1066 - Andrew Bridgeford [128]
The last point is a telling one. Bayeux is shown on the embroidery but it is symbolised by a castle. Nowhere is the cathedral in sight. Bayeux cathedral could easily have been illustrated: William's army passes through Bayeux on its way back from the Breton campaign, and a passing glance at the cathedral could have been made, just as a glance is made in an earlier scene towards Mont-Saint-Michel. It seems that the artist simply did not conceive of Bayeux as a place with a cathedral. For this reason alone the idea that the tapestry was specifically made to be hung around the nave of Bayeux Cathedral on the occasion of its completion and rededication on 14 July 1077 is highly implausible. A great new church is shown in the tapestry in the course of completion; it is the largest building depicted in the whole of the work; and the hand of God even descends from the heavens in order to bless the new building. But this is not Bayeux Cathedral. It is Edward the Confessor's magnificent church at Westminster Abbey. The only other church depicted is the English church at Bosham. If the Bayeux Tapestry was conceived and made to celebrate the completion of Bayeux Cathedral, it does so in a remarkably strange way. It is true that at the top of one of the pillars in the nave of the cathedral is a little stone rendering of Harold's oath scene. This, perhaps, confuses the issue in the minds of some visitors; but the little frieze in the cathedral is a nineteenth-century addition and it is of no relevance to medieval history.2 It is not even certain that the tapestry shows the oath scene as taking place at Bayeux, let alone that the relics over which Harold swore were those of Bayeux Cathedral. The most that can be deduced from what we see in the tapestry is that the oath (so far as the tapestry's story goes) took place on open ground either at or near Bayeux.
It is much more likely that the tapestry was made to be hung around the walls of a large baronial hall, where it would have provided the backdrop to feasting, drinking and the telling of epic tales. Odo could well have possessed such a hall; perhaps he had more than one at his various abodes in Normandy and England. In this setting one can even imagine a jongleur (a visiting Turold?) singing the tale of 1066 to a large assembled company of knights and barons, while the story itself lay illustrated for all to see along the interior walls. It seems plausible to suggest that the tapestry (whether it was the gift of others or a commission for himself) was made while Odo was still in power, before his disgrace and imprisonment in 1082. So much is generally agreed by specialists; but beyond that the tapestry is difficult to date. William's army suffered a humiliating defeat at Dol in Brittany during the autumn of 1076. The tapestry shows a Norman success at Dol in alliance with Harold in 1064 or 1065. The depiction of this victory would have been less appropriate in the eyes of the Normans after their defeat at Dol in 1076. On the basis of this one can tentatively propose that the Bayeux Tapestry was made to be hung in a baronial hall at some time before the autumn of 1076. How, then, did it come into the possession of Bayeux Cathedral? And how did it survive for so long through the obscure Middle Ages before resurfacing in the written records of the cathedral in 1476? There is no certain answer to these questions. The following, though based on evidence, is a speculative reconstruction of what might have happened.
In November 1095 Bishop Odo of Bayeux journeyed to the centre of France in order to attend the Council of Clermont, the great gathering of the Church at which Pope Urban II pronounced the First Crusade. Perhaps the Bayeux Tapestry had not really been to Odo's taste; he might well have suspected it of