Abstract

Studies of the Normans

information on books, on Normans, by Charles Homer Haskins. The books are "The Normans in European History," and "Norman Institutions." Haskins' mastery of his subject would be proved by almost every page of these two books were it not already known from the long series of studies of which these works are a summing up. Normans were perhaps race builders rather than themselves a race, for they were soon absorbed physically, in language, and largely in institutions into the resident population of northern France. The rise, the life and culture, and the fall of this Norman state in France and England, the conquests of Norman adventurers among the Greek and Saracen populations of southern Italy, and the short but brilliant annals of the Norman dynasty in Sicily are the subject of the first of the volumes of the book, mentioned in the article. The second is a more detailed study of the legal and ecclesiastical institutions of Normandy under the Conqueror and his immediate successors.