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A Scene: Slipping Below the Surface of the Bayeux Tapestry

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Micro Middle Ages

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Abstract

Here the microhistorian examines in minute detail a small border scene from the famous Bayeux Tapestry (BT), one that shows a mysterious daisy chain of creatures. Why that scene? Why there? How does it relate to surrounding depictions or does it? How does it touch on the unfolding story of the BT? How does the BT’s designer make meaning in the embroidery and how do we as observers make it mean? The strange little scene proves in the end to be revealing of the designer’s purpose and thesis. The study also finds that if there is subversion in the BT’s border scenes, as suggested by some scholars, that it is in this case Norman and not Anglo-Saxon in inspiration and that Harold is the main point of reference for the scene of the linked creatures, and that the portrayal of him there is far from complimentary.

Thanks especially to Laura Blaj, whose sharp eye often saw better than mine did. And also to Gale Owen-Crocker, who sat down with me at the Leeds International Medieval Conference in July 2018 and provided me with useful tips on how to proceed with my investigation. Also to Carol Knicely Guilbaut, Cullen Chandler, Heather Dawkins, Herbert Kessler, Anne Latowsky, Andrew McDonald, Angus Somerville, Sam Ottewill-Soulsby, Scott Waugh, and the Comparative Court Cultures group with which I have been privileged to convoke since 1997 for their many and instructive comments. A small portion of this chapter served as the plenary address, “Rectangles of Conversation: The Bayeux Tapestry,” that I delivered at the Canadian Society of Medievalists annual conference as part of the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation Congress (of Learned Societies), University of British Columbia, Vancouver, 3 June 2019.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Bayeux Tapestry scenes are cited with reference first to the standard numbers assigned to the work on the BT itself and then, if different, to the plates in David M. Wilson, The Bayeux Tapestry: The Complete Tapestry in Color with Introduction, Description and Commentary (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985).

  2. 2.

    Herodotus, The Persian Wars, introduced by Francis R. B. Godolphin, trans. George Rawlinson (New York: Modern Library, 1942), p. 343.

  3. 3.

    For the extensive bibliography, see Richard David Wissolik, The Bayeux Tapestry: A Critical, Annotated Bibliography with Cross References and Summary Outlines of Scholarship, 1729–1990, 2nd ed., rev. and expanded (Greensburg, Pennsylvania: Eadmer Press, 1990); Shirley Ann Brown, The Bayeux Tapestry: History and Bibliography (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell & Brewer, 1989); Shirley Ann Brown, “La Broderie de Bayeux: analyse critique d’oeuvre publiées 1988–1999/ The Bayeux Tapestry: A Critical Analysis of Publications 1989–1999,” in The Bayeux Tapestry: Embroidering the Facts of History: Proceedings of the Cerisy Colloquium (1999), (Caen: Presses Universitaires de Caen, 2004), pp. 27–48; John F. Szabo and Nicholas E. Kuefler, The Bayeux Tapestry: A Critically Annotated Bibliography (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015). And see also The Study of the Bayeux Tapestry, ed. Richard Gameson (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 1997).

  4. 4.

    J. Bard McNulty, The Narrative Art of the Bayeux Tapestry Master (New York: AMS Press, 1989), p. 6.

  5. 5.

    See Sarah Laratt Keefer, “Body Language: a Graphic Commentary by the Horses of the Bayeux Tapestry,” in King Harold II and the Bayeux Tapestry, ed. Gale R. Owen-Crocker (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell & Brewer, 2005), pp. 93–108.

  6. 6.

    Perhaps explained by a model in which the rope was bent by a building as Conan descended: see Gale R. Owen-Crocker, “Reading the Bayeux Tapestry through Canterbury Eyes,” in Anglo-Saxons. Studies Presented to Cyril Roy Hart, ed. S. Keynes and A.P. Smyth (Dublin: Four Courts, 2006), p. 246 [243–265] and reprinted as item IV in Gale R. Owen-Crocker, The Bayeux Tapestry: Collected Papers (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate Variorum, 2012).

  7. 7.

    It has been estimated that in 2019 and 2020, the average North American saw between 6000 and 10,000 digital advertisements per day, took around 12 digital photographs, and watched just over five hours of television.

  8. 8.

    Aside from simple convenience, one of my reasons for employing the truncation BT is to avoid repeating the constant error of calling it a tapestry even if that is the modern world’s common and unshakeable convention.

  9. 9.

    The longest other contemporary surviving strip art from the period is no longer than 3 m.

  10. 10.

    On the history of the BT, see Carola Hicks, The Bayeux Tapestry: The Life Story of a Masterpiece (London: Vintage, 2006).

  11. 11.

    Long thought to be eight, but the last section has now been determined to comprise two pieces of linen: see Isabelle Bédat and Béatrice Girault-Kurtzeman, “The Technical Study of the Bayeux Tapestry,” in Pierre Bouet, Brian Levy, and François Neveux, The Bayeux Tapestry: Embroidering the Facts of History, pp. 84–86 [83–109].

  12. 12.

    The colors of the exposed wools have changed over time, for some of the green threads now on the front are blue on the less exposed backside: see Gale R. Owen-Crocker, “Behind the Bayeux Tapestry,” in The Bayeux Tapestry: New Interpretations, ed. M. K. Foys, K.E. Overbey, D. Terkla (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell & Brewer, 2009), p. 123 [119–129] and repr. as item I in Owen-Crocker, The Bayeux Tapestry: Collected Papers.

  13. 13.

    Simone Bertrand, La tapisserie de Bayeux et la manière de vivre au onzième siècle (Saint-Léger-Vauban, Yonne: Zodiaque, 1966), p. 32, who testified what a labor it was to do the counting, which was done twice, each count producing a different result.

  14. 14.

    A sign with such an attribution long stood outside the Museé de la Tapisserie de Bayeux.

  15. 15.

    For still other potential patrons, see Andrew Bridgeford, “Was Count Eustace II of Boulogne the Patron of the Bayeux Tapestry?” Journal of Medieval History 25.3 (1999): 155–185 and Andrew Bridgeford, 1066: The Hidden History of the Bayeux Tapestry (London: The Fourth Estate, 2004) and Xavier Barral i Altet, En souvenire du roi Guillaume: La broderie de Bayeux. Stratégies narratives et vision médiévale du monde (Paris: Cerf, 2016), pp. 399–410, who makes a case for the patronage of Adela of Normandy, daughter of William the Conqueror and Queen Matilda.

  16. 16.

    See Hicks, The Bayeux Tapestry, pp. 29–39.

  17. 17.

    See Margart Wade Labarge, “Stitches in Time: Medieval Embroidery in its Social Setting,” Florilegium 16 (1999): 77–96.

  18. 18.

    Among many contributions to the topic, see Richard D. Wissolik, “The Saxon Statement: Code in the Bayeux Tapestry,” Annuale Medievale 19 (1979): 69–97; David J. Bernstein, The Mystery of the Bayeux Tapestry (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), especially pp. 162–164; Andrew Bridgeford, 1066: The Hidden History in the Bayeux Tapestry; Meredith Clermont-Ferrand, Anglo-Saxon Propaganda in the Bateux Tapestry, Studies in French Civilization, 33 (Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 2004). For a helpful review of the topic, see Stephen D. White, “The Fables in the Borders,” in The Bayeux Tapestry and its Contexts: A Reassessment, ed. Elizabeth Carson Pastan, Stephen D. White, Kate Gilbert (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell & Brewer, 2014), pp. 157–161 [154–182]. Another ‘subversive’ point to ponder, of course, is whether the missing right end and conclusion of the BT might have been a purposive excision, for it does deny William his glorious enthronement and pictorial triumph. Yet medieval manuscripts and cloths were always most susceptible to accidental damage and wear at their openings and closings and much folding up and transport of the BT could naturally, if accidentally, have led to just the damage suffered by the BT at its right end. Why there was no attempt, so far as we know, made to repair the torn section may suggest that it was thought too badly damaged to be recreated and attached.

  19. 19.

    The pre-1082 date, however, rests on the assumption that Odo was the patron or recipient of the BT before his fall. If he was not that patron, then other dates for its composition would be possible. Altet’s argument for Adela, for instance, pushes the possible period of the BT’s creation into the early twelfth century. One does wonder why the wool of the stitching of the BT has not been radiocarbon dated or its DNA sampled, points made by R. Howard Bloch, A Needle in the Right Hand of God: The Norman Conquest of 1066 and the Making and Meaning of the Bayeux Tapestry (New York: Random House, 2006), p. 211 n.6.

  20. 20.

    The phrase is thought to play off of Shakespeare, Twelfth Night 2:3.166: Maria “My purpose is indeed a horse of that color,” meaning the same idea or intention or something similar to it. And so “a horse of a different color” is something distinctly different or an unusual thing.

  21. 21.

    See Gale R. Owen-Crocker, “The Embroidered Word: Text in the Bayeux Tapestry,” in Medieval Clothing and Textiles 2 (2006): 35–59 and repr. as item VI in Owen-Crocker, The Bayeux Tapestry: Collected Papers and Gale R. Owen-Crocker, “The Interpretation of Gesture in the Bayeux Tapestry,” Anglo-Norman Studies 29 (Proceedings of the Battle Conference, 2006), 2007, p. 147–150 [145–178] and reprinted as item XIV in Owen-Crocker, The Bayeux Tapestry: Collected Papers.

  22. 22.

    A theory perhaps complicated by that missing right end of unknown length, for to square the hanging of the BT one would need to know its exact original length.

  23. 23.

    See Gale R. Owen-Crocker, “Brothers, rivals and the geometry of the Bayeux Tapestry,” in King Harold II and the Bayeux Tapestry, ed. Gale R. Owen-Crocker (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell & Brewer, 2005), pp. 109–132, and repr. as item VIII in Owen-Crocker, The Bayeux Tapestry: Collected Papers and Chris Henige, “Putting the Bayeux Tapestry in its Place,” in King Harold II and the Bayeux Tapestry, ed. G.R. Owen-Crocker (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell & Brewer, 2005), pp. 125–137.

  24. 24.

    Chris Henige, “Putting the Bayeux Tapestry in its Place,” in King Harold II, p. 134.

  25. 25.

    See W. Brundson Yapp, “Animals in medieval art: the Bayeux Tapestry as an example,” Journal of Medieval History 13 (1987): 15–73.

  26. 26.

    See, among many others, Jan M. Ziolkowski, Talking Animals: Medieval Latin Beast Poetry, 750–1150 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993); Paul Edward Dutton, “Charlemagne, King of Beasts,” in Charlemagne’s Mustache and Other Cultural Clusters of a Dark Age (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), pp. 42–68, 210–221; Altet, En souvenir, pp. 264–275.

  27. 27.

    Bertrand, La tapisserie de Bayeux, p. 505; Carola Hicks, “The Borders of the Bayeux Tapestry,” in England in the Eleventh Century, Harlaxton Medieval Studies, 2 (Stamford: Paul Watkins, 1992), pp. 251–265. The issue of determining the animal count is partly complicated by what one considers to be an animal in the context of the BT.

  28. 28.

    Bertrand, La tapisserie de Bayeux, p. 32. On the bird numbers, see Gale R. Owen-Crocker, “Squawk Talk: commentary by birds in the Bayeux Tapestry,” Anglo-Saxon England 34 (2005): 240 [237–256] and reprinted as item IX in Owen-Crocker, The Bayeux Tapestry.

  29. 29.

    Bloch, Needle in the Right Hand of God, pp. 150–151.

  30. 30.

    Among many studies, see McNulty, Narrative Art, pp. 39–42; Hicks, “The Borders,” pp. 251–265; Gale R. Owen-Crocker, “The Bayeux Tapestry: the Voice from the Border,” in Signs on the Edge. Space, Text and Margin in Medieval Manuscripts, ed. S.L. Keefe and R.H. Bremmer Jr (Leuven: Peeters, 2007), pp. 235–258, and reprinted as item X in Owen-Crocker, The Bayeux Tapestry: Collected Papers.

  31. 31.

    See, for instance, Hèléne Chefneux, “Les fables dans la tapisserie de Bayeux,” Romania 60 (1934): 1–35; Gail Ivy Berlin, “The Fables of the Bayeux Tapestry: An Anglo-Saxon Perspective,” in Unlocking the Wordhord: Anglo-Saxon Studies in Memory of Edward B. Irving, Jr, ed. Mark C. Amodio and Katherine O’Brien O’Keefe (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), pp. 191–216.

  32. 32.

    See Francis Wormald, “Style and Design,” in Frank Stenton, Simone Bertrand, George Wingfield Digby, Charles H. Gibbs-Smith, James Mann, John L. Nevinson, and Francis Wormald, The Bayeux Tapestry: A Comprehensive Survey (London: Phaidon Press, 1957), p. 27 [25–36].

  33. 33.

    See McNulty, Narrative Art, pp. 21–38. And see the effective argument for the charged nature of the fables by Gail Ivy Berlin, “Fables of the Bayeux Tapestry,” pp. 191–216, who on p. 208 writes: “The fables in the Bayeux Tapestry are suggestive, allusive, richly multi-valent, and politically charged. They strongly imply that the fable’s potential for covert political commentary was not lost upon the Anglo-Saxons.”

  34. 34.

    The bottom border disappears for most of the length of the sea crossing (scenes 37–39; Wilson 40–43).

  35. 35.

    For the Victorian reaction, see Bloch, Needle in the Right Hand of God, pp. 83–84.

  36. 36.

    And the same couple two scenes to the left in the ub (48; Wilson 52) in which the male as hunter seems to be offering the woman a gift.

  37. 37.

    McNulty, Narrative Art, pp. 1–3.

  38. 38.

    See Marie de France, Fables, ed. and trans. Harriet Spiegel (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1987), pp. 256–259. See also Michael Lapidge and Jill Mann, “Reconstructing the Anglo-Latin Aesop: The Literary Tradition of the ‘Hexametrical Romulus’,” in Latin Culture in the Eleventh Century: Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Medieval Latin Studies, ed. Michael W. Herren, C. J. McDonough, Ross G. Arthur, 2 vols. (Turnhout: Brepols, 2002), 2: 1–35.

  39. 39.

    See Berlin, “The Fables of the Bayeux Tapestry,” pp. 195–208, for a careful comparison of the BT fables with that source.

  40. 40.

    On the emerging dialectical mentality of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, see Charles M. Radding, A World Made by Men: Cognition and Society, 400–1200 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985).

  41. 41.

    The BT inscription reads “VELIS VENTO PLENIS,” meaning “with sails full of wind.” Did the designer think that strong winds were the cause of the wayward sailing?

  42. 42.

    Marie de France, Fables, ed. and trans. Harriet Spiegel (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1987), pp. 46–49.

  43. 43.

    For a prose translation, see The Fables of Marie de France: An English Translation, trans. Mary Lou Martin (Birmingham, Alabama: Summa, 1984), p. 49: “An evil lord is much the same: if a poor man does him a favor and then asks for his reward, he will get poor thanks, if any. But as long as he is in the power of a bad lord, he should thank him for his life.”

  44. 44.

    Among the various reasons for the voyage, these have been considered: 1. to hunt along the coast, 2. to meet with Duke William to arrange the freedom of a brother and nephew held by the Norman duke, 3. to consult with the duke about William’s succession to the English throne and Harold’s place in the new regime. See Gale R. Owen-Crocker, “Reading the Bayeux Tapestry through Canterbury Eyes,” in Anglo-Saxons. Studies Presented to Cyril Roy Hart, ed. S. Keynes and A.P. Smyth (Dublin: Four Courts, 2006), p. 240 [243–265] and reprinted as item IV in Owen-Crocker, The Bayeux Tapestry: Collected Papers.

  45. 45.

    Frank Barlow, The Godwins: The Rise and Fall of a Noble Dynasty (Harlow: Pearson Education, 2002), p. 69.

  46. 46.

    H.E.J. Cowdrey, “Towards an Interpretation of the Bayeux Tapestry,” in The Study of the Bayeux Tapestry, ed. Gameson, p. 99, who, in contrasting the effect of the main story and that of the border depictions, says: “[T]he atmosphere of insecurity and subliminal tension [of the borders] … contrasts with the favourable, even heroic presentation of Harold in the main story.”

  47. 47.

    Marie de France, Fables, ed. and trans. Spiegel, pp. 125–126. For a prose translation, see The Fables, trans. Martin, p. 113: “A king’s court is likewise: many who enter there lightly would do better to stay outside in order to hear what happens.”

  48. 48.

    See, for instance, the depiction of King Henry I’s dream sequence from John of Worcester’s Chronicle, in Oxford, Corpus Christi College, MS 157. See Robert A. Maxwell, “Visual Argument and the Interpretation of Dreams in the Chronicle of John of Worcester,” The Medieval Chronicle, 9 (2014): 233–269. On the topic of speech bubbles, see Erik Kwakkel, Books before Print (Leeds: ARC Humanities Press, 2018), pp. 105–109.

  49. 49.

    See Sigurđ Magnússon and István M. Szijártó, What is Microhistory? Theory and Practice (London: Routledge, 2013), pp. 19–20.

  50. 50.

    Hicks, “The Borders,” p. 254.

  51. 51.

    It trails behind the long scene of the dead soldiers at 12.32 metres (lb 51–58; Wilson 61–73), the hunting sequence (lb 6–8, but divided by many tree breaks) that runs to 2.24 metres between diagonal bars, and the agricultural scene (lb 9–10; Wilson 10–11) at 1.36 metres.

  52. 52.

    Cited by Wormald, “Style and Design,” p. 27.

  53. 53.

    Yapp, “Animals in medieval art”: 44–45.

  54. 54.

    McNulty, Narrative Art, pp. 39—44.

  55. 55.

    It is striking that Bernstein, The Mystery of the Bayeux Tapestry, who explores the thesis that the borders in particular subvert the official story of the BT for an Anglo-Saxon audience, almost entirely neglects the bottom border scenes at 16–17.

  56. 56.

    Altet, En souvenir, p. 286.

  57. 57.

    Wormald, “Style and Design,” p. 28; Yapp, “Animals in medieval art”: 41–44.

  58. 58.

    See Cyril Hart, “The Cicero-Aratea and the Bayeux Tapestry,” in King Harold II and the Bayeux Tapestry, ed. Gale R. Owen-Crocker (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell & Brewer, 2005), pp. 164–165 [161–178].

  59. 59.

    Wormald, “Style and Design,” p. 28.

  60. 60.

    Hart, “The Cicero-Aratea,” in King Harold II, pp. 164–165.

  61. 61.

    Owen-Crocker, “Reading the Bayeux Tapestry through Canterbury Eyes,” pp. 262–263: “The selected images, however, are not adjacent in the planisphere and I can see no reason why the designer should have chosen those and not others.”

  62. 62.

    See Altet, En souvenir, pp. 287–288 on the importance of Pisces for understanding the rhythms of the BT.

  63. 63.

    See Stephen Jay Gould, “A Special Fondness for Beetles,” in Gould, Dionsaur in a Haystack: Reflections in Natural History (New York: Harmony Books, 1995), pp. 377–387.

  64. 64.

    Coats of arms and house colors do not seem to have to have become fixed and standardized until the twelfth century. The various flags or banners shown in the BT are not particularly helpful since they are multicolored and multifeatured. The traditional coat of arms of William the Conqueror may have a blazing red background surmounted by two stylized golden lions but the so-called coat of arms of the house of Wessex has no green on it at all, but rather an azure blue background with a golden cross surrounded by five martlets.

  65. 65.

    McNulty, Narrative Art, p. 42 does note that “The sign of Pisces appears twice in the Tapestry: at the quicksands, and again at scene 33, where it appears in the lower border of the very scene as Harold, having slipped out of his vow to William and seized the throne, learns of the portentous appearance of the comet. In the lower border of this latter scene there appears yet another foreshadowing: the ghostly outlines of ships foretell the coming invasion.” For McNulty, these pairs of fish are linkage devices, but he does not explore further or claim more.

  66. 66.

    See scenes 14 (Wilson 16) and 25 (Wilson 28).

  67. 67.

    On the importance of St Michael and Mont-St-Michel in general, see Altet, En souvenir and see Daniel F. Callahan, “The Cult of St. Michael the Archangel and the ‘Terrors of the Year 1000’,” in Richard Landes, Andrew Gow, and David C. Van Meter, The Apocalyptic Year 1000: Religious Expectation and Social Change, 950–1050 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 181–204.

  68. 68.

    See Georges Gandy, “Who built what at Mont Saint-Michel during the 10th Century?,” Annales de Normandie 65e année (2015.1): 153–182.

  69. 69.

    See Gale R. Owen-Crocker, “The Interpretation of Gesture in the Bayeux Tapestry,” Anglo-Norman Studies 29 (Proceedings of the Battle Conference, 2006), 2007, p. 149 [145–178] and reprinted as item XIV in Owen-Crocker, The Bayeux Tapestry: Collected Papers.

  70. 70.

    William of Poitiers, The Gesta Guillelmi of William of Poitiers, 1.42, ed. and trans. R. H. C. Davis and Marjorie Chibnall (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), p. 70.

  71. 71.

    Another transgressing of the border is the eel at lb 17 that breaks through the bottom border into the mud in its desperation to escape.

  72. 72.

    As Gauzlin, bishop of Bourges, and Fulbert, bishop of Chartres, differently interpreted the symbolism of the bloody rain that fell on Aquitaine in 1027: see Paul Edward Dutton, “Observations on Early Medieval Weather in General, Bloody Rain in Particular,” in The Long Morning of Medieval Europe: New Directions in Early Medieval Studies, ed. Jennifer R. Davis and Michael McCormick (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), pp. 177–179 [167–180].

  73. 73.

    McNulty, Narrative Art, p. 39.

  74. 74.

    On the curious linking or exchangeability of centaurs and sirens, see Debra Hassig, Medieval Bestiaries: Text, Image, Ideology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 106, 235–236 n. 14, and figs. 105–106. Or perhaps they should be classified simply as homodubii (doubtful humans): see Owen-Crocker, “The Bayeux Tapestry: the Voice from the Border,” p. 250; and Cyril Hart, “The Carolingian Contribution,” pp. 13–14, as known from the Wonders of the East.

  75. 75.

    They ride right to left, because they are riding back to the proximate location of Harold’s capture as seen at BT 6.

  76. 76.

    See Kirk Ambrose, The Marvellous and the Monstrous in the Sculpture of Twelfth-Century Europe (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell & Brewer, 2013), pp. 40–63.

  77. 77.

    See William Travis, “Of Sirens and Octocentaurs: A Romanesque Apocalypse at Montceaux-l’Étoile,” Artibus et historiae 45 (2002): 29–62.

  78. 78.

    For material on Chiron that would likely have been available to the master designer, see Hyginus, Fabulae, 2nd ed., ed. Peter K. Marshall (Munich and Leipzig: K.G. Saur, 2002), praef. 14, p. 13; XIV, 8, p. 25; CI, 1, p. 93; CXXXVIII, 1, p. 122; CCLXXIV, 9, p. 196.

  79. 79.

    The phrase comes from Jean Adhémar, Influences antiques dans l’art du Moyen Âge français (London: The Warburg Institute, 1939), p. 179. See also Ambrose, The Marvellous and the Monstrous, pp. 40–41.

  80. 80.

    Bernard, Apologia ad Guillelum abbatem, ed. and trans. in Conrad Rudolph, The “Things of Greater Importance”: Bernard of Clairvaux’s Apologia and the Medieval Attitude toward Art (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990), p. 282 line 16. Bernard’s disapproval of centaurs in art is not so very different from that of Theodulf of Orléans in Opus Karoli 3.23, ed. Ann Freeman with Paul Meyvaert, in Opus Caroli regis conta Synodum (Libri Carolini), Monumanta Germaniae Historica: Concilia, t. 2 supplementum 1 (Hanover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1998), p. 445 lines 21–29. See also Thomas E. A. Dale, “The Monstrous,” in A Companion to Medieval Art: Romanesque and Gothic in Northern Europe, ed. Conrad Rudolph (Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, 2010), pp. 253–273.

  81. 81.

    In the BT the ‘centaur’ at lb 17 appears in a small space that has apparently suffered some shrinking and twisting of the linen over time that may account for some slight distortion.

  82. 82.

    See also the dramatic head swivel of William when lifting his visor during the battle at Hastings to show his men that he was still alive (BT 55; Wilson 68).

  83. 83.

    Hart, “The Cicero-Aratea and the Bayeux Tapestry,” p. 165: “The large size and odd shape of the hare in the Tapestry figure are not readily explained, but one needs to appreciate that all the figures in the border had to be modified to fit them into its cramped space.” But if the problem was lack of space, why would the emroideresses have expanded the size of the so-called hare?

  84. 84.

    See, for instance, Jeremy Black, Mapping Shakespeare: An Exploration of Shakespeare’s world through Maps (London: Conway, 2018), pp. 49 (Albrecht Durer’s constellations of the southern sky), and pp. 54–55, in which Frederik de Wit’s seventeenth-century celestial map shows the creatures labeled as “Fera, Lupus,” not ‘fera lepus’.

  85. 85.

    Wolves and lions are difficult to distinguish from each other in the BT.

  86. 86.

    See Rudolph, Things of Greater Importance, p. 138 on Bernard of Clairvaux’s tripartite typology of the monstrous, animal, and human as three essential states of created things.

  87. 87.

    Capitulare missorum in Theodonis villa datum secundum generale 10, ed. A. Boretius, in Monumenta Historica Germanicarum [hereafter MGH]: Cap. 1, p. 124. See also Dutton, Charlemagne’s Mustache, p. 135 and Patricia Skinner, “The Gendered Nose and Its Lack: ‘Medieval’ Nose-Cutting and its Modern Manifestations,” Journal of Women’s History 26.1 (2014): 45–67.

  88. 88.

    Gregory of Tours, Libri Historiarum X, X.18, ed. Bruno Krusch and Wilhelm Levison, in MGH: SRM 1.1 (Hanover, 1951), p. 509. See Guy Halsall, “Introduction,” to Humour, History and Politics in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 18.

  89. 89.

    No primary written source appears to resolve the matter.

  90. 90.

    H. E. J. Cowdrey, “Towards an Interpretation of the Bayeux Tapestry,” in Study of the Bayeux Tapestry, ed. Gameson, p. 102 [93–110].

  91. 91.

    Robert Hertz, “The Pre-eminence of the Right Hand: A Study of Religious Polarity” (1909) trans. Rodney Needham, in Right and Left: Essays on Dual Symbolic Classification, ed. Rodney Needham (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1973), p. 17 [3–31].

  92. 92.

    Cowdrey, “Towards an Interpretation,” pp. 102–103.

  93. 93.

    While Tassilo, the duke of Bavaria, was conspiring against Charlemagne, he told his men when swearing to Charlemagne to “think otherwise in their minds and to swear deceitfully.” Annales regni Francorum, 788, ed. F. Kurze after G.H. Pertz, in MGH: Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum (Hanover: Hahn, 1895), p. 80.

  94. 94.

    See Patrik Svensson, The Book of Eels: Our Enduring Fascination with the Most Mysterious Creature in the Natural World, trans. Agnes Broomé (New York: Ecco/HarperCollins, 2020).

  95. 95.

    See “Eels in the Medieval Fenlands,” www.medievalhistories.com/eels-in-the-fenlands/ accessed 21 June 2018. Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People iv.13, ed. Bertram Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), p. 374: “retibus anguillaribus.”

  96. 96.

    See especially John Wyatt Greenlee’s project at Cornell: http://historiacartarum.org/eel-rents-project/. Accessed in June 2019.

  97. 97.

    Isidore, Etymologiae 12. 6 [De piscibus]. 41, ed. W. M. Lindsay, Isidori Hispalensis Etymologiarum sive Originum libri XX (Oxford: Clarendon, 1911) 2 vols., 2: 65.

  98. 98.

    Antoine Oudin, “There are eels beneath the rocks. Danger or evil lurks beneath the surface.” See Jody Enders, Death by Drama and other Medieval Urban Legends (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), pp. 87, 215.

  99. 99.

    See Meyer Schapiro, “Cain’s Jaw-Bone that Did the First Murder,” The Art Bulletin 24.3 (1942): 211 and n. 66 [205–212].

  100. 100.

    So-called because the piece does not today serve as a central pillar holding up a tympanum at the entrance to a church.

  101. 101.

    For a photograph of the object, see the Web Gallery of Art: https://www.wga.hu/html/zgothic/1romanes/po-12c11/11f_1100.html.

  102. 102.

    Meyer Schapiro, “The Sculptures of Souillac,” (1939) in Schapiro, Romanesque Art: Selected Papers (New York: George Braziller, 1977), p. 116 [102–130].

  103. 103.

    See Carol Knicely, “Food for Thought in the Souillac Pillar: Devouring Beasts, Pain and Subversion of Heroic Codes of Conduct,” RACAR: Revue d’art Canadienne/ Canadian Art Review 24.2 (1997): 14–37. Note that the griffin and lion are paired together lower down on the trumeau.

  104. 104.

    Even on the ninth-century Cattedra Petri, where the monstrous occupies the bottom level of the throne: see Dutton, Charlemagne’s Mustache, pp. 122–127.

  105. 105.

    On Bernard’s attitude toward art and this passage, see Rudolph, Things of Greater Importance. It might be said of Bernard’s critique of the playfulness and fantastical delights of Romanesque sculpture that he was criticizing the way it was read by monks rather than its thesis.

  106. 106.

    See J. Bard McNulty, “The Lady Aelfgyva in the Bayeux Tapestry,” Speculum 55.4 (1980): 659–668, for one interpretation of the reasons for her appearance in the BT. See also Edward Freeman, “The Aelfgyva of the Bayeux Tapestry,” in Study of the Bayeux Tapestry, ed. Gameson, pp. 15–18 and M. W. Campbell, “Aelfgyva : The Mysterious Lady of the Bayeux Tapestry,” Annales de Normandie 34.2 (1984): 127–145.

  107. 107.

    Walter Map, De nugis curialium, 7, ed. Montague Rhodes James (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1914), p. 254: “Sed forte qui cum ipso presunt nolunt eam accusare, ne fiat ab ipso purior, quoniam in aqua turbida piscantur uberius, et ipsi nesciunt quod sub eis fit, nec ipse rex quod ipsi faciunt”; Peter of Blois, epistola 50 (1170), in Petri blesensis bathionensis archidiaconi opera omnia, ed. J. A. Giles (Oxford: J.H. Parker, 1846–1846), vol. 1, p. 155. See Archer Taylor, “It is Good Fishing in Troubled (Muddy) Waters,” Proverbium 11 (1968), pp. 268–275 and repr. in Archer Taylor, Selected Writings on Proverbs, ed. Wolfgang Mieder, FF Communications, no. 216 (Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1975), pp. 172–179; Margaret A. Sullivan, “Bruegel’s Proverb Painting: Renaissance Art for a Humanist Audience,” in Wise Words: Essays on the Proverb, ed. Wolfgang Mieder (New York: Garland, 1994), pp. 271–272 [253–295].

  108. 108.

    Adage III vi 79, in Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 35: Adages III iv 1 to IV ii 100, trans. Denis L. Drysdall, ed. John N. Grant (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), p. 165.

  109. 109.

    Though its lacunae, most obviously Harold’s defeat of Harald Hadrada at the battle of the Stamford Bridge in the north of England on 25 September 1066, a mere three days before William and the Normans landed in the south at Pevensey Bay and but 20 days before the Battle of Hastings on 14 October 1066, are almost as telling as what the BT shows and an indication of the designer’s intention to tell the Norman story, not the Anglo-Saxon one.

  110. 110.

    McNulty, Narrative Art, p. 41.

  111. 111.

    Though at BT 3–5, we see Harold and others wading into water to board a boat and disembark from it, the water lines running over top their legs.

  112. 112.

    On the subtle dynamics of personal interdependence and the display value of written agreements, see Geoffrey Koziol, The Politics of Memory and Identity in Carolingian Royal Diplomas: The West Frankish Kingdom (840–987), Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy, 19 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013).

  113. 113.

    William of Poitiers, Gesta 1.46, ed. and trans. Davis and Chibnall, pp. 76, 78: “Infeliciter secundi flatus, qui nigerrimis uelis tuis aspirauerunt redeuntibus. Impie clemens pontus qui uehentem te hominem teterrimum ad litus prouehi passus est. Sinistre placida statio fuit quae recepit te naufragium miserrimum patriae afferentem.”

  114. 114.

    See C. R. Dodwell, “The Bayeux Tapestry and the French Secular Epic,” The Burlington Magazine, no. 764 vol. 108 (1966): 549–560.

  115. 115.

    See Andrew Taylor, Textual Situations: Three Medieval Manuscripts and their Readers (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), pp. 26–27.

  116. 116.

    As early as Chanson de Roland, laisse 12, vv. 178–179.

  117. 117.

    Ordericus Vitalis 3.11, in The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, Volume II, Books III and IV, ed. Marjorie Chibnall (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), p. 137, praises Harold’s many virtues, but laments that he lacked faith (fidelity), the basis of all the virtues.

  118. 118.

    Ordericus Vitalis 7.15, Ecclesiastical History, Volume IV, Books VII and VIII, ed. Chibnall (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973), vol. 4, p. 94. On William’s final testament, see now Laura Blaj’s master’s thesis “A Close Reading of Orderic Vitalis’s Rhetorical Swan Song (‘Lapsus ducis’) for William the Conqueror” (Simon Fraser University, April 2021).

  119. 119.

    Ordericus Vitalis 7.15, ed. Chibnall, vol. 4, p. 82. And cf. Gen. 44:4.

  120. 120.

    Chanson de Roland, laisse 25, v. 334.

  121. 121.

    Epistola de Apostolatu s. Martialis, PL 141: 94C-D [87–112]. See also Richard Landes, Relics, Apocalypse, and the Deceits of History: Ademar of Chabannes, 989–1034 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995).

  122. 122.

    Though the historical question has always been whether he entered into that agreement voluntarily or not.

  123. 123.

    See Owen-Crocker, “Brothers, rivals and the geometry of the Bayeux Tapestry,” in King Harold II, p. 121.

  124. 124.

    Chanson de Roland, laisse 16, v. 234.

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Dutton, P.E. (2023). A Scene: Slipping Below the Surface of the Bayeux Tapestry. In: Micro Middle Ages. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-38267-3_4

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