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Orderic Vitalis (c. 1114/41)
Historia ecclesiastica
Orderic Vital in unquestionably the greatest Norman historian of the ducal period. He was born in England in Atcham on 16 February 1075, of a French father from Orléans, Odelerius, and English mother. He was the son of one of the numerous mercenaries engaged by the Duke of Normandy for the Conquest of England in 1066.
After his initial studies at Shrewsbury, the young Orderic was, at the age of ten, sent to Normandy by his father. He was entrusted to the monastery of Saint-Evroult in the Ouche region, which the Grandmesnils had restored in 1050. It was in this community that he was given the name of Vital, which he preferred to his baptismal name.
From 1085 the story of Orderic merged with that of his monastery where he lived until his death in c. 1142. He devoted his energy and talent to the scriptorium and the abbey's library. He made only very few journeys outside the Duchy: to England - to Crowland and Worcester, in France and Burgundy, above all for the great gathering in Cluny in 1132.
Orderic soon revealed himself to be a talented copyist. Nearly twenty manuscripts were completely or partly produced by his hand. It is known that he copied the Historia ecclesiastica by Bede, the Gesta Normannorum ducum by Guillaume de Jumièges to which he made additions, the life of Saint Willibrod by Alcuin, that of Saint Aethelwold by Wolstan and many other lives of the saints, hymns and sermons. The nature of some interventions on many other manuscripts leads one to suppose that he must have had an important role at the head of the library's scriptorium.
The masterwork of Orderic is his Historia ecclesiastica to which he devoted thirty years of his life from 1114 to 1142.
Originally at the request of the abbot Roger, Orderic undertook the writing of a history of Saint-Evroult in order to preserve for posterity the memory of the founders and benefactors of the abbey. But the temporal and geographical perspective gradually expanded to the dimensions of a general history. The Normans who gave no limit to their political ambitions and the Church which by definition had a catholic vocation led the historian to adopt an ever larger perspective. The title of the work borrowed from the Venerable Bede, might equally have been Gesta Dei per Normannos.
The whole work is divided into thirteen books. The first two books written between 1136 and 1140, form a universal chronicle from the year 1 to 1142 in the manner of Jérôme, Sigebert de Gembloux and Marianus Scot. Books 3 to 5, written between 1114 and 1129, tell the story of Norman expeditions to England and Italy. Book 6, written in c. 1131, was entirely devoted to the history and patrimony of the monastery of Saint-Evroult, while the last seven which were written in the period 1133 to 1140, are presented as a history of Christendom from 1080 to 1140, still with the Anglo-Norman world and the monastery of Saint-Evroult as the major focus of interest.
To this diversity of perspectives is added the even wider diversity of subjects addressed. It seems that there was no limit to the possible events occurring in this world in the context of the Historia ecclesiastica: wars, marriages, storms, monastic foundations, shipwrecks, miracles, changes in dress fashion, the lives and deaths of princes, strange customs, rumours etc. Everything is told with the same scrupulous attention to detail and accuracy. But the Historia ecclesiastica whose critics have taken pleasure in listing its digressions and emphasising the convoluted structure and undue length, does on the other hand present a deep unity. It is in his theology of the history that this unity affirms itself and that the various centres of interest are given their hierarchy. Orderic is attentive to the hand of God in the world and tries to demonstrate in the apparent incoherence of the facts there can be perceived the historic realisation of the City of God.
Orderic Vital is also distinct from other mediaeval historians in the richness of his documentation. He applies a highly discerning approach to the use of the works of his predecessors. He does not spurn any written document: the lives of the saints, collections of miracles, annals, charters, ducal decrees, or council decrees. He is capable of carrying out lengthy research to locate a valuable document and does not hesitate to pursue his enquiry into the events that took place in the region of Saint-Evroult.
Orderic is very aware of the affairs of his century, and offers us documentation of great value in the most varied of fields: his work is presented as a history which is at the same time religious, social, economic, administrative, intellectual and even genealogical.
The modern reader is also struck by the literary quality of this history. As a professional historian, Orderic is also a talented writer. He likes to structure his narrative into episodes, and to pace the dramatic progression, describe landscapes, and have characters express themselves in their own words. Some passages of the Historia ecclesiastica are rightly famous, such as the shipwreck of the Blanche Nef (1120), the burial of William the Conqueror (1087) or the Mesnie Hellequin (the nocturnal vision of a priest in the Lisieux region in 1091).
Pierre Bouet
ÉDITIONS
- Migne J.-P., Orderici Vitalis, angligenae coenobii Vticencis monachi, Historiae ecclesiasticae libri tredecim, dans Patrologie latine, 188, Paris, Garnier 1890, col. 15-984.
- Le Prevost A., Orderici Vitalis Historiae ecclesiasticae libri tredecim, 5 vol., Paris, Renouard, 1838-1855.
- Chibnall M., The ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, 6 vol., Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1969-1980
(avec tradcution anglaise).STUDIES
- Delisle L., Notice sur Orderic Vital, au tome 5 de l'édition d'A. Le Prévost, Paris, Renouard, 1855, p. I-CVI.
- Wolter H., Ordericus Vitalis. Ein Beitrag zur kluniazensischen Geschichtsschreibung, Wiesbaden, Steiner, 1955.
- Ray R. D., Orderic Vitalis on Henry I : theocratic ideology and didactic narrative. Essays in Honor of R.C. Petry, 1974, p. 119-134.
- Chibnall M., The world of Orderic Vitalis, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1984.
- Musset L., L'horizon géographique, moral et intellectuel d'Orderic Vital, La Chronique et l'histoire au Moyen Age, 1984, p. 101-122.
- Bouet P., Orderic Vital, lecteur critique de Guillaume de Poitiers, Mediaevalia christiana (XIe-XIIIe s.). Hommage à R. Foreville, Tournai, Éditions universitaires, 1989, p. 25-50.