gathered, mute in a palsied
supplication like the stone figures carved upon the walls above them.
At last the terrible year passed by, and the stars fell not, nor did
the heaven depart as a scroll when it is rolled together, and the
kings of the earth and the great men and the rich men and the chief
captains and the mighty men and every bondman and every freeman came
forth from their houses and from their dens and from the rocks of the
mountain, and went with one accord to give thanks to Holy Church for
their deliverance. The wave of religious feeling swept from one end of
Europe to the other, and nowhere was it so strong as in Normandy. For
the Normans saw their advantage in it, just as the first pirates had
seen their gain in baptism. The laws of Rollo and his descendants were
too strict for brigandage at home, so the more restless spirits
started over Europe in the guise of pilgrims, "gaaignant," as Wace
says, towards Monte Cassino, to St. James of Compostella, to the Holy
Sepulchre itself. It was as pilgrims that they travelled into Southern
Italy, where a poor Norman knight had been rewarded for his fighting
against the infidels by the County of Aversa. Tancred of Hauteville,
from the Cotentin, followed there. By 1002 the citizens of Rouen were
already admiring the oranges, or "Pommes d'Or" which their adventurous
"Crusaders" had sent back from Salerno, as the first-fruits of that
Kingdom of Calabria and Sicily which a Norman, Robert Guiscard, was to
make his own.

Meanwhile within the bounds of Normandy itself, the great religious
revival went on side by side with growing civic and military strength.
In 1004, Olaf, King of Norway, who had come over to help the second
Duke Richard, was baptised in the Cathedral of Rouen. Sweyn, King of
Denmark, and Lacman, King of Sweden, were in the city at the same
time, and doubtless felt the same impulse to profession of the
Christian faith when visiting their Scandinavian relatives. Rouen was
indeed a gathering place for all the northern royalties, for Ethelred
II. who had lost the Anglo-Saxon throne, was there as well, with his
wife Emma the daughter of the Duke. It seems in fact to have already
become the fashion for princes of the royal house of Britain to
complete their education by a little tour in France. A curious trait
of the manners of the time is recorded by Wace, who describes one of
the many banquets that must have been given so often during all these
royal visits