1066 - Andrew Bridgeford [70]
Since the 1950s, Wormald's pioneering observations have been built on by other art historians.11 Once again, those who have assumed that nothing new awaits to be discovered about the Bayeux Tapestry have been proved to be very wrong; much of the most exciting and intriguing art historical work was done in the 1990s, and it is entirely possible that more remains to be discovered. The artist of the tapestry seems to have made much use of the Old English Illustrated Hexateuch (a copy of the first six books of the Bible produced at St Augustine's Abbey in the mid-eleventh century). He also drew from a collection of texts known as the Canterbury Miscellany and a sixth-century work known as The St Augustine's Gospels.In the eleventh century The St Augustine's Gospels were kept on the high altar of the abbey church at St Augustine's Abbey. The Gospels are said to have been brought to Canterbury in 597 by St Augustine; they are still used in the ceremony for the enthronement of archbishops of Canterbury. So impressive is the range of parallels that, in the words of one recent historian, 'the art historical evidence for the design and manufacture of the Tapestry at St Augustine's Abbey, Canterbury is now so extensive and formidable that it should be taken as an established fact'.12
These parallels are drawn with artwork produced at male monasteries and the master artist of the tapestry was probably (as has often been assumed) a man, although it is also likely that the embroiderers were women. The tapestry's unity of style suggests that there was a single master designer, though he may have worked with one or more assistant. The designer could have been a monk at St Augustine's or a layman with a close connection with the abbey. Not all those who lived and worked in monastic communities had taken the vows of monks or were fully accepted as monks. The artist may have transferred his parchment designs on to the linen surface with a charcoal marker, although no trace of the outline has been found. Embroiderers would have then set to work with needle and thread. How long it took can only be guessed. The fact that it took two years for the Leek embroiderers to complete their nineteenth-century facsimile is of little help, for it is not known how many embroiderers were employed to stitch the original. Intriguingly there was a small nunnery in Canterbury on part of the estate owned by St Augustine's Abbey, though no positive evidence has been found indicating that this is where the tapestry was made. The linen could, of course, have been taken anywhere for this purpose. The surviving tapestry has been found to consist of eight joined-together sections; it is thus conceivable that a number of different workshops were engaged on the task.
In sum, it now seems well established that the artist of the Bayeux Tapestry was someone with a very close connection with St Augustine's Abbey in Canterbury and that the tapestry was made by English embroiderers, probably at or near Canterbury. This is entirely consistent with our analysis of the tapestry's story. Covertly the work tells the same story about Harold as the one later told, around forty or fifty years afterwards, by Eadmer, a monk of the other great Canterbury monastery, Christ Church. It does not seem unreasonable to conclude that this was a story known to and preserved