.   When
Rollo promises king Aethelstan,  in  return for one half the
land and wealth  of the kingdom,  to  repress the rebellious
factions in  England,  he proposes  a series  of destructive
accomplishments  that culminate  in  three  elements of  the
third function:
      Quos vis,   conteram,  quos  voluerit disperdam.
      Subvertam  urbes  eorum,   villasque  et  oppida
      incendiam ipsorum:   proteram eos  et dispergam,
      subjiciam eos tibi  et occidam.    Uxores  et
      semen  eorum  captivabo,   et    armenta  eorum
      devorabo. (p. 159)
   That the  preparations for  converting the  pirate should
provoke a  connection with  the third  function recalls  the
baptism  in  826  of  Danish  leader  Herold  (Ermoldus  ll.
2164-2365),  in which Ermoldus calls upon Herold to cast his
own gods away,  or turn  them into plowshares,  thus turning
the  false images  of  the  second function  into  practical
implements of the third function.
   Rollo's conversion,   then,  satisfies  the needs  of the
medieval  as   well  as  specifically   Norman  imagination,
although  The evidence  that  Rollo  was ever  converted  is
slender.  Flodoard has no comparable scene in the  Annales,
although  he does  record  the  conversion of  the  pirates,
without specifically mentioning Rollo,  in  the  History of
Rheims, IV.xiv (MGH SS XIII, p.  577) and without mentioning
feudal submission or marriage.   Significantly,  in Flodoard
the  conversion follows  the defeat  at  Chartres,  with  no
intervening scene in which the French demand that their king
negotiate with the overpowering pirate:
      De   Nordmannorum   quoque   mitigatione   atque
      conversisone valde laboravit,  donce tandem post
      bellum,  quod  Rotbertus comes contra  eos Carno
      tenus gessit, fidem Christi suscipere coeperunt,
      concessis sibi  maritimis quibusdam  pagis,  cum
                           - 26 -
      Rothmagensi, quam pene deleverant, urbe et isdem
      subjectis.
Furthermore, according to the  planctus composed at William
Longsword's death, Rollo died unbaptized, although William's
mother, and William himself were Christian:
             ... transmarino natus patre,
      in errore paganorum permanente,
      matre quoque consignata alma fide,
           Sacra fuit lotus unda. (Lair, "Complainte," p. 393)
Clearly,  then,   Dudo,  Wace,  and  Benoit are  involved in
fabricating  a  scene  that allows  Rollo  to  maintain  his
primacy in the first function, that permits the power of the
second function  its peculiar  hegemony,  that  incorporates
what must have  been an historical fact --  the pirates were
defeated at Chartres -- and that provides the Normans,
 by means of an  argumentum,   if not an outright  fabula,
with a pious pirate progenitor.
   When Wace's  Archbishop addresses Rollo on  the necessity
for conversion and feudal submission,   he suggests that the
pain inflicted  by the Viking  in life will  be symetrically
awarded to him after death:
      "Rou," dist il, "Dex veut creistre t'onnor et ton barnage;
      en painne et en malice as use ton aage
      et vescu d'autrui lermes et d'autre gaaignage,
      maint homme as essillie et torne a servage
      et mis par povrete mainte fame au putage,
      et tolloit lor chasteaux et lor droit heritage;
      ne prenz conroi de t'ame plus que beste sauvage,
      tu iras en enfer en dolerouz mesnage,
      en perdurable painne qui onques n'asoage,
      de vivre longuement n'as pleige ne gage. (ll. 1120-29)
Wace has  gone beyond  Dudo here,   whose Archbishop  is too
accomplished a  diplomat to use  such provocative  images of
destruction at this point. Instead, Dudo's Archbishop limits
his  rhetorical exertions  to  emphasizing everyman's  human
limitations, then offers salvation and real estate:
      Deum te aestimas? Limo plasmatus, nonne homo es?
      Nonne  es  esca vermium,   cinisque  et  pulvis?
      Memento  qualis es  et eris,   et cujus  judicio
      damnaberis.  Herebro,   ut reor,   frueris,  nec
      quamquam   lacesses  ultra   praelis.   Si   vis
      Christianus  fieri,   praesenti  futuraque  pace
      poteris frui, ditissimusque hac terra morari [p.
      168].
Neither  in the  discussion with  the king,   urging him  to
negotiate  with  the  pirates,    nor  in  the  Archbishop's
negotiations with Rollo,  does Dudo permit anyone to mention
the severe damage done by Rollo's men. In an earlier passage
(pp.  164-165),  Dudo does give a vague description of their
destructive  activity,  but  it  follows  a truce  foolishly
broken by the Franks, so that the results,  mostly involving
killing peasants, seem, in a sense, "just."
                           - 27 -
   Benoit's Archbishop reduces  the damage done by  Rollo by
distributing  the  blame  between Hastings  and  Rollo  (ll.
8472ff.),  while magnifying the appeal for conversion to 110
lines.
   In all  three texts,  the  Archbishop now urges  Rollo to
marry the king's daughter,  which  he agrees to do,  leaving
only one  final transaction  to be  accomplished:  a  ritual
humiliation[2].   The last impediment  to Rollo's submission
involves his kissing the king's foot,  a gesture to which he
expresses great resistance:
      Rolloni  pedem regis  nolenti osculari  dixerunt
      episcopi:  "Qui tale donum recipit, osculo debet
      expetere  pedem  regis."    Et  ille:   "Nunquam
      curvabo   genua  mea   alicujus  genibus,    nec
      osculabor  cujuspiam  pedem."  Francorum  igitur
      precibus compulsus,  jussit  cuidam militi pedem
      regis   osculari.    Qui  statim   pedem   regis
      arripiens,   deportavit ad  os suum,   standoque
      defixit  osculum,   regemque   fecit  resupinum.
      Itaque  magnus  excitatur risus,   magnusque  in
      plebe tumultus. (Lair, p. 169)
Rollo's  behavior here  recalls  Dudo's  description of  his
father:
      qui  nunquam colla  suae  cervicis cuipam  regis
      subegit,  nec cujuslibet manibus gratia servitii
      manus suas commendando commisit. (p. 141)
The  scene  displeased  Michelet very  much:   "Telle  etait
l'insolence de ces barbares" [p.321], but he might have felt
even greater repugnance towards Wace's version of the scene,
in  which Rollo  himself,   and not  one  of his  retainers,
overturns the king:
      Rou devint hons li roiz et sez mains li livra;
      quant beiser dut le pie baiser ne se daingna,
      la main tendi aval, le pie au roi leva,
      a sa bouche le traist et le roiz enversa,
      assez s'en ristrent tuit, et le roiz se drescha.
      (ll. 1152-56)
Wace's Rollo  is certainly  less gentrified  than Dudo's  or
Benoit's,  whose  Rollos also  have more  visions;  Benoit's
Rollo delivers a fifteen-line speech on the impossibility of
his abasing  himself before any  mortal,  and he  returns to
Dudo's version of the agent of Charles' fall.
   Thus the political truth encoded  by the story of William
Longsword's  behavior  at Attigny  (which  Dudo  supresses),
where  he temporarily  balanced  the  European hierarchy  by
reversing the postions of Louis and Otto --i.e., Carolingean
hegemony depended directly on the behavior of the pirates --
is transferred and  encoded in this incident in  the life of
William's father,  with a comic  variation.   The balance of
power  in northeastern  France was  in the  hand(s)  of  the
pirates.   As  Freeman remarked (I.235):  "The  whole Norman
                           - 28 -
story is strange  and unlikely and many of  the events sound
most  temptingly like  repetitions  of  earlier events."  In
addition,   by subtracting  the incident  at Attigny,   Dudo
reduces the motivations for William's murder.  The degree to
which Rollo has been gentrified  is perhaps best illustrated
by considering two other stories  told about his conversion;
in a  passage described  by its  editor as  "pure fantasie,"
Ademar  de   Chabannes  (c.   988-1034)   provides   a  wild
combination of a Rollo both pagan and Christian, celebrating
his conversion by killing and by giving away money:
      Et    Normanni    regressi,     terram    vacuam
      reperrientes, sedem sibi in Rotomago constituunt
      cum principe suo Roso.   Qui factus christianus,
      captivos  plures  ante  se  decollare  fecit  in
      honore quos coluerat deorum.   Et item infinitum
      pondus    auri    per    ecclesias    distribuit
      christianorum  in  honore veri  Dei,   in  cujus
      nomine baptismum susceperat. [pp. 139-140).
This  particular  fabrication  also shows  Rollo  as  the 
cardino  rerum  in  Norman   conversion,   but  rather  more
violently,  if  not grotesquely,   than the  official Norman
versions.   One might  also  speculate  that Ademar's  Rollo
symbolically articulates  the pagan impression that  the new
religion required new priorities;  for Christians, gold, not
human life,   was the  most valuable  commodity.   A  milder
version of the scene,  in a  chronicle compiled in the early
thirteenth century,  emphasizes the linguistic,  rather than
the  religious differences  between  the  pirates and  their
unwilling hosts:
      Hic Carolus  dedit Normanniam Rolloni  cum filia
      sua Gisla.    Hic non est dignatus  pedem Caroli
      osculari,  nisi ad os  suum levaret.  Cumque sui
      comites  illum  ammoneret  ut   pedem  Regis  in
      acceptionem tanti  muneris oscularetur,   lingua
      Anglica  respondit,     Ne se  bi  Goth,   quod
      interpretatur,  Non, per Deum.  Rex vero et sui
      illum  deridentes,   et sermonem  ejus  corrupte
      referentes,   illum  vocaverunt   Bigoth:   unde
      Normanni adhuc Bigothi dicuntur.   [  RHG VIII,
      Paris,  1752,  p.  316,  Anno  912:    Ex Brevi
      Chronico S. Martinis Turonesis]
This story encodes the necessity of converting from Norse to
Latin, that accompanied the religious conversion;  according
to  Ademar  of  Chabannes,    WL  himself  accomplished  the
religious and linguistic shift after the death of Rollo:
      Tunc Roso  defuncto 8' (an.  931),   filius ejus
      Willelmus  loco   ejus  praefuit,    a  puericia
      baptizatus,   omnisque eorum  Normannorum,   qui
      juxta Frantiam inhabitaverant,   multitudo fidem
      Christi suscepit, et gentilem linguam obmittens,
      Latino sermone assuefacta est.
                           - 29 -
   In any  event,  Dudo's  Charles the  Bald makes  Rollo an
offer  he chooses  not to  refuse,  and  his conversion  and
feudal submission occur simultaneously.    Early in the next
book,  after bestowing  his lands and power  formally on his
son William,  Dudo's Rollo dies peacefully of old age;  thus
the doyen  of Saint  Quentin solidifies  William's right  to
Normandy,  which had  depended,  in the Carolingian  text of
Richer,  on a  renewal by Louis.  Dudo may also  have had in
mind an intertextual transaction, by means of which he might
contradict  Richer's  report  that  Rollo   had  died  in  a
slaughter of Vikings (see Lat. pp. 100-101)
   As Wace prepares to end his section on Rollo, he tells us
that,  at the death of  Rollo's royal wife,  the arrangement
with   Poppa   is  regularized,    and   William   Longsword
legitimately inherits Normandy:
      A honor et a joie vesqui bien longuement;
      N'out nul enfant de Gile qu'il prist premierement,
      sanz enfant vint la dame a son definement,
      donc espousa Rou Pope, qu'il tint puiz longuement.
      Longue Espee, son fiz, estoit de beau jovent,
      bien estoit percreus et de bon escient,
      armes pooit porter, nes dotoit mez noient;
      Rou fist son heir de lui au conseil de sa gent. (ll. 1286-93)
Poppa's  discontinuous  presence  in  Rollo's  conjugal  bed
presented a problem  for the panegyrists;  Dudo  records the
sequence,  making as  little of it as  possible,  while Wace
implies,   by  his paratactic  construction,   that  Poppa's
fertility was the central motivation.  Benoit,  however,  in
keeping  with the  traditions of    fin amors,   represents
Rollo's act first as the resumption of a grand passion,  and
then as a productive act as well:
      Ci truis escrit en ceste page
      Que Gisle, la proz e la sage,
      La fenne Rou, morut sanz eir,
      Mais ce ne puis mie saveir
      Quanz anz fu longe od lui sa vie.
      Mais apres ce que fu fenie,
      Reprist Pope, si l'esposa;
      Ce fu la riens qu'il plus ama.
      Gerpie l'oct sanz mauvoillance
      Por la fille le rei de France.
      Porquant ne mist pas en obli
      La grant amor qu'il oct od li. (ll. 10123-34)
Benoit,  then,   may begin  his life  of William  Longsword,
having given his subject the appearance of being legitimate,
in spite of  the testimony of Flodoard  and Richer.  Poppa's
importance is almost entirely as  the mother of William,  to
the fabrication  of whose idealized  life Dudo  devotes Book
III of  De Gestis Normanniae.
   To consider  the results of his  efforts in the  light of
Dummezil's   three   functions   requires   no   Procrustean
abilities,   perhaps  because  Dudo,    in  the  process  of
                           - 30 -
transferring his protagonist to the sonorous, enclosed world
of  poetry,  permitted  his  imagination  such license  that
Warrior,  Priest,   and Labor-Procreation  simply took  over
(although  the  third  function is  far  more  developed  by
Benoit)  the task  of providing an idealized  progenitor for
Richard,  who  is envisaged  in Dudo's  first apostrophe  to
William (Lair, p. 180) as the equilibrator, led by Christ to
apotheosis in Elysium.
   Dudo either knew nothing whatever  about WL's early life,
or  chose to  supress any  facts that  might interfere  with
fabricating a  young athlete of  God,  since he  offers only
rhetorical commonplaces,   like those identified  by Curtius
(pp. 180-181), to describe the pirate's youth; as a warrior,
Dudo's  William combines,   from an  early  age,  grace  and
wisdom:
      Est  namque  ei   filius  nobilissima  Francorum
      stirpe  progenitus,  qui  et corpore  vegetabili
      sospitate  vigorato   elegantissimus,   sensuque
      plurimarum studiis rerum  informato peritissimus
      (Lair, p. 181).
Following both Dudo and William,   Wace provides a lengthy
effictio of  WL,  emphasizing his  physical prowess  and his
good looks,  qualities that seem to account cumulatively and
paratactically for  his royal  marriage (though  not to  the
mother of the next Duke, Richard):
      Guillaume Longue Espee fu de grant estature,
      gent fu et bel et de moult grant faiture,
      gros fu par lez espaulles, greille par la chanture,
      jambes out longues, droites, large la forcheure,
      oilz droiz et apers out et douce regardeure,
      mez a sez anemis sembla moult fiere et dure;
      bel nez et bele bouche et bele parleure,
      n'estoit mis sa chiere embronchie ne oscure,
      la vertiz porta haut, longue out cheveleure,
      fors fu comme jaanz et hardiz sanz mesure,
      qui son coup atendi de sa vie n'out cure.
      Dam Herbert de Saint Liz fu de grant teneure,
      Guillaume prist sa fille par marial droiture.
      (ll. 1314-1326)
Benoit  also  provides  a lengthy    effictio,   but  lists
abstract qualities first,   expending only three lines  at a
comparable point in his text on physical beauty:
      Sor autres beiaus ert sa beautez
      Dreiz, lons e fors e prox e granz
      E les deus oiz resplendi sanz... (10572-74)
Certainly  knights idealized  in romance  possess such  good
looks, but saints, recalling the beauty of Rebecca,  Rachel,
Joseph,   Jonathan,   and  Absalon,   were  often  unusually
attractive (Graus,   pp.  463ff.).    Courtly and  Christian
conventions, then, might operate simultaneously.
                           - 31 -
   For  the  greater  part   of  his  approximately  50-line
encomium of WL,  however,  Benoit develops the notion of his
feudal  qualities,  through  a  series  of commonplaces;  
sapientia  et fortitudo,   for  example,   modulates into 
pietas:
      Son sa valor, son sa puissance
      Deslei ne tort ne desigance
      N'i fera ja, son escient,
      Ne grant ovre sanz jugement.
      Honnorez ert, plein de poeir,
      Plein d'escience e de saveir. (ll. 10557-564)
Neither Flodoard nor Richer had attributed such qualities to
William,  nor had they numbered  his mother among the French
nobility (see Lair, p.  180,  note a);  for Flodoard she had
been an anonymous concubine from  Britanny,  and Richer does
not mention her at all.  As  part of his attempt to gentrify
William,  Dudo supplies  a proper name and  a proper lineage
for her,  although she is clearly a different woman from the
Gisla whom  Rollo received  from Charles  the Simple  at the
time of his baptism.  Her name is Poppa, and Dudo provides a
gentrifying, though restrained,  effictio for her:
      Quin  etiam  quandam   Popam  virginem,   specie
      decoram,      superbo    sanguine     concretam,
      praevalentis principis Berengarii filiam,  secum
      laetus adduxit eamque sibi connubio ascivit,  et
      ex ea filium nomine Willelmum genuit.  (Lair, p.
      157)
Wace's  description  of Poppa  is  significantly  different;
after a conversation  with Hastings,  and in  the process of
wreaking havoc in  Northern France,  Rollo forms  an amorous
attachment to a very young girl,   Poppa,  the daughter of a
count;  in seven  lines,  Wace introduces her,   invokes the
topos  of outdoing  to characterizes  her  as a  non-pareil,
indicates  her geneological  significance,  and  foreshadows
both the birth and the  death of William Longsword,  placing
the blame for the latter event  squarely on the shoulders of
the Flemish:
      Li quens Berengier out une fille moult bele,
      Pope l'apeloit l'on, moult ert gente pucele,
      n'avoit encor eu sain ne triant ne mamele,
      ne savoit l'en plus gente dame ne damoisele.
      Rou en a fait s'amie, qui moult l'a desiree,
      de lie fu nez Guillaume qui out non Longue Espee,
      que li Flamenz occistrent par traisson provee. (ll. 591-97)
The range  of reference  in this passage  gives the  poem at
least momentarily  the quality Auerbach calls  "Homeric," in
his discussion of Odysseus' scar  (pp.  1-20,   et passim).
The specific  physiological detail,   suggesting (by  triple
synecdoche) that she was scarcely pubescent,  is an original
contribution by Wace, which disappears in Benoit's 32-line
effictio of Poppa as an ideal courtly beauty of aristocratic
lineage,  capable of rousing  fin amor in Rou's breast (ll.
6290-6322); to obscure the irregularity of the relationship,
                           - 32 -
Benoit  invokes   the  principle  of   cultural  relativity,
developing the  implications of   more  danico {William  of
Jumi\`{e}ge's  phrase,  p.   24},   in  the spirit  of  vigorous
encomium:
      Son la costume e son les leis
      Qu'en Denemarche unt li Daneis
      L'a prise a finne a grant haustece,
      A grant joie e a grant leece.
      Moct la tint honnoreement.
      De li, si l'estoire ne ment,
      Fu Guilleaume nez, e Gerlos,
      Une pucelle de grant los. (6323-6330)
   Pirate sexuality is a  problem for Christian panegyrists,
and   Carolingian  sexuality   provided   them  with   equal
difficulties;   the population  explosion produced  by   de
facto polygamy had originally been responsible for migration
from Scandinavia,   according to  Dudo,  and  Wace made  the
phenomenon even clearer in his version (see above).
   Dudo's  solution for  the  troublesome  intrusion of  the
third function is rhetorical, i.e., he records and burnishes
his details, avoiding unpleasant inferences; in an even more
strenuous  tour-de-force  later  on,   he  offers  the  same
strategic  solution  to  account   for  William  Longsword's
polygamous behavior,   although the rhetorical  problems are
compounded in  the case of  Rollo's son,  because  Dudo (and
Benoit  after  him)   takes on  the  additional  problem  of
establishing WL's monkish tendencies.
   Dudo's first  task,  however,  is to  establish William's
competence in  the first function;  therefore,   Rollo's son
sets out  to battle  Bretons,  and  to make  peace with  the
treacherous rebel Riulf.  His  major military accomplishment
occurs,  or  is imagined  to have occured  at the  battle of
Pratum  Belli,   where  he   responds  initially  with  more
discretion than valor.  At the  sight of his enemies amassed
in  great numbers  at Rouen,   William calls  a council  and
suggests  delaying  until  able   to  recruit  more  troops.
Rebuked for effeminacy by Bernard  the Dane,  Dudo's William
replies, in a burst of alliterating f's, c's, and d's,  with
a vigorous   beotword,  claiming the standard  for himself,
and challenging his followers to fall  upon the enemy like a
wolf upon lambs:
      "Duris   et   obscoenis   verbis   me   turpiter
      lacessisti,   cum   me  effeminatum,    armisque
      frigidum,   quin etiam  nihilum vocasti.    Ecce
      praeibo  signifer festinanter  ad praelium,   et
      conteram   constanter    exercitum   inimicorum.
      Devorabit   gladius  meus   carnes   perjurorum,
      disrumpamque  et  dissipabo castra  eorum.   Non
      diutius  segnes et  timidi  moramini,  verum  me
      festinanter sequemini, et invadamus eos ut agnos
      lupi." [p. 190]
                           - 33 -
Bernard  promptly  apologizes,   like   an  ideal  retainer,
insisting  that his  remarks  were meant  only  to test  the
loyalty of the troops,  giving Dudo the opportunity to weave
a few more panegyrical phrases into the biography:
      Cernens     autem    Bernardus     animositatem,
      constantiamque virilem Guillelmi ducis, dixit ad
      eum    verbis    humillimis:      "Domine    dux
      praepotentissime,      noli    irasci     nostra
      allocutione,  quia consequens est  et utile quod
      nobis jubes facere. Tantum experiamur quis tecum
      ibit  ad praelium,   quique  subvenient tibi  in
      auxilium." (p. 190)

Bernard, then,  presents  his  provocation  as a  kind  of
rhetorical test, not of William Longsword, but of the Norman
troops.

   Wace gives a far less elegant scene, with two men,  Boton
and Bernard,  attacking William's  slothfulness,  and with a
change in the nature and giver of the test:

      "Boton," ce dit Guillaume, "je ne m'i os combatre,
      quer contre un de mez hommes en a bien Riouf quatre,
      mort sui se il me peut detenir ne abatre.
      --- Coart es," dit Boton, "par le cors Saint Fiacre!
      Par la foi que je doi au Saint Filium Patre,
      Se fust qui cue feist bien te deust on batre,
      tu ne t'oses aremer ne en tez armes embatre." [1433-39]

When William again  insists that Riulf is  too formidable an
enemy,   Bernard then  composes a  longer attack,   accusing
William of lacking sufficient faith in God, and invoking, 
inter alia, the image of Rollo [ll.  1446-61].  William then
reveals that he was speaking,  par art, to test the troops:

      "Amis," dist il, "Bouton, et tu amis Bernart,
      ne me tenez donc mie a mauvez n'a coart,
      essaier vous vouloie, si parloe par art,
      quer combatre me voil et de ferir m'est tart."

   In Benoit's  version of  the scene,   Bernard delivers  a
59-line denunciation of WL, without alluding to any testing;
WL's response is an angry, extensive (11547-589)  gab, also
without any  mention of  testing,  which  produces Bernard's
immediate  assent.   Thus  Benoit,    the  most  extensively
rhetorical of the three,  deletes  the element of rhetorical
test present in Dudo and in Wace.

   WL  now decides  to press  forward,   winning a  striking
victory over Riulf, with no casualties suffered by William's
men:

      Tunc Guillelmus  lustrans campum  cadaverum,  et
      non inveniens mortuum ullum suorum, glorificavit
      cum suis Deum, qui subvenit sperantibus in se in
      adjutorium.  Locus autem, in quo bellum mirabile
      fuit,   dicitur  usque in  praesentem  diem  add
      Pratum-Belli.  [p. 191]

Wace and Benoit also report no  dead or injured on William's
side,  while many on Riulf's  side died,  staining the grass
with their  blood,  or drowned  in the Seine.   In addition,
however,   Benoit  emphasizes  the  amount  of  wealth,   of
beautiful,  luxurious  objects involved,   calling upon  the
nonpareil-topos  to  augment  the   presence  of  the  third
function:
      Tel aveirs mais n'i fu jostez,
      Tant trefs ne tant bel pavillon,
      Tant mantel vair, tant pelicon,
      Tant coffre ne tante vaiselle,
      Tante despoille riche et bele,
      Tant bel osberc, tant branc d'acer,
      Tant palefrei e tant destrier,
      Autres aveirs riches et mainz:
      Ne fu mais fait si faiz gaainz. (11822-30)

   Dudo, however,  at this point,  does not invoke the third
function,  choosing  instead to  concentrate his  rhetorical
efforts  on developing  a sense  of  William's military  and
political importance;  in the course of receiving credit for
almost  every virtue  and  accomplishment possible,   Dudo's
pirate  negotiates the  return of  Louis d'Outre-Mer,   then
loyally supports  Louis against the treacherous  elements of
the French nobility;   in return,  Louis himself  composes a
panegyric for his most faithful retainer,  elegantly triune:
 nemo  justior in factis,   nemo sanctior in  dictis,  nemo
potentior in armis  (Lair, p. 196).  Dudo, Wace, and Benoit
also report that WL arranges for  Louis and Henry the German
Emperor to establish a temporary alliance, although not in a
scene  as  violent and  dramatic  as  the one  contrived  by
Richer, in which WL rearranged the seating for Louis and the
Emperor Otto.

   When William  proceeds to  pledge his  loyalty to  Louis'
infant  son  Lothar,  however,   and  to  the concept  of  a
Carolingian  dynasty (Lair,   p.   198),   the other  French
magnates  take  umbrage,   though  not  openly,   as  Dudo's
antithetic construction emphasizes,  ira corde,  non vultu,
commoti, and they begin to plot,   nequiter.   Clearly this
Norman   marchio is  very far from  Flodoard's   dux,  and
easily distinguishable from Richer's pirate.

   His intellectual curiosity, however,  makes him even more
complicated,  if not exactly complex.  One day he asks Abbot
Martin of  Jumi\`{e}ges why  the Christian  religion observes  a
tripartite structure (col.  675), and Martin's response is a
lecture on  a topic  discussed at some  length by  Duby (pp.
270ff.)   When  William reveals his  own desire to  become a
monk to the abbot, Martin objects strenuously,  arguing that
the warrior  should guard those in  charge of the  other two
functions.  A  lecture on the  necessity for  separating the
first and second  functions should come as no  surprise in a
work  dedicated to  Adalbert,   whose  satiric   Carmen  ad
Rotbertum Regem  constantly juxtaposes warrior and  monk for
comic purposes, with lines like:

      Miles nunc, monachus diverso more manebo.
      Non ego sum monachus, jussu sed milito regis. [p. 8]

The parodic battle between monks  and Saracens that Adalbert
imagines (ll.  119-154), as part of his attack on Odilon and
the Cluniacs, also makes the combination of functions comic.
Duby's objections to  Benoit's version,  where he  finds the
warrior's  part  in the  dialogue  disproportionatly  large,
overlooks the fact that such a scene is part of the stock in
trade of panegyrists; Ermoldus (Faral, p. 147, ll.  1909ff.)
represents Louis  lecturing to the  archbishop of  Rheims in
823 A.D., on how to convert the Danes, more than one hundred
years  before   Dudo  attempts  his  biography   of  William
Longsword,  and  in accordance  with what  Poulin (p.   131)
describes as  the ideal for  a Carolingian prince:    not to
find sainthood by retreating from society,  nor in governing
with particular competence, but in renewing ancient virtues,
where duty to state and personal sanctification coalesce. In
spite of  the abbot's  advice,  however,   William persists,
leaving the monastery precipately, uncharitably declining an
invitation  to  dine;   he immediately  becomes  sick,   and
recognizes in the illness the punishing hand of God.

   Wace's first  interest in  describing WL's  visit to  the
monastery is to distinguish William from Hastings, as he had
made the  antithetical distinction between Rou  and Hastings
earlier;  in this case, William has rebuilt what Hastings,
li cuvert, destroyed:

      Li dus vint a Jumeges o mesnie privee
      por voier l'abeie qu'il avoit restoree,
      que Hastain, li cuvert, out destruite et gastee. [1701-03]

Wace's  WL does  not  ask a  question  about the  tripartite
structure of  society,  but states,  in  indirect discourse,
that  he  wishes  to  change his  life  and  become  a  monk
(1706-09).  Abbot Martin tries,  briefly and unsuccessfully,
to  dissuade him,   then  invites him  to  stay for  dinner.
William  refuses,  hurrying  off  towards  Rouen,  where  he
immediately  falls  ill,   punished  for  refusing  monastic
hospitality.   Benoit follows the same sequence,  augmenting
the amount of direct discourse,  and placing the description
of the  three orders or functions  in the mouth  of William,
rather than in the mouth  of the abbot,  thereby distressing
Duby:

      In the original account, it was the clerk -- the
      abbot,  the contemplator of  invisible things --
      who described the  ideal order to be  imposed on
      earthly  society.  In  Benedict's version,   the
      description is given by the duke himself... This
      is the fundamental,  the tragic change,  -- this
      fall,  this plunge from  the dizzying heights of
      theology...toward  the  abysmal depths  of  that
      petty, trivial thing that we call politics.  (p. 276)

Neither Wace  nor Benoit subscribe  to William  of Jumi\`{e}ges'
notion that  WL declined the  abbot's offer out  of culinary
fastidiousness.

   When  Dudo's  William  announces   his  retirement,   his
subjects object,  but when he adds that his son will succeed
him, the loyal Normans instantly accede (pp. 203-204).  Wace
offers  the  same  event,   expanding  the  passage  with  a
description of Richard as a perfect prince, fluent in Danish
and French, physically attractive, generous, literate,  able
to care  for birds,   play chess,   hunt,  and  behave in  a
thoroughly  courtly  fashion (1762-75).   Benoit,   however,
imagines three specific nobles convoked by William, swearing
allegiance, in an elegantly appointed room, to Richard,  who
is  clearly  too   young  to  have  achieved   many  courtly
accomplishments,  since Benoit describes him as lying before
them in  the nude,   La  jut li enfes trestoz  nuz [13665];
Benoit ends the  scene with William commending  the child to
the care of Anslec, Bernard the Dane, and Boton.

   The next problem with which Dudo  deals is how to provide
Arnulf  with necessary  but morally  insufficient reason  to
murder Williiam.  The solution is provided by a struggle for
the property of Erluin,  a  sequence of events that replaces
the humiliation of the Emperor Otto at Attigny in Richer's
History,  as  the provocation  for William's  assassination.
Arnulf takes Erluin's  castle,  and when his  protector Hugh
will  not help  him regain  the property,   Erluin turns  to
William.   Appropriately,   William first  redirects him  to
Hugh,  who  promises not  to harm  anyone who  helps Erluin;
William  then  proceeds  to  restore  the  property  to  its
rightful  owner,  thereby  providing  Arnulf with  murderous
motivation (pp. 203-204).

   When Wace's Arnulf takes Montreuil,  Herluin goes through
a process  of three  stages;  first  he goes  to Hugh,   who
refuses to help because Arnulf is   sez amis.   (l.  1804).
Then he  goes to king Louis,   who says that he  cannot help
because Arnulf is  sez homs (l. 1809).  Finally, he goes to
William Longsword  who,  after  first determining  that both
Hugh and  Louis have  promised not  to interfere  if Herluin
finds help elsewhere,  personally sets  out with his troops.
By  retaking   Montreuil  and  fortifying  it   against  the
neighboring Flemish,  William thus  provides Arnoul with the
necessary  motivation,   although Arnoul's  accomplices  are
supplied not by Flodoard,  Richer,  and  Dudo,  but by the
chanson de  geste to  which Wace  had earlier  referred,  as
Holden indicates (III. p. 25).

   Nothing becomes William's life like his leaving of it, as
the panegyrists,  Benoit particularly,   represent the final
scene,  although practical considerations  also play a part.
Dudo's  version  of  the preparations  for  the  meeting  at
Piquigny  acknowledge political  and  military reality  more
precisely than the previous texts.  His Arnoul, for example,
calls for separating the two  armies while the leaders meet,
and  the river  serves that  practical  purpose,  since  the
Somme,  Dudo points out,  is very deep at Picquigny.  At the
same time,   however,  Dudo's rhetorical  urges lead  him to
compound the  antithetical possibilities;  for  Richer,  the
only opposition in the scene was  derived from the fact that
one leader  arrived by land,  and  the other by  water;  for
Dudo,  however,   hic martyrixandus citra,  ille dolosus et
perfidus ultra (Lair, p.  207), and he continues to contrast
William's  innocence  and Arnulf's  perfidy  throughout  the
passage.  When William is called back,  after the conference
on the  island has  formally ended,   and the  participating
parties have  exchanged the kiss  of peace (Dudo  shows more
restraint here  than some later  writers,  who are  quick to
suggest  the Christ/Judas  analogy),  William  rows back  to
shore  alone in  one boat,   and his  twelve retainers  (the
traditional number both for the  comitatus and for Christ's
apostles)  row back in another.    Four conspirators call to
him to return, because Arnulf,  too weakened by gout to come
forward himself, has forgotten something:

      Domine, domine, melioris consilii obliti, torque
      parumper,   precamur,  navim,   quia volumus  to
      paucis.  Noster  senior nequit  amplius aggredi,
      quia podagrae infirmitate sic eum detineri,  sed
      mandat mirabile,  cujus oblitus est,  tibi.  (p.
      207)
Innocently,  or stupidly  (for a text which  claims Arnulf's
technical  innocence,    see  Lair,   note  a,    p.   208),
unaccompanied even  by the  two boys who  rowed him  back in
Richer's  version,  William  turns  the  boat around,   rows
himself back to the island,  and presents himself unarmed to
his enemies, who take instant, effective action, hacking him
to pieces and fleeing:
      Tunc Willelmus,  fide  integerrimus,  perfidorum
      precatibus  crebrius compulsus,   torquet  navim
      celerius,   venitque ad  ripam fluminis  armorum
      securus sine suis, cum eis locuturus.   At illi,
      sub  pellium  tegmine   jam  absconsis  quattuor
      mucronibus    celeriter     extractis,     rabie
      immanissimi furoris accensi diabolicoque spiritu
      exagitati,  percutiunt et  occidunt,  heu dolor!
      Innocentem   Willelmum,    videntibus   cunctis;
      hincque,  cum  Domino omnium  nequissimo,  cleri
      classe  transvecti,   suoque  exercitui  annexi,
      praepete equitatu potiuntur fuga lapsi. (p. 208)
   Normans  and  Bretons  then mourn  the  martyred  Viking,
although Dudo  magnifies the  martyrdom,  and  supresses the
Viking:
                           - 38 -
      Sic   pretiosus  marchio   Willelmus   testisque
      Christi    gloriosissimus     felici    martyrio
      consecratur.  Taliterque regnum  coelorum,  quod
      diu  concupivit,   adeptus,  vivens  in  Christo
      feliciter coronatur. Perfusum quippe sui cruoris
      rore beati  viri corpus  jacuit exanime.   Verum
      anima,   in coelum  ab  angelis deducta,   inter
      choros angelorum inaestimabiliter est collocare.
      (p. 208)
When they strip  his body,  they find  strapped,   strophio
lumborum ejus, the silver key to the place where he kept his
monk's outfit After his death,  the Normans and the Britons,
in a  scene from which  Louis d'Outre-Mer has  been entirely
removed,  spontaneously and unanimously  elect Richard their
leader (pp. 208-209):
      necnon Northmannorum  principes dixerunt  nimium
      ejulantes:   "Seniorem, proh dolor!  perdidimus,
      seniorem faciamus."
   Wace follows Dudo's  outline for the murder  scene,  with
several modifications;   where Dudo represented all  four of
the conspirators calling the Duke  back to the island,  only
Bauce  calls to  him in  Wace's text,   perhaps because  the
nature of   chanson  de geste requires  a reduction  in the
agents of evil.   In addition,   Wace supresses the motif of
Arnulf's illness:
      "Sire duc," ce dit Bauces, "retornez a nos cha,
      lessiez passer vos hommes, le batel revendra,
      mis sires vous veut dire un grant besoign qu'il a,
      mez por autres paroles qu'il vous dist l'oublia,
      et ce est tout li miex porquoi il s'acorda;
      venez a lui parler, vous reperrerez ja." (ll. 1972-77)
When WL returns, Bauce strikes the first blow,  decapitating
the Duke, and the others then chop him to pieces:
      Li dus sailli arriere et le bateaux passa,
      la pais estoit juree, nulle rien ne douta.
      Alas, quel felonnie! Dex. porquoi retorna!
      Bauces leva l'espee que souz ses peaux porta,
      tel l'en donna eu chief que tout l'escervela;
      li autres trois ferirent et le duc trebucha. (ll. 1978-83)
   Benoit develops a lengthy scene  for the martyrdom of WL,
substituting an oar for the  murder weapon wielded by Wace's
Bauce:
      Bauce parmi le chef en som
      Le feri se d'un aviron
      Que tote la teste out fendue
      E jus la cervele espandue;
      Traites unt les espees nues. (14597-601)
[See Andresen for discussion of the substitution of an oar]
   Benoit   firmly  supports   Dudo's   assertion  of   WL's
sainthood,  although,  like  Dudo and Wace,  he  supplies no
miracles :
                           - 39 -
      Eisi out sa vie finee
      li dux Willaumes Longe Espee
      Martir fu saint e glorios. (ll. 14765-67)
Like Dudo and Wace,  Benoit represents Richard's election at
this point without the presence of Louis,  and in hyperbolic
terms:
      Ne fu faiz sires n'establiz
      Plus ducement, ce dit l'escriz.
      Sempres, n'i out autre devise,
      Sus le maistre autel de l'iglise
      Li unt sa feaute juree
      Eisi cum mieuz fu devisee. (ll. 14755-60)
   In  all texts,   the  martyr's death  is  followed by  no
thaumaturgical events;   after all  the panegyric  possible,
composed in  Latin and  in French,  in  verse and  in prose,
William remains no canonized saint, (to use Ulisso's phrase)
                    com 'altrui piacque.
On  the  other hand,   his  son's  body will  be  remarkably
preserved -- both in Dudo and  in Benoit,  Richard's body is
odiferous -- although his grandson's  body will show no such
signs.  The Norman  panegyrists had to settle  for bestowing
only the odor, not the fact of sanctity upon their patrons.
   Dudo's text,  then,  shows what  might be produced in the
early  eleventh  century  by  an  ecclesiastical  politician
trained in  classical panegyric;   Wace's text  shows how  a
twelfth-century cleric  might convert  such material  into
chanson de geste,   with the help of  some intervening Latin
prose  abbreviations;   Benoit's  text shows  how  the  same
material might be reinvented  when literary fashion changes,
and  roman becomes the rage.  Although Wace lost his job to
Benoit in the twelfth century, and Primat, in the process of
composing the final  Capetian version of French  history, 
Les Grandes  Chroniques,  prefers  to rely  upon William  of
Jumi\`{e}ges, rather than Dudo, Wace, or Benoit,  nineteenth and
twentieth-century readers  interested in Norman  history and
poetry have come to prefer Wace,  because his rougher vision
seems to give more pleasure,   and because he supressed less
of historical reality than his predecessors and competitors.
   Ph.  A.  Becker, "Die Normannenchronicon:  Wace und seine
Bearbeiten,   Zur romanischen Literaturgeschichte,  Munich,
1967, pp. 466-495.
Eleanor Searle,   "Fact and  Pattern in  Heroic History," 
Viator 15 (1984), 119-37.  Rollo as Aeneas,  with consequent
abandonment of the Viking cultural past. Eastern Normandy is
emphasized.   p.  132:  "The great  set-piece of the work is
devoted   to  Richard's   winning-over  of   the  Danes   to
Christianity and  to peaceful  settlement of  lands that  he
will assign them." Gunnor a significant figure, as Richard's
non-Christian  then  legitimate wife.    Robert  of  Torigny
                           - 40 -
offers   another    version   of   the    tale,    involving
bed-substitution.  p.  136 Two themes of Dudo's work:   "the
legitimacy of  the male  lineage,  and  its dependence  upon
alliance with the female lineage.
Meinolf Schumacher,   "Teuflische Piraten,"   Archive  fuer
Kulturgeschichte 74 (1992), 249-256.
                           - 41 -
[1] The  military  power  of the  church  was,   of  course,
    significant in the practical world also;  perhaps 2/5 of
    a Carolingian  bishop's income was spent  on maintaining
    the  militia ecclesia,  according to Janet L.  Nelson's
    calculations,  in "The Church's  Military Service in the
    9th Century,"  in   The Church and  War,  ed.   by W.J.
    Sheils, Blackwell, 1983.
[2] See Marc  Bloch,   roi  thaumaturge:  les formes  de la
    rupture  de l'hommage  dans  l'ancien  droit f\'{e}odal,  
    Paris, 1912.
                           - 42 -