Amatus di Montecassino

Amatus of Montecassino (Salerno ?, c. 1010 - end of 11th cent.)

Historia Normannorum, now lost; it only survives in a French translation of the 14th century: Ystoire de li Normant.

Amatus, a monk at Montecassino in the mid-11th century, wrote a history of the settlement in Italy of the Normans and their subsequent conquests. The eight books, now lost, of the Historia Normannorum, written in the last quarter of the century, dealt with their origins, their victorious campaigns under the leadership of Robert Guiscard and Richard of Capua and their settlement in Campania, until Richard's death in 1078. All that remains of this work is a poor translation in Italianizing French written in Angevin Naples, found by chance and only published in 1835. The work marks a turning-point in the development of Cassinese history-writing; the first to fully comprehend the importance of the Norman phenomenon, he placed this people at the centre of his work, abandoning the annalistic structure. In effect, his historical accounts founded the 'legend' of their arrival in Italy.

Amatus was an exponent of what has been described as 'ethnic' Norman history. In other words, he had a very clear idea of the role that the Normans had already played ¾ and would continue to play ¾ in southern Italy, and he was their enthusiastic bard. 'Legitimate booty, which brings honour, is that taken in clean, honest combat with the owner who is incapable of defending it. In accordance with this ethical code, the chroniclers did not need to justify the conquests made at the expense of the Greeks and Lombards, the former effeminate and pusillanimous, the latter unnecessarily turbulent and treacherous': this ethnic contrast, as outlined by Delogu, is the hermeneutic key allowing us to understand Amatus's Normans and, above all, those of Geoffrey of Malaterra.

Pierre Bouet
ouen - Office universitaire d'études normandes
Université de Caen

 

MODERN EDITIONS

- Ystoire de li Normant, par Aimé, évêque et moine au Mont-Cassin / Abbé O. Delarc (ed.). - Rouen : A. Lestringant, 1892.
- Storia de' Normanni di Amato di Montecassino volgarizzata in antico francese, ed. V. De Bartholomaeis, FSI 76, Rome, 1935.