Norman Change, Lords, and Rural Societies

Often the Norman conquest of southern Italy has been interpreted as a classic case of transition from one system to another. It is thought that a territory won by force and violence must have undergone the most radical of changes. The paper aims to suggest that this view is particularly inappropriate to understanding the rural societies of the Mezzogiorno. The sources talk of rural communities that are dynamic, well-off, clearly differentiated, made up of free men, active both politically and sometimes militarily, capable of opposing their own village lords. This rural dynamism does not sit well with the darker images of Norman change in the 11th century. It is true that the violence, and even simply the fear of the Normans, prompted rural communities to ask their lords to confirm their liberties and their obligations; in the same period some small and medium-sized proprietors placed themselves under the protection of churches and minor lords. But there is no trace of all those calamities that the “mutationists”, arguing in favour of the feudal revolution, have attributed to seigneurial rapacity. The peasant population did not suffer mass confiscations, systemic expropriations, generalized efforts to subject them to servitude, massive increases in exactions, ruptures with local customs. Abuses, confiscations, arbitrary impositions and violence only moderately affected the internal structures of rural societies. We need to gauge the extent of the change carefully. That there was a radical revolution is undeniable. But it concerned the world of politics and power: the history of the aristocracies, government structures and state institutions. For most of the population, the impact of this political revolution was much less evident. The influence of the conquest was anything but small. But it assumed forms that were very different from the radical break that we observe in the history of aristocracies and great landholdings. The change caused by the Norman conquest was a shock rather than a revolution. It resulted in the accentuation and general diffusion of complex phenomena that were already underway before the conquest. We can see it in trends like incastellamento, the militarization of local elites, the spread of corvées and seigneurial reserves, and much else.