La perception d’une principauté territoriale : l’exemple de la Normandie, Xe–XIe siècle

Abstract : The article examines the territory – here of the Norman principality – as a «support of identity». From the eleventh century, narrative texts give a precise idea of the territory and the of the borders of the Duchy of Normandy, while the territorial component became part of the Norman identity. Texts often obscures the stages of a territorial genesis which was in reality more complex than the historiography of the duchy suggests. Normandy was soon associated with the area of the ecclesiastical province of Rouen, and the appropriation of the religious past and of the holy bodies of the province also had a territorial dimension, helping to anchor the power of the Norman princes in the sacred. The reign of Richard I (942-996) was probably a decisive step in the shaping of the «territorial memory» of the duchy, while at the turn of the Millenium the name Normannia were increasingly used in order to designate the territory under the aegis of the counts and then the dukes of the Normans. In a sense, Normandy was a project that Norman princes had to to accomplish, before being a projection of their own power.