1066 - Andrew Bridgeford [108]
Most problematic of all, however, is the allusion to scandal. For it is very hard not to regard the Ælfgyva scene, with its teasingly incomplete inscription, as relating in some way to a sexual scandal. The naked figure in the lower border, gesturing up Ælfgyva's skirt, explicitly seems to mimic the action of the priest; and there is another partially clothed figure, a workman wielding a tool, in the immediately preceding lower compartment. This is not, it has to be said, the way one would naturally expect a royal princess, one still living and unmarried, and a half-niece of Bishop Odo, to be portrayed in the embroidery. Even if, as some would implausibly argue, the figure in the lower border is purely 'decorative', and nothing to do with the scene above, to juxtapose such lewd imagery with a portrait of the king's daughter would have been unbelievably negligent on the part of the designer. The contrasting buildings in which Ælfgyva stands and from which the priest strides are open to similar sexual innuendo.
A not dissimilar explanation of the Ælfgyva scene is that the eponymous lady is the sister of Harold whom Eadmer tells us (without giving her a name) was to be engaged to one of William's nobles.6 This was part of the agreement Harold was constrained to enter into in order to secure his release from Normandy. Harold may have had a sister named Ælfgyfu; she is mentioned in the Domesday Book.7 This Ælfgyfu's existence is otherwise unattested, and it is possible that the Domesday entry is a scribal error, but assuming she did indeed exist, she may be the sister of Harold whom Eadmer referred to and we have the beginnings, at least, of a more promising explanation. Given the tapestry's close association with Eadmer's account of Harold's visit to Normandy it cannot be without interest that the story of the betrothal of Harold's sister should also come from Eadmer. The appearance of Ælfgyva where we see her in the embroidery, just after Harold and William's discussions, is consistent with this explanation, although it is unlikely that she was actually in Normandy at the time. Thus there may just be an allusion in this scene to Harold's promise to wed his sister to a Norman noble; but even if true it cannot be the entire explanation. We have noted on many occasions the artist's ingenuity at teasing his audience with multiple meanings. Invariably, however, he has one underlying meaning which he wishes to convey. Failure to realise this has long bedevilled research into the Bayeux Tapestry; historians have too often assumed that there can only be one meaning and have thus been misled on to false trails by one of the more superficial interpretations. What suggests that the Ælfgyva scene has some further, deeper meaning is the sexual innuendo.
The gesture of the priest, using a single open hand, does not obviously amount to the placing or arranging, or even the removing, of a veil. On the contrary, the closest, if somewhat later, parallels in medieval art once again give the scene an erotic import. 'The face-fondling gesture,' writes J. Bard McNulty, 'was for centuries charged with sexual meaning. It continued to be used in the art of later centuries, where it was sometimes combined with gestures even more sexually explicit.'8 The earliest example of such a gesture quoted by scholars is a sculptured scene of Salome dancing before Herod from a twelfth-century capital which originally decorated the church of Saint-Etienne in Toulouse (the capital is now to be found in the Musee des Augustins, Toulouse). Overall, the evidence for the view that the Ælfgyva scene relates to a sexual scandal appears to be pretty compelling.
Were there any important women named Ælfgyva/Ælfgifu who were known, or rumoured, to have had some scandalous involvement with a