Orderic Vitalis: Historia Ecclesiastica

The Historia Ecclesiastica is the great work of Orderic Vitalis (1075 to c. 1142), an English-born monk of Saint-Evroul in Normandy, written over some twenty-five years and brought down to 1141. In thirteen books it begins with the life of Christ and the history of the popes and emperors, as the opening list of chapters shows, then turns to the foundation and restoration of Saint-Evroul, the deeds of the Normans in Normandy, England, Italy and the Holy Land, and the reigns of William the Conqueror and his sons. The sample tells how a priest named Restold was moved by visions to seek the abandoned site of Saint Evroul’s hermitage.

Orderic is one of the most important historians of the Anglo-Norman world, and his work is a principal source for the Norman Conquest and its aftermath, the First Crusade, the politics of Normandy and the life of monasteries and noble families in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. He wrote with a keen eye for character and anecdote and a strong moral sense, often reporting speeches and local stories. The work also reveals the outlook of a monk who never forgot his English birth.