ORDERICUS VITALIS, the author of a History of considerable value in relation to England and Normandy in the 11th and 12th centuries, was born in the year 1075 at Atcham near Shrewsbury. His father, Odeler of Orleans, was one of the followers of Roger Montgomery, a powerful baron who had accompanied William the Conqueror from Normandy, and in whom that monarch reposed especial confidence. Roger had at one time cruelly despoiled the abbey of St Evroul en Ouche, and in his latter years sought to make reparation by bestowing large gifts of benefices and lands on the society. In this manner Odeler also became interested in St Evroul. He was a married priest, and Orderic, the eldest of his three sons, who had at first been sent by him to receive his education at Shrewsbury, was now at the age of ten years dedicated to the monastic life and sent to St Evroul. It was a Benedictine foundation, and at this time perhaps the most celebrated of all the schools in Normandy {Gallia Christiana, xi. 814-6). On the 21st of September 1085 the youthful Orderic received the tonsure and was admitted one of the oblates of the monastery. It was the feast of St Maurice, the commander of the legendary Theban legion, and Orderic’s name, which seems to have been displeasing to the Norman ear, was now changed into that of Vitalis, one of Maurice’s lieutenants. In March 1093 he was ordained a deacon, but was not admitted to priestly orders until 1107. We have it on his own testimony that he was treated with kindness in his new home, and his uneventful life was chiefly passed in a routine of religious observances and of such studies as the Benedictine rule was then interpreted to admit; but from this number, he tells us, pagan history was excluded. The discipline of the society at St Evroul was ...well maintained, and not a few of its members were worthy representatives of that spirit of devotion to learning by which their order was long so honourably distinguished. Orderic’s superiors appear to have soon discerned his aptitude for literary labours, and at the suggestion of two of their number (Roger and Guérin) he first commenced to write the history of the foundation. Among his fellow-monks were men who had taken part in the expeditions of the Normans in Italy and Sicily, in the Crusades, and in the wars waged by William the Conqueror and his sons, and to such associations, as well as to the advantages which a resident at St Evroul would enjoy owing to its being a great centre of intercommunication, we must attribute much of the remarkably varied and minute information with which the Historia abounds. Travel, again, appears to have had for Orderic a special charm; and, notwithstanding the difficulties interposed by his monastic vow, he twice revisited his native country, Croyland and Worcester having been his principal places of sojourn. We also find him at Cambrai, and in 1132 at Cluny at a great gathering of its celebrated order. In the year 1141, being, as he tells us, worn out with age and infirmities, he was fain to bring his historical labours to a close, and it is inferred that his death occurred soon after. Although compelled to quit his native country at so early an age, Orderic seems always to have felt himself an exile. In the title of his work he is careful to describe himself as “Angligena,” and throughout the narrative he gives special prominence to whatever relates to England.
The Historia Ecclesiastica is divided into three parts. Of these the first, in two books, gives an outline of the history of the church from the commencement of the Christian era to the death of Pope Leo IV. in 855, a list of the popes from that date to Innocent II. being appended. The second part—the first in order of composition (see supra}— is the Historia Uticensis, or history of the monastery of St Evroul from its foundation by Abbot Ebrulf in the year 560 to the narrator’s own time; it contains many interesting sketches of the abbots and other members or benefactors of the society. The third part—the only genuinely historical portion of the work—is in seven books, and is devoted to a general account of events in Western Christendom from Carolingian times down to the year 1141. With the year 1084 (after a considerable break in the narrative) the work begins to assume its peculiar value as a storehouse of information with respect to the history and social condition of England and Normandy in the latter part of the 11th and first half of the 12th century. In striking contrast to the ordinary chroniclers of his age, Orderic collected and recorded with scrupulous care numerous facts and incidents which others would have deemed too insignificant for notice. But there is no work relating to the same period, says Guizot, which throws so much light on the political, civil, and religious aspects of society in the West, and the conditions of feudal, monastic, and ordinary life. These merits, however, are in no slight degree obscured by Orderic’s singularly involved style and turgid diction, while his absolute disregard of method renders his narrative at times difficult to comprehend and follow.
In addition to the Historia there exists in the library at Rouen a manuscript edition of the Norman history of William of Jumièges, which Μ. Leopold Delisle feels no hesitation in assigning to Orderic (see his Lettre à Μ. Jules Lair, 1873).
The best edition of the Historia is that edited by Μ. Auguste Le Prévost, in five volumes (1838-55). In the concluding volume (pp. i.-cvi.) there is an admirable account and criticism of Orderic by Μ. Leopold Delisle. The edition in Migne’s Patrologia, vol. clxxxviii., though a later publication, is a reprint of the less accurate text of Duchesne. A French translation by Μ. Guizot, in 4 vols., 8vo, was published at Caen in 1821-27; and there is an English version (with Guizot’s preface) by Thomas Forester, 4 vols., 1853-56, in Bohn's Antiquarian Library.
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