In an article entitled “Problematizing Patronage: Odo of Bayeux and the Bayeux Tapestry” published in 2009, the authors anticipated several of the main arguments of the present book by proposing that the monks of the abbey of St Augustine in Canterbury created the so-called Bayeux Tapestry for their own purposes, and without either supervision or direct support by any external patron. This hypothesis, we suggested, could offer an alternative explanation for those features of the work often cited as evidence that the monks of this abbey were commissioned to make the textile by Odo of Conteville, half-brother to William the Conqueror, Bishop of Bayeux (1049/50–1097), and Earl of Kent (1067–1082/83). At the same time, it would enable us to provide a more plausible interpretation of its complex, multi-layered pictorial narrative than the ones proposed by previous scholars, who read it as a politically partisan, yet historically reliable story of the Norman Conquest of the English from the perspective of the conquerors, the conquered, or both. Indeed, as this book will demonstrate, every feature of the textile that has been cited as evidence that Odo of Bayeux commissioned it can be better explained by accepting that it was made at the initiative of the monks of St Augustine’s to tell their own story of the conquest and to serve their own purposes, when displayed at the abbey itself.

After the conquest, the members of this monastic community made strenuous efforts to promote its power and prestige, most spectacularly manifested in its 1091 translation of the early saints buried there, including the relics of St Augustine himself, whose mission of 597 was credited with bringing Christianity to the English. With their well-earned reputation for outstanding artistic achievements in the late Anglo-Saxon period and notable successes after 1066 in new artistic undertakings, the monks of this house, we argue, were fully capable of initiating, supporting, and executing a lengthy embroidered pictorial narrative. In short, by proposing that the plan to create the textile was formulated by the monks of this major Kentish abbey, we saw the possibility of answering questions about the work that have never been satisfactorily resolved.