The phrase more danico [1] is a Medieval Latin legal expression which may be translated as "according to Danish custom", i.e. under Medieval Scandinavian customary law.
It designates a type of traditional marriage practiced in northern Europe during the Middle Ages. [2]
The examples that have come down to us involve powerful rulers in a union with a highborn woman of somewhat lesser rank. Rarely, it occurred to legitimize an abduction, as with Rollo and Poppa, who was taken after a battle at Bayeux; but this is not a defining characteristic. While Roman law had not distinguished between elopement and bride kidnapping (both being raptus in parentes), the distinction was significant in Germanic law. Still, according to Reynolds, the consent of the parentes was required in the more danico case. This consent could still be obtained after the fact, if an elopement was involved.
It is possible, therefore, that marriage more danico was neither informal marriage nor even legitimized abduction, but simply secular marriage contracted in accordance with Germanic law, rather than ecclesiastical marriage. [3]
The word "secular" here should not be interpreted to mean that no context of Germanic religion was involved. Although the form of any ritual that might have been employed is unknown, it is sometimes assumed that it was a type of handfasting. [4]
More danico permitted polygyny (serial or simultaneous), but is not synonymous with it. The "putting away" of a more danico wife could apparently be done at the mere wish of the husband; the rights of the wife are unclear. Often the putting away was done with the intention of marrying a still higher-ranking woman more christiano; but since there are numerous instances of the husband returning to the more danico wife, it is possible that the relationship had merely been deactivated or kept in the background. The union could also be fully dissolved, so that the wife was free to marry another man. Her consent in the matter may or may not have been required; again, the consensual aspect is unknown. (See below.)
By tradition and customary law, the children of such a relationship were in no way considered of lesser rank or disadvantaged with respect to inheritance. Many sons more danico went on to become dukes or kings by succession or conquest.
Increasingly discouraged by the Christian Church, the practice gradually died out.
In the middle and north of France, where there was less Roman law in the customary law, Roman law was not accepted in bulk or as authoritative in itself; but it influenced the customary law. [5]
It was not until the nation consciousness of the western nations was well developed and national laws were codified that it became the norm that all persons in a country were to be subject to the same law. Previously, each man was held accountable according to the laws of his own people.
In France in the course of the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries the old Germanic principle of the personality of the law, that is, of law as applicable to persons according to their race, had given way to the principle of territoriality, that is, of law as valid within a certain country. [6]
By accepting baptism and vassalage under a Christian prince under Charles the Simple after the Treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte in 911, Rollo had placed the Vikings of Normandy on the inevitable path of Christianization; but they clung to some old customs.
There was a perennial political tension between canon law and the traditional law. The Church deprecated this type of traditional union, employing the terms "bastardy" and "concubinage". On a purely political level, temporal rulers of more fully Christianized entities did not ignore the advantage of denigrating their enemies in moral terms with respect to their marriage customs.
The instrumentality of Christian clergy at a marriage ceremony was not specifically required by the Church until the Council of Trent on November 11, 1563.
The Roman ethnographer Tacitus writing in his De origine et situ Germanorum described the customs of the Germanic tribes and praised their monogamy. He did note that among the upper classes, however, polygyny was not unheard of. By the Viking Age, the Germanic peoples of Scandinavia had acquired a reputation for the habit.
Speaking of the Swedes, Adam von Bremen said:
For every man has two or three or more women at the same time, according to the extent of his power; the rich and the rulers have more than they can count. [7]
Norman chronicler William of Jumieges uses the term explicitly to refer to two relationships:
Modern historians have applied the term to various irregular or polygynous unions formed by several other monarchs of the Viking age, including Harald Fairhair, Canute the Great, Harold Godwinson and Cerball mac Dúnlainge.
Known to us from the histories of William of Jumièges and Orderic Vitalis, the purport of the phrase more danico is based in both the historical context, as well as in the meaning of the words within the fabric of the Latin language and the underlying Old Norse.
Orderic Vitalis spoke Old English until the age of ten, when he was forced to adopt Norman French; he wrote in a stilted, but fluent and educated Medieval Latin. In the vernacular he would have spoken of the custom as danesche manere (Norman French), as would William of Jumièges, who was Norman, but also wrote in Latin.
Mōre "by custom" is the ablative case of the Latin word for "manner", the subject form being mōs (cf. More judaico , "according to Jewish custom"). [11] In Lewis and Short's Latin Dictionary , the semantic range of the Latin word mos is elongated along the axis of arbitrary↔required, extending from "wont" or "caprice" on the one end, to "law" or "precept" on the other end:
Thus the term mos/mor- captures the ambiguity between the official Christian view of the practice as a despicable and self-indulgent "fashion", on the one hand, and the Germanic institution sanctioned by ancient traditional "law", on the other hand (cf. Marriage à la façon du pays, "marriage according to local custom").
During the Viking Age, the essentially tribal entities that became the modern Scandinavian nations differed in some customs, but had a concept of themselves as a unity. For example, according to the Gray Goose Laws of the Icelandic Commonwealth recorded in 1117, Swedes, Norwegians, Icelanders and Danes spoke the same language, using dǫnsk tunga or dansk tunga ("Danish tongue") or norrønt mál ("Nordic language") to name their language, Old Norse. Here "dansk" meant "Norse". Furthermore, mos danicus (Danish dansk skik) was not merely a "Norse custom", but prevalent among other Germanic peoples such as the Franks (see above).
Rollo died in 927, and was succeeded by his son William "Long Sword," born of his union more danico with Poppa, daughter of count Berenger; he showed some attachment to the Scandinavian language, for he sent his son William to Bayeux to learn Norse. [12]
It is also worth noting that Rollo, founder of the Norman dynasty, is claimed as Norwegian in the Norse sagas, [13] but as Danish by the historian, William of Jumièges.
Normandy is a geographical and cultural region in northwestern Europe, roughly coextensive with the historical Duchy of Normandy.
Harold Godwinson, also called Harold II, was the last crowned Anglo-Saxon English king. Harold reigned from 6 January 1066 until his death at the Battle of Hastings on 14 October 1066, the decisive battle of the Norman Conquest. Harold's death marked the end of Anglo-Saxon rule over England. He was succeeded by William the Conqueror.
Rollo was a Viking who, as Count of Rouen, became the first ruler of Normandy, a region in today's northern France. He emerged as a leading warrior figure among the Norsemen who had secured a permanent foothold on Frankish soil in the valley of the lower Seine after the Siege of Chartres in 911. Charles the Simple, king of West Francia, granted them lands between the mouth of the Seine and what is now Rouen in exchange for Rollo agreeing to end his brigandage, swearing allegiance to him, religious conversion and a pledge to defend the Seine's estuary from other Viking raiders.
Mores are social norms that are widely observed within a particular society or culture. Mores determine what is considered morally acceptable or unacceptable within any given culture. A folkway is what is created through interaction and that process is what organizes interactions through routine, repetition, habit and consistency.
The Duchy of Normandy grew out of the 911 Treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte between King Charles III of West Francia and the Viking leader Rollo. The duchy was named for its inhabitants, the Normans.
Richard II, called the Good, was the duke of Normandy from 996 until 1026.
Richard I, also known as Richard the Fearless, was the count of Rouen from 942 to 996. Dudo of Saint-Quentin, whom Richard commissioned to write the "De moribus et actis primorum Normanniae ducum", called him a dux. However, this use of the word may have been in the context of Richard's renowned leadership in war, and not as a reference to a title of nobility. Richard either introduced feudalism into Normandy or he greatly expanded it. By the end of his reign, the most important Norman landholders held their lands in feudal tenure.
Dudo, or Dudon, was a Picard historian, and dean of Saint-Quentin, where he was born the 960s. He was an erudite scholar and he likely acquired his education in Liège or perhaps Laon. By 987, Dudo had become a canon at St Quentin, the abbacy of which was held by the counts of Vermandois. In that year he was sent on a diplomatic mission to Richard I of Normandy by Albert I, Count of Vermandois which was successful. Dudo became a frequent visitor to the Norman court in the two years prior to Richard's death in 996. In a letter to Adalbero, Bishop of Laon, Dudo said that, as a result, Richard asked him to write a work recording "the customs and deeds of the Norman Land, the rights established within the kingdom of his great-grandfather Rollo". During a second stay in Normandy, Dudo wrote his history of the Normans, a task which Duke Richard had urged him to undertake. Very little else is known about his life, except that he died before 1043.
The House of Normandy designates the noble family which originates from the Duchy of Normandy and whose members were dukes of Normandy, counts of Rouen, as well as kings of England following the Norman conquest of England. It lasted until Stephen of the French House of Blois seized the Duchy of Normandy in 1135. The house emerged from the union between the Viking Rollo and Poppa of Bayeux, a West Frankish noblewoman. William the Conqueror and his heirs down through 1135 were members of this dynasty.
William Longsword was the second ruler of Normandy, from 927 until his assassination in 942.
Norman law refers to the customary law of the Duchy of Normandy which developed between the 10th and 13th centuries and which survives today in the legal systems of Jersey and the other Channel Islands. It grew out of a mingling of Frankish customs and Viking ones after the creation of Normandy as a Norse colony under French rule in 911.
Gunnor or Gunnora was Duchess of Normandy by marriage to Richard I of Normandy, having previously been his long-time mistress. She functioned as regent of Normandy during the absence of her spouse, as well as the adviser to him and later to his successor, their son Richard II.
The trial of Penenden Heath occurred in the decade after the Norman Conquest of England in 1066, probably in 1076, and involved a dispute between Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, half-brother of William the Conqueror and Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury and others.
Bernard the Dane is described by the tenth century ecclesiastical writer Dudo of Saint-Quentin as a 'warrior' of Rouen from 'Dacia', an ally and confidant of the first leaders of Normandy, political counsellor to Rollo's son William Longsword, and co-regent of the territory during the minority of his son and heir, Richard I of Normandy. In particular, Bernard is seen as being at the centre of events in the aftermath of the assassination of William Longsword.
The Normans were a population arising in the medieval Duchy of Normandy from the intermingling between Norse Viking settlers and locals of West Francia. The Norse settlements in West Francia followed a series of raids on the French northern coast mainly from what is now Denmark, although some also sailed from Norway and Sweden. These settlements were finally legitimized when Rollo, a Scandinavian Viking leader, agreed to swear fealty to King Charles III of West Francia following the siege of Chartres in 911. The intermingling in Normandy produced an ethnic and cultural "Norman" identity in the first half of the 10th century, an identity which continued to evolve over the centuries. The Normans adopted the culture and language of the French, while they continued the martial tradition of their Viking ancestors as mercenaries and adventurers. In the 11th century, Normans from the duchy conquered England and Southern Italy.
Geoffrey of Brionne, also called Godfrey was Count of Eu and Brionne in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries.
Poppa of Bayeux was the wife more danico of the Viking leader Rollo. She was the mother of William I Longsword, Gerloc and grandmother of Richard the Fearless, who forged the Duchy of Normandy into a great fief of medieval France. Dudo of Saint-Quentin, in his panegyric of the Norman dukes, describes her as the daughter of a "Count Berengar", the dominant prince of that region, who was captured at Bayeux by Rollo in 885 or 889, shortly after the siege of Paris. This has led to speculation that she was the daughter of Berengar II of Neustria.
Gisela was a Frankish princess who was married to Rollo, Duke of Normandy. It is uncertain whether Gisela existed.
Sprota was an early 10th century woman of obscure origin who became wife 'in the Viking fashion' of William I, Duke of Normandy, by her becoming mother of his successor, Duke Richard I. After the death of William, she married a wealthy landowner, Esperleng, by him having another son, Norman nobleman Rodulf of Ivry.
The Battle of Northam, sometimes known as the Two Battles of Northam, were fought around Northam Parish, Devon in 1069 between a Norman force led by Brian of Brittany and an Anglo–Saxon army commanded by Godwin and Edmund, two sons of the late English king Harold Godwinson. The Normans inflicted heavy casualties on the Saxons and forced them to retreat from Devon.