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ABSTRACT
This article revives the suggestion, previously made by Otto Werckmeister and Shirley Ann Brown, that the Bayeux Tapestry was intended to act as part of a petition to free Bishop Odo of Bayeux from imprisonment at the hands of his half-brother, William the Conqueror, and that it was commissioned by the three knights named in it, Turold, Wadard and Vitalis, perhaps with the support of Abbot Scolland of St Augustine’s abbey, Canterbury. It argues that the role played by these three knights has been too quickly dismissed, and in so doing asks wider questions including about how political petitions were made and whether any attempt to deny Harold Godwinson a royal title and a reign had been successfully communicated to the population at large.
Acknowledgement
I would like to thank Prof. Leonie Hicks, as well as the two anonymous referees, for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 The most detailed accounts are: Orderic Vitalis, Historia Ecclesiastica, ed. and trans. Marjorie Chibnall. 6 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969–1980), 3: 38–44; William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum: The History of the English Kings, eds. and trans. R. A. B. Mynors, R. M. Thomson, and Michael Winterbottom, vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 506.
2 Mark Hagger, Norman Rule in Normandy, 911–1144 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2017), 9–18.
3 Hagger, Norman Rule, 19–22.
4 The dating of the Carmen is somewhat uncertain. Frank Barlow suggested that it was written after the fall from favour of Eustace of Boulogne in 1067 and his restoration if not exactly to favour then at least to his English estates, which took place at an unknown date before William of Poitiers wrote his Gesta Guillelmi. See Frank Barlow, ‘The Carmen de Hastingae Proelio’, in Studies in International History Presented to W. Norton Medlicott, eds. K. Bourne and D. C. Watt (London, 1967): 35–67, reprinted in Frank Barlow, The Norman Conquest and Beyond (London: Hambledon, 1983): 189–222 (200); The ‘Carmen de Hastingae proelio’ of Guy Bishop of Amiens, ed. and trans. Frank Barlow (Oxford: Clarendon Press,1999), xli; Otto K. Werckmeister, ‘The Political Ideology of the Bayeux Tapestry’, Studi Medievali, third series 17 (1976): 535–95 (585–6) and notes.
5 It is unlikely that the knights would have had sufficient familiarity with much of the art that might have influenced the design themselves, although they might have been better acquainted with the chansons. The suggestion that the Tapestry’s narrative borrowed from chansons was suggested by, for example, Charles R. Dodwell, ‘The Bayeux Tapestry and the French Secular Epic’, The Burlington Magazine, 108 (1966): 549–60. The influence of imperial Rome, in particular Trajan’s Column, was suggested by Werckmeister, ‘The Political Ideology of the Bayeux Tapestry’, 535–48 and has been supported by, for example, Gale Owen-Crocker, ‘Stylistic Variation and Roman Influence in the Bayeux Tapestry’, Peregrinations: Journal of Medieval Art and Architecture, 2 (2009): 51–96, reprinted in Gale Owen-Crocker, The Bayeux Tapestry: Collected Papers, Variorum Collected Studies Series (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2012): V. 1–35 and Howard B. Clarke, ‘The Identity of the Designer of the Bayeux Tapestry’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 35 (2013): 119–39 (132–3). The use of Roman imagery in an embroidery intended for the king would reflect the use of such imagery in, for example, William of Poitiers’s Gesta Guillelmi and the poem Plus tibi fama, written as early as 1070. Similarly, Bishop Hugh-Renard of Langres (1056–84) predicted that King William would become an emperor, while Baudri of Bourgeuil stated that he had indeed risen from consul to become a caesar (see Elisabeth M. C. van Houts, ‘Latin Poetry and the Norman Court 1066–135: The ‘Carmen de Hastingae Proelio’, Journal of Medieval History, 15 (1989): 39–62 (42); idem. ‘Rouen as Another Rome in the Twelfth Century’, in Society and Culture in Medieval Rouen, 911–1300, eds. Leonie V. Hicks and Elma Brenner, Studies in the Early Middle Ages (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013): 101–24 (105–6)); Werckmeister, ‘The Political Ideology of the Bayeux Tapestry’, 562.
6 Visual imagery was deemed helpful for the education of a secular audience by numerous churchmen, hence the abundance of sculpture, whether on tympana or capitals or made into friezes, and stained-glass windows in contemporary and later churches. There was also the occasional illustrated chronicle: a copy of Dudo of Saint-Quentin’s De moribus with gaps for illustrations survives as Rouen, Bibliothèque Municipal, MS 1173/Y11; see Leah Shopkow, History and Community: Norman Historical Writing in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1997), 220–1; Benjamin Pohl, Dudo of Saint-Quentin’s ‘Historia Normannorum’: Tradition, Innovation and Memory (York: York University Press, 2015), 32–3, 173–97). There was also an illustrated copy of Otto of Freising’s Chronica (Pohl, Dudo, 29). Illustrations continued to be used to aid understanding even as literacy improved, as in the fourteenth-century Holkham Bible Picture Book; see The Holkham Bible: A Facsimile, commentary by Michelle P. Brown (London: British Library, 2007).
7 The influence of illuminations in manuscripts from St Augustine’s Canterbury on the designer of the Tapestry was first suggested by Francis Wormald, ‘Style and Design’, in The Bayeux Tapestry, ed. Frank M. Stenton (London: Phaidon Press, 1957): 24–36. The argument has been widely accepted and is discussed and developed by, for example, Nicholas P. Brooks and H. E. Walker, ‘The Authority and Interpretation of the Bayeux Tapestry’, Proceedings of the Battle Conference on Anglo-Norman Studies I. 1978 (1979): 1–34 (10–18); Cyril Hart, ‘The Bayeux Tapestry and the Schools of Illumination at Canterbury’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 22 (2000): 117–67; Richard Gameson, ‘The Origin, Art, and Message of the Bayeux Tapestry’ in The Study of the Bayeux Tapestry, ed. Richard Gameson (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1997): 157–211 (162–4); Gale Owen-Crocker, ‘Reading the Bayeux Tapestry through Canterbury Eyes’, in Anglo-Saxons. Studies Presented to Cyril Roy Hart, eds. Simon Keynes and Alfred P. Smyth (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2006): 243–65; Elizabeth C. Pastan and Stephen D. White, The Bayeux Tapestry and its Contexts: A Reassessment (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2014), 2, 65–7. While some of the models suggested are not always convincing as prototypes (as with the lunching scene), nonetheless overall the argument seems sound. This work, as well as that concerning the English influences in the Latin inscription (see for example, Brooks and Walker, ‘Authority and Interpretation’, 10; Gameson, ‘Origin, Art, and Message’, 164–5 and notes), necessarily acts to undermine the arguments proposed for manufacture in France (Bayeux and Saint-Florent of Saumur): see Wolfgang Grape, The Bayeux Tapestry (Munich, London, and New York: Prestel, 1994), 44–54; George Beech, Was the Bayeux Tapestry Made in France: The Case for St Florent of Saumur (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005); Xavier Barral i Altet, En souvenir du roi Guillaume: La broderie de Bayeux (Paris: Les Editions du Cerf, 2016), particularly 362–76, 385–97.
8 The abbess of Montvilliers presented William the Bastard with a chalice when petitioning for a gift to add to the nuns’ victuals (Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum: The Acta of William I (1066–1087), ed. David Bates (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), no. 212, at p. 659. Orderic Vitalis noted the giving of gifts by those petitioning for the release of Count William of Mortain, Robert of Etoutteville and others captured at the battle of Tinchebray (Orderic, Historia, 6: 94). Geoffrey Koziol, Begging Pardon and Favor: Ritual and Political Order in Early Medieval France (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992): 297–8 notes that contemporaries ‘gave gifts endlessly: to celebrate marriages and seal alliances, to support entreaties for aid, to reward faithful service, and to show that one served faithfully’.
9 Shirley A. Brown and Michael W. Herren, ‘The Adelae Comitissae of Baudri of Bourgeuil and the Bayeux Tapestry’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 16 (1994): 55–73 (70); Shirley A. Brown, ‘The Bayeux Tapestry, A Critical Analysis of Publications’, in The Bayeux Tapestry: Embroidering the Facts of History, eds. Pierre Bouet, Brian Levy, and François Neveux (Caen: Presses Universitaires de Caen, 2004): 27–47(29); Pastan and White, Bayeux Tapestry, 30 and n. 118.
10 Shirley A. Brown, ‘The Bayeux Tapestry: Why Eustace, Odo, and William?’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 12 (1990): 7–28.
11 Werckmeister, ‘The Political Ideology of the Bayeux Tapestry’, 586–7; Brown, ‘Eustace, Odo, and William’, 26–7.
12 Brooks and Walker, ‘Authority and Interpretation’, 18
13 H. E. J. Cowdrey, ‘Towards an Interpretation of the Bayeux Tapestry’, Anglo-Norman Studies 10 (1988): 49–65 (53).
14 Gameson, ‘Origin, Art, and Message’, 161, n. 13.
15 Pastan and White, The Bayeux Tapestry, 87–104. The argument presented there does not account for Turold, however, who is dismissed as unidentifiable.
16 Bayeux Tapestry, Scenes 44, 54. The word ‘pueros’ in the latter scene is a reconstruction, although that does not affect the argument here. The Tapestry is available in a number of reproductions, among the most accessible of which is the electronic version available at <https://www.bayeuxmuseum.com/en/the-bayeux-tapestry/discover-the-bayeux-tapestry/explore-online/ >. Odo’s appearances in the Tapestry are well-known, and have been noted by, inter alia, Brown, ‘Eustace, Odo, and William’, 20–1; Cowdrey, ‘Towards an Interpretation’, 50–1; Gameson, ‘Origin, Art, and Message’, 176–7; François Neveux, ‘The Bayeux Tapestry as Original Source’, in Embroidering the Facts of History, 171–95 (179–89).
17 Bayeux Tapestry, Scenes 35, 22. The location of the oath scene in the Tapestry has been disputed. Cowdrey in particular suggested that there is not enough in the Tapestry explicitly to link the oath with Bayeux or with Odo (Cowdrey, ‘Towards an Interpretation’, 50, n. 4; see also Pastan and White, Bayeux Tapestry, 86, 107–21 for a further discussion of the issue). Others have concluded, in my view correctly, that the Tapestry does indeed show the oath being sworn at Bayeux (for example, Gameson, ‘Origin, Art, and Message’, 181, n. 122).
18 Bayeux Tapestry, Scene 16; Gale Owen-Crocker, ‘Brothers, Rivals and the Geometry of the Bayeux Tapestry’, in King Harold II and the Bayeux Tapestry, ed. Gale Owen-Crocker (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2005): 109–23 (113).
19 See, for example, the relatively recent discussions in: Brooks and Walker, ‘Authority and Interpretation’, 7–8; Brown, ‘Eustace, Odo, and William’, 20-2; Grape, The Bayeux Tapestry, 54; Gameson, ‘Origin, Art, and Message’, 178–80; François Neveux, ‘The Great Bayeux Tapestry Debate (19th–20th Centuries)’ and ‘The Bayeux Tapestry as Original Source’, in Embroidering the Facts of History, 17–25 (17–21) and 182–6 respectively; Brown, ‘A Critical Analysis of Publications 1988–1999’, 33–4; Owen-Crocker, ‘Brothers, Rivals’, 109–11; Pastan and White, Bayeux Tapestry, 64–72, 84–94, 247–48, 252–3; Christopher Norton, ‘The Helmet and the Crown: The Bayeux Tapestry, Bishop Odo and William the Conqueror’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 43 (2021): 123–49 (123, 137). Other suggestions have included Queen Edith (Carola Hicks, ‘The Patronage of Queen Edith’, in The Bayeux Tapestry: New Approaches; Proceedings of a Conference at the British Museum 16–17 July 2008, eds. Michael J. Lewis, Gale R. Owen-Crocker and Dan P. Terkla [Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2011]: 5–9); Count Eustace II of Boulogne (Andrew Bridgeford, ‘Was Count Eustace II of Boulogne the Patron of the Bayeux Tapestry?’ Journal of Medieval History, 25 [1999]: 155–85); Count Robert of Mortain (David S. Spear, ‘Robert of Mortain and the Bayeux Tapestry’, in The Bayeux Tapestry: New Approaches, 75–80); Abbot Scolland of St Augustine’s Canterbury (Pastan and White, Bayeux Tapestry, 67–70); and King William himself (Norton, ‘The Helmet and the Crown’, 147–9).
20 Turold has been identified as Ralph’s father by, for example, H. Tsurushima, ‘Hic est miles: Some Images of Three Knights: Turold, Wadard and Vital’, in The Bayeux Tapestry: New Approaches, 81–91 (83–5). Hugh Thomas was content to accept that identification: Hugh M. Thomas, ‘Turold, Wadard and Vitalis: Why are They on the Bayeux Tapestry?’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 38 (2016): 181–97 (182).
21 Bayeux Tapestry, Scene 10.
22 Bayeux Tapestry, Scene 41.
23 Bayeux Tapestry, Scene 49.
24 The idea that they were there because of an association with Odo goes back to 1821: T. Amyot, ‘A Defence of the Early Antiquity of the Bayeux Tapestry’, Archaeologia, 19 (1821): 192–208, noted in Pastan and White, Bayeux Tapestry, 83.
25 Tsurushima, ‘Hic est miles’, 83, 84, 86, 87–8.
26 Hicks, ‘The Patronage of Queen Edith’, 6.
27 Barral i Altet, En souvenir du roi Guillaume, 391–7.
28 Tsurushima, ‘Hic est miles’, 90.
29 T. A. Heslop, ‘Regarding the Spectators of the Bayeux Tapestry: Bishop Odo and his Circle’, Art History, 32 (2009): 223–49 (229–32), noted and discussed in Pastan and White, Bayeux Tapestry, 93–4. While Arnulf of Hesdin was remembered for being marvelously skilled at farming, amongst other things, by William of Malmesbury, he did not appear in Malmesbury’s pages because of that agricultural acumen alone, but rather because he was the subject of one of St Aldhelm’s miraculous cures (William of Malmesbury, Gesta Pontificum Anglorum, ed. and trans. Michael Winterbottom, vol. 1 [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007], 654).
30 In contrast, Hugh Thomas has argued that Vitalis’s ‘modestly important’ role before the battle of Hastings gave Odo sufficient reason to name him in the Tapestry but not his other more significant (in terms of landholding) tenants (Thomas, ‘Turold, Wadard and Vitalis’, 187–8).
31 J. J. N. Palmer, ‘The Wealth of the Secular Aristocracy in 1086’, Anglo-Norman Studies 22 (2000): 279–91 (285, n. 42).
32 Thomas, ‘Turold, Wadard and Vitalis’, 181, 187–95. Pastan and White made a similar argument for the appearance of Wadard and Vitalis, but in their case with reference to their standing with the abbot of St Augustine’s Canterbury (Pastan and White, Bayeux Tapestry, 87, 95–101).
33 Ælfgyva is depicted at Scene 15 of the Tapestry. She is similarly described as ‘mysterious’ by Brooks and Walker, ‘Authority and Interpretation’, 8 and as one of the ‘classic mysteries’ of the Tapestry by Clarke, ‘The Identity of the Designer of the Bayeux Tapestry’, 121. See also, for example, Edward A. Freeman, The History of the Norman Conquest of England, 6 vols (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1867–79), 3: 696–9; J. Bard McNulty, ‘The Lady Aelfgyva in the Bayeux Tapestry’, Speculum 55 (1980): 659–68; Eric F. Freeman, ‘The Identity of Aelfgyva in the Bayeux Tapestry’, Annales de Normandie 41–2 (1991): 117–34.
34 Brooks and Walker, ‘Authority and Interpretation’ 18. Pastan and White rejected Werckmester’s ‘wildly speculative theory’, apparently on the basis that Werckmeister failed to provide any justification for his suggestions (Pastan and White, Bayeux Tapestry, 93). Hugh Thomas noted Werckmeister’s thesis, but not why he rejected it (Thomas, ‘Turold, Wadard, and Vitalis’, 187 n. 21).
35 Palmer, ‘The Wealth of the Secular Aristocracy’, 281, 284, 290; H. Tsurushima, ‘Hic est miles’, 85–7; noted in Thomas, ‘Turold, Wadard and Vitalis’, 184.
36 Tsurushima, ‘Hic est miles’, 83–4; Thomas, ‘Turold, Wadard and Vitalis’, 184–7.
37 Regesta, ed. Bates, no. 27; Henri Navel, ‘L’enquête de 1133 sur les fiefs de l’evêché de Bayeux’, Bulletin de la Société des Antiquaires de Normandie, 42 (1934): 5–80 (20).
38 See Tsurushima, ‘Hic est miles’, 87–8, including here a quotation from Goscelin of Saint-Bertin’s Miracles of St Augustine which remarks on Vitalis’s involvement in the trade in Caen stone: Pastan and White, Bayeux Tapestry, 95–6; Thomas, ‘Turold, Wadard and Vitalis’, 187.
39 Christine Senecal, ‘Keeping Up with the Godwinesons: In Pursuit of Aristocratic Status in Late Anglo-Saxon England’, Anglo-Norman Studies 23 (2001): 251–66 (265). She goes on to note that even thegns who held land valued at £40 were able to commission the highest quality objects. Robin Fleming concurred: ‘Thegns who held estates valued on the order of £40 per annum would have had total incomes, when measured in silver, of 28.5 pounds weight a year; and if they were able to realise a tenth of this in cash, they would have had fortunes’ (Robin Fleming, ‘The New Wealth, the New Rich and the New Political Style in Late Anglo-Saxon England’, Anglo-Norman Studies 23 [2001]: 1–22 [17]).
40 Dialogus de Scaccario: The Dialogue of the Exchequer; Constitutio Domus Regis: The Disposition of the King’s Household, eds. and trans. Emily Amt and Stephen D. Church (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007), 212.
41 Domesday Book notes that there were four nuns who held four acres of land in alms from the abbot of St Augustine’s next to Canterbury (Great Domesday Book, fo. 12r; Domesday Book: Text and Translation, ed. John Morris, 38 vols [Chichester: Philimore, 1975–86], 1: Kent, § 7.11).
42 Isabelle Bédat and Béatrice Girault-Kurtzeman, ‘The Technical Study of the Bayeux Embroidery’, in Embroidering the Facts of History: 83–109 (91).
43 The Great Roll of the Pipe for the Twentieth Year of the Reign of King Henry the Second, AD 1173–74, The Publications of the Pipe Roll Society, 21 (1896), 8. The linen of the Tapestry was almost certainly much finer and thus more expensive than everyday cloth would have been, but there was also much less of it.
44 Gameson, ‘Origin, Art and Message’, 172; Clarke, ‘The Identity of the Designer of the Bayeux Tapestry’, 127–33; Pastan and White, Bayeux Tapestry, 116–124.
45 See, for example, Regesta, ed. Bates, nos. 84, 85, 87; Brooks and Waller, ‘Authority and Interpretation’, 17; E. Cownie, Religious Patronage in Anglo-Norman England, 1066–1135, Royal Historical Society Studies in History (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1998), 102, quoted in Pastan and White, Bayeux Tapestry, 100.
46 Clarke, ‘The Identity of the Designer of the Bayeux Tapestry’, 127–30.
47 Jordan Fantosme’s Chronicle, ed. and trans. R. C. Johnson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981). That the poem was written with the intention of reconciling Henry II and his supporters with the rebels was proposed by Matthew Strickland, ‘Arms and the Men: War, Loyalty, and Lordship in Jordan Fantosme’s Chronicle’, in Medieval Knighthood, IV. Papers from the Fifth Strawberry Hill Conference, eds. Christopher Harper-Bill and Ruth Harvey (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1992): 187–210 and is also discussed in Laura Ashe, Fiction and History in England, 1066–1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 82–4.
48 Recueil des actes des ducs de Normandie de 911 à 1066, ed. Marie Fauroux, Mémoires de la Société des Antiquaires de Normandie 36 (1961), no. 146.
49 Regesta, ed. Bates, no. 200.
50 Thomas, ‘Turold, Wadard and Vitalis’, 184.
51 Cowdrey, ‘Towards an Interpretation’, 53.
52 For example, Brooks and Walker, ‘Authority and Interpretation’, 10.
53 Hagger, Norman Rule, 9–18.
54 E. M. C. van Houts, ‘The Ship-List of William the Conqueror’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 10 (1988): 159–83.
55 For the Carmen see above, n. {4}.
56 William of Poitiers, Gesta Guillelmi, eds. and trans. Ralph H. C. Davis and Marjorie Chibnall (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 100–2, 132–4, 148, 164.
57 Poitiers, Gesta, 164.
58 Poitiers, Gesta, 166.
59 Orderic, Historia, 3: 42; Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, 1: 506.
60 Saints might be rebuked and their relics humiliated by being placed on the ground or covered in thorns if they failed to satisfy those in search of a cure or protect their communities. See Robert J. Bartlett, Why Can the Dead Do Such Great Things? Saints and Worshippers from the Martyrs to the Reformation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013), 109–12.
61 Levi Roach, Æthelred II the Unready (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016), 136–52.
62 Recueil des actes de ducs de Normandie, ed. Fauroux, nos. 70, 74; Hagger, Norman Rule, 408–9.
63 Fantosme, Chronicle, 1–2 (ll. 17–19).
64 Orderic, Historia, 3: 132.
65 Ashe, Fiction and History, 45.
66 Poitiers, Gesta, 20, 114, 118, 120. The omission is noted in Pastan and White, Bayeux Tapestry, 214–18.
67 The deathbed scene is open to different interpretations. It might depict Edward’s deathbed bequest of the kingdom to Harold, but it might also reflect the scene in the Life of King Edward whereby Queen Edith and the kingdom were placed under Harold’s protection (The Life of King Edward Who Rests at Westminster, ed. and trans. Frank Barlow, second edition [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992], 122–4; and see the discussions in, for example: Brooks and Walker, ‘Authority and Interpretation’, 10; Pastan and White, Bayeux Tapestry 42, 218–23; Ashe, Fiction and History, 44–5; George Garnett, Conquered England: Kingship, Succession and Tenure 1066–1166 [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007], 9, 171).
68 For discussion, and some alternative views, on the apparently favourable treatment of Harold see, for example, Frank Stenton, ‘The Historical Background’, in The Bayeux Tapestry, ed. Stenton, 9–24 (15); Dodwell, ‘The Bayeux Tapestry and the French Secular Epic’, 50–7; Pierre Bouet, ‘Is the Bayeux Tapestry Pro-English?’, in Embroidering the Facts of History: 197–215; Thomas, ‘Turold, Wadard and Vitalis’, 195–6.
69 This is effectively the interpretation set out in Dodwell, ‘The Bayeux Tapestry and the French Secular Epic’, 554. It might also be conjectured that the Tapestry was here responding to a complaint that Duke William should not have allowed the duplicitous Harold to leave his court – rather like the later criticisms of Louis VII’s decision to allow Eleanor of Aquitaine to return to her estates in 1152. That might also explain why the Tapestry perhaps portrays Harold’s departure after the oath as swift and stealthy.
70 Poitiers, Gesta, 100.
71 On this subject see also Ann Williams, ‘The Art of Memory: The Posthumous Reputation of King Harold II Godwineson’, Anglo-Norman Studies 42 (2020): 29–43 (29–36).
72 William of Jumièges, Orderic Vitalis and Robert of Torigni, The ‘Gesta Normannorum Ducum ‘of William of Jumièges, Orderic Vitalis and Robert of Torigni, ed. and trans. E. M. C. van Houts, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992–95), 2: 168, 180.
73 Carmen, ed. and trans. Barlow, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 32.
74 Poitiers, Gesta, 100 and 120, respectively, and see also p. 140. The English envoy himself speaks explicitly of King Harold: Poitiers, Gesta, 118. See also Bouet, ‘Is the Bayeux Tapestry Pro-English?’, 209–10.
75 Orderic, Historia, 6: 94.
76 Regesta, ed. Bates, nos. 223, 286.
77 Including Regesta, ed. Bates, nos. 300 (1066×1075), 317 (1066×1086).
78 Great Domesday Book, fo. 38r; Hampshire, §1.12, 13; Garnett, Conquered England, 9–33; David Bates, William the Conqueror (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016), 469.
79 Anselm of Canterbury, The Letters of St Anselm of Canterbury, trans. Walter Frölich, 3 vols, Cistercian Studies Series, 96, 97, 142 (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1990–94), nos. 401, 402, 404, 424, 462.
80 As with, for example, John of Worcester, the author of the Waltham Chronicle, and the monk of St Augustine’s Canterbury who added a notice of King Harold’s death to a martyrology. On this subject see most conveniently, Williams, ‘The Art of Memory’, 29–43, particularly pp. 38–41 and notes, and also Elisabeth M. C. van Houts, ‘The Conquest through European eyes’, English Historical Review 110 (1995): 832–53.
81 Carola Hicks opined that the Tapestry was intended for William, albeit made shortly after the Conquest rather than in the 1080s as suggested here (Hicks, ‘The Patronage of Queen Edith’, 6).
82 Bayeux Tapestry, Scene 43.
83 ‘Prandium ab apparatu edendi dictum. Proprie autem veteres prandium vocabant omnium militum cibum ante pugnam; unde est illud ducis adloquium: “Prandeamus tamquam ad inferos cenaturi”’: Isidore of Seville, Etymologies, 20:2, ed. W. M. Lindsay (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911); trans. Stephen A. Barney, W. J. Lewis, J. A. Beach and Oliver Berghof (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 395–6. Sse also Mark Hagger, ‘Lordship and Lunching: Interpretations of Eating and Food in the Anglo-Norman World, 1050–1200, with Reference to the Bayeux Tapestry’, in The English and their Legacy 900–1200: Essays in Honour of Ann Williams, ed. David Roffe (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2012): 229–44.
84 Laura H. Loomis, ‘The Table of the Last Supper in Religious and Secular Iconography’, Art Studies (American Journal of Archaeology) 5 (1927): 70–88; Brooks and Walker, ‘Authority and Interpretation’, 15; Martha Rampton, ‘The Significance of the Banquet Scene in the Bayeux Tapestry’, Medievalia et Humanistica, new series 21 (1994): 33–53.
85 Daniel, 5:5, 5:7.
86 Daniel, 5: 18–21, 22–28.
87 Thomas, ‘Turold, Wadard and Vitalis’, 193 and n. 52.
88 Odo was, of course, also styled bishop in royal acts and other documents before his fall from favour. The use of the style does not, therefore, help to date the Tapestry. But nor does it impact the argument presented here, which attempts to demonstrate how the word might have been used to make a petition in Odo’s favour after his arrest.
89 Orderic, Historia, 4: 42. Malmesbury says much the same: ‘having explained that his fetters were not for the bishop of Bayeux but the earl of Kent’ (Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, 506).
90 The Register of Pope Gregory VII 1073–1085: An English Translation, ed. and trans. H. E. J. Cowdrey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 441–2 at 442 (no. 9.37).
91 Bayeux Tapestry, Scene 44. Spear has suggested that Count Robert also appears with his brothers when the command is given to build ships (Scene 35) and among the knights of the Breton campaign (Scenes 16–20), and that he is the figure who oversees the construction of the castle at Hastings (Scene 45). In addition, Spear conjectured that his name originally appeared where later repairs have intruded the name ‘Eustatius’ (Scene 55 and see below): Spear, ‘Robert of Mortain and the Bayeux Tapestry’, 76–8. While these identifications necessarily remain tenuous, the multiplication of Robert’s appearances does no damage to the suggestion made here.
92 Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, 506; Poitiers, Gesta, 100; Jumièges, Gesta Normannorum Ducum, 2: 186; Spear, ‘Robert of Mortain and the Bayeux Tapestry’, 78–9.
93 Orderic, Historia, 4: 98.
94 Bayeux Tapestry, Scene 45. That the figure should be identified as Count Robert is suggested by Spear, ‘Robert of Mortain and the Bayeux Tapestry’, 77, following Lucien Musset (Lucien Musset, The Bayeux Tapestry, trans. R. Rex [Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2005], 214) and Frank Barlow, Carmen, lxv.
95 Orderic, Historia, 2: 220.
96 Bayeux Tapestry, Scene 55.
97 Spear, ‘Robert of Mortain and the Bayeux Tapestry’, 75.
98 Norton, ‘The Helmet and the Crown’, 139.
99 Jumièges, Gesta Normannorum Ducum, 2: 176. The provenance is discussed by Elisabeth van Houts in her introduction to her edition at 1: c.
100 Brown, ‘Eustace, Odo, and William’, 25–6.
101 Suzanne Lewis has noted how the Tapestry as a whole is made up of such ‘relays of smaller units’: Suzanne Lewis, The Rhetoric of Power in the Bayeux Tapestry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 74, quoted in Brian J. Levy, ‘Trifunctionality and Epic Patterning in that Bayeux Tapestry’, in Embroidering the Facts of History, 327–45 (328).
102 The issue is raised by Brown, ‘Eustace, Odo, and William’, 18.
103 See the detailed discussion in Pastan and White, Bayeux Tapestry, 154–82 (Ch. 7).
104 See Pastan and White, Bayeux Tapestry, 169–71 for the possible identifications and outlines.
105 Orderic, Historia, 2: 312.
106 Orderic, Historia, 3: 44.
107 Fulgentius the Mythographer, trans. Leslie G. Whitbread (Columbus OH: Ohio State University Press, 1971), 79–80. Chibnall stated that Orderic’s trite quotation could not be found, but here she was in error (Orderic, Historia, 3: 44 n. 1).
108 Malmesbury, Gesta Pontificum Anglorum, 90.
109 Rouen, Archives Départementales de la Seine-Maritime, G 4480; Calendar of Documents Preserved in France, 918–1206, ed. John H. Round (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1899), no. 1459; Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum 1066–1154: II. Regesta Henrici Primi, 1100–1135, eds. Charles Johnson and H. A. Cronne (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956), 363 (no. ccxiii).
110 Jumièges, Gesta Normannorum Ducum, 2: 58.
111 Given that the Tapestry was hung in the nave of Bayeux cathedral for only a few days every year from at least the fifteenth century, it is unlikely that the process of erecting it was particularly difficult or time consuming.
112 Dudo of Saint-Quentin, De moribus et actis primorum Normanniae ducum, ed. Jules Lair, Mémoires de la Société des Antiquaires de Normandie, 23 (1865), 230; Dudo of Saint-Quentin, History of the Normans: Translation with Introduction and Notes, trans. Eric Christiansen (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1998), 105.
113 English Historical Documents II, 1042–1189, eds. and trans. David C. Douglas and George W. Greenaway (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1953), 606–7 (no. 81)
114 The Lives of Thomas Becket, trans. Michael Staunton, Manchester Medieval Sources Series (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001), 218–19.
115 The Register of Pope Gregory VII 1073–1085, trans. Cowdrey, 221–2 (no. 4.12).
116 Orderic, Historia, 4: 98.
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Mark Hagger
Mark Hagger is a reader in medieval history at Bangor University. His work focuses on Norman and Anglo-Norman government and administration, charters, and narratives. He is the author of William: King and Conqueror (London: I.B. Tauris, 2012) and Norman Rule in Normandy, 911−1144 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2017).