The Bayeux Embroidery as a Historical “Source”

The Bayeux Embroidery is an important subject of inquiry in the field of art history as a rare and unusually large surviving example of a medieval tradition of embroidered pictorial narratives. Scholarship on the embroidery, however, has long been dominated by political historians using its pictorial narrative, along with textual narratives supposedly resembling it, as a record of historical events and even as a reliable source of evidence about how the Norman conquest of England came about. By aligning selected scenes on it with decontextualized passages from the written sources they trust and ignoring many other scenes in the main frieze, most of the border imagery, and numerous alternative textual accounts, historians of national politics have constructed in several different ways what is known in this genre of scholarship as the “the chain of events” that supposedly led to Duke William of Normandy’s invasion of England and his victory in the Battle of Hastings (14 October 1066) over the army of King Harold II, who was killed in the battle. By doing so, these historians have also resolved, at least to their own satisfaction, the centuries-old controversy about who was the legitimate successor of King Edward (later known as the Confessor), who died on 5 January 1066. Was it the dead king’s brother-in-law, Earl Harold Godwineson, who took the throne the next day and became king of the English? Or was it Duke William of Normandy – the late King Edward’s mother’s brother’s son’s bastard son – who invaded in late September of 1066 and, after defeating Harold II’s army at Hastings, was crowned and consecrated in London as king of the English on Christmas Day, 1066?

Instead of trying to solve what appears to be an insoluble problem by seeking to establish the true story of how the conquest came about, modern historians have always had the option of acknowledging, as William of Malmesbury did in the early twelfth century, that “the truth of the facts is in suspense and uncertain” and that in all probability, neither William I nor Harold II had much of a claim to be King Edward’s legitimate successor.

Conflicting Interpretations of Eight Fables

Just as the central frieze of the Bayeux Embroidery depicts Harold dux Anglorum and his “milites” leaving a second-story banquet hall at Bosham, boarding ship, and sailing out to sea, the lower border shows the first in an uninterrupted series of Aesopian fables, the last of which appears just as the English reach land and are captured by a lord called Guy (W4-8; Figs 2–4). Previous writers on the embroidery are generally agreed that the series includes eight fables, referred to here as the “canonical” eight to distinguish them from other fables also represented but rarely if ever noticed. They can be summarized as follows. In Fox and Crow – which reappears first in the lower border, after Harold meets with William, duke of the Normans (W18; Fig. 9), and then in the upper one, as he returns to England (W27–8; Fig. 14) – the crow found a piece of cheese, but the fox tricked him into dropping it and ate it himself (W4; Plate III; Fig. 2). The wolf in Wolf and Lamb met the lamb drinking from a stream and made false charges against him, which the lamb rebutted. But the wolf ate him anyway (W4; Plate III; Fig. 2). Bitch and Puppies – which the lower border shows again, shortly before the Battle of Hastings (W59–60; Fig. 29) – tells how one bitch loaned her lair to another who was pregnant and later allowed her to keep it until her puppies were older. When she returned a second time, the other bitch drove her away (W4–5; Plate III; Fig. 2). In Wolf and Crane – which is repeated in the upper border, as Harold returns to England (W27; Fig. 14) – the wolf promised a reward to the crane for extracting a bone from his throat. After she removed the bone and claimed her reward, however, he denied her (W5; Plate III; Fig. 2).

In Lion King, the lion swore not to eat meat, but later devoured his subjects one by one (W5–6; Fig. 3). In Frog, Mouse, and Kite, the frog agreed to help the mouse cross a river – and then drowned him by tying one of his legs to one of hers and dragging him down to the river bottom.

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.

Locating Harold’s Oath and Narrating Harold’s Journey

The scene on the Bayeux Embroidery showing Harold, duke of the English, taking an oath to William, duke of the Normans after William and his followers arrive in Bayeux (W26; Plate X; Fig. 13) is the high point of the first part of the pictorial narrative, which depicts a journey that Harold made, according to the Norman Story but not the English one, from England to the Continent and back at an unspecified date usually identifed by modern historians as 1064 or 1065. Although there has been much debate about what the textile’s pictorial narrative of this journey was intended to convey about it to contemporary viewers, most scholars agree that it shows Harold swearing an oath to William at Bayeux on the relics of Bayeux Cathedral. Many also believe that the decision to set the oath-swearing scene at Bayeux and not at Bonneville, where William of Poitiers situates it in his Gesta Guillelmi, marks a rare deviation from the Norman story of the conquest, which the embroidery usually tells; and further, that this deviation confirms the hypothesis examined from several different perspectives in this volume that Odo of Bayeux commissioned the monks of St Augustine’s, Canterbury to create a pictorial narrative that would glorify his own role in the Norman Conquest in addition to justifying the conquest itself. This hypothesis has long provided part of the rationale for arguing that when considered together with several other scenes discussed in Chapter 6, the scene depicting Harold’s oath emphasizes and even exaggerates the bishop’s role in events leading up to the Norman conquest of England, on the grounds that none of these scenes has any parallel in written accounts of the conquest, including versions of the Norman Story taken to be the source or sources that the embroidery’s designer followed. Recent commentators have therefore interpreted the oath-swearing scene as, for example, emphasizing “[Odo’s] right to be actively involved in Harold’s come-uppance, [by] championing and upholding the relics of his foundation”; “[pulling him] into the ranks of the earl’s victims, lending further weight to [his] role in the Conquest”; demonstrating “the efficacy of [those] relics”; and giving them a “starring” role in the conquest.

How Land Should be Given

When King William I gave land in England as “a perpetual inheritance” to the Norman abbey of La Trinité du Mont in 1069, he made the gift by means of a knife, which he jokingly gave to the abbot as if he were going to stab him in the palm, saying, “This is the way land should be given.” This was not the usual way to give land, of course. But the story presupposed that there was a customary legal ceremony for doing so, which William would ordinarily have performed by placing the knife – which symbolized his gift – in the abbot’s hand. In any case, the king’s act was still represented by the scribe who recorded it in a charter as a clear sign that with many “nobiles” standing beside him as witnesses, he had given land to La Trinité. Using a staff rather than a knife, John Burnet performed a different version of the same ceremony sometime during the 1070s, when he made a deathbed gift to the Norman abbey of Saint-Martin de Sées. After the abbot came to his house and granted him the society and benefit of the abbey by handing him a staff, John and his brother Herbert first held the staff in their own hands and then gave a tithe to the abbey by handing the same staff back to the abbot, with many men of good judgment present to witness the ceremony.

It was also customary for donors of land to monasteries to make their gifts ceremonially by placing a knife, a charter, a book, or a glove on the patron saint’s altar. Here, at the right of the lower register of the illustration from the late twelfth-century cartulary of Mont-Saint-Michel (Fig. 58), a king gives land to the abbey by placing a glove on the altar of St-Michel, while witnesses stand behind him. Above, the king, now clad in the garb of a penitent, requests the society and benefit of the abbey, which, the image shows, he will receive from the saint through the abbot’s mediation. In Figure 59, which shows an image accompanying a charter, King Edgar is about to hand to Christ a book symbolizing the gift of land that the king made to the New Minster at Winchester in 966.