Patricia Stephenson.
New Light on the Bayeux Tapestry
i
Contents
Preface
ii
List of illustrations, maps and genealogical table
Chapter 1 Introduction to the Tapestry
Chapter 2 The Patron of the Tapestry
Chapter 3 The Life Story of the Tapestry
Chapter 4 The possible provenance of the Tapestry
Chapter 5 Muriel at Wilton Abbey
Chapter 6 Baudri de Bourgueil's description of the Tapestry
Chapter 7 Queen Edith at Wilton Abbey
Chapter 8 AElfgyva, Abbess of Wilton Abbey
Chapter 9 Goscelin, chaplain of Wilton Abbey
Chapter 10 Marie de France and her background
Chapter 11 Marie's family
Chapter 12 The source of Marie's and the embroiderers' fables
Chapter 13 Tapestry fables explained by Marie
Chapter 14 Turold and the Chanson de Roland
Chapter 15 Eve and Goscelin
Chapter 16 Conclusion: unravelling the Bayeux Tapestry
iii
1
5
8
11
16
20
23
31
40
49
61
68
75
83
92
98
Bibliography
Index
108
116
Patricia Stephenson.
New Light on the Bayeux Tapestry
ii
Preface
New light on the provenance of the Bayeux tapestry may solve some
of its remaining mysteries. Research into several contemporary figures
each connected with Wilton Abbey in Wessex could throw some light on
the Tapestry's place of origin. More conclusive is the connection of the
Fables of Marie de France, Abbess of Shaftesbury Abbey a century later,
with those in the Tapestry borders: a comparison of these fables points
to a common source for both, thus placing the embroiderers and Marie
in the same region of Wessex.
It is necessary to show that the poetess Marie de France was indeed
the Abbess of Shaftesbury Abbey, appointed we may presume by the
King, her half-brother Henry II. By tracing her family, gleaning details
from her own writings and from contemporary writers, we can open a
window onto Marie's life and times. Thanks to Marie pointing us in the
direction of Wilton, the ancient royal capital of Wessex, a picture of life
in Wessex in the aftermath of the Battle of Hastings can be very
rewarding in our study of the Tapestry: hitherto mysterious scenes in
the Tapestry are elucidated.
What follows is an examination of all these connections, including the
rôle of the chaplain of Wilton Abbey and its Abbess AElfgyva in the
period leading up to and immediately following the Battle of Hastings.
After William the Conqueror's victory, many women took refuge in the
hospitable Abbeys, with no intention of taking the veil. Those who
joined Queen Edith who was an outstanding needlewoman, at Wilton
Abbey, could well have formed a team of embroiderers. Wilton Abbey
was a worldly establishment well known for its culture over the
centuries. Wilton and Shaftesbury Abbeys, close neighbours and both
founded by King Alfred who sponsored the arts, could together have
shared the making of the Bayeux Tapestry, given the time scale for this
remarkable task if it were to be completed for display in the nave of
Bayeux Cathedral at its consecration in 1077.
Patricia Stephenson.
New Light on the Bayeux Tapestry
iii
All Scene references in the Tapestry are to those in David M. Wilson's
The Bayeux Tapestry, first published by Thames and Hudson in 1985.
Patricia Stephenson.
New Light on the Bayeux Tapestry
1.
Chapter 1.
Introduction to the Tapestry
The Bayeux Tapestry is not a tapestry in the usual sense but a long,
narrow strip of linen with scenes embroidered upon it in coloured
wools. It illustrates the history of events leading up to William, Duke of
Normandy's decision in 1066 to invade England and seize the throne,
which led to King Harold's defeat and death at the battle of Hastings on
Saturday, 14 October of that year. The Norman victory, narrowly won
"at the hoary apple tree"1 changed the course of English history: it
marked the end of the Anglo-Saxon era.
A true tapestry is likely to be rectangular, varying in size, the scene
portrayed being woven with a shuttle on a loom to create the featured
material hanging; or it could be smaller in scale, worked with a needle
and silk thread or wool onto a canvas background. Small stitches were
used for delicate work, also known as petit point, and larger cross
stitches, gros point, for the larger designs.
The Bayeux Tapestry belongs to neither of these categories. It
measures about 230 feet in length and a mere 20 inches in height: it is
made of nine pieces of woven linen of varying lengths with scenes
embroidered upon them and joined almost invisibly in eight places. The
bleached linen background is always visible. Line stitch or stem stitch in
various colours is used to sketch in the outlines of the embroidered
scenes, which are then filled in with laid and couched stitches. This
method consists of laying parallel lines to cover the areas which are then
pinned in place by spaced lines of stitches at right angles: these are
then couched down to secure them.2 This creates a mesh pattern upon
the linen ground which is very effective.
Eight colours, five principal ones, mixed and matched, are used with
random variation, so that horses or human hair can be of any colour,
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New Light on the Bayeux Tapestry
2.
even red or blue. The nearside legs of animals are usually a different
colour from the far side, perhaps to give the impression of shadow and
depth. One person's clothing can change colour from scene to scene
which is not meant to suggest an endless wardrobe but simple variety to
create a rich and lively display. Here we have details of contemporary
life such as would never otherwise have come to light.
As in contemporary wall paintings, there are borders top and bottom
and at either end. Beneath the top border, almost as an afterthought,
place names and proper names and some brief captions have been
added in Latin, using outline stitch, to explain identities and actions.
This lettering is about one inch high which can be read from afar and is
predominently in black or dark green; but about half way through the
story being told, these colours are intersperced with terracotta and
golden yellow, perhaps depending upon the supply of wool or
workshop. The whole impression given is of a busy, colourful medieval
strip cartoon.
The action throughout barely needs the Latin captions: the story, like
a chanson de geste, moves swiftly and tensely forward but by means of
gestures , postures and looks, leading from one scene into the next.
Clever body language is a substitute for words, as in the early animated
silent cinema. Trees and buildings separate the episodes in the main
panel. The continuous decorative borders, running along the top and
bottom of the main panel, are filled with legendary creatures: exotic
beasts, wyverns, heraldic animals and birds, in pairs or singly, mingled
with ornamental foliage and arranged in orderly sections, divided up by
chevrons filled with scrolls or crosses, perhaps representing the
festoons, real or painted, which decorated wall paintings of this period.
A few little figures appear in the borders, some naked, their significance
probably known to a contemporary audience. When the action
requires more space, as with sails on boats or tall buildings representing
a grand palace or Westminster Abbey, then the upper border makes
way for these. When battle begins, the lower border becomes a
graveyard for the bodies which are plundered for their armour. As
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New Light on the Bayeux Tapestry
3.
battle fever rises, a row of sturdy archers takes over the lower border,
probably mercenaries in William's army, who pursue the English and win
the day.
Everywhere there is action and animation. The hanging has been
subtly designed as a complete composition by a master artist, a genius it
seems, able to please both Norman and Anglo-Saxon viewers.
Embroiderers depended upon the artist , as did tilers, to set out their
work for them. There must have been cooperation between the artist
and the craftsmen and women who had the skills to interpret the
drawings provided; and perhaps a little leeway was given to the
embroiderers in the case of the border decorations: they may have
copied from what was at hand, be it a floor tile or a manuscript
illustration.
It can now be seen that the word tapestry is a misnomer: broderie or
embroidered hanging, which was used to describe it in the first written
record of it, was more apt. In an inventory of the Treasures in Bayeux
Cathedral, dated 1476, the Bayeux Tapestry was described as, "a very
long and very narrow strip (or hanging) of linen, embroidered with
figures and inscriptions representing the Conquest of England which is
hung round the nave of the church on the Feast of Relics and throughout
the Octave," being the eight day period following the Feast of the Relics
from 1st. to the 14th. July. This inventory is written in Vulgar French
rather than in Latin so as to be the better understood:
"Ici est redige en francois et vulgaire langaige, pour plus claire et
familiere designation desdictz joyaulx ornements et autres biens
et de leurs circonstances, que elle n'eust peu estre faicte en termes
de latinite.
Une tente tres longue et estroicte de telle a broderie de Ymages
et escripteaulx faisans representation du conquest d'Angleterre
laquelle est tendue environ la nef de l'eglise le jour et par les
Octables des Reliques." 3
Patricia Stephenson.
New Light on the Bayeux Tapestry
4.
Notes
1. Anglo-Saxon Chronicle D. ed.Dorothy Whitelock, David C. Douglas and Susie L.
Tucker (Eyre and Spottiswode 1961) D year 1066.
2. George Wingfield Digby, Technique and production, in Sir Frank Stenton, ed.
The Bayeux Tapestry, a Comprehensive Study (Phaidon, London 1957) pp.38 - 40.
Isabelle Bédat and Béatrice Girault-Kurtzeman in Embroidering the Facts of
History, The Technical Study of the Bayeux Tapestry, Proceedings of the Cerisy
Colloquium (1999) ed. Pierre Bouet, Brian Levy and François Neveux, say that
after close examination when the display case was dismantled, the Tapestry
was found to consist of nine panels, not eight as previously thought. p.84.
3. Simone Bertrand, The History of the Tapestry, in Sir Frank Stenton, ed. The
Bayeux Tapestry, A Comprehensive Study (Phaidon, London 1957) p.88; and
Shirley Ann Brown, The Bayeux Tapestry, History and Bibliography (Woodbridge
1988) Appendix 1.p.16.
Patricia Stephenson.
New Light on the Bayeux Tapestry
5.
Chapter 2.
The Patron of the Tapestry.
The connection of the story told in the Tapestry with the Relics
of Bayeux Cathedral is of paramount importance. When visiting William
in Normandy, in 1064 or 1065, Harold swore an oath to William, his
hands upon these sacred Relics, a scene crucial to the story being
recorded. This scene 26 shows Harold standing between two mobile
altars containing relics hidden beneath richly embroidered hangings,
whilst William gives the orders from his ducal throne. He is
commanding Harold to proceed. It is thought that in order to be free to
return to England, Harold was obliged to swear to support William's
claim to the English throne. Harold's companions are shown awaiting
him anxiously beside and inside his boat, ready to move off as soon as
he has complied with his oath.1 Perhaps the figure not yet in the boat,
watching Harold nervously as he makes his oath, is Hakon the hostage,
set free thanks to his uncle Harold.2 The tilt of the head resembles that
of the figure touching Harold's hand and listening intently to what
he is telling them in scene 17.
When, later, Harold himself was offered the throne by the dying King
Edward and his Barons and accepted the honour, the Normans were
able to regard this as treachery which led to William's invasion and to
Harold's defeat and death at Hastings. According to the chronicler
Eadmer, King Edward had warned Harold that his proposed visit to see
William could have disastrous consequences for both himself and for
the kingdom.3 Swearing upon the Relics of Bayeux Cahedral was a
pivotal scene in the story told in the Tapstry. Displaying the Tapestry in
the Cathedral on the Feast of the Relics and the Octave was a constant
reminder of this act.
Such was the belief in holy relics in the eleventh century and the power
of the church that the dilemma of Harold's oath would be especially
meaningful for an eleventh century audience for whom the swearing of
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New Light on the Bayeux Tapestry
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oaths on holy relics was sacrosanct. Here we have a moral tale on
display in the Nave of Bayeux Cathedral, at eye level for worshippers to
study, with captions in Latin for those who could read. Odo, Bishop of
Bayeux, William's half-brother, plays a prominent rôle in the Tapestry
but not in other accounts of the events being recorded. Together with
his brother Robert of Mortain, these two brothers help William to plan
the invasion, Odo even sharing Wiliam's throne in the first consultation
scene. The three sit in council after the feast at Hastings. One of the
most arresting scenes in the Tapestry is of Odo, as warrior priest,
magnificently attired for the battlefield and flamboyant on his black
steed, with raised baton encouraging the Norman soldiers to fight on.
This special treatment of Odo in the Tapestry must have pleased the ego
of this ambitious man.
Two of Odo's vassals, Wadard and Vital, are singled out and named in
the Tapestry: there must be a reason for this special treatment. It can
only be explained if Odo is the patron of the work; perhaps these vassals
accompanied him on his visits to the workshops where the Tapestry was
being made. Odo would expect flattery from his cartoonist whom he
would be paying. William would approve of a project which would
justify his invasion of England. Viewers would recognise their Bishop in
the Tapestry which would signify the blessing of the church on William's
enterprise; besides which the Normans went into battle bearing the
papal standard sent to William by Pope Alexander II, according to
William of Poitiers' account in his History of William the Conqueror.4
Odo had been made Bishop of Bayeux by William in 1049, possibly
whilst still in his teens.5 Enriched by his vast acquisitions in England
after 1066, Odo planned his rebuilding of the Cathedral in Bayeux and
an Abbey on the outskirts of the city which he dedicated to a local hero,
Saint Vigor, who, like Saint George, was a legendary slayer of dragons.6
This could account for the numerous dragons in the Tapestry borders;
the fact that a wyvern was the symbol of Wessex, Harold's domain,
would make the winged dragon doubly appropriate as border decoration
in the Tapestry.
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Odo's new Cathedral was consecrated in 1077 and it has been
assumed that the Tapestry was first displayed in the nave to celebrate
this occasion. Although some have considered the subject matter too
secular and violent for a cathedral and more suitable for a baronial hall
or palace, the moral point being made in the hanging would need to
reach as wide an audience as possible therefore the best venue for this
purpose would be the Bishop's new Cathedral in Bayeux. Similar battle
scenes are on show permanently in a slightly later stained glass window
in Chartres Cathedral, showing Christians fighting the Saracens in
sequences from the Chanson de Roland, an epic tale often compared
with the Battle of Hastings.
After its annual display on the Feast of the Relics and for seven days
thereafter, the Tapestry would be rolled up, latterly using a roller on
wheels to facilitate the winding and unwinding process and stored away
in the Cathedral vestry, to be forgotten for another year. This neglect
has probably preserved the colours; but the rollers caused damage to
the fabric which has had to be repaired. For how long this once yearly
exhibition of the Tapestry continued is not known, nor when it first
began: the world seems to have remained ignorant of its existence.
Notes
1. A century later in his Roman de Rou, the historian Wace, Canon of Bayeux
Cathedral, writes that William did not tell Harold how significant were the Relics
in the altars until after the oath had been sworn.
Glyn S. Burgess, trans. The History of the Norman People. Wace's Roman de Rou,
with notes by Glyn S. Burgess and Elisabeth van Houts (The Boydell Press 2004)
Part 3 ll.5652 - 5724, pp.154-155.
2. Eadmer, Recent Events in the History of England, trans. Geoffrey Bosanquet
(London, The Cresset Press 1964) p.6.
3. Ibid, p.6.
4. Frank Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford 1971) p.586.
Ian W. Walker, Harold. The Last Anglo-Saxon King (Sutton 1997) p.148.
5. David R. Bates, The Character and Career of Odo, Speculum, vol. 1, 1975, p.5.
6. David J. Bernstein, The Mystery of the Bayeux Tapestry, Part I. Chap I.
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New Light on the Bayeux Tapestry
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Chapter 3
The Life Story of the Tapestry.
The second written mention of the Tapestry at which its name was
finally established, was over two hundred years later, in 1724. A drawing
of the first part of the story about King Edward the Confessor, Earl
Harold Godwin, as he then was in 1064-1065, Guy de Ponthieu and
William, Duke of Normandy, was shown by a member of the Académie
des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres to a fellow member, a Monsieur
Lancelot, for identification. The latter immediately realised its historical
value but could not place it. It was left to another member of the
Académie, Dom Bernard Montfaucon, to discover through his contacts
the origin of this drawing, whose owner turned out to have been a
deceased member of their Académie, an antiquary named Nicolas
Foucault. He had been the Intendant or Administrator of Normandy,
whose headquarters were in Caen, not far from Bayeux. Lancelot
published Foucault's sketch in 1724, in a paper explaining his ignorance
as to its origin.1
By 1728, Dom Bernard Montfaucon had traced the drawing to Bayeux
Cathedral; he received copies of the Tapestry's inscriptions from the
Prior of the Abbey of Saint-Vigor in Bayeux: he then published these,
together with engravings based on Foucault's drawing, in Volume I of
the Monuments de la Monarchie française in 1729. Next he employed a
distinguished draughtsman, Antoine Benoît, to complete the drawings,
which appeared in Volume II in 1730.2
The origin of this supposedly unfinished work of art was discussed by
these academic gentlemen and the work was attributed to William the
Conqueror's wife, Queen Matilda. It was known that she had so
appreciated Anglo-Saxon embroidery from the renowned Winchester
workshop, that she had ordered a chasuble from this workshop for her
Abbaye-des-Dames at Caen and that another one was being made for
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New Light on the Bayeux Tapestry
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her at the time of her death. Initially connecting Matilda with the
Bayeux Tapestry was accepted. Further enlightenment showed that the
work was not unfinished but worn away by too frequent rolling and
unrolling of the linen strip. The final scenes are now thought to have
shown William's reception in London and coronation at Westminster
Cathedral on Christmas Day 1066. Thus the story which began with a
scene showing King Edward enthroned would have ended as intended
with William's enthronement. The general term Tapestry has remained
the official description over the years although Queen Matilda's part in
its making has been dismissed.
At the end of the eighteenth century the Tapestry had a narrow
escape during the revolutionary years, when it was saved from
becoming a wagon cover for the revolutionary forces in Bayeux in 1792,
thanks to the quick action of a local administrator, Monsieur LéonardLeprestier, who provided substitute sacking for the wagons.3 The next
excitement in the Tapestry's life story was in 1803 when Napoleon
Bonaparte was planning his invasion of England. The Tapestry caught his
imagination and was commandeered for propaganda purposes at an
exhibition at the Palace of the Louvre in Paris. There Napoleon's invasion
plans received due publicity and the Tapestry an equal amount of praise,
before its return to the quiet backwater of Bayeux.4 But the Tapestry
was now on its way to becoming famous.
The seeds had been sown. More interest in the Tapestry followed in
the nineteehth century with an increasing number of visitors: artists,
poets and writers, among whom was Charles Stothard, a young
antiquarian draughtsman who was commissioned in 1818 by the London
Society of Antiquaries to make drawings of the Tapestry which were
turned into engravings and published in 1821. Stothard also indicated
where repairs were needed to preserve the hanging: he noted the
colours still hanging by threads from the needle holes so that the repairs
were authentic.5 He may even have done some minor repairs himself.
Ever increasing numbers of visitors in the twentieth century
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New Light on the Bayeux Tapestry
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caused the municipal Council of Bayeux to provide better permanent
accommodation for their treasure and its visitors. Since 1983 the
Tapestry has been housed in a specially adapted museum, once a
seventeenth century Grand Seminary belonging to the Bishop. Instead
of stretching round a Cathedral nave from pillar to pillar, it now stretches
for half its length in one direction before doubling back round a bend for
the second half to be displayed: this arrangement is to facilitate the flow
of visitors through the gallery. The Tapestry rounds the bend at the
point when William's work force is busy constructing his fleet for the
invasion of England. The Tapestry's name has been retained, even to
this day: on a plaque outside the gallery, we read La Tapisserie de la
Reine Matilde, beside the notice: Centre Guillaume le Conquérant.
Notes
1. Simone Bertrand ,The History of the Tapestry, in Frank Stenton, ed. The Bayeux
Tapestry. A Comprehensive Survey, (Phaidon London, 1957) pp.88-89.
Shirley Ann Brown, The History of the Bayeux Tapestry , (Woodbridge,The Boydell
Press 1988).
2. Simone Bertrand, The history of the Tapestry, in Frank Stenton, ed. The Bayeux
Tapestry. A Comprehensive Survey, (Phaidon, London 1957) p.89.
3. Carola Hicks, The Bayeux Tapestry. The Life Story of a Masterpiece, (Chatto and
Windus, 2006) p.92.
4. Ibid. p.95.
5. Eric Maclagan, The Bayeux Tapestry ( King Penguin 1953). Introduction, p.16.
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Chapter 4.
The possible provenance of the Tapestry.
Although thought by some to have been made in France, in the
Bayeux region,1 the Tapestry is generally supposed, because of its AngloSaxon features, to have been designed and worked in England, whilst
the events being recorded were still fresh in people's minds. This should
have given a time span from 1067 until the consecration of Bayeux
Cathedral in 1077; but as Stigand, Archbishop of Canterbury and Bishop
of Winchester, is shown in a favourable and dignified light, wearing his
full regalia of stole and maniple in two important scenes yet was
deposed by the Normans and imprisoned at Winchester in 1070, this
would suggest that the Tapestry was completed before this date.
The earliest surviving examples of Anglo-Saxon embroidery in England
can be seen in the Treasury of Durham Cathedral: they are a stole,
maniple and girdle dating from the early tenth century, discovered in the
coffin of Saint Cuthbert when it was opened in 1827. The inscriptions on
the reverse end of each panel read: "AElfflaed fieri precepit," and "pio
episcopo fridestano," commanded by Queen AElfflaed, Lady of the
Mercians, who was King Alfred the Great's daughter, to be made for
Frithestan, Bishop of Winchester from 909 to 931. The items are
thought to have been made at the Winchester embroidery workshop
and later presented to the shrine of Saint Cuthbert by King Athelstan in
934.2
There was a flourishing tradition of Anglo-Saxon embroidery in the
South West of England. Embroidery in Wiltshire had flourished ever
since Saint Dunstan had taken an interest in needlework: he was a
trained goldsmith and had himself designed a stole to be embroidered
by a Wiltshire lady named AEthelwynn and her needlewomen.
Domesday Book records, both before and after 1066, the work of one
Leofgeat from Knook, who "made and makes the The King's and Queen's
gold fringe." 3 Also in England was the hanging depicting the battle of
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New Light on the Bayeux Tapestry
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Maldon which Byrthnoth's widow offered to Ely Cathedral, in memory of
her husband's heroic fight with his noble thegns against Viking invaders
in 991.4 Odo may have seen this hanging in Ely Cathedral, perhaps an
inspiration to him for the Bayeux Tapestry.
Many think that the Bayeux Tapestry, if commissioned by Bishop Odo,
would have been made in the Canterbury area, given that Kent was his
earldom in England and he was on good terms with Saint Augustine's
monastery. The similarities in the Tapestry with illuminated manuscript
illustrations in the monastic library there are striking. Three individuals
named in the Tapestry, Wadard, Vital and possibly Turold were tenants
of the Bishop in Kent. However, these three vassals also held land of Odo
elsewhere, including Dorset and Wiltshire in England and also land in
Normandy.5 It may well be that the gifted artist who conceived the
whole epic story in the Tapestry was acquainted with the treasures in
Saint Augustine's monastery but it does not necessarily follow that the
embroiderers and their workshops were situated in this area.
As we have noted, Winchester and the surrounding region of
Wessex were celebrated for embroidery work; the school of painting in
Winchester was the most ancient in England.6 The Tapestry's nine strips
of linen of varying lengths could have been prepared and embroidered
in different but neighbouring workshops, close enough together for all
materials to be shared. There must have been close collaboration
between workshops in order to finish the project within the timescale.
The most important religious houses in Wessex were the Benedictine
Abbeys at Wilton and Shaftesbury whose lands lay adjacent. Domesday
Book records land which Odo and his brother Robert of Mortain held in
Wiltshire and Dorset after 1066. Odo acquired valuable hides in
Ditchampton, Wilton, from Wilton Abbey and land in Rampisham,
Dorset, from Shaftesbury Abbey , which his vassal Wadard held of him.
Wadard also held Swindon in Wiltshire of Bishop Odo. Robert of Mortain
acquired vast tranches of Godwin land in in the West Country.
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13.
In 1067 William the Conqueror returned to Normandy after
appointing his half-brother Odo as his Deputy in Southern England. Odo
would inevitably have had to travel across the country to all important
cities: to Winchester, seat of the Treasury, and on to Sarum, the
country's most important administrative headquarters in Wessex
since Roman times and through which ran the Roman road from Bath
to Canterbury via Winchester.7 Anglo-Saxon Kings had retreated to this
Saxon stronghold to defend themselves, their Court and their army
against Viking raiders. A Royal Palace was built within the fortress
probably in Edward the Confessor's time.8
Sarum Castle was strategically as important to William as it had been
to the Anglo-Saxon Kings: he probably repaired the fortifications there
soon after his coronation. Sarum appeared in Norman records on at
least three important occasions during his reign. In 1070 he assembled
his victorious army there rewarding mercenaries for their services and
dismissing them. In 1072, shortly before his campaign in Scotland, he
summoned by writ AEthelwig, Abbot of Evesham, to attend him at
nearby Clarendon, bringing all knights under his command which
included seven Midland shires of West Mercia and others. In 1086
William again summoned to Sarum the principal landowners in England
to swear an oath of Fealty to him against his enemies. Sarum could
accommodate large numbers.
Owing to its geographical situation, in 1075 William saw the Bishopric
moved from Sherborne and Ramsbury to Sarum Cathedral which stood
without the Castle walls to the North West. The design and building of
the Cathedral has been attributed to Bishop Herman and was probably
nearly completed by 1075. It was left to the Norman Bishop Osmund
from 1078 to add the finishing touches and to Bishop Roger of Caen in
the early twelfth century to restore it after a storm had partially
destroyed it. Roger had also the task of rebuilding the Royal Castle
there, thus confirming Sarum's importance as an administrative centre
in the South West of England since Saxon times.11.
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Anglo-Saxon Kings in the nineth century dwelt at Wilton: Egbert, his
son AEthelwulf, Alfred's father, and Alfred who founded Wilton Nunnery
for twenty-six nuns,12 previously a Chantry founded by King Egbert.
There was a Royal Mint and a Royal Palace at Wilton, known as the
Royal capital of Wessex where Charters were issued and the Archives
were kept.13 Winchester was the religious capital of Wessex and seat of
the Treasury: both gave way to Westminster during the reign of
Edward the Confessor, though the Treasury remained at Winchester.
Bishop Odo's itinerary round the South West of England would
certainly have lead him to Winchester and Sarum, which was only three
miles from the great Abbey at Wilton. Odo would be looking for a team
of experienced embroiderers, connected with a rich monastery, with a
reputation which could carry out his project of recording the Norman
victory. Wilton Abbey, a centre of culture, could well have been Odo's
choice for the making of the Tapestry. At Wilton Abbey in 1066 there
was a resident whose advice he might have sought: this was Muriel, the
Norman poetess, who was possibly Odo's and Robert's sister of that
name.
Notes
1. W. Grape, The Bayeux Tapestry, (Prestel, Munich and New York 1994) pp.44 - 50
2. Dominic Marner, Saint Cuthbert. His Life and Cult in Medieval Durham, (The
British Library 2000) p.17.
3. Domesday Book, Wiltshire, eds.Caroline and Frank Thorn, (Phillimore, Chichester
1979) 67.86.
4. George Wingfield Digby, Technique and Production in Frank Stenton, ed. The
Bayeux Tapesatry. A Comprehensive Survey (Phaidon, London, 1957) p.48
E. Maclagan, The Bayeux Tapestry, (King Penguin, 1953) p.17
5. H.C. Prentout, in The Study of the Bayeux Tapestry, ed. R. Gameson,
Article 4, pp26-28.
6. E.W. Tristram , English Medieval Wall Painting (OUP, 1944-1950)
7. The journey from Sarum to Canterbury which had to pass through Wilton because
there was then no bridge near Sarum, took five days. See A.W. Wilmart ed.
La Légende de Sainte Edith en prose et en vers par le moine Goscelin (Anal. Boll.
LVI, 1938) p.267. The distance from Sarum to Winchester, Western Gate, was
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19 Roman miles or 21 plus 3 furlongs, English miles. See Sir Richard Colt Hoare,
The Ancient History of Wiltshire, Vol.2, p.58.
8. Victoria County History of Wiltshire, Early History.
9. Frank Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford, 3rd. edn. 1971) p.605
10. Anglo-Saxon Chronicle E year 1085; also see Frank Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England
(Oxford, 3rd. edn. 1971) p.618
R. Allen Brown, The Normans and the Norman Conquest (The Boydell Press
2nd. edn. 1985) p.75.
11. Kathleen Edwards, Salisbury Cathedral, an Ecclesiastical History, (OUP reprint).
See Sir Richard Colt Hoare , V.C.H. Vol.3, pp.156-158.
12. C. Horstmann ed. of early 15c. poem in Wiltshire dialect S. Editha sive Chronicon
Vilodunense Aus ms. Cotton Faustina B III l.3141.
13. Victoria County History of Wiltshire, Early History,p.7. See also G.M. Young,
Origin of the West Saxon Kingdom (Oxford 1934) pp.8-9.
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Chapter 5.
Muriel at Wilton Abbey.
Some time after Arlette of Falaise (also known as Herleve), had given
birth to her son William (later the Conqueror), and probably her
daughter Adelaide, by Robert, later to become Duke of Normandy, he
arranged for her to marry a nobleman, Herlouin de Conteville. The
recorded children of this marriage were Odo, Robert and their sister
Muriel; there was possibly another sister also.1 We are told by the
chronicler Wace, in his Roman de Rou, The History of the Norman
People, written about 1160, that on the eve of his decision to invade
England and seize the throne, William summoned Yon, Muriel's
husband,2 to his first council, along with his closest relatives and most
trusted friends to give him their advice, as well as their financial
support. Family bonds were valued and it can be seen from the story
told in the Tapestry that William was close to his half-brothers Odo and
Robert, who helped him to plan the invasion of England and were at his
side throughout.
We learn from the monk Goscelin, chaplain of Wilton Abbey , that
Muriel the poetess who had been educated at Wilton Abbey as a young
girl, returned to the Abbey a widow: she was there in 1067 so Goscelin
tells us, and became a nun.3 Muriel remained at Wilton for the rest of
her life. In 1113, nine Canons from Laon Cathedral on a fund-raising
mission to England, visited Muriel's grave in Wilton Abbey Church which
they found next to a memorial to the Venerable Bede. 4 Muriel was held
in high esteem at the Abbey.
There is some confusion about the identity of the husband of Odo's
sister Muriel although it is certain that she married into the family of
Turstin Haldup, Baron of La Haye-du-Puits, who, with his wife Emma,
founded the Benedictine Abbey of Lessay in the Cotentin in 1056.
Their son Eudes, Viconte of the Cotentin, who acquired the title au
Capel, built the Abbey church, the foundation and donations for which
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were confirmed in a Charter of 1080, signed by the entire ducal family:
William the Conqueror, his Queen Matilda, their three sons, Robert,
William Rufus and Henry, half-brothers Bishop Odo and Robert of
Mortain, besides Anselm, Abbot of Bec, Lanfranc, Archbishop of
Canterbury and all the important Bishops and Barons of the Cotentin
region.5
The title au Capel or al Chapel refers to the crown of flowers worn
when Eudes or Yon processed at the head of the Abbey choir to the
choir stalls on the Feast of the Holy Trinity, to whom the church is
dedicated. When Eudes died in 1098, he was buried in the body of the
Choir, the place reserved for the founder.6 It is thought that Eudes au
Capel is the same person as Yon au Capel mentioned by Wace as
Muriel's husband; but as Charter evidence of 1080 refers to Eudes' son
Robert de Haie as grandson of Turstin and nephew of Yon au Capel,
therein lies the confusion and an explanation is lacking. Wace also says
that as far as he knows, Yon and Muriel had no children.7
Muriel was a rare name of Norman origin, written variously as Murier,
Murieli or Muriel.8 As Muriel the poetess, sent by her family to be
educated at Wilton Abbey, was of a rich, noble, Norman descent and
lost her husband in 1066, it is tempting to suppose that she was Odo's
and Robert's sister, married to Yon au Capel who died in 1066 leaving
her a childless widow. Whether or not Muriel the poetess was Odo's
sister, it is likely that he would visit a celebrated Norman poetess,
established in England at the great Abbey of Wilton. If he chose Muriel's
nunnery to undertake his commission for the Tapestry, he would expect
her support in giving the Norman version of recent historical events.
We can piece together the background of Muriel the poetess through
poems written to her in her youth at Wilton Abbey. Serlo, a monk and
Canon of Bayeux Cathedral, on friendly terms with Odo, wrote a poem
to her from which we learn of her aristocratic Norman connections and
that she had left her native land to live in England at Wilton Abbey,
probably to be educated in the well-known school for young
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noblewomen attached to the Abbey. Serlo warned Muriel against the
marriage status for a young girl of a noble family, saying that in those
times of arranged marriages she would be obliged to take a lover and
she would be far better remaining a virgin in her nunnery. 9 However, it
seems that Muriel did not follow Serlo's advice for she certainly
married. Serlo described Wilton Abbey as a poetic community which
made him hesitant about sending Muriel one of his poems, as she had
requested, because he feared strong criticism from her community. 10
A Benedictine monk, on the other hand, known later as Baudri de
Bourgueil, had no such qualms: he sought Muriel's criticism for his
poems.11 He too addressed a poem to her at Wilton Abbey in which he
describes her as young, pretty, noble and rich.11 He had heard her recite
very well and praised her voice:
" O quam dulce sonat vox tua dum recitas. " 12
Clearly, Baudri had visited Wilton Abbey and met Muriel there. In his
letter addressed to her, the first, he said, that he had ever written to a
young girl, he expressed a wish to see her again. 13 This implies that he
visited Wilton Abbey many years before he became Abbot of Bourgueil
in Anjou in 1089, and he may have continued his visits. Baudri de
Bourgueil seems to have enjoyed travelling.
Notes
1. G.H.White, The Conqueror's brothers and sisters, (Complete Peerage, Vol 12, Part I
Appendix K)
2. Wace, Roman de Rou, ed. H. Andresen (Heilbronn 1877-79) II p.269, l.6025 ff:
Yon al Capel
Qui a feme aveit Muriel
Seror le duc de par sa mere,
E Herluin aveit a pere.
3.
4.
5.
F.Barlow, ed. and trans. The Life of King Edward who rests at Westminster,
second edition, (Oxford Medieval Texts,1992) Appendix C.
J.S.P. Tatlock, Muriel. The Earliest English Poetess. (V.C.H. Vol.48, 1933) p.317.
Lessay, texte des Amis de l'Abbatiale, (Zodiac 1974 ) p.2.
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6. Ibid p. 2-3
7. G.H. White , The conqueror's brothers and sisters, (Complete
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
Peerage, Vol.12) Part I , Appendix K
J.S.P. Tatlock, The Earliest English Poetess, V.C.H. Wiltshire, Vol 48, p.319.
Ibid p.318. It is interesting that this advice pre-dated by a century discussions
on Courtly Love.
Ibid. p.318
Phyllis Abraham, ed. Baudri de Bourgueil, Lettre (poème) adressée à Muriel,
CXCIX (Paris 1926) lines 1-16.
Ibid, line 8.
Ibid, lines 20-30, 35-40.
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Chapter 6.
Baudri de Bourgueil's description of a Tapestry.
At the end of the century, Baudri wrote a poem to Adèle, William the
Conqueror's daughter, in which he describes a tapestry illustrating the
Battle of Hastings.1
Adèle was known to have a tapestry which
celebrated the battle, hanging in the alcove of her bed chamber,
obviously quite a small hanging. Baudri mentions gold thread and pearls
which do not feature in the Bayeux Tapestry; yet his description of
William's invasion of England and the Battle of Hastings contains so
many details which do belong to the latter that he seems, with poetic
licence, to have merged the two in his imagination. Indeed, he said that
his poem, to please Adèle, was a vision.
It is possible that this poem by Baudri, written it is thought between
1090 and 1102, is the first mention of the Bayeux Tapestry. 2 Baudri
describes what we see in the Tapestry. He gives us many background
details about William addressing his family, barons and advisers at his
first council held at his Court. He goes on to describe William sitting on
his throne, as shown in the Tapestry, explaining the situation about his
rights as King of England and offering those present land and riches
there if they will fight with him. William then recites the Norman
victories elsewhere to fire up his listeners: he mentions Maine, Anjou
and even Puglia in Italy. He makes a rousing speech and all agree with
him, says Baudri's poem.
The poem then moves on to the building of William's fleet, how trees
were felled, everyone using his talents to build the ships. Baudri
explains how some boats were for infantry, others for cavalry and
horses. He describes the Royal Ship, the Mora, a present to William
from his wife Matilda; he then reports on the weather, the grieving
wives left behind and the journey across the Channel. Speaking of
William's arrival at Pevensey, Baudri refers to the Duke as "the Prince of
the English" arriving at "his land." 4 With such praise for her father,
Baudri was flattering the Countess Adèle.
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Many other historical details are in Baudri's poem: he tells how the
English dismounted to form a shield wall, which he calls a "a tight
wedge"; 5 and recounts in detail the Norman's flight half way through
the battle when they thought that William was dead. Baudri even
quotes William's speech to his men, telling them to fight on as there is
no escape because their ships are far from the shore, presumably a
tactic which William had foreseen.
Then Baudri tells of the arrow which felled Harold. Of all
contemporary Norman accounts of the Battle, Baudri alone tells of an
arrow which pierced Harold's eye and contributed to his death, just as it
appears in the Bayeux Tapestry. One hundred years later, the chronicler
Wace, who as a Canon of Bayeux Cathedral would have had the
opportunity to study the Tapestry, also asserts that Harold was blinded
by an arrow, as just retribution, he goes on to say, for his father's part in
the blinding and death of Arthur, Edward the Confessor's brother.6
Lastly Baudri describes the flight of the English, whom he calls
barbarians. He goes on to describe the ruthless cruelty of the Normans,
necessary he says, like that of a wolf in a sheepfold who must kill every
one of the flock. Only darkness intervened to stop the slaughter. Baudri
suggests that the English did not use the bow and arrow: he implies
that William's archers won the day, just as the end of the Tapestry
demonstrates. One future Norman King of England, William's grandson
Henry II, noting the lack of yew trees in England for the making of bows,
remedied this by planting a wood of eighty acres of yews near
Clarendon forest: these mighty trees still stand, known as Great Yews,
their foreboding, gnarled presence a reminder of that defeat of the
English at Hastings.
Baudri ends his poem by saying that this triumph of William's can be
read and seen in the Tapestry. "If you could see this Tapestry," he says,
"you could read the truth on it." 7 He must have seen the inscriptions as
well as the embroidered figures. Baudri could have seen the Tapestry in
situ in Bayeux Cathedral; he could have read contemporary accounts of
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these events as described by William of Poitiers and Gui d'Amiens; he
might even have seen the Tapestry in the making when he visited Wilton
Abbey on one of his journeys to England, supposing that the hanging
was indeed being made there.
Notes
1. Phyllis Abrahams, Baudri de Bourgueil ,Poème CXCVI Adelae Comitissae, (Paris
1926).
2. Shirley Ann Brown, The History of the Bayeux Tapestry, (Woodbridge, The Boydell
Press 1988)
3. Phillis Abrahams, Baudri de Bourgueil, Poème CXCVI Adelae Comitissae, (Paris
1926), ll.259-330.
4. My grateful thanks to Professor Michael Herren's translation of Poème adressé
à Adèle in The Study of the Bayeux tapestry ed. Richard Gameson (Boydell and
Brewer 1997)
5. Poème adressé à Adèle, trans. Michael Herren.
6. Gyln S. Burgess, ed. and trans. The History of the Norman People, Wace's Roman
de Rou (Boydell Press, 2004) ll.8798-8799.
7. Poème adressé à Adèle, trans. Michael Herren.
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Chapter 7.
Queen Edith at Wilton Abbey.
The reputation for embroidery was already established at Wilton
Abbey before Queen Edith learnt her skills at needlework in the Abbey
school there, where all the arts were encouraged. In his Life of King
Edward, the probable author Goscelin writes that Edith was famous and
distinguished for verse and prose and in her needlework and painting
was another Minerva.1 The young Saint Edith, Queen Edith's namesake,
spent her time at Wilton Abbey embroidering church vestments: she
also drew the cartoons for the wall paintings to embellish her own little
chapel at the Abbey, dedicated to Saint Denis. Her tutor, the monk
Benno, Canon of Trier, a chaplain at Wilton Abbey, experienced in the
art, executed these wall paintings.2
Medieval streets in Wilton were named after the trades and crafts
pursued there: the road past Wilton Abbey, where cottagers lived,
engaged perhaps in needlework, was called Eye Street. Needle Street
and Glover street reflected their trades and needle makers bore
occupational names: we know of Thomas the Needler and Robert,
Richard and Gilbert le Aguiler who lived in Nedlers Street by Nedlers
Bridge. Flemish weavers settled at Wilton.3 One might say that this
medieval tradition has been continued over the centuries for Wilton
today is famous for its carpets.
In his Life of King Edward, the probable author Goscelin tells us that
Edith the Queen embroidered all her husband's garments: "it could not
be thought," he wrote, "that even Solomon in all his glory was ever thus
arrayed." Edith even designed the trappings for Edward's horse.4
Examples of Edith's work can perhaps be seen in the Tapestry itself in
Edward's clothing; and of Anglo-Saxon embroidery in the vestments
worn by Archbishop Stigand at Edward's bedside and standing on the
left of Harold enthroned, wearing his stole and holding on his arm his
maniple with its gold fringes. In his Life of Saint Edith , the author tells
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of the nuns' skills at needlework, mentioning their wonderful vestments
and tapestries.5 Even William of Poitiers praised English embroidery, 6
later to be known as Opus Anglicanum.
Together with her sisters, Edith had been educated in the boarding
school for young noblewomen attached to Wilton Abbey. In 1051 she
took refuge at the Abbey when her husband temporarily dismissed her
after he and her father Earl Godwin had been unable to resolve a
quarrel. The initial cause of this quarrel had been a complaint to the
King by Eustace of Boulogne, Edward's brother-in-law, about the
conduct of the citizens of Dover in Godwin's Earldom; but the situation
developed out of all proportion when fanned by the Norman Archbishop
of Canterbury, Robert of Jumièges, who disliked the Godwins: he took
the opportunity to persuade the King that Godwin had been responsible
for the blinding and death of his brother Arthur. Consequently Godwin
had to outlaw himself; and Edith also came in for retribution and
banishment. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says that the King sent her to
his sister's Abbey at Wherwell but Goscelin corrects this statement with
confidence, saying that Edith chose Wilton. Edith was reinstated with
her husband in 1052 after Godwin had forced the King to hear his case
and exchange the kiss of peace. This time it was Robert the Archbishop
who fled back to Normandy, leaving the door open for Stigand, Bishop of
Winchester, to step into the Archbishop's place whilst still holding on to
his Bishopric at Winchester.7
When Edith retired to Wilton Abbey after her husband's death in
January 1066, she already regarded the Abbey as her home. For several
years before this, she had spent time in Wilton supervising the
rebuilding in stone of the Abbey Church, previously a wooden structure.
In his Life of King Edward, Goscelin writes: "and when a few years had
slipped by, it was finished nobly with all things necessary to, and
becoming, such a work and also royal honour and glory." Goscelin says
that the building is Edith's child and she will have more pleasure from
the fruits of her building labour than she would have had from children
who could cause her grief.8 This was Edith's gift to the Abbey where she
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had been brought up. In spite of set-backs such as the great fire which
swept through the town in the summer of 1065, destroying all Edith's
preparations for the consecration of her new Abbey but fortunately
leaving the Abbey unscathed, Edith redoubled her efforts and had the
building ready as planned in October for Bishop Herman to carry out the
consecration and rededication to Saint Benedict. Edith had completed
this major task just two months before her husband's rebuilding of
Westminster Cathedral was ready for consecration on 28 December of
that year. There may have been some rivalry between husband and wife
over these two immense building projects running parallel.
In retirement, Edith would be at Wilton Abbey at the time of the
Battle of Hastings. She quickly made her peace with William, by handing
over the keys of the Treasury at Winchester. 9 Unlike Harold's mother
Gytha, who encouraged opposition to William and was forced to flee the
country, settling at St. Omer, Edith managed to hang on to most of her
possessions and was respected by William who allowed her to be buried
in Westminster Abbey beside her husband when she died in 1075. By
that date, the Tapestry recording so much about her recent family
troubles would probably be finished.
The first part of the Tapestry is devoted to a sympathetic portrayal of
Edith's brother Harold, naming him King of the English, a fact omitted in
Norman accounts of these events. It demonstrates Harold's bravery
when rescuing Norman soldiers from drowning in the treacherous
waters of the River Couesnon at Mont-Saint-Michel bay when
accompanying William on his Brittany expedition in the early summer of
1064 or 1065 " when the corn was green and still stood in the ear, "
we are told by William of Poitiers. 10 It would not have been appropriate
for the embroiderers of the Tapestry to demonstrate Harold's bravery by
reference to his remarkble victory at Stamford Bridge which had
protected the kingdom against invaders but resulted in the death of his
breakaway brother Tostig; nor did Goscelin in his praise-poem of Edith's
family, undertaken at her request, refer to this decisive action except to
dismiss it as a family tragedy not to be dwelt upon; so Harold's knightly
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qualities had to be demonstrated in the Tapestry by his performance on
the Breton campaign which William acknowledged by the bestowal of
arms. This gift would also, ofcourse, secure Harold as William's vassal,
making the compliment double-edged.
At the beginning of the Tapestry, Harold is shown setting out
cheerfully with his companions and his hawk and hounds: hunting was
his favourite pastime and he owned several books on the subject. 11 We
are presented with an optimistic picture of Harold carrying a
hound under his arm and his hawk on his wrist as he embarks into his
waiting boat at Bosham harbour and later manages to hold on to his
hawk even when captured by Count Guy of Ponthieu. In these opening
scenes of the Tapestry, we are shown the Godwin manor hall at Bosham
where Harold and his companions take a meal, after first praying in
Bosham Church, probably for a safe journey and happy outcome of
their adventure to Normandy. No Norman account mentions Bosham
manor, inherited by Earl Godwin from King Canute whose kinsman
Godwin had become through marriage. Edith and her sisters at Wilton
Abbey would be familiar with Bosham and would no doubt enjoy seeing
it in embroidery. The bereaved sisters would perhaps have known but
would refrain from disclosing the secret that Harold's mutilated body
had been buried beside the Saxon Chancel steps in Bosham Church.
A Saxon arch is depicted very clearly in the Tapestry, enabling the
building to be easily recognised even today, perhaps a deliberate
indication of Harold's resting place.
Harold's body was identified on the battlefield by his handfast wife
Edith Swanneck and removed, with William's permission, by William
Malet, an Anglo-Norman aristocrat in William's service but previously
known at Edward the Confessor's Court and related to King Edward,
therefore perhaps sympathetic towards the Anglo-Saxons. Harold would
be buried secretly as the Conqueror would not wish his grave to become
a shrine. Malet was instructed to bury the body by the sea: in laying it
to rest in Bosham Church, this was indeed beside the sea, although
perhaps not exactly as William had intended.
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After Hastings, Bosham manor came into the posession of William
Fitz Osbern's brother, the Conqueror's steward, who in 1072 became
Bishop of Exeter. He may have been responsible for raising the floor in
Bosham Church and building the part-Norman chancel arch, thus
concealing any burial. As recently as 1954, when repairs in the church
led to the lifting of the paving stones beneath this arch, the remains of a
dismembered body were found there in an elaborate stone coffin. The
right leg was missing, the left femur fractured; there was no skull.
Writing of Harold's death on the battlefield, Bishop Guy d'Amiens
whose nephew Hugh of Ponthieu was said to have been present at
Harold's death, told how Harold's head was cut off by Eustace, his right
leg amputated at the thigh and hurled far away by Walter Giffard. 13
Whatever the date of Guy d'Amiens' account in the Carmen de Hastings
Proelio, and it is thought to be soon after the event, the details are
strikingly apt, matching what we see is happening to Harold's right thigh
in the Tapestry. A smaller coffin was also found beneath the chancel
arch in Bosham Church: it is known to be that of King Canute's eight
year old daughter who had drowned there when Canute held the manor.
Both bodies were carefully examined, recorded and reburied.14
Edith's two other brothers, Leofwyn and Gyrth, both heirs to the
throne, who fought at Hastings are given honourable mention in the
Tapestry, named and shown fighting and dying for their country: only
one gets a mention in Norman versions of these events.15 If in the hands
of their grieving sisters at Wilton Abbey, all of them would be honoured,
including Eustace, Edith's sister-in-law by marriage: we can assume that
he had been forgiven for his part in their father's difficulties in 1051;
besides, he was William's standard bearer so Muriel would wish to see
justice done to Eustace. Harold's tragic death illustrated in the Tapestry
and in which Eustace apparently played his part, shows Harold as a hero,
not the miscreant, villain and perjurer who deserved his fate as
described by Norman writers.16
Not only does the Tapestry honour Edith's brothers, her husband
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King Edward, enthroned and dignified, opens this historic tale: twice he
is shown on his lion-headed throne, later on his deathbed, a scene in
which Edith herself takes part at the foot of the bed, warming her
husband's feet in her lap, we are told by Goscelin the monk, who must
have witnessed this scene to be able to record every detail in his Life of
King Edward who rests at Westminster.17 This scene forms a climax in
the Tapestry story, showing also Edward's funeral followed by the newlycrowned King Harold, with the caption, "here they gave the kingdom to
Harold." The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle states: "Earl Harold succeeded to
the kingdom of England as the King granted it to him and as he was
elected thereto. He was consecrated king on Epiphany." 18
There was no question of Harold seizing the throne, as reported by
William of Poitiers and William of Jumièges. What is not clear is who
performed the coronation ceremony. It was probably AEldred,
Archbishop of York19 in the presence of Archbishop Stigand who was not
recognised by the Pope. Yet only a full view of Stigand is pictured
wearing his stole and holding out his maniple: the explanation here is
that Stigand had long been a friend of the Godwin family and especially
of Queen Edith who, when in 1070 he was deposed by the Normans
and imprisoned at Winchester, travelled from Wilton to visit him in
prison. If Edith were involved in the making of the Tapestry, we can
understand Stigand's presence as well as the scenes of Bosham and
mention of other members of her family. There is no doubt that the first
part of the Tapestry is Godwin orientated and the link with Wilton Abbey
is easy to establish. It also matches descriptions given in Part I of the
praise-poem of the Godwin family, The Life of King Edward who rests at
Westminster, commissioned by Queen Edith and whose most likely
author was the monk Goscelin, chaplain at Wilton Abbey at that time
and who had the Queen's ear.
Edith was an intelligent and gifted woman who excelled at
embroidery. After supervising the building of a great Abbey Church, she
would be ideally suited to the task of organising a team of
embroiderers to commemorate not only her own family tragedy in
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the first part of the Tapestry but also the Norman prowess and victory
in the second. With Muriel's presence at the Abbey, it seems that those
most closely connected with the main participants in both armies, as
displayed in the Tapestry, were living harmoniously together at Wilton
Abbey. Odo would probably not have hesitated to put his project into
such capable hands. A pattern was emerging for the master artist: a
well-balanced epic drama, portraying the feats of two great dynasties.
Just as Harold's two brothers had supported his performance in the first
part of the work, so William was supported in the second part by his
two half-brothers , Odo and Robert of Mortain. Above all, the artist
must appear impartial to please both the victors and the defeated.
Like the Godwin sisters at Wilton Abbey in 1066, Muriel was also in
mourning and her need to honour the dead was as great as theirs,
although she also had a victory to celebrate. In the aftermath of the
invasion and shock at the distress and destruction caused, it is likely
that those at Wilton Abbey would want to make reparations to
heal the wounds, to set the example of the only way forward. Work on
a commemorative tapestry would have been theraputic, keeping minds
and bodies busy for all involved: and many would be needed in the
preparation and achievement of this unusual undertaking. Other
members of the Godwin family in mourning at Wilton House included
Harold's daughter Gunnhild and Edith's sister Gunnhild who was a nun
there. Edith's sister AElfgyva about whose whereabouts we can only
guess had probably been resident at Wilton Abbey with her sister
Gunnhild since they were boarders in the Abbey school. Of the three
women who appear in the Bayeux Tapestry, two were connected with
Wilton Abbey and one of them was named AElfgyva.
Notes
1. F. Barlow, ed. and trans. The Life of King Edward who rests at Westminster, 2nd.
edition (Oxford Medieval Texts, 1992) Book I, p.25.
2. A.W. Wilmart, ed. La Légende de Sainte Edith en prose et en vers par le moine
Goscelin (Anal. Boll. 56, 1938) para 20; and C. Horstmann, ed. S.Editha Chronicon
Vilodunense im Wiltshire Dialekt, (Heilbronn 1883) ll. 1781-1792.
3. Victoria County History, Wiltshire, Vol.6, p13.
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4. F. Barlow, ed. and trans. The Life of King Edward who rests at Westminster,
2nd. edition (Oxford Medieval Texts, 1992) Book I, p.25.
5. A.W. Wilmart, ed. La Légende de Sainte Edith en prose et en vers par le moine
Goscelin (Anal. Boll. 56, 1938) pp.86, 89.
6. R. Foreville, ed. William of Poitiers, History of William the Conqueror (Paris 1912)
pp. 256-258.
7. Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, trans. G.N. Garmonsway, (J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd. London
1972) text D, years 1051, 1052, pp. 173-182 and E. years 1051, 1052,
pp.172-183. See also
F. Barlow, Edward the Confessor, (Yale Univ. Press 1997) Appendix A, pp. 294-295.
8. F. Barlow, ed. and trans. The Life of King Edward who rests at Westminster,
2nd. edition (Oxford Medieval Texts, 1992) Book I, p.73
9. F. Barlow, The Godwins (Longmans 2002) pp. 114-115.
10. Lewis Thorpe, trans. William of Poitiers, The History of William the Conqueror,
Duke of Normandy, King of the English, (The Folio Society 1973) p.36.
11. Ian W. Walker, Harold, The Last Anglo-Saxon King (Sutton 1997) pp. 134-135.
12. John Pollock, Harold Rex. Is King Harold buried in Bosham Church?
Penny Royal Publications 1996)
13. Anglo-Saxon chronicle, text C, year 1053 p.182 and text E, year 1053
p.183. Both texts say that Earl Godwin was buried in the Old Minster at
Winchester where he died but they could be mistaken in which case it could be
his coffin in Bosham Church.
14. Harold founded Waltham Canonry in Essex in about 1060. Tradition has it that
this was Harold's final resting place and in 1177 this church claimed this to
be the case. See also F. Barlow, The Godwins (Longmans 2002) pp.113-114, and
Ian W. Walker, Harold the Last Anglo-Saxon King (Sutton 1997) p. 181.
15. F. Barlow, ed. and trans. The Carmen de Hastings Proelio of Guy Bishop of
Amiens (Oxford Medieval Texts 1997) in which only Gyrth's death is mentioned
and see also, Sally Ann Brown's Article on the Bayeux Tapestry entitled Why
Eustace , Count of Boulogne? which says that only the Carmen poem describes
the death of Gyrth; Leofwine is not mentioned.
16. William of Poitiers, William of Jumièges,Gui d'Amiens and even Orderic Vitalis
all slander Harold with such names, summed up by Pierre Bouet in his chapter
Is the Bayeux Tapestry pro-English? in The Bayeux Tapestry. Embroidering the
Facts of History. Proceedings of the Cerisy Coloquium 1999, eds. Pierre Bouet,
Brian Levy and François Neveux . p.210.
17. F. Barlow, ed. and trans. The Life of King Edward who rests at Westminster
(Oxford Medieval Texts 1992) Part 2.
18. Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, E, year 1066, trans. by G.N. Garmonsway, p.197.
19. Ian W. Walker, Harold. The Last Anglo-Saxon King,(Sutton 1997) p. 136.
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Chapter 8.
AElfgyva, Abbess of Wilton Abbey.
Edith's sister AElfgyva, also written AElfgifu and even Alfyne, is named
in Domesday Book as Harold's sister.1 There is also in the Domesday
records for Wessex, and named among other members of the Godwin
family, an AElfgyva who holds lands of King Edward in Sussex, Dorset and
in Wiltshire, where she held as many as 30 hides at East Knolye. 2 Also in
Wiltshire is an AElfgyva connected with the lands of the church of
Wilton held by the Abbess of Wilton Abbey: an entry for the Chalke
Valley close to Wilton, Bowerchalke and Broadchalke, where AElfgyva
held two hides, states that at the time of Domesday, 1086, these were
claimed by the then Abbess.3 From these records we might deduce that
though a common Anglo-Saxon name, these last AElfgyva entries also
refer to Edith's and Harold's sister whom we may suppose remained a
resident at Wilton Abbey, with her sister Gunnhild, where she is
mentioned as a member of Queen Edith's household.4
We know that between the years 1065 and 1067, covering the very
period of events in the Bayeux Tapestry, an AElfgyva was Abbess of
Wilton Abbey.5 The inclusion of an AElfgyva in the Bayeux Tapestry,
deliberately named, being pointed out to William by Harold in their
conversation, at once suggests a connection with Wilton Abbey.
AElfgyva is shown standing in an imposing gateway, in front of an
interesting building, attended by a cleric who is drawing attention to her
eyes. She is not at Rouen in William's palace but in her own gateway, at
Wilton Abbey, as the Abbess of Wilton is seen on her seal. 6 This
suggests that Harold's sister AElfgyva and the Abbess of Wilton were the
same person.
The chronicler Eadmer, a monk at Canterbury writing at the end of the
eleventh century, in his History of Recent Events in England, writes that
William was proposing to Harold a marriage between Harold's sister
AElfgyva and one of his Barons.7 Perhaps Harold's outward gesture
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towards the following scene of AElfgyva is to explain to William and to
the viewers that being a nun, his sister was not of marriageable status.
Not only was Harold's sister a nun, but if Harold's visit to Normandy took
place in the early summer of 1065 as William of Poitiers suggests, she
was by then an Abbess and one favoured by Saint Edith of Wilton Abbey
who had just performed a miracle healing on her eyesight, which is the
reason for the cleric's gesture, to point this out. The cleric has an
important rôle in this scene. There is no sexual innuendo as has often
been suggested: he is there to remind viewers of this miraculous cure of
AElfgyva's blindness by Wilton's Saint. He is almost certainly her
chaplain at Wilton Abbey, none other than Goscelin the monk: a modest
priest, who would not wish to be named.
This seems to be the news which Harold is imparting to William and
those present at his Court, including perhaps Harold's brother Wulfnoth
and nephew Hakon who had been living at William's Court as hostages
since 1052. Eadmer, the chronicler, records that on Earl Godwin's return
to England in 1052, and reinstatement by King Edward, two hostages
were sent to William's Court, probably to ensure Godwin's good
conduct.8 The figure closest to Harold in this scene who appears to be
touching his hand with a rapt expression, looks similar in stance and tilt
of the head, to the figure in a later scene awaiting Harold expectantly,
worriedly, on the beach beside the boat ready to take them back to
England. Eadmer says that one hostage was allowed to return to
England, presumably Hakon.9 We know that William kept Harold's
brother Wulfnoth a semi-prisoner for the rest of his life. 10 Harold
appears excited as he tells William the story of AElfgyva's miraculous
cure by Saint Edith, all the details of which are provided by Goscelin,
chaplain at Wilton Abbey, in his Life of Saint Edith, written about 1080
at the request of the Abbess Godyva, who succeeded AElfgyva as Abbess
at Wilton.11
First Goscelin tells of Saint Edith's parentage: daughter of King Edgar
and Wulfrith whom he had abducted from the boarding school at Wilton
Abbey when staying the there, for which, it is thought, he had to pay
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the penalty set by Archbishop Dunstan of not wearing his crown until
973.12 Wulfrith returned to the Abbey with her baby daughter Edith and
became a nun there and later its Abbess. Edith remained at Wilton
with her mother all her short life, going to and fro between her
father's Royal Palace in Kinggesbyre, now Kingsbury Square in Wilton
and the Abbey. King Edgar engaged tutors for her and she spent some
of her time visiting the sick and needy in Wilton and looking after her
collection of animals which she kept in the Abbey grounds and for which
her mother had to build a high wall to keep them within bounds. 13 Edith
also embroidered church vestments and was a gifted painter. The only
time she is known to have left Wilton was when she accompanied her
mother Wulfrith to attend the translation of the body of her half-brother
Edward, later the Martyr, from Wareham in Dorset where he had been
hastily buried after his assassination at Corfe Castle, to a shrine awaiting
him at Shaftesbury Abbey.14
King AEthelred, a half-brother of Edith's, together with Archbishop
Dunstan encouraged Edith to build a little chapel at Wilton Abbey next
to the Abbey Church, decorated, as we have already noted, with wall
paintings using Edith's own designs.15 When Edith died at the age of
twenty-three, in 984, she was buried in her own little chapel. Those who
prayed at her tomb found that their prayers were answered. Archbishop
Dunstan had two visions about Edith who was quickly made a Saint in
King AEthelred's reign. When King Cnut was staying overnight at Wilton
Abbey, where he had been christened, he was convinced by the stories
of Edith's miracles and ordered a shrine in gold to be built for her.16
Goscelin relates in detail the miraculous healing of AElfgyva's eyesight.
One day, the Abbess AElfgyva was lighting the altar lamp in Saint Edith's
little chapel beside her tomb. Overcome with emotion, she filled the
lamp, which was a metal hanging bowl,17 with too much oil. The bowl
capsized and AElfgyva's right eye became badly swollen. Not only was
her sight affected but she was in danger of losing her life. As she lay in
complete darkness, she had a vision in which she saw very clearly the
young figure of Saint Edith standing over her and making the sign of the
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cross with her thumb as she always used to do. Edith told AElfgyva not
to be afraid as soon she would be well. When the Abbess awoke, the
swelling went down and she regained her health for which she gave
thanks to God.18 Because of this experience, AElfgyva became devoted
to Saint Edith: it is probably due to her and to her chaplain Goscelin
who wrote The Life of Saint Edith that Wilton has to this day an AngloSaxon princess as its national Saint, the Normans having swept aside
many Anglo-Saxon Saints and their Saints' Days. Wilton celebrates
Edith's life every year on 16 September, the date upon which she died
in 984.
We cannot know for certain the reason for Harold's visit to Normandy
in 1065. The master artist of the Tapestry has deliberately left the
matter ambiguous to suit both the Norman and English viewers. William
of Poitiers in his account of these events unfolding in the Tapestry in his
Life of William the Conqueror 19 and later, Wace in his Roman de Rou20
both say that King Edward sent Harold as his envoy to confirm to William
the offer of the English throne: this seems unlikely but justifies William's
subsequent invasion. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, version D,21 states that
William had visited King Edward in 1051 during Earl Godwin's absence,
when Edward might have adopted William as his heir, but Eadmer the
monk in his History of Recent events in England makes no mention of
this visit. Eadmer explains that when Harold asked for the King's
permission to visit William on family business, to try to release the
Godwin hostages, Edward warned Harold, as shown in the first scene in
the Tapestry, that such a visit could prove disastrous both for him and
for the kingdom. Eadmer, writing with hindsight, reports the King's
supposed reply:
"I will have no part in this; I give you leave to go where you will and to
see what you can do. But I have a presentiment that you will only
succeed in bringing misfortune upon the whole kingdom and discredit to
yourself." Eadmer continues:
"Harold, trusting his own judgment rather than the King's embarked
on board ship taking with him his richest and most honourable men,
equipped with a lordly provision of gold, silver and costly raiment."
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Once Harold became a guest in William's palace at Rouen, he realised
that he was in William's power. Eadmer writes:
"Then Harold perceived danger whichever way he turned. He could
not see any way of escape without agreeing to all that William wished.
William made Harold swear that he would implement all that they had
agreed." 23
We know that this situation led up to the oath which Harold is seen
swearing in the Tapestry scene at Bayeux before he is able to return to
England; after which, Eadmer tells us, he took his nephew and returned
home. The next ordeal for Harold is also illustrated in the Bayeux
Tapestry: he must give King Edward a report of his Normandy trip. We
see Edward enthroned, looking very severely at Harold, pointing his
forefinger in admonishment and, according to Eadmer, saying:
"Did I not tell you that I knew William and that your going might bring
untold calamity upon this kingdom," prophetic words indeed from a
King who would be sanctified in 1160 as Confessor. 24
Even these scenes, elucidated by Eadmer's account, can be interpreted
differently by a Norman audience. Harold was aware of his quandary at
William's palace: the master artist could place the scene with AElfgyva
very nicely into the chain of events at this point giving the impression
that marriages were being discussed, whilst at the same time Harold
could be invoking the help of the Saint of Wilton. Those making the
Tapestry, if at Wilton Abbey, would be keen to promote Wilton's Saint
just as Odo would wish to widen the appeal of visiting his Cathedral at
Bayeux by exposing to Tapestry viewers the sacred Relics of Bayeux upon
which Harold had sworn his fateful oath at the end of his visit to
Normandy.
Harold had accepted William's hospitality; he had accompanied
William as his comrade-in-arms to Brittany after which he had received
the favour of arms from William and thus become his vassal; in order to
escape home, he had to swear the oath, soon to be broken, which would
tarnish his reputation and turn him into a purjurer in the eyes of that
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feudal society. Such was Harold's tragedy.
No coronation ceremony of Harold is shown in the Tapestry, as both
Normans and the English must be appeased by the master designer.
Instead, Stigand is given his prominent position as a friend of the
Godwins whilst at the same time portentous signs creep into the story
diverting attention from Stigand to Halley's comet in the sky and ghostly
boats in the bottom border which was soon to become a graveyard. The
master designer was a genius, able to convey two parallel
interpretations of the events being told. Even the fables in the borders,
or most especially the fables, which could by many be passed over as
pure decoration, could also be interpreted with either a Norman or an
Anglo-Saxon slant. The skilful embroiderers some of whom were related
to the dramatis personae in the Tapestry, would be aware of its dual
purpose. Perhaps only in a nunnery such as Wilton Abbey where
mourners related to both armies mingled with forgiveness in their
hearts could such a work be achieved as a record for posterity.
It was with posterity in mind that the Bayeux Tapestry was conceived,
to tell the story of brave men and how history was fashioned. It tells of
the end of the Anglo-Saxon era and the start of the Anglo-Norman age.
Through the ages, those proud of their work have signed their names for
posterity. Sometimes the works themselves have named their creators,
as with the Alfred Jewel, an aestel inscribed with the words: "Alfred had
me made." 25 Shaftesbury town bore a similar inscription on an ancient
wall which read: "Alfred had this town built in the eighth year of his
reign 880." 26 Queen AElflaed's embroidered stole, maniple and girdle
found in Saint Cuthbert's tomb and now preserved in Durham Cathedral,
bears her name.27 Scultpors, artists, illuminators, scribes, all signed their
work in one way or another for posterity. The sculptor Giselbertus
carved his name in stone beneath his magnificent figures on the western
portal of Autun Cathedral; Matthew Paris left us a drawing of himself,
on his knees, worshipping the Virgin Mary;28 John Sifrewas, rather later,
drew delightful portraits of himself and his scribe, John Whas, in the
glorious illuminated Sherborne Missal.29 The twelfth century poet,
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Marie de France, connected with the Bayeux Tapestry by the fables in its
borders, wrote in the Epilogue to her collection of Fables:30
"She who allows herself to be forgotten is foolish."
By appearing in the Tapestry, AElfgyva made sure that the collective
workforce, men and women, who created the Bayeux Tapestry would
not be forgotten as it was under her Abbacy that the work was begun.
She represented them all. AElfgyva's Abbacy covered the remaining
year of King Edward's reign, the brief reign of Harold her brother, the
Norman invasion, the Battle of Hastings and the beginning of William
the Conqueror's reign: momentous years which were commemorated in
the Bayeux Tapestry.
This was also the beginning of the great age of Cathedral building:
three major ecclesiastical buildings are celebrated in the Tapesatry,
including the little Saxon church at Bosham, still standing today and
displaying features with which the Godwin family would all be familiar.
Also, not to be missed in the upper border, we can recognise MontSaint-Michel Abbey on its rock, the principal shrine in the Duchy of
Normandy,31 though it adds nothing to the story being told in the
Tapestry. The Tapestry was intended to celebrate the consecration of
Odo's new Cathedral at Bayeux but at the same time it displayed King
Edward's great new Abbey at Westminster, thanks perhaps to the
detailed description of it in Goscelin's Life of King Edward who rests at
Westminster.32 The Tapestry also celebrated Queen Edith's newly-built
Abbey Church at Wilton again thanks to Goscelin enabling us, through
his description, to identify the entrance to this buiding in the scene of
the cleric and AElfgyva.33
Notes
1. Domesday Book, A Complete Translation, Alecto, Historical Edition Ltd. 1992
(Penguin Books 2002). Entry for Buckinghampshire, IIII, The Bishop of Bayeux,
land held by a man of AElfgyfu, sister of Earl Harold.
2. Ibid. Sussex p.53 x, Dorset p.213 xxvi and p. 229 lvii, Wiltshire p.164 i.
3. Ibid. p.172 xiii
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4. J.E. Nightingale, Memorials of Wilton, (Devizes 1906) The Early History of Wilton
pp.18-19.
5. Ibid. p27.
6. Ibid. p.14. for seals of Abbesses of Wilton Abbey.
7. Eadmer, A History of Recent Events in England, trans. Geoffrey Bosanquet (The
Cresset Press, London 1964) pp. 6-8.
Ian W. Walker, Harold the Last Anglo-Saxon King (Sutton Publishing Ltd. 1997)
p. 93.
8. Eadmer, A History of Recent Events in England, trans. Geoffrey Bosanquet (The
Cresset Press, London 1964) p. 6.
9. Ibid. p. 6.
David M. Wilson, The Bayeux Tapestry (Thames and Hudson 2004) Scene 26.
10. F. Barlow, The Godwins (Longman 2002) pp. 117-118
11. A.W. Wilmart, ed. The Life of Saint Edith in prose and in verse by the monk
Goscelin (Anal. Boll. 56, 1938) Note 6 pp36-37. It is interesting to note that
Dom Andre Wilmart describes Godyva as AElfgyva's sister; and later, a nun
named Thola as AElfgyva's blood sister.
12. J.E. Nightingale, Memorials of Wilton (Devizes 1906) see The Early History of
Wilton.
13. A.W. Wilmart, ed. The Life of Saint Edith in prose and in verse by the monk
Goscelin (Anal. Boll. 56, 1938) p. 79.
14. Ibid. pp. 82-83.
15. Ibid. p. 87 n. 2.
Sainte Editha, Chronicon Vilodunense im Wiltshire Dialekt, aus ms. Cotton,
Faustina B III ed. C. Horstmann (Heilbronn 1883) p.40, ll. 1780-1792.
16. Ibid. p. 87 ll. 3507-3510.
17. An Anglo-Saxon metal bowl was dug up in Wilton in 1860 when the Victorian
drains were beng laid: it was found between the former Abbey and Kingsbury
Square. It is now in Salisbury Museum. See J.E. Nightingale , Memorials of
Wilton, p.5.
18. A.W. Wilmart, ed. The Life of Saint Edith in prose and in verse by the monk
Goscelin (Anal. Boll. 56, 1938) Para. 19. pp.294-295.
19. William of Poitiers, History of William the Conqueror, ed. and trans.
R.H.C. Davis and M. Chibnall (Oxford 1998)
20. Wace, Roman de Rou, trans. G.S. Burgess (Boydell Press 2004)
21. Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, D. 1051 entry.
22. Eadmer, A History of Recent Events in England, trans. Geoffrey Bosanquet
(The Cresset Press, London, 1964) P6.
23. Ibid. pp. 7-8.
24. Ibid. p.8.
25. To be seen in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.
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26. John Chandler, A Higher Reality, The History of Shaftesbury Royal Nunnery,
(Hobnob Press 2003) p. 7.
27. The stole, maniple and girdle found in Saint Cuthbert's tomb in 1827, bear the
inscriptions: AELFFLAED FIERI PRECEPIT and PIO EPISCOPO FRIDESTANO, that is,
made at the command of Queen AElfflaed for Bishop Frithestan and they were
thought to have been made in the Winchester school of embroidery. They were
presented to the shrine of Saint Cuthbert by King Aethelstan in 934. See Saint
Cuthbert. His Life and Cult in Medieval Durham, by Dominic Marner, (The British
Library 2000) p.17.
28. Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, self portrait.
29. Janet Backhouse, The Sherborne Missal, (The British Library 1985) Frontispiece
and p.7, p.22, pp.51-52 and back cover illumination.
30. Marie de France, Fables, eds. A. Ewert and R.C. Johnson, (Basil Blackwell 1942)
31. Katherine Lack, Conqueror's Son, (Suttom Publishing 2007) p.141.
32. F. Barlow, ed. and trans. The Life of King Edward who rests at Westminster,
2nd. edn. (English Medieval Texts 1992) Book 2.
33. Scene 17 in David M. Wilson's The Bayeux tapestry (Thames and Hudson 1985)
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Chapter 9.
The Cleric Goscelin.
Goscelin is indispensable to our understanding of the first part of the
Bayeux Tapestry. Perhaps best known as a hagiographer, he clearly
enjoyed researching and writing his findings about Anglo-Saxon Saints
for which later writers, like William of Malmesbury, were indebted to
him; but his Life of King Edward who rests at Westminster1 was in a
different category. Written at the request of Queen Edith, it was
originally to be a praise-poem about her family. Goscelin, chaplain at
Wilton Abbey, was, it seems, its author: praised by William of
Malmesbury, it is unlikely that the Queen would have looked elsewhere
for an author.
Goscelin took pleasure in describing the Godwin family, all of whom
he knew individually; but his plan was to speak mainly about Earl
Godwin, Harold, Tostig and Edith herself. He wrote in Book I that his
intention was to please the Queen. It is likely that the work was begun
when Edith was supervising the rebuilding of Wilton Abbey Church:
"emulating her husband's good works at Westminster," 2 wrote Goscelin.
He tells of the great fire which swept through Wilton during the summer
of 1065, burning many houses and Edith's preparations for the
ceremony of consecration and rededication of the Church to Saint
Benedict which she had planned for early October of that year. Being a
determined lady, Edith redoubled her efforts, Goscelin tells us, and still
had everything ready for Bishop Herman to go ahead with the ceremony
as planned. Goscelin describes both the occasion and the oratory
which Saint Edith had built.3
That same October, Queen Edith's two elder brothers, Harold and
Tostig, were staying with King Edward at his hunting lodge in Britford,
three miles from Wilton, for some hunting in Clarendon Forest. 4 In late
August that year, Harold had invited Edward for some hunting at
Portskewett near Chepstow where he had just constructed a hunting
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lodge but an attack on this site by some Welsh marauders had caused
this trip to be postponed.5 The King took pleasure in hunting and in
the company of Harold and Tostig whom he relied upon, like sons, to
protect the kingdom. He was, it seems, in robust health. This casts
doubt upon William of Poitiers' theory that, being in ill health, Edward
had dispatched Harold to Normandy earlier that year to offer William
the crown. As Edward had Edgar the AEthling living at his Court, then
aged about twelve,6 it would be surprising if he had made up his mind
to make William his heir.
This situation was abruptly changed at Britford. Goscelin reports at
length at the end of Part I of his praise-poem what happened and from
his description, it seems that he was present at Edward's Court. News
of a Northern uprising in Tostig's Earldom in Northumberland reached
them at Britford: his possessions there had been plundered and burnt;
he was accused of cruelty; Earl Morkere of Mercia had been invited to
take over the earldom. King Edward was distressed: winter was
approaching and his army was disinclined to go on a winter campaign
nor did it wish to get involved in a civil war. 7
Tostig accused Harold , as Edward's negotiator, of stirring up trouble in
the North; Harold may aleady have been negotiating to marry Earl
Morkere's sister Ealdgyth, recently widowed when her husband, King
Gruffydd ap Llywelyn of Wales, was suddenly attacked and killed by his
own men.8 Harold hotly denied Tostig's accusation, under oath, which
caused Goscelin to remark wryly that:
"Harold was, alas, too generous with his oaths," 9
a direct reference to Harold's recent enforced oath to William, Duke of
Normandy.
King Edward's reluctant solution to this crisis was to let Tostig and his
family go into exile: they were given hospitality and an estate at SaintOmer in Flanders by Tostig's father-in law, Count Baldwin. Edith was
upset by her brothers' quarrel and, from this moment, perhaps in a state
of shock, Edward's health began to fail. By Christmas he was too ill to
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to attend the consecration and dedication to Saint Peter of his great new
Cathedral at Westminster on 28 December. By 4 January 1066 he was
dead and buried. Edith went into retirement at Wilton Abbey where she
would be reunited with her sisters.10
What happened at Britford which Goscelin describes in detail in his
Life of King Edward who rests at Westminster had a direct bearing on the
outcome of the Battle of Hastings even though he refrains from
mentioning the Battle and Harold's short reign, saying that he did not
wish to dwell upon tragedy. Had there been no quarrel at Britford
between the Godwin brothers over the Northern uprising, there might
have been no Stamford Bridge at York where Tostig arrived aggressively
with King Harold Hardrara of Norway to assert their rights and where
both met their deaths. Harold was forced to leave the South coast
unguarded whilst he marched north, leaving the door open for William.
Harold returned immediately but with a depleted and tired army to fight
William who had landed at Pevency and was ravaging Godwin country.
Harold should have waited to strengthen his army but, with his two
brothers Leofwine and Gyrth, he went to the defence of his people and
his land. After Hastings, the Godwin sisters at Wilton Abbey were left to
mourn the loss of four brothers and Goscelin's praise-poem for the
Godwin family was left in tatters: he laments that his heroes are all
dead. In Book II, Goscelin had to alter his theme and probably rethink
the title of the praise-poem which would become the Vita AEdwardi
Regis known in translation as The Life of King Edward who rests at
Westminster.
After comforting Edith in Book II of his poem, Goscelin decided to
write about Edward's religious life, about a few miracles ascribed to him,
about his wise prophesies, the dedication of Westminster Cathedral, the
King's death and buriel there. Goscelin details what was said during
Edward's final hours: he reports his dying wishes, his hopes and fears
for the kingdom, his requests and even his dreams. He tells how Edward
commended Edith and the kingdom into Harold's protection and asked
Harold to allow all Edward's Norman friends to return to their homes
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across the Channel safely unless they wished to remain to serve Harold:
making it clear that Edward was not expecting William to take over the
kingdom. Even William of Poitiers said that when dying, Edward
bequeathed the throne to Harold. Fifty years later, describing William's
deathbed scene, Orderic Vitalis gave his view as to why only Normandy
was inherited, as was the custom, he said, by the eldest son Robert, but
England, being the spoils of war, was to go to the second son,
William Rufus. In the next century, when writing his poem the Roman
de Rou, in praise of the Dukes of Normandy, its author Wace puts the
following words into William's mouth:
"I conquered England wrongfully and many men were killed
wrongfully; I killed their heirs wrongfully and took over the kingdom
wrongfully. What I stole wrongfully and had no right to I ought not to
give to my son, neither should I endow him with it wrongfully. " 11
This, with hindsight, seems to confirm Goscelin's account of Edward's
dying wishes; and to help our understanding of the Tapestry illustration
of this important scene.
Being present at the consecration of Westminster Abbey on 28
December 1065, and having a keen interest in architecture, Goscelin
wrote a full description of the occasion and the building. It seems that
his description influenced the cartoonist of the Tapestry: we see the
lofty columns described, the crossing, the winding stairs all reproduced
in embroidery.12 It is also thanks to Goscelin's description of Saint
Edith's little Chapel that we can identify it in the Tapestry. Goscelin
explained that it was like an annex through which one had to pass from
the porch to reach the main Church. Of this porch of entrance and
Edith's Chapel, Goscelin wrote:
"It was like a little porche of entrance
to the Abbey Church; it had little gates
of entrance with crosses set upon them" 13
The fifteenth century poem outlining the history of Wilton Abbey,
the Kings and Queens who had stayed there, even been born there,
christened there or merely passed through, was composed, it is
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supposed , by one of the chaplains who also described the little porch
of entrance to Saint Edith's little Chapel in the same terms. The author
confirms that it had been rebuilt in stone like the Church itself. It is a
more elaborate structure than that shown in the Tapestry, having
entrances from three sides which, without perspective, could hardly
have been produced in embroidery but, simplified, the main features
are there: the double doors with crosses set upon them. Similarly, the
Abbey gate is a simpler version than the three dimensional one shown
on the Abbess' seal. Her gateway is where the Abbess would expect to
be shown in pictorial form, recognisable to a contemporary audience.
The location of the AElfgyva scene is clearly Wilton Abbey and it is
Goscelin in his Life of Saint Edith who has opened our eyes to this
detail.
Goscelin wrote down his observations very carefully.14 Before writing
his Life of Saint Wulfsin, Abbot of Sherborne Abbey, formerly of
Westminster, we learn how he sought out and questioned those who
had known Wulfsin.
For those studying the Bayeux Tapestry
explanations can be found in Goscelin's writings about contemporary life
in England though it is unlikely that he would be involved actively in its
making even were it happening in his own Abbey. It seems, however,
that he is the priest accompanying AElfgyva as her chaplain and he is
therefore taking part willy-nilly in the story being told; perhaps just as he
found himself taking part in a dance at Wilton Abbey arranged by the
Abbess Brightwyn when he first arrived there. This tells us more about
life at Wilton Abbey in the eleventh century.15
Wilton Abbey was a vast establishment: it managed to absorb Queen
Edith's Court during her retirement. There is a Charter record of her
holding a meeting in an upper room in the Church in 1072, about a deed
of sale of land at Combe in Somerset which was to be handed over to
Giso, the Bishop of Wells: an illustration of this occasion has been
preserved with a list of twenty-six witnesses. 16 With such meetings as
this and all the hurley-burley which Edith's presence there must have
entailed as she lived there "in quasi-regal state,"17 and perhaps a
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Tapestry being made there, Wilton Abbey must have been a worldly
environment from which Goscelin would distance himself as much as a
chaplain could. He was a sensitive intellectual, a scholar and writer who
valued the calm of his little cell. Whilst on a trip along the Thames to
Westminster with Bishop Herman, he remarked upon the noisy throng,
the lavish food and how he longed to be back praying in his little cell
among his books at Wilton.18
Goscelin arrived in England in about 1058 from the monastery at St.
Bertin in Flanders to become part of Bishop Herman's household, as
secretary and companion.19 At that time the Bishop was visiting
Potterne, near Devizes and Goscelin went to find him there. He wrote
with horror and dismay about the "damp, black hole" in which he was
expected to sleep that first night and he described his misery.20 He then
tells how the room was transformed for him. The Bishop soon returned
to Sherborne where Goscelin was housed as he had been accustomed at
his monastery at St. Bertin. Bishop Herman was first Bishop of Wilton
and Ramsbury and chaplain to King Edward; later he was appointed
Bishop of Sherborne and Ramsbury. When William moved the see to
Sarum, near Wilton, in 1075, Bishop Herman remained there until his
death in 1078.21
Being neither Anglo-Saxon nor Norman but Flemish, Goscelin proved
to be an impartial historian in his adopted country; but after 1066 he
had to be careful of his choice of subject, which was why he wisely made
no mention of Harold's reign, nor of Stamford Bridge nor Hastings in
Book II of his Life of King Edward who rests at Westminster, as was the
case in Domesday Book commissioned by William in 1086 to record
what he had inherited. Each county recorded the ownership of land in
King Edward's time. Goscelin had to be careful not to offend the
Norman victors. Post-Hastings England was a dangerous place with
frequent revolts against the Norman occupiers which William's army
dealt with swiftly and brutally. Anglo-Saxon sympathisers had to be on
their guard. The Tapestry story of events leading up to Hastings was a
brave historical record and manages, like Goscelin in his writings, to
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remain neutral in relaying both sides of the story.
Other aspects of the Tapestry point to Wilton rather than Canterbury
as its place of origin. Embroiderers in Kent might have shied away from
mentioning Eustace of Boulogne who had led a revolt in Kent in 1067
against William and Odo;22 nor would Stigand have been given the title
of Archbishop if the Tapestry were worked in the Canterbury area; nor
should it be overlooked that of the three women who appear in the
Tapestry, two are connected with Wilton Abbey. The third, a lady in Kent
fleeing with her young son from the Normans' scorched earth policy, has
no identity: until we can find one for her she represents womankind at
the mercy of the Norman invaders. Perhaps she represented Edith
Swanneck fleeing with Harold's son.
It is in Goscelin's writings that we have found the key to unlock the
meaning of the scene with AElfgyva in the Bayeux Tapestry. The
inscription is left unfinished for a contemporary audience to read in
several ways: it celebrates the miracle healing of the Abbess' eyes by
the Saint of Wilton Abbey; it draws attention to Queen Edith's
rebuilding of the great Abbey Church; it is evidence of the provenance
of the Bayeux Tapestry; and this scene has still more to offer us. 23
There is also further evidence of the Tapestry's place of origin to be
found in its borders which will link it also with Shaftesbury Abbey whose
land adjoined that of Wilton Abbey. If we study the Fables of Marie
de France,24 written when she was Abbess of Shaftesbury Abbey one
hundred years later, it will become evident that she used the same
source for her work as did the embroiderers who included the fables in
the borders of the Tapestry. Just as Baudri's poem filled in details of
some scenes in the Tapestry and Goscelin others, so Marie's Fables
help our inderstanding of the fables in the borders, the reason for their
choice and their meaning in the context of the Tapestry.
Notes
1. F.Barlow, ed. and trans. The Life of King Edward who rests at Westminster,
2nd. edn. (Oxford Medieval Texts 1992)
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2. Ibid. Book I, Chapter 6, p.71.
3. Ibid. Chapter 6, pp.71-73.
4. Ibid. Chapter 7, p.75; see Appendix C, on Wilton Royal residences and hunting
grounds.
5. Anglo-Saxon Chronicle C and D for year 1065, trans. by G.N. Garmonsway,
(J.M. Dent and Sons Ltd. London 1972)
6. F. Barlow, Edward the Confessor, (Yale Univ. Press 1992) p.217.
7. F. Barlow, ed. and trans. The Life of King Edward who rests at Westminster
(Oxford Medieval Texts 1992) Part I, Chapter 7, pp.75-81. See also
F. Barlow, Edward the Confessor, (Yale Univ. Press 1992) p.235 and Appendix A,
p.296.
8. Ibid. p.243.
9. F. Barlow, ed. and trans. The Life of King Edward who rests at Westminster
(Oxford Medieval Texts 1992) for Goscelin's comment on Harold's oath from
from the Vita AEdwardi Regis:
Hoc illi imposuit, sed ille citius ad sacramentanimis,
proh dolor, prodigus, hoc objectum sacramentis purganit.
10. A.W. Wilmart, ed. and trans. The Life of Saint Edith in prose and in verse by
the monk Goscelin (Anal. Boll. 56, 1938) Note 6, pp.36-37
11. G. Burgess, trans. Wace, Roman de Rou (Boydell Press 2004) p.194, ll. ca. 9130.
12. F. Barlow, ed. and trans. The Life of King Edward who rests at Westminster
(Oxford Medieval Texts 1992) Part I, Chapter 6, pp.67-71.
13. A.W. Wilmart, ed. and trans. The Life of Saint Edith in prose and in verse by
the monk Goscelin (Anal. Boll. 56, 1938) p.86.
J.E. Nightingale, Memorials of Wilton(Devizes 1906) p.16.
C. Horstmann, ed. S. Editha Chronicon Vilodunense im Wiltshire Dialekt,
(Heilbronn 1883) ll.1773-1780.
14. C.H. Talbot, ed. Introduction to Goscelin's Liber Confortatorius (The Wellcome
Foundation London) pp.21-22; and
C.H. Talbot, ed. The Life of Saint Wulsin of Sherborne, (Revue Benedictine 1959)
p.68.
15. F. Barlow, ed. and trans. The Life of King Edward who rests at Westminster
(Oxford Medieval Texts 1992) Appendix C, on Goscelin of St. Bertin and his
works.
16. Pauline Stafford, Queen Emma and Queen Edith. Queenship and Women's
Power in eleventh century England (Blackwells, Oxford 1997) p.109.
17. J.E. Nightingale, Memorials of Wilton (Devizes 1906) p.19.
18. F. Barlow, ed. and trans. The Life of King Edward who rests at Westminster
(Oxford Medieval Texts 1992) Appendix C , on Goscelin of St Bertin and his
works.
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19. C.H. Talbot, Introduction to the Liber Confortatorius of Goscelin of St . Bertin
(The Wellcome Foundation, London) p.5.
20. Ibid. p.5.
W.H. Barnes and Rebecca Haywood, Writing the Wilton Women, Goscelin's
Legend of Saint Edith and the Liber Confortatorius (David Brown books co.
Belgium) translation , Book IV.
21. C.H. Talbot, Introduction to the Liber Confortatorius of Goscelin of St. Bertin
(The Wellcome Foundation, London) p.3.
22. F. Barlow, The Feudal Kingdom of England 1042-1216 (Longman 1999) p.71
David Crouch, The Normans, The History of a Dynasty (Hambledon, 2002) p.101.
Frank Stenton Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford 1971) pp.599-600.
23. See Chapter 15 of this volume.
24. Marie de France Fables, eds A. Ewert and R.C. Johnson (Basil Blackwell,
Oxford 1942)
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Chapter 10.
Marie de France and her background.
First we have to establish that Marie de France was, as far as we can
know, the Abbess of Shaftesbury between 1181 and her death in 1216.
There are those who have placed her at Romsey Abbey or at Reading
Abbey or elsewhere. Of these three Abbeys, it is now known that the
Abbess Marie of Romsey at that time was King Stephen's daughter Mary
whom Henry II thought wise to expell to France after his accession to
the throne because this lady was not averse to spying. Once back in
France and with a dispensation by the Pope from her abbatial vows, she
was able to marry Matthew of Flanders. The fact that two of Marie de
France's works were found in the library at Reading Abbey seems
insufficient proof that Marie was connected with this Abbey, for, as we
shall see, her works were very popular. In 1173, Henry made Thomas
Becket's sister Mary, Abbess of Barking.
At least nine fables illustrated in the borders of the first part of the
Tapestry are among Marie's collection of Fables but not in other
collections, which have variations such as different animals. This leads us
to conclude that Marie's Fables and those of the embroiderers were
derived from the same source. There is no record of embroiderers at
Reading who might have sewn the Bayeux Tapestry although,
coincidentally, Reading Museum today houses the one replica of it which
we have in England.
This was made in 1885 by the Ladies of Leek, near Chester, members
of the Leek School of Art-Embroidery founded by Elizabeth Wardle, wife
of Thomas Wardle who had a silk and textile manufactory in Leek.
Thomas used natural dyes for his products and became a friend of
William Morris who had the same interest in natural materials and may
have inspired Elizabeth to embark upon the replica of the Bayeux
Tapestry.1 Thirty-five members of Elizabeth's Embroidery School, many
of whom were members of the Wardle family, completed the task in one
year but with the aid of nineteenth century heating and lighting in
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winter and glass panes in all windows, benefits which the original team
did not enjoy; nor would Elizabeth's team be interrupted in their work
by frequent calls to prayer in the Abbey Church, which also took place in
the early hours of the morning. No men took part in embroidering the
replica which may not have been the case in the making of the original,
as further research may show.2
Once completed and admired, the replica went on its travels round
England, even to New York and Germany, after which it was offered up
for sale on account of management problems and expenses incurred. It
was bought by the Councillors of Reading and is now housed in Reading
Museum. This seems to be the extent of the Bayeux Tapestry's
connection with Reading. Marie de France can not easily be placed at
Reading Abbey but there is plenty of evidence to connect her with
Shaftesbury.
In a Charter of 1181 granted by Henry II to Shaftesbury Abbey, Henry
refers to Marie the Abbess as his sister and he took Shaftesbury Abbey
under his special protection:
"Henricus dei gratia Rex Anglie et Dux Normanie et Comes Andegavie..
ad peticionem sororis Marie Abbatisse Sancti Edwardi." 3
Henry's son Richard, when King, bestowed favours "especially on the
Abbess Mary" and his brother John gave "for my dearest aunt the
Abbess Mary, two loads of brushwood daily" from his estate at
Gillingham in Dorset. This show of affection did not, however, prevent
John when King from taking possession of Marie's Abbey and its assets
in 1208 at the time of the papal edict, 4 although he soon relented and
reinstated Marie and her nuns one month later. John had demanded
money from Marie's Abbey funds for the repair of Sarum Castle for
defence against the revolting Barons but Marie stood her ground and
refused to pay, which suggests that in her role as "dearest aunt" she
knew his ways and was prepared to defy her King.
That Henry II and his sons, Richard and John, named Marie , or
Mary, Abbess of Shaftesbury, in its Charters as "sister" and "dearest
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aunt" is evidence that half-sister and aunt Marie was Abbess of
Shaftesbury, not Reading. The fact that Marie shared the same source
for her Fables with the embroiderers of the borders in the Bayeux
Tapestry shows that the poetess and the Abbess were one and the same
person and that the Tapestry had its origins in the neighbouring Abbeys
of Shaftesbury and Wilton, rather than Canterbury or even Winchester.
Marie provides us with some information about herself from which
we learn about her background. We know that she was an ex-patriot
poetess writing in Anglo-Norman in England in the latter part of the
twelfth century. Her three acknowledged works are her Lais, her
collection of Fables and her Espurgatoire de Saint Patriz.5 We know that
the Espurgatoire must have been written after July 1189 because Marie
refers to Saint Malachias who was not canonised until that date; so the
order of these three works is as given. In her Epilogue to her Fables
Marie writes:
"Me numerai par remembrance:
Marie ai num, si sui de France."
"I name myself for posterity:
My name is Marie and I am from France."
In her book the Espurgatoire, she again names herself :
"Jo Marie, ai mis en memoire,
Le livre de l'Espurgatoire."
In one of her Lais, Guigemar, Marie demands the attention of her
audience, reminding them who is addressing them and that she has
recorded this lay for their benefit:
"Oez, Seignurs, ke dit Marie
Ki en sun tens pas ne s'oublie."
"Listen, my Lords, to what Marie has to say
Who is recording what must not be forgotten."
This tells us that Marie de France was exalted enough to demand to be
heard by her audience.
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Marie was indeed proud of her work as an author and sought
respect. She gives little details about herself in her poems from which
we can build up a picture of her. She tells us that she was at first
unhappy living in a strange country so she turned to writing for
consolation. She comments in her Prologue to the Lais: "By studying
and undertaking some hard work, one can better distance and relieve
oneself from great suffering." At first, she said, she had considered
translating some good tale from Latin into French but as this had been
done by so many others, she thought of the lays which she had heard:
she collected these twelve tales for future generations to enjoy so that
they would not be forgotten. A lay is a short narrative poem of Celtic or
Breton origin, telling a tale of love and adventure to entertain an
audience; the lay is recited or sung perhaps accompanied by a rote,
which is a small harp.
We learn from a contemporary writer, Denis Piramus from Saint
Edmund's Abbey, in his work La Vie de Saint Edmund, thought to have
been written between 1170 and 1180, that "Dame Marie's Lais were
much loved by Counts, Barons, Knights and Ladies." 6 This was Marie's
audience, the Court circles of Henry II. Marie tells us that she composed
the Lais "for a noble King who is so brave and chivalrous in whose heart
all good resides."
" nobles reis
Ki tant est es pruz e curteis
En ki quoer tuz biens racine."
It is thought by some that Marie must therefore have composed most
of her Lais before 1170. This was the date, in December, of Thomas
Becket's murder and the time of Henry II's romance with Rosamund
Clifford and his break , in 1173, with Eleanor his Queen. Because of
these factors some prefer to regard Henry II's son and heir, known as the
Young King, as Marie's "nobles reis;" but it is unlikely that this youth
who spent his time tourneying in Normandy, would oust his father's
position in Marie's estimation: to quote Thomas Becket, "the Young
King was more able in arms than in learning." 7
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Marie would be aware that Henry repented his involvement in
Becket's murder: an unguarded outburst of annoyance with such words
as "who will rid me of this turbulent priest?" had been the catalyst to
cause four knights to ride away on Christmas Day in 1069 to do the
deed. In April 1172 Henry was absolved of blame by the Archbishop of
Rouen and did penance at Avranches where he knelt outside the
Cathedral to be flogged by monks. He was required by the Pope to
repeat this penance at Canterbury. There he walked barefoot into the
Cathedral to receive absolution and another three to four lashes from
all ecclesiastical persons present.8 Henry was ordered to found three
religious houses which were at Witham in Somerset, at Amesbury near
Wilton which he refounded with a cell from Fontevrault Abbey and he
also refounded Waltham Abbey in Essex.9 As for the fair Rosamund,
extra-marital romances and their offspring were commonplace and with
the exception of some clergy they were for the most part accepted at
the time. It is unlikely that Marie would be disturbed by this love affair.
Henry had been particularly well educated in France and on his
childhood trip to England. At Bristol Castle in his Uncle Robert's
household, he learnt literature and languages and conversed with the
best scholars, among whom were Gilbert Foliot, Abbot of Gloucester,
and possibly also the philosopher John of Salisbury, Giraldus Cambrensis
and Peter of Blois, learned in history and theology who later became
Henry's secretary. It is to him that we owe the description of Henry's
continued indulgence in learning: "As often as he can get breathing
time amid his business cares, he occupies himself with private reading,
or takes pains in working out some knotty question among his clerks."
In a letter to the Archbishop of Palermo, Peter wrote: "Your King is a
good scholar but ours is far better. With the King of England there is
school every day, constant conversation of the best scholars and
discussion of questions."10 Henry had a habit of indulging in lenthy
discussions whilst still seated on his horse which meant that all his
Courtiers were obliged to remain standing for long periods but could
not complain. Books were dedicated to Henry and he commissioned
works such as the Roman de Rou: A Chronicle of the Dukes of Normandy
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from the Jersey historian Wace whom he elected a Canon of Bayeux
Cathedral and where the Canon would have had the opportunity to
study the Bayeux Tapestry. If Henry himself had seen the Tapestry there
it could have inspired him to commission yet another History of the
Dukes of Normandy from the monk Benoît de Sainte Maure perhaps to
ensure that posterity should have the record; or perhaps because
Wace's version did not satisfy or took too long or was left unfinished.
From all this, it is evident that Henry II would be more likely than his
young son to encourage Marie to write.
Henry's break with Eleanor his Queen took place in May 1173 when
he discovered that she had begun plotting against him with her former
husband Louis VII and her sons Henry and Richard who resented their
lack of promotion by their father so joined his adversary. Marie would
surely wince at her nephews' disloyalty. Henry's men had intercepted
Eleanor disguised as a man en route for Paris and for this offence Henry
had her incarserated first in Normandy then in England.11
Having established that Marie's Lais were known at Henry II's Court in
England, we can turn to some of the Counts and Barons, Knights and
Ladies whom Denis Piramus told us enjoyed them. Perhaps the best
known among the audience would be William the Marshal who became
tutor and Protector to the Young King in 1169. It was William who
dubbed the Young King a Knight in 1173 and for the next ten years they
took part together in tournaments, a valuable source of income for the
Young King who complained to his father of being strapped for cash.
However, with William's help he always won. For the young knights of
the twelfth century, the best tournaments were in France, in Flanders,
Burgandy, Champagne and the Normandy area. Henry II had banned
tourneying in England, afraid perhaps that the rigorous training might
encourage anarchy. It was left to his belligerent son Richard in 1194 to
licence, in a letter to Hubert Walter , Archbishop of Canterbury who was
also in the King's absence his Justiciar, five tournament grounds in
England. One of these five grounds was between Sarum and Wilton.12
The tournament grounds were also a source of revenue.
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Marie describes tourneying in her Lais despite the Church's
disapproval of the sport and the fact that a knight killed in a tournament
was denied a Christian burial. She appears to know Northern France
well, naming in her Lais such places as Pitres, Dol and Fresnay. No doubt
she would take a nostalgic interest in all the news from France and
follow William's adventures there with her nephew, the Young King.
We are fortunate in having a biography of William the Marshall, a
long praise-poem commissioned by his son as a tribute to his father just
after his death in 1219. Written by Jean le Trouvère, who together with
his personal knowledge of his subject added stories about William
provided by those closest to him, such as his faithful servant John
d'Erley, this troubadour's Song opens a window for us onto the world of
Marie de France and those of her time. 13 From it we learn that the
young William would frequent the Court, that he had a good voice and
would himself sing troubadours' songs and that he enjoyed dancing with
the ladies: those same Ladies who loved hearing Marie's Lais and were
named collectively by Denis Piramus.
From The History of William the Marshal we learn how William came
to be the Young King's Protector, recommended to Henry II by Queen
Eleanor after being ambushed in southern Aquitaine in 1169. William
was accompanying his maternal Uncle Patrick of Salisbury, who was
there to protect the Queen, when they were attacked. Patrick was
stabbed from behind and killed. William rushed forward to avenge this
murder single-handed; but with so many against him, sixty-eight, says
his biographer perhaps with poetic licence, he could not help being
taken captive. Eleanor, in gratitude, gave hostages for his release; but
not before, so the Song relates, an unknown lady, seeing William's
untended wounds, smuggled bandages to him in a loaf of bread and
saved his life. Such a tale would filter back by word of mouth, perhaps
by friars, to all at Henry II's Court in England, to monasteries, nunneries
and Castles, where news and stories of heroic deeds were exchanged
and romances were told and written.
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William the Marshal's world was dangerous, exciting and fascinating.
Marie would be acquainted with all the heroic tales which would filter
back to the Court about William's adventures in France. Indeed, in his
Song about William, Jean le Trouvère tells us that "noone speaks of
anyone else in all Normandy, in all France," so much so that at the
beginning of every tournament the herald would cry:
"Ca, Dieu aide au Maréchal,
" Your attention: God help the Marshal!"
No wonder that the other knights grew jealous of the favourite of the
Young King and plotted his downfall.
A situation arose in 1182 not dissimilar to that in the legend of King
Mark of Cornwall and his nephew Tristan whom the other knights
plotted to discredit out of jealousy. In William's case, they accused him
of harbouring an unbridled passion for Margaret, the Young King's
wife.14 Like King Mark, the Young King had no choice but to dismiss
William. What followed would be news to cause a stir at Court in
England among those who were used to hearing the Tristan and Isolt
story as entertainment; for here was a real Tristan tale being played out
in France, complete with trial, not by water as in the legend but by
combat, although in Margaret's case, adulterous love seemed to be a
trumped up accusation.
At Henry's Christmas Court at Caen, William, we are told, went there
to prove his innocence. He challenged each of his accusers in turn. He
even offered to cut off a finger from right hand as a handicap. As none
of his accusers dared to take up his challenge, in due course William was
pardoned and reinstated. In her lay Chevrefoil about an episode in the
Tristan legend unique to Marie, and perhaps mindful of these events in
France, she refers to the pardon which Tristan sought from King Mark.
Marie was no doubt influenced in her choice of subject matter by events
around her; indeed, on two occasions she tells us that her tale is true. In
Marie's world, fiction and reality overlapped and she could not resist
inserting her own moral judgements into her version of an ancient
Breton lay. These details illustrate Marie's closeness to Henry II's Court.
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Marie's subject matter in the Lais was love within and without the
bonds of marriage: she wrote for a Courtly audience and was therefore
at the heart of the debate about Courtly Love, mulled over at Queen
Eleanor's Court in Poitiers and at the Court of her daughter Marie de
Champagne in Troyes. Marie de France makes her own balanced views
about love and fidelity very clear in her Lais. Based upon common sense,
she maintains that both of these qualities should be treasured. For those
who would argue that passionate love , any more than tourneying, was
not a suitable topic for a future Abbess, one could reply that Marie's
concept of love brought her participants closer to God. By the time
Marie was appointed Abbess of Shaftesbury Abbey in 1181, most of her
Lais would be complete and she would be ready to embark upon her
retelling of the Fables, with their piquant moral values.
Having collected all her Lais together, Marie added her Prologue and
dedication. In her lay Guigemar which acted as a Preface before she
had composed her Prologue, she speaks about herself and about the
jealousy which she experienced of others for her achievements and her
work. She comments that "men and women often make slanderous
accusations about her and want to lower the esteem which she enjoys:
"Humme u femme de grant pris
Cil ki de sun bien unt envie
Sovent en dient vileinie;
Sun pris li volent abeisser."
Marie is possessive about her literary reputation, just as William the
Marshal was prepared to go to any lengths to protect his reputation as a
loyal knight. He would have had Marie's sympathy.
After her appointment as Abbess of Shaftesbury Abbey in Dorset,
Marie tells us in her Prologue to the Fables that she has undertaken to
write this work at the request of the most worthy man who is "the
flower of chivalry, of learning, of courtesy."
"Ki flurs est de chevalerie,
D'enseignment, de curteisie;"
And in her Epilogue Marie repeats that she wrote this book for the love
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of Count William, the most worthy in any realm:
"Le plus vaillant de nul realme."
In his funeral address for William the Marshal, Stephen Langton, the
Archbishop of Canterbury, declared:
"Behold, the best knight who ever lived."
The flower of chivalry is a courtly term applicable to many a knight of
the twelfth century. The same words are inscribed upon the tomb of
Count William Longspée who lies buried in Salisbury Cathedral and is
thought to be the natural son of Henry II and Rosamund Clifford. 15 He
became Earl of Salisbury in 1198 and a Patron of Shaftesbury Abbey so
some name him as Marie's Count William, though his youth in this
context might count against him. William Marshal acquired his title in
1189: he seems a stronger candidate for Marie's Count with a long
record of exploits behind him, all recounted later by Jean le Trouvère.
William the Marshal's example of honour and loyalty and performing
his duty was unsurpassed. Loyal first to the Young King, even when he
revolted against his father, William then served in the King's household
after the Young King's untimely death. During Henry's second son
Richard's revolt against his aging and ailing father, William found himself
face to face with Richard and could have killed him but, declaring that he
"would leave that to the devil," he killed his horse instead to give Henry
time to make his escape from Le Mans to the fortress at Fresnay-surSarthe. After Henry's death, Richard was wise enough to forget this
encounter with William whose support he needed to deal with his
troublesome brother John: and when John's turn came to rule, he too
recognised in William a loyal servant and counted upon his support, this
time against the Barons who rebelled. Even the Barons, after John's
death, chose William for the high office of Regent of England for the boy
King, Henry III. Marie would have witnessed all these dramatic events
at close quarters and she was describing the feudal society in which she
lived: her subject matter in the Fables was duty, loyalty and honour.
Even her wolf in order to seal a Charter was obliged to kiss the hedgehog
although he would much rather not.
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It is apparent from her work that Marie's background was that of
Henry II and his Court. This observation would seem to eliminate other
contenders suggested for Marie's identity: Marie de Champagne,
Eleanor's daughter by Louis VII of France, who married Henri de
Champagne, remained in France at her own Court at Troyes; and Marie,
daughter of Count Waleran de Meulan, who married Hugh Talbot, would
have lived in Devon or in Herefordshire.16 As we shall see, all Marie's
family were connected with the Court of Henry II.
Notes
1. Carola Hicks, The Bayeux Tapestry. The Life Story of a Masterpiece (Chatto and
Windus, London 2006) pp.182-194.
2. See below, Chapter 15 , on Eve, a nun at Wilton Abbey.
3. J.C. Fox, Mary, Abbess of Shaftesbury (English Historical Review, Vol.26) p.322,
shows Marie to be half-sister to Henry II.
4. Ralph V. Turner, King John (Longman 1994) pp.155-174.
5. Marie de France, Lais, ed. A. Ewert (Basil Blackwell, Oxford 1969)
Marie de France, Fables, édition critique par Charles Bruckner (Peeters, Louvain
Belgium 1991).
Marie de France, Fables, selected and edited by A. Ewert and R.C. Johnson
(Basil Blackwell, Oxford 1942)
Marie de France, Espurgatoire de Saint Patriz, ed. Thomas A. Jenkins (Univ. of
Chicago 1903) The Espurgatoire is a Translation from a Latin Tractatus by Henry
of Salisbury.
Marie de France, L'Espurgatoire de Saint Patriz, trans. from the Tractatus de
Purgatorio Sancti Patricii of an English Cistertian monk, Henry of Saltrey, with
Introduction by Michael Curley (Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies,
Binghamton, New York 1993) Vol 94.
6. H. Kjellman, ed. La Vie de Seint Edmund le Rei, poème anglo-normand du XIIe
siècle, par Denis Piramus,(Goteborg 1935)
7. William Stubbs, Learning and Literature at the Court of Henry II, (Lecture given
11 June 1878)
8. Alison Weir, Eleanor of Aquitaine, By the Wrath of God Queen of England,
(Jonathan Cape 1999) pp.192-197 and 198.
9. Ibid. p.198.
10. William Stubbs, Learning and Literature at the Court of Henry II, (Lecture given
11 June 1878)
11. Alison Weir, Eleanor of Aqutaine, By the Wrath of God Queen of England
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12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
(Jonathan Cape 1999) p.217. At Sarum and Ludgershall Castles.
Frank Barlow, The Feudal Kingdom, (Longman 1999) pp.265-266.
N. Denholm-Young, The Tournament in the Thirteenth Century. Studies
presented to F. Powicke, ed. R.W. Hunt, R.W. Pantin and R.W. Southern (Oxford
1948) pp. 240-268. See also:
Juliet R.V. Barker, The Tournament in England 1100-1400 (The Boydell Press
1986) pp.17-27 .
Juliet Barker and Richard Barber, Tournaments, Jousts, Chivalry and Pageants
in the Middle Ages (Boydell and Brewer 1989)
John Gillingham, Richard the Lionheart (London 1978)
Paul Meyer, ed. Histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal par Jean le Trouvère (Anciens
Textes français, 1891, 1894, 1901) 3 Vols.
Margaret was the daughter of King Louis VII of France and his second Queen.
Henry's short liaison with Rosamund Clifford began about 1173, possibly earlier,
and lasted until her death at Godstow Nunnery near Oxford, in 1176.
A. Ewert, ed. Marie de France, Lais (Basil Blackwell, Oxford 1969) Introduction,
p. ix note 7.
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Chapter 11.
Marie's family.
Having placed Marie in her background, we can get closer to her by
finding out about her family. She had a sister Emma who was a member
of Queen Eleanor's Court and travelled with her as lady-in-waiting in
France and in England. When in May 1174 Henry dismantled Eleanor's
Court at Poitiers, he took with him their daughter Joanna, Alys, their son
Richard's intended, Constance of Brittany, his brother Geoffrey's widow,
and Emma of Anjou.1 When Emma became a widow that year, Henry
gave her in marriage to David ap Gwynedd, Prince of North Wales.
Ellesmere, a possession of the Fitz Warin family of Whittington Castle
near the North Wales border was granted to them as a wedding present.
Emma would be acquainted with the Fitz Warin family, as Hawise, wife
of Fulk Fitz Warin had also been a lady-in-waiting to Eleanor. In fact, the
Fitz Warin children were brought up in the same nursery as Henry's and
Eleanor's children. The eldest Fitz Warin son, also named Fulk, was John
Lackland's school friend.
Once more we have a praise-poem from which, if we can select truth
from fiction, we learn about this family of Whittington Castle in
Shropshire: we read of a quarrel between these two children, won by
Fulk and which so rankled in John's mind that once King, he took his
revenge, depriving Fulk of his inheritance to bestow it upon a favourite,
Morys de Powys. John was known to be vindictive.
This Anglo-Norman poem, The Romance of Fulk Fitz Warin,2 known
first orally then in verse form, now lost, was copied in the midfourteenth century and tells how Fulk, persecuted by John and outlawed
because of John's grudge against him, had to live in the forests of
Southern England between the years 1200 and 1203 before regaining
possession of his ancestral home. Fulk, a Robin Hood figure, perhaps
the original, together with his brothers, three of whom were named, as
in the Robin Hood tales, William, John and Aleyn, would move between
Babinswood in the Welsh Marshes near Whittington and the shelter of
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the Braydon oaks (still there today ) in Savernake Forest, Wiltshire, near
their relatives who held the manor of Lambourn and also of Wantage of
the Marshals; or the brothers would be driven further afield to forests
near Canterbury where they had a friend in Archbishop Hubert. It was
the Archbishop who found Fulk a wife, a rich widow, Maud de Caus, with
a dowry coveted by King John, which fanned the flames of their dispute.
The poem relates how the brothers outwitted John and his men at every
turn. Marie would be aware of these adventures, given the family
connection through her sister Emma; she would also be aware of John's
jealous nature. If she learnt details of these skirmishes in the woods, of
how Fulk would shoe his horses backwards to confuse John's men, then
as a writer of adventures herself, she might have enjoyed this news.
There was no shortage of material to inspire a gifted writer in the
twelfth century and wandering friars always had plenty of news to
divulge.
Marie's sister Emma of Anjou was said to be Geofrey of Anjou's
daughter by "a lady in Maine" which suggests that this lady may also
have been Marie's mother.3 We read of Marie's brother Gui, who came
to live in Shaftesbury with his wife and family and acted as Marie's
attorney, signing Charters of the Abbey under the name Gui de Hostiliac,
spelt in various ways but which has been identified as a town in Maine,
just south of Le Mans in the forest of Bercé 4
A picture of Marie's family and native land is now emerging. Hostiliac
today is known as Saint-Mars-d'Outillé, having joined up with the nearby
hamlet of Saint-Mars after the Wars of Religion. Outillé, both before
and since Roman times, had been the site of a prosperous foundry, iron
ore being abundant in the forest of Bercé, which is still criss-crossed by
Roman roads. Today, a fine moated nineteenth century castle stands on
the site of the medieval one, which was destroyed during the wars of
Religion and whose stones were reused so that all which remains of the
ancient castle of the days of Gui de Hostiliac and his sister Marie de
France is the rubble which filled its thick walls; rather less than the
remains of Shaftesbury Abbey after the dissolution of the monasteries
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by Henry VIII. Both sites are imposing and evocative and more can be
learnt about those who occupied them.
Henry II's father, known as Geoffrey Plantagenet because of the sprig
of "genet" or heather which he would wear in his bonnet, was also
known as Goeffrey the Fair. Henry's mother was known as the Empress
Matilda, having first been married to the Emperor Henry V of Germany
where she was dispatched, as was the custom, at the age of eight to
prepare for this marriage. When she became a childless widow in 1125,
at the age of twenty-six, her father Henry I of England recalled her to his
Court and at Christmas that year he persuaded his Barons to accept
Matilda as his legitimate heir, having lost his son, Matilda's twin, William
Atheling in the White Ship disaster in 1120, off the coast of Barfleur.
William had only recently been married to Isabelle Matilda of Anjou who
was saved from the wreck and who later became Abbess of Fontevrault
Abbey where several Plantagenets are buried. To preserve the link with
Anjou and Maine on the borders of Normandy, Henry I now arranged a
second marriage for the Empress Matilda with the fourteen year old
Geoffrey Plantagenet, Isabelle Matilda's brother.
The marriage of Geoffrey and Matilda took place in Le Mans Cathedral
in 1128 but it seems that the couple did not stay together. Matilda
returned to her father's Court at Rouen and spent time at Wilton Abbey
in Wessex. The Abbey records show that Matilda was staying there in
1130 when she gave a right to fuel to the Abbey and her father Henry I
granted a right to hold a Fair in Wilton that year. Meanwhile Goeffrey
was subduing troublesome Barons and proving himself to be a brave
descendant of the House of Anjou. Matilda did not rejoin her husband
until 8 September 1131 when, at the age of seventeen, he sent for her.
When Henry I died in 1135, Matilda was pregnant with her third son,
William, and although she set out for Normandy intending to secure
her inheritance, her cousin Stephen of Blois, conveniently placed at
Boulogne, risked the bad weather in the Channel and reached London
without delay. There he persuaded some of the Barons to accept him as
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King, which they gladly did, offering him the crown, clearly preferring
Stephen whom they knew well and liked, from the long time he had
spent at Henry's Court, to the Empress whom they regarded as a
haughty sranger who spoke German: they sorely misjudged her.
All Matilda could do at the time was to complain bitterly to the Pope
that Stephen had broken his oath to her father and usurped the English
throne: a repitition of William the Conqueror's grievance against Harold
but with a happier outcome. Matilda's son William was born in 1136,
her son Geoffrey having been born at Argentin in June 1134 and the
future Henry II at Le Mans on 5 March 1133. Matilda postponed her
journey to England until she had mustered her forces and strength.
Though Stephen had the coast guarded, Matilda finally slipped into the
country at Arundel in 1139, invited there by her step-mother Adelizia,
Henry I's second Queen who was by then châtelaine of Arundel Castle
There Matilda found her half-brother Robert of Gloucester rready to
lead her campaign against Stephen. The long-drawn-out war of
succession to the English throne was underway and Matilda was obliged
to remain in England for a period of nine years. She returned to Rouen
in 1148 only after securing the succession for her son Henry.
During Matilda's absence, Geoffrey Plantagenet was gradually taking
possession of Normandy as his share of the conflict against Stephen. In
1142 Earl Robert made a trip to Normandy at Geoffrey's request but also
to ask for his help in England. Disinclined to leave Normandy, Geoffrey
sent Henry instead, then aged nine, with his uncle with whom he stayed
for at least two years continuing his education and learning the
language. He was able to visit his mother who had set up her household
at Devizes Castle. Henry then returned to France.
It was during this time that Geoffrey's natural children were born,
including Marie. Henry II with his brothers spent most of his childhood
in France and it is easy to suppose that all these children would know
each other and form close relationships. Geoffrey's natural children,
besides Marie, Gui and Emma included another son, Hameline and a
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sister Aldewide. The latter married Ralph, Prince of Bourg-Deols and
remained in France but when Henry became King of England in 1154 it
seems that he wanted to keep his close and trustworthy family near him.
Hameline who became Earl of Warren always fought at Henry's side;
and it is possible that Marie accompanied him to England about this
time when her sister Emma, travelling with Queen Eleanor , also crossed
the Channel. This we can only guess but it is evident from her Lais that
Marie had spent a considerable time in England before she became
Abbess of Shaftesbury.
5
The story of Henry's extended family, and thus of Marie's, does not
end here. Research by Constance Bullock-Davis6 has confirmed that Gui
de Hostiliac was Marie's brother and tells of three more brothers
bearing the name Osteilli. It is supposed that the "lady of Maine," after
bearing Geoffrey the Fair's natural family, married the Sire of Osteilli
with whom she had a further three sons: William de Osteilli, Durand de
Osteilli and Gilbert de Osteilli, all of whom were favoured at Court by
Henry II and Queen Eleanor. William became a Chamberlain in England
until he came into his inheritance at Osteilli, at which time he continued
as Chamberlain but in France whilst his brother, Durand, until then
Henry's Butler, took over as Chamberlain in England. Gilbert was Keeper
of the King's Wardrobe.
All these brothers and half-brothers of Marie, the King's half-sister,
signed Charters and documents after the King's and Queen's signatures.
The fact that Henry surrounded himself by these relations strongly
suggests that they had shared part of their childhood and because of his
love of his natal town, Le Mans, perhaps they had hunted together at
Outillé near Le Mans in the forest of Bercé.
It is clear that Marie arrived in England as a young girl, perhaps to
continue her education. The most likely school where she might have
stayed would have been at Wilton Abbey with its reputation for
educating the daughters of noble families and where Queens
traditionally resided. As we have noted, the Empress Matilda (or Maud
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in the Abbey records) had frequently stayed there, even making it her
headquarters during her campaign against Stephen, although it was he
who, ironically, fortified it when he also stayed there during this civil war.
Because of its reputation for culture, rather than agression, it is at
Wilton Abbey that we can best picture Marie on her arrival in a strange
country. There they spoke French; it was probably there that she burnt
the midnight oil whilst composing her Lais: "Soventes fiez en ai veillie,"
she wrote.
Not far from Wilton was Henry II's favourite Palace at Clarendon
where he would be drawn frequently with his itinerant Court. Like King
Edward before him, he enjoyed the hunting in Clarendon Forest, a part
of the New Forest. It was from this Palace that Henry issued the
controversial Constitutions of Clarendon, the cause of his quarrel with
Thomas Becket. A country lane leading from the Bishop's Palace at
Sarum to Clarendon Palace is named Becket's Walk, so often did he
traverse it to thrash out the disagreements which finally inadvertently
led to his death.
It may have been Henry's mother the Empress Matilda who
recommended a residence for Marie on her arrival in England, in which
case it would certainly have been Wilton Abbey where Matilda's mother
had resided and been educated and where she herself had so ofen
stayed. It was the custom for women of high-born families to be
appointed as Abbesses in the great Abbeys of Wessex, therefore an
eventual move from Wilton to Shaftesbury Abbey, in her brother
Henry's gift, would seem a normal progression for Marie. Shaftesbury
Abbey became even richer than Wilton owing to endowments, which
led to the well-known dictum at the time of the dissolution: "if only the
Abbess of Shaftesbury could have married the Abbot of Glastonbury,
together they would have been richer than the King of England".
Shaftesbury Abbey was quite a prize for Marie and a fitting position for a
King's sister.
If born during the 1140s Marie would have been close on forty years
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of age at the time of her appointment in 1181 as Abbess of Shaftesbury,
which, like Wilton Abbey, was one of King Alfred's foundations. Marie
tells us that she found there Alfred's translation into the vernacular of
fables from AEsop, which were infinitely adaptable for any society and
Marie was poised to take up her pen again. In keeping with her new
status as Abbess of a religious house and mindful of the code of a feudal
society, Marie put these fables into Anglo-Norman rhyming couplets "as
best as she was able." "Si cum jeo poi plus proprement," she declared
in her Epilogue.
Notes
1. Alison Weir, Eleanor of Aquitaine , By the Wrath of God Queen of England,
(Jonathan Cape 1999) p.212.
2. The History of Fulk Fitz Warin ed. and trans. Thomas Wright (London, The
Warton Club, 1855)
E.A. Francis, The Background to Fulk Fitz Warin. Studies in Medieval French,
presented to Alfred Ewert (Oxford 1961) pp.322-323.
3. J.C. Fox, Marie de France (English Historical Review, Vol. 25, 1910) p.304.
4. R.W. Eyton, Court, Household and Itinerary of Henry II (London 1878) pp.75n.
85n.
and Charter Number 4; see J.C. Fox, Mary Abbes of Shaftesbury (English
Historical Review Vol. 26, 1911) p.319
5. J.C. Fox, Marie de France (English Historical Review, Vol. 25, 1910) p.304.
6. Constance Bullock-Davis, Marie,Abbess of Shaftesbury and her brothers
(English Historical Review, Vol. 80) Article.
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Chapter 12.
The source of Marie's and the embroiderers' fables.
Marie has told us in the Epilogue to her Fables that she found a
copy of AEsop's Fables which had been translated from Latin into English
by King Alfred "who loved it very much,"
"Li reis Alfrez que mut l'ama,
Le translata puis en engleis."
In her Prologue to her Fables, Marie gives us more information about
her source. She tells us that the Emperor Romulus recommended the
study of AEsop's Fables to his son Tiberinus because of the good moral
advice contained in them: he had them copied from the first century
collection by Phaedrus, fabulae aesopiae, which were in Latin iambic
verses and have been preserved in several manuscripts of the nineth
and tenth centuries.1 Romulus gave his name in the fourth century to
the derivative versions of this Phaedrus collection.
There were various manuscripts of fables descended from the sixth
century BC AEsop in circulation in Alfred's time, nineth century England.
Alfred's collection which Marie says she used is lost but is thought to
have been based upon the Romulus group which has survived in six texts
from the thirteenth century, together with its derivatives: the Romulus
Nilantii, three Latin prose versions consisting of forty-nine fables; and
the Dérivée métrique, of forty-six fables in Latin hexameters. 2 In the
nineth century, a monk called Ademar of Chabannes combined the
fables of Phaedrus and Romulus and illustrated his collection with his
own drawings.
A Latin prose collection of one hundred and thirty-six fables of which
the earliest manuscript is from the thirteenth century, known as the
LBG Collection3 mentions in its Preface that it too was inspired by King
Alfred's translation:
"Deinde rex Anglie Affrus in anglicam linguam eum transferri precepit."
As both Marie and this LBG collection refer to an English translation of
fables by King Alfred, this seems to indicate their use of this lost
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collection. After a careful examination of manuscripts and a process of
elimination, Hélène Chefneux found that only in Marie's Fables and the
LBG Collection are all the same fables to be found, 4 though with slight
differences in the telling. Twenty-three manuscripts of Marie's Fables
have survived but none from her own time. The oldest extant
manuscript is from the beginning of the thirteenth century and only two
contain all of her one hundred and three fables with her Prologue and
Epilogue.5
The nine consecutive fables illustrated in the Bayeux Tapestry are in
Marie's collection and the details which Marie gives match the fables in
the Tapestry so exactly that both the embroiderers and Marie appear to
have had the same source before their eyes: either Alfred's version, as
Marie says, or his source from the Romulus group. Marie's first forty
fables show a close connection with the Romulus Nilantii deritative.6
King Alfred founded Marie's Abbey at Shaftesbury in 888 7 and
he made his daughter AEthelgifu 8 its first Abbess. It would not be
surprising therefore if a copy of a translation of fables by King Alfred, or
ordered to be made by him, had remained in this Abbey for the
edification of the nuns. Perhaps not all Alfred's own translations were
deemed worthy of recording among his religious and philosophical
works by his biographer Asser.9 It is very likely that Marie's Fables or
Alfred's collection were read aloud to the nuns who would know Latin,
English and Anglo-Norman.
The first forty of Marie's Fables were illustrated with drawings taken
from the Romulus collection.10 Some of these illustrations have been
preserved in two manuscripts, français 2173 and français 24428, in the
Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. The embroiderers of the Tapestry may
have copied the same illustrations making some variations of their own,
just as Marie added her own witty comments to her renderings;
however, it is in the details of Marie's text that we find the explanations
of some of the more obscure Tapestry illustrations, whose meaning
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might otherwise escape us. Because Marie's source was that of the
embroiderers, we find her giving us a running commentary on the
border illustrations in the Tapestry.
It is thanks to Marie's explanations that the sequence of nine fables in
the first part of the Tapestry take on a new dimension when we think of
the full meaning and moral message of each fable: they now have more
than a purely decorative function in the border. These fables would be
known to the embroiderers and to those viewing the Tapestry in Bayeux
Cathedral, giving food for thought to some, but by no means all
ofcourse, about kingship and oathtaking, as they contemplated the epic
drama unfolding in the main panel. Once again we are aware that
masterful designers of the Tapestry in their choice of fables have offered
further thoughts upon Harold's situation and William's reaction, which
could be interpreted as it best suited the viewers according to whether
they supported William or Harold. The Normans regarded Harold as a
villain and perjurer whilst the Anglo-Saxons saw in William a crafty
manipulator.
The fables in the Tapestry treat difficult moral questions about
promises made and promises broken, about comradeship, rogues and
the power of the mighty. As in the original AEsop's fables, they were a
commentary on human nature which could apply to any era: the
Tapestry fables were a comment on the feudal society of their day, as
were Marie's in the twelth century. In all her writing, Marie's themes
treated the importance of loyalty, honour and compassion for the
underling. In dedicating her fables to the "flower of chivalry," probably
William the Marshal, Marie was making a statement to remind us of his
record for loyalty, second to none.
The lessons to be learnt from the sequence of nine fables in the
Tapestry borders are a warning against treachery and villains and can be
summed up in the following maxims:
1. Beware of flatterers: they are wily.
2. Grand persons often behave unreasonably towards the underdog
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and make false charges.
3. Being kind to bad people is a big mistake.
4. The less privileged can be useful to the great but should not
expect any reward.
5. Beware of making a rogue your overlord.
6. Beware of all cunning rogues; even a good companion can be
treacherous if it suits him.
7. Beware of being tricked; but remember that those who make
promises should keep them.
8. A powerful man will always have "the lion's share;" the rich man
wants to keep all for himself and the poor man inevitably suffers.
9. Take good advice when it is offered; but the wise man should be
discerning and beware of lies, even unintentional ones.
With these harsh guide lines in mind, we should be ready to study more
closely the fables chosen for the Tapestry borders and for example, in
the case of the first fable, to decide who was the Crow and who the Fox.
Because repeated twice, this first fable merits special attention. The
long sequence of fables appears at the beginning of the Tapestry
beneath Harold's story, starting at the scene in which he sets out
peacefully for Normandy from his family manor at Bosham. It continues
until we find him being rescued from Gui de Ponthieu's custody by
William's messengers. The first repeat of this fable is placed in the lower
border as William's army, accompanied by Harold, approaches MontSaint -Michel where Harold valiently rescues two Norman soldiers from
drowning in the quicksands there. It reappears a third time in the upper
border, perhaps another hidden reminder of its message, as Harold on
his return home rides to report on his Norman venture to King Edward.
It could be supposed that this first fable figures three times because it
is one of the best-known of AEsop's fables, about a fox who flatters a
crow sufficiently to persuade him to respond by opening his beak to sing
thus foolishly releasing the coveted cheese which he is holding. It could
have been repeated because different embroiderers fancied giving their
own versions at different stages in the Tapestry; but it is far more likely
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to have been a deliberate repetition to emphasise the message which it
conveys: beware of wily flatterers. To succumb to their flattery will lead
to disaster, as indeed it did in Harold's case. We are reminded of King
Edward's raised finger and sombre expression of displeasure when an
abject Harold on his return grovels before his King in scene 28. Edward
knew William's character and had apparently warned Harold that
William would expect some great advantage for himself if he were to
release the Godwin hostages which he held. Edward feared disaster for
the kingdom if Harold got embroiled.11 So Harold was the unfortunate
crow who lost his cheese and William the wily fox. Norman viewers
might chuckle or smirk at their great leader's craftiness whilst AngloSaxons would wince at Harold's naive good intentions and be thankful
for the wisdom of their much-revered King Edward.
There is no evidence in the Tapestry that William released the
hostages or sent gifts to Edward; a contemporary viewer might have
identified one hostage, Hakon, freed as Eadmer, the historian, claimed. 12
Harold had set out from England full of hope , having first prayed in
Bosham church for a happy outcome, but had returned to England
dejected, his honour besmirched, having been obliged to swear an oath
to William which imperilled the future of the kingdom as Edward had
forewarned.
There was no escaping the oath: Harold was indebted to William for
rescuing him from Gui's custody, for his hospitality at the ducal palace
at Rouen, for the camaraderie shared on the Breton expedition, for
William's recognition of Harold's prowess on the battlefield for which he
received the gift of arms, thus binding him to William as a vassal; and
finally for his release after the oath had been sworn. Was this not the
plot of a wily fox , grasping his opportunity, looking to the future? The
Jersey historian Wace pointed out that William did not disclose the
significance of the Relics of Bayeux, upon which Harold had been
obliged to swear, until the deed was done.13 How else could Harold
have escaped ? He was entrapped and therein lay his dilemma and the
subject matter of the Bayeux Tapestry.
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An oath was a serious commitment in feudal society and those
telling Harold's story in the Tapestry might have wanted to show how
this situation had come about. They may have slipped the fable of the
Crow and the Fox into the borders three times to exonerate Harold, very
skilfully, without causing offence to the Norman victors and to
emphasise the relevance of the fable's message so that posterity could
be the judge between William and Harold. They certainly made Harold a
heroic figure in the first part of the Tapestry and, by the end, a tragic
one.
A portion of posterity has judged Harold to be false through and
through, a villain and a perjurer. Some opinions describe him as an
upstart, with a flawed character and say that Edward was wandering in
his mind when he finally chose him to rule the kingdom or to act as his
sister Queen Edith's Regent. The Godwin family origins are elusive but
they have been traced back along a noble Anglo-Saxon-Danish line from
King Alfred's brother, King AEthelred I; and on his mother's side from
Danish Royals through marriage.14 Since Earl Godwin's death in 1053,
Harold had been King Edward's right hand man, settling troubles on the
Welsh border and virtually ruling the kingdom for his aging monarch, as
his father had done before him. Noone was better suited to carry on the
Anglo-Saxon line. Contrary to what has been said of him, his tireless
competence, ruthlessness when needbe, compares well with William his
rival. So did the master draughtsman and the embroiderers hint at
Harold's moral dilemma by introducing well-known fables into the
borders of the Tapestry ? If Harold's family, Edith, AElfgyva and the two
Gunnhilds were among the embroiderers, what were their thoughts as
they sewed the threads of history? True feelings after the invasion had
to be concealed, hidden perhaps in a set of fables in the Tapestry. Edith
may have resigned herself to William as King due to her husband's long
association with the Norman Court during his upbringing, but she was in
mourning for four noble brothers.
For the Norman writers recording these events, to say that an ailing
King Edward sent Harold to Normandy to offer the crown to William was
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Norman propaganda, written by William's chaplain and admirer, William
of Poitiers, to justify his Duke's actions and backed by the chronicler
William of Jumièges. Edward was still in good health in 1064-1065 and
enjoying his hunting. He may not at that point have made up his mind
about a successor. When Harold landed on William's doorstep in the
summer of 1064 or 1065, William held all the trump cards mentioned
above and this very wily fox made sure that the crow would drop his
cheese which was, in fact, stolen goods, taken from the open window of
a larder as the manuscript illustration français 2173 shows. Only King
Edward could say to whom it rightfully belonged.
Notes
1. Harriet Spiegel, ed. and trans. Marie de France, Fables (Univ. of Toronto Press,
1987) Introduction, p.6.
2. H. Chefneux, Les Fables de Marie de France (Romania LX 1934) pp.1-35, 153-194.
3. Called LBG because mss. in London, Brussels and Gottingham.
4. H. Chefneux, Les Fables de Marie de France (Romania LX 1934) pp.1-35, 153-194.
5. A. Ewert and R.C. Johnson, Marie de France, Fables (Basil Blackwell, Oxford 1942)
Introduction, p. xiii.
6. Madeleine Soudée, Des Ysopets de Marie de France (Les Lettres Romanes xxv,
1981) Article.
7. John Chandler, A Higher Reality. A History of Shaftesburt Abbey Hobnob Press
2003) p.7.
8. Spelt variously eg. AElfgyva
9. Asser, Life of Alfred and other contemporary sources (Penguin Classics, 1983)
10. Madeleine Soudée, Des Ysopets de Marie de France (Les Lettres Romanes xxv,
1981).
11. Eadmer, A History of Recent Events in England trans. Geoffrey Bosanquet (The
Cresset Press, London, 1964) p.6.
12 Ibid. p.8.
13. Wace, Roman de Rou. The History of the Norman People,ed. Glyn Burgess (The
Boydell Press 2004) p.155, ll.5653-5724.
14. F. Barlow, The Godwins, The Rise and Fall of a Noble Dynasty (Longman 2002)
Chap.I, p.15.
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Chapter 13
The Tapestry fables explained by Marie.
The first eight fables in the lower border of the Tapestry follow each
other in an uninterrupted succession, each with its own moral message.
After an interlude in which a decorative dragon, two pelicans and a lion
fill the border, separated by the chevrons containing branches , crosses
or scrolls, which are a feature of both borders as in early wall paintings
in England, a nineth fable follows to end this particular display. The
nineth is a rare bucholic scene which can be regarded simply as a
delightful and interesting example of agricultural practices of the day,
perhaps copied from known Canterbury manuscripts. It may, however,
represent two fables in one which also appear in Marie's collection as
we shall see.
The second fable to consider is The Wolf and the Lamb in which we
witness a King's power and unfairness to his subject. Clearly shown in
both the Tapestry and the illustration in Marie's collection, the lamb is
downstream when the wolf accuses him of muddying his drinking water.
Denials, reasoning and self-justification are of no avail if you are an
underling before an overlord. He intends to gobble you up anyway.
The illustration in the Tapestry shows the wolf's tongue slavering for
lamb's flesh. In the thirteenth century illustrated manuscript f.2173, the
wolf is shown lapping the water, clearly unsullied, in an otherwise
identical picture.
For the third fable in the Tapestry, we need Marie's explanation: four
puppies are yapping from beneath the upturned prow of a boat serving
as a home whilst a dog, a bitch, looks at them from the outside. This is
the fable of The Bitch and her Friend . Having nowhere to give birth to
her puppies, a bitch is offered temporary hospitality by a friend. Once
the puppies are old enough, the kind friend suggests that it is time for
them to leave. Marie adds the detail that by now the puppies are
wrecking her lovely home. The bitch begs to be allowed to stay on
awhile as winter is approaching, to which her compassionate friend
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agrees. In the Spring, she again says that it is time for them to move on
but now her guest swears and curses and threatens her saying that the
pups are now old enough to tear her to pieces. With that, they turn
their hostess out of her home. We see her in the Tapestry being
threatened at her own front door by the vicious puppies. This
illustration is repeated in the lower border with four puppies barking at
the rightful owner of the house at the point in the Tapestry where
William is leading his army into battle in England against Harold. The
moral here is that the righteous can lose their inheritance to a rogue.
Harold, the acknowledged King of England 1 is destined to lose his life as
well as his home; and according to Gui d'Amiens' description of the
Battle of Hastings, Harold's body is indeed torn to pieces; but we must
bear in mind that he was the oath breaker, so the moral question is,
which of the protagonists is the rogue?
The next fable, number four, is about a wolf in great pain with a
bone stuck in his throat, who requires the services of a long-beaked bird.
The crane offers herself to retrieve the bone. In The Wolf and the Crane,
the bird performs the task admirably but on asking for her promised
reward she is told that she should consider herself lucky not to have had
her head snapped off when it was down the wolf's throat. This
illustration is repeated once in the upper border. Both show the crane's
beak half-way down the wolf's throat. The illustration in the manuscript
f.2173 of Marie's fables, shows the crane first inspecting the wolf's
throat to find the bone. The moral here is that the less privileged or
needy may prove useful to the great but should not expect any reward.
Fable five in the Tapestry is one of the most developed fables in
Marie's collection and is well illustrated in the Tapestry but still requires
Marie's explanation which includes her own amusing touches. Yet again
it is about a rogue: The Lion and his Subjects but it is not the lion who is
the rogue. In the illustration in Marie's manuscript f.2173, he looks
every inch a Lion King addressing his subjects; but in the Tapestry, one
stage further on in the story, he looks like the wolf, one of the lion 's
subjects who has replaced him. This was because the lion announced
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his departure for another country and the animals elected the wolf to
rule in his place. They had asked for another lion but none was
available. They were obliged to choose the wolf otherwise he would
have taken his revenge upon them. To be frightened of the
consequences if you do not bow to the mighty would be a concept
which those looking at the Tapestry could understand, as also for
Marie's generation.
The Lion King knew that this was a dangerous choice for his subjects
so he advised them before he left to make the wolf promise never again
to eat flesh. This the wolf readily did, swearing an oath upon Saints'
Relics; but very soon he had a yearning to eat flesh and picked on a
gentle roe deer to trick her into disloyalty. He asked her if his breath
smelt. With simple-minded honesty, she replied that it did, dreadfully.
For this honesty she was tried by judge and jury and ofcourse found
guilty of insulting her overlord, for which the sentence was death.
The wolf ate most of her himself. Soon he had an urge for more flesh
and asked the same question of another beast who, determined not to
copy the deer's mistake, decided to lie; but lies were punishable by
death so she too was eaten. This time the wolf, emboldened, ate all of
her himself. The third animal he fancied was the fat monkey, shown
clearly in the Tapestry looking cheeky, with a clever answer ready for the
same question: he said that he really did not know if the wolf's breath
smelt. Some versions of this fable add because he had a cold in his
nose. The wolf is thwarted and angry by such evasion and seeks
revenge. He retires to bed telling his doctor that only monkey flesh will
cure him. His Barons were obliged to release him from his oath; the
monkey is sacrificed, as are the other subjects one by one. The moral is
evident: a wise man should never elect a rogue as his overlord. Eleventh
and twelfth century society would be only too aware of how a great man
can sweep aside his subjects if or when it suits him.
The fable in the Tapestry which is so restored as to be hardly
recognised is number six in the row. A bird of prey seems about to
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catch a mouse and a frog in her talons: as in the title The Mouse and
the Frog. Thanks to Marie's version and illustration in ms. f.2173, we can
recognise the charming mouse whom the frog found on her doorstep
beside the mill wheel attending to her whiskers with her dainty back
feet. Marie tells how she welcomed the frog into her cosy little house
and after a friendly night together, the frog suggests a visit to her home
across the marsh: using flattery and promises, she gets the mouse to
agree. When they reach the river, the mouse declares that she cannot
swim. The frog calms her fears saying that she must just cling onto some
string which she will provide and this way she will carry her new friend
safely across; but she really intends to drop her into the deep water to
drown. The trusting mouse clings on, squeaking in fear. Luckily this
alerts the kite flying overhead who hears her cries, grabs both creatures
in her talons, spares the mouse and swallows the frog, who suffered the
fate which she had prepared for her new friend. The moral shows the
importance of choosing friends carefully. The mouse was foolishly
trusting, allowing herself to be duped. It is a sad fact that even good
companions can be treacherous when it suits them. Was William or
Harold the treacherous friend ? Normans and Anglo-Saxons would differ
in their interpretations of this fable.
The moral of The Wolf and the Billy Goat which comes next in the
Tapestry as fable number seven seems at first to be, beware of being
tricked by those who make promises and do not keep them. It
reappears twice in the upper margin, just as William's army disembarks
at Pevensey and again where William exhorts his men to fight bravely at
Hastings. Does William come with God on his side and the Pope's
banner to deprive the Anglo-Saxon of his throne ? This might have been
a controversial subject for the Tapestry embroiderers. Marie explains
the situation. A Billy Goat knew that he had no means of escape from a
wolf who cornered him saying that he had been seeking him for a whole
year. So the goat asked the wolf if before he died he might first say a
mass for both of them on a nearby hillock, as both were in need of
prayers. Sure of his prey, the wolf agreed and accompanied the Billy
Goat to the hillock. Once there, the goat shouted the mass at the top of
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of his voice: we can see him doing so in the Tapestry illustration. As he
had intended, the shepherds and the neighbours are asoused from sleep
and give chase to the wolf with their dogs. As he was caught, the wolf
accused the goat of breaking his word. The goat may have saved his skin
but Marie thought that his conscience should be troubling him:
promises made should be kept. Here we are confronted by Harold's
predicament. In his case he tried to save his skin but did not succeed.
The Bayeux Tapestry tells of a tragedy from which Harold could not
escape. William had the might and the power to deprive him of his
inheritance: whether or not he had the moral superiority is for posterity
to judge.
There are still two more fables to consider: we see in the lower border
a lion, claws extended, out for a kill, being followed by a cow, a ewe and
a goat. This is the eighth fable in a row: The Lion Hunting. He is
employing the three animals as his beaters to put up the deer: they
must do this duty. We see the deer fleeing, frightened, doomed, about
to be caught and eaten. Although the lion asks his three servants to
divide up the prey into four equal portions, they know very well that the
lion will eat not just "the lion's share" but all of it because if they dare to
touch any, he will kill them. They get nothing for their trouble. So it is
with powerful men: they gather companions but few will benefit; in
fact, most subjects suffer and live in fear. Marie's account is very close
to the Tapestry illustration which is similar to the illustratied version of
Marie's fable in manuscript f.24428.
After a short interlude in the lower border, the nineth fable brings to a
close this series: Marie's fable The Swallows and the Linseed explains
the bucholic scene. The swallow advises the birds of the field to eat as
much of the seed being sown as possible to prevent germination
because from the flax which it will produce the farmer will make snares
(enginz) and a sling (la fronde) with which to catch the birds. The birds,
however, do not follow the swallow's advice and are duly caught. The
moral here is that they were foolish to ignore good advice: a reminder
perhaps that Harold was foolish not to take King Edward's advice evident
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in scene I of the Tapestry. When asking permission to seek the release
of the Godwin hostages held by William, Edward warned Harold of his
premonition of disaster.2 However, a second fable told by Marie about
The Swallow and the Sparrows shows how hard it is to judge whether or
not the advice is good: this time the swallow's advice was based upon
the farmer's lies when he declared within her hearing that he would
never harm the birds. She apologised to the sparrows for misleading
them unintentionally, which had led some birds into the farmer's traps.
Marie's telling of these Tapestry fables ends here: without it, some
of the details in them would have escaped us; the much repaired mouse
and frog episode, might have remained incomprehensible. Today's
audience is perhaps not as au fait with medieval fables as were the
contemporary viewers at Bayeux. Today, fables are thought to be fairy
tales for children: in our literate society we have other means of
pointing the finger. At a time when few could read, pictures of fables
known orally, like Bible stories told in frescoes and wall paintings, on
portals and capitals in cathedrals, were the reading matter of the people
and those details in the Tapedtry would not pass unnoticed. The moral
questions raised in the fables, for those who looked, had a relevance to
the main story. Their inclusion makes this amazingly balanced record of
historical events all the richer, especially since the meaning of these
fables is deliberately ambiguous to suit both a Norman audience and the
defeated Anglo-Saxons.
Marie's text certainly enhances our
appreciation of the Tapestry borders.
If the Tapestry had been worked near Canterbury, this connection
between Marie and the embroiderers would be difficult to explain.
Geographically Wilton and Shaftesbury Abbeys were well placed for
collaboration on a piece of work such as the Tapestry. Both Wilton and
Shaftesbury Abbeys, being foundations of King Alfred, may have kept a
copy of Alfred's fables in their archives. The libraries in these Abbeys
would be well stocked. William of Malmesbury, when researching his
History of the Kings of England stayed at Shaftesbury Abbey and praised
Alfred's translations so may have seen them there. As for Marie, there
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being no school for young noblewomen at Shaftesbury Abbey, she may
well have belonged to the Wilton community before taking up her
important post at Shaftesbury. In both Abbeys she would have felt close
to her family, with Clarendon Palace nearby where Henry II frequently
held Court.
More fables may remain to be identified in the Tapestry. Perhaps
among the naked figures were The two Lovers in Marie's collection or
The Blacksmith and his Axe but these appear randomly among the host
of legendary creatures which seem to reflect the mood of the main saga:
a lone wolf howls beneath King Edward's death bed scene; the multiple
presence of dragons may be a reference to the Tapestry's destination at
Bayeux Cathedral near the Abbey which Odo dedicated to Saint Vigor, a
slayer of dragons. There may be a clever dual reference here because
the wyvern was the symbol of Wessex, which was Godwin country. The
embroiderers working on the borders may have copied whatever was at
hand such as the floor tiles at Shaftesbury Abbey some of which have
survived and closely resemble some purely decorative motifs in the
Tapestry borders. The design of floor tiles was an art in itself. The
master designer does seem to have given a free hand to those working
on the Tapestry borders, his main concern being the central panel.
Whoever this gifted designer was, it would be surprising if the
embroiderers did not pay tribute to him in their work. They would know
him well from his visits to the workshops where his masterpiece was
taking shape. The as yet unexplained name Turold, sewn into the
Tapestry above the bearded dwarf-like figure holding two horses, might
have some bearing on this subject. Although the idea has been
considered and rejected, it may be worth another look.
Notes
1. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, E, G.N. Garmonsway. trans. (J.M. Dent and Sons
1972) year 1066:
Earl Harold succeeded to the kingdom of England as the King granted it
to him and as he was elected thereto.
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2. Eadmer, A History of Recent Events in England, trans. Geoffrey Bosanquet
( The Cresset press, London 1964) p.6.
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Chapter 14.
Turold and the Chanson de Roland.
Of two possible explanations for the inclusion of the name Turold in
the Tapestry the simpler is that he was the third of Odo's most trusted
vassals in England and in France, the other two named in the Tapestry
being Wadard and Vital. If Odo were the patron of the Tapestry, it would
be understandable that he might have wished these three loyal vssals to
be named in recognition of their services. Turold held extensive hides of
Odo in Kent. If this were the explanation, then the name sewn into the
hanging would probably refer to the tough messenger in scene 11, not
to the dwarf-like figure.
However, names in the Tapestry were most often positioned above
the figures to whom they referred and there is no doubt that the name
Turold, framed in black stem stitch to indicate its importance, is placed
immediately above the small figure in civilian clothes, definitely not a
military man nor of the church. His diminutive figure might be the
artist's attempt at perspective as he stamds back from the main action,
just as smaller boats in the Channel crossing signified distance.
This Turold has a distinctive code of dress which sets him apart from
other non-military figures who appear in the Tapestry wearing hose
beneath their tunics. Turold wears baggy white pants beneath an ample
trouser suit. This could be the traditional garb of a troubadour attached
to a nobleman's household. Here at Gui de Ponthieu's castle, Turold is
making himself useful holding the messengers' horses whilst observing
all that is happening in this scene. He must have had a knowledge of
horses to be able to control these two who are champing at the bit; but
in that dress he could hardly be described as a groom. The embroiderers
would have seen Turold wearing such clothes. This seems to rule out
Odo's vassal Turold. It is apparent that in the Tapestry this Turold is
attached to Gui's household in some capacity, perhaps as a troubadour
employed in the great hall of an evening, before the fire, when the meal
had brought the household together.
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Troubadours were professional itinerant entertainers, plying their
trade from Court to Court and across the Channel. They could come
from any walk of life, including noblemen by birth, like Queen Eleanor's
grandfather, William IX of Aquitaine who was a celebrated poet and
wrote troubadour songs which he himself performed. He was also a
Duke and a Knight as was his neighbour the troubadour Duke Bertrand
de Born of the château de Hautfort; whilst the twelfth century
troubadour Bernardt de Ventadorn, who evidently caused Queen
Eleanor's heart to flutter at her Court at Poitiers, was low-born but well
educated and a talented musician with a beguiling voice. Alerted to the
spell which de Ventadorn had woven over his wife, Henry II summoned
this troubadour to his Court in England where he reluctantly had to go
across the uninviting Channel.1
Evidently William the Conqueror worried lest boredom should set in
among his troops assembled at Saint-Valéry-sur-Somme, which was in
Gui de Ponthieu's province. William may have been glad of the services
of a troubadour to entertain his men during their long wait for the wind
to change to take them to England. If Turold filled this rôle, he would
have witnessed first-hand the busy preparations for the invasion: the
boat building, the tools they used, the armour being embarked, the
barrels of wine being shipped, all highlighted in the Tapestry account.
Turold would be a valuable asset to William and could have
accompanied his army across the Channel, also witnessing the landing at
Pevensey, the exit of horses from the boats, the building of defences and
the feast at Hastings: he may even have been present in Scene 48. A
camp follower at the Battle of Hastings and its aftermath could have
stored up all these details which later found their way into the Tapestry.
The realism of the images suggests a first-hand knowledge of all these
events and observation by a trained eye. It is possible that the Turold
seen at the castle of Beaurain became the designer of the Tapestry and
was acknowledged as such by the embroiderers who sewed his name
into the hanging for posterity.
If the gifted designer of the Tapestry was not himself the artist, he
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could have collaborated with an experienced artist or artists, to set out
his composition. The Winchester School of Painting, in the same region
as Wilton and Shaftesbury Abbeys could have provided the artistic talent
as they did for church wall paintings. A troubabour attached to
William's expedition might also have had in his repertoire a poem about
Charlemagne and his nephew Roland. It is said that William demanded
this heroic tale to be sung before the Battle of Hastings to encourage his
soldiers to fight as bravely as Charlemagne's against the infidel. The
story must have been known. Bishop Gui of Amiens, whose account of
the Battle of Hastings is thought to be the earliest, 2 wrote that a
troubadour named Taillefer asked William's permission to lead the way
into battle singing the Chanson de Roland 3 and to be the first Norman to
kill an Englishman. It is even written that he set out into no man's land
juggling his sword as a challenge to the English. Later chroniclers, Wace
and Roger of Wendover,4 both writing in the twelfth century, took up
this tale and embroidered it further by adding that William himself went
into battle chanting the Chanson de Roland.
How, we wonder, did this connection with the Chanson de Roland
come about? The earliest extant manuscript of this poem, written in
Anglo-Norman, the language spoken in England after the Norman
invasion, probably dates from the last quarter of the eleventh century,
perhaps from the time of the first crusade in 1098, though some think a
little earlier: it is known as the Digby manuscript and thought to be
based on a lost original.5 Before that, the Song would be known orally
as part of a troubadour's repertoire.6 The final couplet of this poem
written by the Anglo-Norman scribe who copied it, ends with the words:
"Ci falt la geste7 que Turoldus declinet."
"Here ends the tale told by Turoldus."
It is acknowledged that the Turold named in the Bayeux Tapestry and
the poet of the Chanson de Roland might be the same person; but the
name Turold was a very common one. We have already met it as one of
Odo's vassals; it was also the name of William's tutor; and of Odo's
nephew or son, Turold of Fécamp, who was made Abbot of Malmesbury
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then later Abbot of Peterborough and described as a soldier rather than
a monk,8 not one to be connected with poetry. Other Turolds have been
put forward in connecrion with the Bayeux Tapestry so a conclusion
about the identity of the designer is unlikely.
It is tempting, however, to look for comparisons of the Bayeux
Tapestry with the Chanson de Roland. Many parallels can be drawn
between them. It has first to be noted that although the poem is about
Charlemagne of the late eighth century and his battles against the
Saracens, as the Muslims in Spain were called, Normans do figure in the
poem even by name, no doubt slipped into the narrative by the eleventh
century troubadour to please his patron and his audience. Richard I of
Normandy, named as Richard the elder 9 is mentioned: he was Queen
Emma's father, Edward the Confessor's grandfather and William the
Conqueror's great-grandfather. Mont-Saint.-Michel is mentioned in the
poem as the Abbey where Charlemagne might celebrate the conversion
of his enemy Marsilie to Christianity: it also appears in the Tapestry's
upper border, without any explanation. Reference is even made in the
poem to Charlemagne's crossing of the Channel to England, an incident
quite unknown which could only be referring to William's crossing in
1066.10
Both the Chanson de Roland and the Bayeux Tapestry are epic dramas
and both have their roots in an historical event. Both are about a feudal
society; both dramas start with the elderly statesman of "hoary white
beard." Other similarities are quite striking: the battle scenes in both
are vivid and powerful and horses play a major part. William goes into
battle with the Pope's blessing just as Charlemagne champions
Christendom against the Pagan. William was said to be wearing round
his neck a holy relic from Bayeux Cathedral, Saint Peter's tooth, upon
which Harold had sworn his oath. Roland kept holy relics in the golden
hilt of his sword Durendal and even some hair of Saint Denis to whom
Saint Edith of Wilton had dedicated her Chapel.
There are similarities between the dramatis personae of both works
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of art. Roland and Oliver his friend and Archbishop Turpin are three
close comrades in arms on the battlefield just as Harold is supported by
his two brothers, Leofwin and Gyrth; and William by his half-brothers,
Odo and Robert of Mortain. Three hundred years of Christianity
separate Bishop Odo from Archbishop Turpin which means that Turpin's
sword has been replaced by Odo's baton or mace. Turpin was as
renowned a knight upon the battlefield as his companions. Perhaps
Odo would like to have worn spurs and performed deeds of valour. At
the height of the battle of Roncesvales, Count Roland calls out to Oliver:
"Lord companion, I am sure you will agree
The Archbishop is a very fine knight.
There is none better on the face of the earth;
He has great skill in striking with lance and spear." 11
As for blows, the Archbishop deals more than a thousand.12 When he
hears Charlemagne insulted by the Saracen King Corsablix, Turpin spurs
his horse and kills this Saracen King. 13 In the Tapestry a great show is
made of Odo, resplendant and brave, in the midst of the Battle of
Hastings and perhaps similarly attired accompanying William on his
Breton expedition and seen against the backcloth of Mont-Saint- Michel.
The main theme of both these epics is treachery. In the Chanson de
Roland, Ganelon, Roland's step-father, is the traitor: on his return from
negotiating with Marsilie at Saragossa, he is named both traitor and
perjurer.14 Charlemagne knows his character and does not trust him,
just as King Edward fears trouble from William. Ganelon is the Emperor
Charlemagne's brother-in-law, just as Harold is King Edward's. In
Norman eyes, Harold is the traitor: having sworn to help William
acquire the English throne, he becomes both perjurer and traitor when
he accepts the crown for himself. Like Ganelon, of fine demeanor,
splendid in armour, a respected sratesman and noble in many ways, he
is flawed. Like Ganelon, he dies what could be termed a traitor's death
when his body is torn to pieces.
To the Anglo-Saxons, however, Harold resembles the hero Roland:
answerable to King Edward when offered the crown, he was rightfully
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elected King, as recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Like Roland, he
naively set up his own misfortunes. Roland suggested Ganelon to carry
Charlemagne's message to Marsilie and thus set the wheels in motion
for Ganelon's treachery; Harold's over-confident trip to Normandy
whether or not carrying Edward's message, sealed his fate. He is valiant
and brave on the battlefield; like Roland, he sees his closest companions
killed then fights to the death. Just like another Anglo-Saxon hero of
King AEthelred's time, the thane Byrhtnoth, at the famous battle of
Maldon, whose death was also recorded on a tapestry hanging, 15 Harold
died a hero's death worthy of being recorded in a Tapestry.
Ganelon's apparent resentment of Roland for sending him into danger
where previous envoys had lost their heads, was merely on the surface
of a deep antagonism, perhaps jealousy. It is possible that William
harboured similar personal feelings against Harold, beneath his
righteous indignation against a usurper. As with Ganelon, William used
words as weapons to plot his revenge upon Harold by manipulating his
Barons and neighbouring supporters to join him in his invasion to claim
new territory. Ganelon's plot with Marsilie depended upon his way with
words, his timing and his nomination of Roland for the rearguard.
William's words and timing during Harold's stay with him in Normandy
were comparable, as he seized his opportunity to weave a plan.
Both Edward and Charlemagne were affected by dreams,
premonitions and visions: in both epics, omens were taken seriously.
When Ganelon let fall Charlemagne's glove before setting out on his
mission to Saragossa, the Franks gasp:
"God, what can this mean ?
From this mission great misfortune will befall us." 16
According to Eadmer the historian, these were Edward's words when
Harold set out on his mission to Normandy. Charlemagne dreams that
Ganelon seizes his lance and breaks it. On Ganelon's return and
nomination of Roland for the rearguard, Charlemagne mistrusts him,
calling him "the living devil," 17 but Roland willingly accepts the
nomination as his duty ; and his fate rolls on as in a Greek tragedy.
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Style and technique are not dissimilar in these two epics. The
puzzling repeat scenes in the Tapestry might have their origin in the
"laisses similaires" 18 of the Chanson de Roland: a method of picking up
the threads of what has gone before after a break of some sort or for
emphasis. They occur in both works at dramatic moments: messengers
sent to rescue Harold from Gui's imprisonment, King Edward's burial is
succeeded by a more detailed deathbed scene, Harold's death by an
arrow in the eye is followed by a hacking to death when prone upon the
ground. As Roland is about to die on the battlefield of Roncesvales, we
are told how he blows his horn to summon Charlemagne:
"Rolant set the olifant to his lips.
He takes a firm hold of it and blows with all his might;" 19
In the next laisse we have:
"Count Roland with pain and distress
Sounds his olifant in great agony." 20
Even a third repeat follows in laisse 135 with more details:
"Count Roland is bleeding from the mouth;
In his skull the temple is burst.
He blows the olifant in pain and in anguish;
Charles heard it and so did the Franks.
The build-up of tention for the audience is palpable. Tears would be
shed. When Charlemagne says he is sure Roland needs help, Ganelon
disdainfully replies,
"There is no battle;
You are old, hoary and white-haired;
Such words make you seem like a child." 21
Now Charlemagne is sure of Ganelon's treachery. He has him seized and
placed in fetters like a bear: like the bear in the lower border of the
Tapestry.
Charlemagne turns back. At this dramatic moment, Turoldus speaks
as might a Greek chorus:
"What matter ? For they have delayed too long;"
and again,
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"What matter ? It is of no avail.
They delay too long: they cannot get there in time." 22
The effect of pressing home the inevitable by repetition is to double or
treble the agony and sorrow. The repetition continues during Oliver's
and Turpin's deaths and finally Roland's. In the Tapestry such repetitions
can occur only once but are equally effective. There would be nothing
surprising about them for the Tapestry audience used to a troubadour's
style of presentation. It also draws to a close a moving episode after
which the audience is ready for the sequence, which, in the Chanson de
Roland was Charlemagne's avenging of Roland's and the rearguards'
deaths. Hoary and white-haired he may have been but Charlemagne in
person killed the Emir of Babylon who had arrived to support the
wounded Marsilie. In the Tapestry, after Edward's death, the audience
awaited William's reaction and action; after Harold's death, the Tapestry
dares not record the trauma in England following the Battle of Hastings
whilst William completes his victory: that was not the Tapestry's
function. It probably ended on what should have been a jubilant
celebration: a final scene showing William's coronation; but the
embroiderers who had recorded all these moving events may well have
echoed in their hearts Charlemegne's last comment in the Chanson de
Roland:
" God, how wearisome is my life."
The poet of the Chanson was using a more varied medium than the
embroiderers: words, change of tenses, tone of voice, even a stringed
instrument. The Tapestry was restricted to colour, gestures and captions
and maybe the occasional clerical raconteur in the Cathedral but this
was not expected. In the nave of Bayeux Cathedral, the people's area of
the great building, its pictures would be read as wall paintings were read
and the sculpted capitals with their sometimes strange legendary
creatures also seen in the Tapestry borders. The borders of wall
paintings were generally standardised scrolls or leaf patterns but the
Tapestry offered something different, something more, even some
down-to-earth nudes, such as the little figure beneath the cleric in
AElfgyva's scene, which now needs our attention.
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Notes
1. Alison Weir, Eleanor of Aquitaine, By the Wrath of God, Queen of England
(Jonathan Cape,London 1999) p.105.
2. Gui d'Amiens, the Carmen de Hastingae Proelio, ed. by Catherine Morton and
Hope Muntz (Oxford Medieval Texts 1972)
3. The Chanson de Roland ed. F. Whitehead (Basil Blackwell, Oxford 1980)
4. Wace, Le Roman de Rou, trans. and ed. Glyn Burgess (The Boydell Press 2004)
ll.8013-8018.
Roger of Wendover, Flowers of History trans. J.A. Giles , 2 vols. (Llanerch
1994-1995)
5. ms. Digby 23 in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.
6. See Introduction by F. Whitehead, Chanson de Roland, (Basil Blackwell, Oxford
1980) pp.vi and vii.
7. La geste, usually means epic tale, as in the general term , Chanson de Geste.
8. David C. Douglas, William the Conqueror (Eyre Methuen 1964)
9. Chanson de Roland, "Richart le veill" l.3470.
10. Ibid. l.372.
11. Ibid. l.1671-1675.
12. Ibid. l.144.
13. Ibid. l.1671
14. Ibid. l.674
15. A hanging depicting the Battle of Maldon of 991, presented to Ely Cathedral by
Bryhtnoth's widow, AEthelflaed, and which Odo might have seen there.
16. Chanson de Roland, ll.334-335.
17. Ibid. l.746.
18. A laisse was a verse of varying length.
19. Chanson de Roland, laisse 133.
20 Ibid. laisse 134
21. Ibid. laisse 134, l.1770
22. Ibid. laisses 136 and 138, ll.1840 and 1841.
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Chapter 15.
Eve and Goscelin.
Goscelin makes no reference to the Bayeux Tapestry being made at
Wilton Abbey during the years following 1066 but this is hardly
surprising : Goscelin was wary about what he wrote under the Norman
occupation; he was, moreover, a scholar given over to reading and study.
We know that during the unsettling and frightening years after the
Norman invasion, Wilton Abbey opened its doors to welcome not only
Queen Edith and her entourage and Harold's daughter Gunnhild but also
many others. This influx of guests may well have disturbed some in the
community.
To name one such was Eve. She had lived at Wilton Abbey since she
was a child, entrusted by her parents during Edward the Confessor's
reign to the nuns for her upbringing and education at their school for
noblewomen. Eve was the daughter of Olive, a Lotharingian lady and
Api, a Dane, and she became the protegée of Bishop Herman: she was
perhaps his niece.1 Goscelin, then a chaplain at Wilton Abbey, became
her tutor and a close relationship between them developed. Eve showed
a precocious desire for learning and a leaning towards mysticism: the
mixture of a secular and religious community as at Wilton Abbey would
not have been conducive to Eve's vocation. It is likely that finding in
each other a sole-mate, tutor and pupil distanced themselves from the
busy comings and goings of life centred round Queen Edith's Court,
where perhaps the great Tapestry was being created.
With her mother, Eve attended the consecration of Queen Edith's new
Abbey Church on 3 October 1065; at the banquet which followed the
ceremony, Goscelin sent Eve a fish, as a present! Eve took her vows at
Wilton Abbey and became a nun. With Goscelin as her escort she
attended the consecration of Westminster Abbey on 28 December of
that year and although thirty years her senior, Goscelin had by then
lost his heart to her. At Westminster Abbey, he noted how Eve in her
black nun's habit far excelled in beauty all the fine ladies who attended
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the ceremony dressed in purple. This is a love story which happened in
Wilton at the time when the Bayeux Tapestry was being embroidered
but it did not follow the course of Abelard's and Heloise's love.
So explicit are some of the images in the Tapestry, one must suppose
that men also formed part of the embroidery team. It seems that a man
may have been responsible for inserting into the Tapestry border,
beneath the cleric, who almost certainly represents Goscelin, the
blatantly erotic figure: contemtorary gossip and scandal had worked
their way into this record of history in which the border designs were
left to the whims of the embroiderers.
Bishop Herman died in 1078 and Queen Edith before him in December
1075,2 by which time the tapestry would probably have been completed.
Goscelin and Eve comforted each other in 1078 for to both of them the
Bishop had been a surrogate father. Herman was replaced at Sarum by a
Norman, Bishop Osmund, who immediately gave Goscelin his marching
orders. Goscelin was banished from Wilton Abbey: presumably, it was
thought that his love for Eve had become too dangerous. After so many
years at Wilton Abbey, Goscelin, broken-hearted, was forced to travel
elsewhere, wandering from Abbey to Abbey where he was welcomed as
a hagiographer to write up the history of their Saints. We catch up with
him in Norfolk, at Bury Saint Edmunds and at Ely.
Meanwhile Eve left Wilton Abbey of her own volition to become an
anchorite in Saint Laurent's Chapel near Angers. Eve could not have
made these arrangements for this brave decision unaided. Perhaps
Muriel, the Norman poetess then at Wilton Abbey, made introductions
for her, having connections herself with the community of recluses to
which the Chapel of Saint Laurent belonged.3 Later, Eve moved to the
Church of Saint-Eutrope where she was joined by her niece Ravenissa.
When news reached Goscelin of Eve's departure from Wilton Abbey, he
was devastated and at first inconsolable, weeping "in a flood of tears,"
he tells Eve in the Introduction to his long letter, known as his Liber
Confortatorius,4 which he wrote to her to comfort and encourage her. In
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this letter, written at Bury Saint Edmunds, Goscelin refers to "the cackler
and impure gossip monger" whose "wicked eye and artful finger" may
have sown the seeds of "hissing calumny:"5
"Absint a puro susurrio sibilantes insidie, nequam oculus,
uafer digitus, uentilator et cachinnator impurus."
From this we learn that an artful finger of one impure gossip monger
could have introduced the note of slander into the Tapestry border.
Such a rumour may have been the reason for Bishop Osmund's removal
of Goscelin from Wilton Abbey in 1078.
Goscelin reassures Eve in his letter of consolation to her, saying that it
is preferable to him to have been made a laughing stock than to have
neglected what was owed in affection. He comforts Eve, taking comfort
himself in the name of Christ, that their " pure whisperings together"
have been misinterpreted when their affection for each other was on a
higher spiritual level. He is desolated at their further geographical
separation; but his message to Eve is positive and his advice is typical of
the scholar that he was: a long reading list, carefully chosen. Goscelin
ends Book I of his long letter assuring Eve, his "dearest one" and "soul
sweetest to me," that he will always be there for her, "the same absent
as he was present," and he asks her to pray for him. This letter is in four
parts or books, in which Goscelin expounds the Scriptures to Eve,
relates some miracles and makes nostalgic references to life at Wilton.
If this is the explanation of the naked figure in the border of the
Tapestry in this hitherto mysterious scene of a cleric and AElfgyva, then
it would confirm that the Bayeux Tapestry was indeed made by
embroiderers connected with Goscelin's Abbey at Wilton. It is easy to
imagine them gossiping whilst sewing together. At this same time,
Goscelin was composing, at the request of the Abbess Godyva, The Life
of Saint Edith. This he dedicated to the Norman Archbishop Lanfranc in
1080 and he was careful what he wrote about Wilton Abbey and its
Anglo-Saxon residents. From all accounts, it seems that Goscelin was an
honest, impartial and reliable witness of events. He stayed in many
monasteries after leaving Wilton. Professor Barlow suggests:
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Winchester, Peterborough, Barking, Ely as his refuges.
6
There is a reference in the anonymous Anglo-Norman poem La Vie
de Sainte Audrée 7 to a monk called Goscelin, stating that he wrote lives
of Saints. Some ascribe this poem to Marie de France because its author
frequently gives her name as Marie, wishing to be remembered by
posterity, and adding, in like manner to Marie de France, that she who
allows herself to be forgotten is foolish:
"Mut par est fol ki se oublie.
Ici escris mon non Marie,
Pur ce ke soie remembree."
Also like Marie de France, this author explains her intentions: to
translate La Vie de Sainte Audrée from a Latin version, adding accounts
of miracles which she has collected by word of mouth and from Bede's
writings, as she did not wish them to be forgotten. Marie de France has
written similarly of her collection of Breton Lais. Our anonymous poet
writes:
"Issi ay ceo livere fine,
En romanz dit et translate
De la vie seinte Audree
Si com en latin l'ay trove
Et les miracles ay oy,
Ne voil nul mettre en oubli."
The mid-thirteenth century copyist of this poem has given his, or
her, own version of Anglo-Norman spellings; his or her octosyllabic
rhyming couplets go astray at times but the original could have been
written by Marie de France in the early years of the thirteenth century,
in which case the reference to a monk named Goscelin who wrote the
lives of Saints has some significance in connecting Marie with Wilton
Abbey where Goscelin had been chaplain and revered as an author of
Saints' lives. His reputation as such would have remained alive at Wilton.
If Marie de France were the author of La Vie de Seinte Audrée, it would
not be surprising if she referred to Goscelin in this poem.
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The reference is amongst accounts of miracles performed by Sainte
Audrée at Ely Abbey which Goscelin visited in about 1087 - 1088 during
his itinerary of Abbeys and monasteries after leaving Wilton Abbey. The
poem tells us that Sainte Audrée cured the monk Goscelin of a sickness:
8
"Uns de moines ki gari fu,
Gocelin out non, mont amoit
Vies des seins ke il translatoit
Par la sante ke out recovere
Al loenge de Seinte Audree
Fist une prose ou melodie
Ke uncore est en l'abeie."
We know that Goscelin was a gifted musician so a "melodie" composed
by him in praise of Sainte Audrée while staying in her Abbey at Ely would
be in keeping with his talents. The author of the poem tells us that
Goscelin's melodie is still in the Abbey.
Perhaps the sickness of which Sainte Audrée was said to have cured
Goscelin was his love-sickness for Eve, the nun from Wilton Abbey to
whom he wrote his long letter of comfort, his Liber Confortatorius, when
staying at nearby Bury Saint Edmund's Abbey. If Marie de France was the
author of the poem, she would have been touched by the story of
Goscelin's love for Eve, his "sweetest one." This coincidence makes it
more than likely that Marie de France, the probable author of La Vie de
Seinte Audrée, was resident at Wilton Abbey just over half a century
later.
When Goscelin finally settled at Saint Augustine's monastery in
Canterbury, the new order under the Normans had been established but
the reforms in the church, in which the feasts of some English Saints
were no longer recognised, were causing troubles there as everywhere.
In fact, the monks of Canterbury were in a state of rebellion over the
reforms, so much so that when Bishop Odo and Archbishop Lanfranc,
who had succeeded Stigand as Archbishop in 1070, turned up to install
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the new Abbot , they found the Abbey deserted. Some monks were
imprisoned for this behaviour.9
On his arrival at Saint Augustine's, Goscelin was chosen to see through
the reforms. This shows that he was highly respected by all factions. He
was praised by his fellow monks, one of whom wrote of him:
"You, O Goscelin, overflow with the arts as the sea
overflows with water and sand. Kindly, cheerful and
well- stocked with honest qualities, you keep clear
of the disputes and dissentions that occur among us.
You are the glory, grace and adornment of our monks,
a comfort to the sorrowful, the sweet solace of the
troubled.10
This seems to be a fitting note on which to end our indebtedness to the
works of Goscelin, the monk from Saint Bertin.
Notes.
1. Stephanie Hollis, Rebecca Hayward et al.,Writing the Wilton Women(David
Brown, Belgium 2005) Introduction by Stephanie Hollis.
2. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, D and E, both say that Edith, the Lady-dowager
pased away at Winchester and other writers concur.
3. The nunnery of Le Ronceray in Angers. See Stephanie Hollis, in Writing the
Wilton Women, Introduction (David Brown, Belgium 2005)
4. C.H. Talbot, ed. The Liber Confortatorius of Goscelin of Saint Bertin
(Yhe Wellcome Foundation, London)
5. Stephanie Hollis, Rebecca Hayward et al., Writing the Wilton Women, (David
Brown, Belgium 2005) I am indebted to W.H. Barnes and Rebecca Hayward
for the translation of Goscelin's Liber Confortatorius.
6. Frank Barlow, ed. and trans. Vita AEdwardi Regis, The Life of King Edward
(Oxford Medieval Texts, 2nd. edn. 1992) Appendix C.
7. Anon. La Vie de Seinte Audrée, poème Anglo-Normand du XIII sièecle (Osten
Sodergard, Uppsala 1995)
8. Ibid l.3119
9. David Bernstein, The Mystery of the Bayeux Tapestry,(London 1986) Chapter III
Canterbury: From Anglo-Saxon to Norman.
10. A.W. Wilmart, ed. La Légende de Sainte Edith en prose et en vers par le moine
Goscelin, The life of Saint Edith, (Anal. Boll. 56, 1938) Appendix C
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Chapter 16.
Conclusion: unravelling the Bayeux Tapestry.
Similarities between some Anglo-Saxon illustrations in manuscripts
written in Canterbury and some details in the tapestry have been
persuasive in tentatively locating the workshops for the Tapestry in that
area: for example in the Old English Hexateuch of ca. 1030, Abraham
catching birds in a sling has been compared with the farmer in the
Tapestry border doing likewise. That King William made Bishop Odo
Earl of Kent and his three supposed vassals named in the Tapestry held
land of him in the Canterbury area has also lent weight to this
assumption and to the view that Odo was the patron of the Tapestry.
Certainly, to commission this totally unconventional subject matter for
display in a Cathedral was more likely to be the act of a rebellious spirit
than of a pious lady. We know the history of this larger than life Bishop,
whose domain was both Church and State, and who dwarfs his halfbrother William in his several appearances in the Tapestry: he is very
likely to be its patron. The location of the workshops, however, is less
obvious.
The debate about the provenance of the Tapestry has continued
among scholars. David Wilson1 is inclined towards a School of
Winchester location, Wolfgang Grape 2 argues for a Norman provenance,
probably Bayeux, whilst David J. Bernstein,3 connects Biblical references
with either Saint Augustine's monastery or Christ Church monastery in
Canterbury so places the tapestry artist there. The designer of the
Bayeux tapestry who must have seen the entire composition in his
mind's eye before work began, could very well have belonged to the
Canterbury School of painters; yet for a Canterbury nunnery to be the
location of the workshops, the Tapestry's many connections with
Wessex, outlined in the previous pages, would be hard to explain.
Work on the tapestry is generally thought to have begun very soon
after the events described. As the first part of the story told is devoted
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to a sympathetic portrayal of Harold as hero, although the defeated
King, such a project is more likely to have been conceived in
collaboration with the mourning members of his family who were at
Wilton Abbey in Wessex , than in a Canterbury nunnery whose brief
would probably have remained confined to a celebration of William's
victory: there they would have had no personal reason to diverge from
this agenda. As shown in the opening scenes of the Tapestry, Harold's
trip to see William in Normandy was centred round the Godwin manor
at Bosham and family affairs: most likely the release of the two Godwins
being held hostage by William. If the AElfgyva in scene 17 in the
Tapestry is a Godwin sister and Abbess of Wilton Abbey, here again we
have a Godwin family connection and a Wessex one creeping into the
main theme.
The dowager Queen Edith, having readily accepted William as King
when she handed over the keys of the Treasury at Winchester, was
respected by him; and as William and Odo had a compatriot at Wilton
Abbey in Muriel, the Norman poetess, possibly their sister, they would
have had every reason to feel confident that the making of the Tapestry
was in the best hands. Thus Edith was in a good position to include in
the subject a eulogy of her brother Harold whilst honouring all the dead
at Hastings, as well as the living. Edith was politically shrewd.
Research by Marjorie Chibnall into the years immediately following
William's victory points out that the first Norman account of these
events, the poem by Gui, Bishop of Amiens, the Carmen de Hastingae
Proelio, composed soon after the events, refers to Harold as King, as we
find him described in the Tapestry, and, more reliably, as do Charters
dealing with the redistribution of land.4 Only after about 1070, when
the Norman chroniclers William of Jumièges and William of Poitiers
were justifying William's invasion and his right to the English throne,
was Harold vilified and deprived of his title as King. Twenty years later,
at the time of Domesday Book, he had been demoted for the records to
plain Count. Perhaps it was felt that as William's difficulties in subduing
his newly-acquired kingdom continued, strong back-up by his chroniclers
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was required, though he may have repented his delusion about being
the rightful King at his deathbed, as reported by Orderic Vitalis, when
William left the kingdom of England to God.5 It has been left to
posterity, with some help perhaps from hidden hints in the Bayeux
Tapestry, to judge Harold and William as they deserve.
By the end of the eleventh century, when Eadmer the monk from
Christ Church monastery was writing his Recent Events in the History of
the English, he may have conferred with Goscelin who would by then be
settled at Saint Augustine's monastery in Canterbury. Goscelin could
have shared with Eadmer Queen Edith's views of events which he could
have heard in person when writing his praise-poem The Life of King
Edward, assuming Goscelin, not Folcard, to be its author. Goscelin
could have enlightened Eadmer about Harold's visit to Normandy to gain
the release of Godwin hostages, about Edward's misgivings and
premonitions of disaster for the kingdom and about the concern felt
over Harold's oath upon the Holy Relics of Bayeux Cathedral which those
at Wilton Abbey would have held sacred. Contemporary faith in the
power of holy relics and of their Saints should not be overlooked when
considering the story told in the Bayeux Tapestry.
Belief in Saint Edith 's power of healing is clearly demonstrated by the
inclusion in the Tapestry of the Abbess AElfgyva whose eyesight was
miraculously restored by the Wilton Saint, as Goscelin the cleric points
out in scene 17. If the workshops of the Tapestry were at Canterbury,
the presence of AElfgyva, shown in her gateway at Wilton Abbey, with
her chaplain in attendance, would have had no place in the Tapestry.
Many attempts to identify this AElfgyva in the Tapestry have put the
emphasis upon the wrong, therefore misleading, feature: the sexual
innuendos in the border rather than the lady and her surroundings.
The border scenes would be added last after the main panel was
completed, the embroiderers working from the centre to the edges.
Therefore in order to identify AElfgyva, the border scenes should be
ignored and a highly-regarded contemporary figure should be sought,
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one who would have a priest in attendance and who were both relevant
to the Tapestry subject matter. Queen Edith with her priest might be
contenders were it not for the nun's dress. So an Abbess and her
chaplain would certainly fit the bill and given that Goscelin's accounts of
events during 1064 and 1066 together with his architectural
descriptions, seem to appear in the Tapestry and also considering the
relationship of Queen Edith's sister AElfgyva to Godwin participants in
these events and to her standing as Abbess of a rich and famous
establishment during the crucial years 1064 to 1066, she deserves our
serious consideration as the AElfgyva in the Tapestry.
Moreover, the talented composer of this remarkable archive seems to
have enjoyed introducing some poetical touches into his story, likening
Harold's tragedy to the theme of destiny in Greek dramas, hinting at this
destiny by means of Halley's Comet, the hand of God and other signs as
well as the underlying emphasis on a great miracle performed by
Wilton's Saint Edith, likening the incident of AElfgyva's right eye to
Harold's forthcoming fate. So Saint Edith whose shrine was situated at
Wilton Abbey plays a major rôle in this hanging: able to heal AElfgyva
but not her forsworn brother. This connection with Saint Edith's shrine
explains AElfgyva's prominence in the Tapestry which has hitherto been
so puzzling. Separate explanations must be sought for the presence of
the shocking naked figures added later into the border beneath AElfgyva
and her priest; therein lies the minor tragedy of a minor figure in the
Tapestry: Goscelin the priest.
Besides promoting their Saint, the embroiderers from Wilton Abbey
took the opportunity to celebrate three recently consecrated religious
foundations: Bayeux Cathedral which was supposedly in Odo's thoughts
when planning the hanging, Westminster Abbey, King Edward's great
achievement and where William was crowned King on Christmas Day
1066 after his victory, and thirdly, their own magnificent Abbey Church,
recently rebuilt by Queen Edith, the other reason for giving Wilton
Abbey and its Abbess AElfgyva this publicity. Pilgrims were always
welcome and shrines were money-spinners.
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As for their chaplain's presence in the Tapestry, not only was he there
to draw attention to the miracle performed at Wilton Abbey but it
seems to have been his account of events leading up to and including
King Edward's death, at the very climax of the story being told, which
was being closely followed by the master designer of the Tapestry, giving
details which would be unknown at Canterbury until a later date.
Whether he liked it or not, Goscelin was a key figure in Part I of the
embroidery; including him, though unnamed, may also have been a
statement of acknowledgement.
Then there is the connection between the fables illustrated in the
Tapestry borders and those found in the archives of Shaftesbury Abbey
and translated by Marie de France just over half a century later. It is
unlikely that embroiderers in Canterbury would have chosen the same
fables, if indeed any fables for the borders when they could have used
different motifs. As we have seen, the inspiration for the inclusion of
these particular fables may have been a delicate decision by Harold's
grieving family as a means of inviting posterity to judge his conduct. By
this action, they have helped to rescue Harold's reputation from the
shame of breaking his oath to William and the ensuing calumny of the
Normans anxious to blacken his character as they whitewashed
William's. Because of the enforced silence of the Anglo-Saxons in
uncertain times under Norman rule, these fables enabled them to
express their views. If the inclusion of the fables was indeed a hidden
message from Harold's family in order to rehabilitate him, then this first
part of the Tapestry was certainly a Godwin family affair.
By commissioning this hanging for his Cathedral at Bayeux, Odo would
be justifying the decision which he and his brother Robert of Mortain
encouraged William to take: to invade England, seize the throne and
enrich their relations and loyal Barons. The Tapestry tells a de Conteville
family drama as well as a Godwin one. For this reason, we do not see in
any of the scenes in the Tapestry the Bishop of Coutance who also
accompanied the expedition as is well recorded by Norman chroniclers.
Bishop Odo alone appears in a leading ecclesiastical rôle in the Tapestry,
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New Light on the Bayeux Tapestry
103.
blessing the food at the gathering around the make-shift table before
the Battle. In four, maybe five, important scenes,6 Odo takes the
limelight.
It would appear therefore that the Tapestry is the tale of two rival
dynasties, not just a straightforward historical record of William the
Conqueror's accession to the English throne in 1066. By making this
memorial to the dead, these two families were brought together and
perhaps reconciled in Edith's and Muriel's Abbey. There the first steps
were taken, it seems, to heal the terrible wounds inflicted by the
invasion. The residents of Wilton and Shaftesbury Abbeys in Wessex
may have set the example needed for reconciliation and found some
spiritual solace in so doing.
Anglo-Saxon characteristics noted in the Tapestry in style and
inscriptions were more likely to occur in workshops further removed
from Canterbury which was subject to influences from the continent.7
According to David Knowles, " at the time of the Norman Conquest there
were only nine nunneries in England and almost all in the old Kingdom
of Wessex." 8 The ancient school of painting at Winchester, established
there since King Alfred's reign, might have played a part in the creation
of the Tapestry. Queen Edith is known to have travelled between Wilton
and Winchester where she owned property; and the important
Scriptorium at Sarum was ideally situated near Wilton if help were
needed with the inscriptions. On a piece of sculpture found during
excavations at the site of the Old Minster in Winchester stands a knight
clad in chain mail with sword hanging from his belt, very similar to the
Tapestry knights.9
The Tapestry lends itself to comparisons with wall painting on which
the influence of the Winchester school of painting radiated afar. Wall
painters would have derived their skills from working on miniatures and
illuminated manuscripts. Their art would have included providing
embroiderers and tapestry workers with the cartoons for their hangings
and tilers with their patterns. Anglo-Saxon features can be recognised in
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New Light on the Bayeux Tapestry
104.
the few remaining examples of early church paintings: in the posture of
figures, the exaggerated size of the hands, the folds of their garments,
the buildings, letterings and decorated borders which are all reminiscent
of the Tapestry. Seated figures on thrones, showing rounded knees
through the draped material, feet together upon a stool, are very similar
in both media. Standing ecclesiastical figures wearing stoles similar to
Stigand in the Tapestry can be seen in Clayton Church, West Sussex; and
in a Gloucestershire church, at Kempley, one such figure holds his
maniple on outstretched arm reminding us of Stigand displaying his
maniple on outstretched hand at Harold's coronation. In the Nativity
scene in the Chapel of the Holy Sepulcre at Winchester, there is a Manus
Dei in the sky similar to that in the Tapestry above Westminster Abbey.
There are horses also in contemporary wall paintings. In Hardham
Church, near Pulborough in West Sussex, a mounted Saint George is
seen killing the dragon and in the church of Saint Martin at Wareham in
Dorset, prancing horses appear in the story of Saint Martin of Tours in
which the Saint is accompanied by a posse of soldiers on horseback very
like those in the Tapestry. Some wall paintings aspired to ressemble a
hanging by including painted hooks, loops and folds as in a curtain
hanging, beneath the dado in some churches, including Hardham,
perhaps a poor man's substitute for a fabric hanging.10
If more be needed to demonstrate the interchange between these
two art forms, there is the much later panel dated about 1200 showing,
between scroll borders, an array of mounted knights in armour with
lances and swords, riding both east and westwards, some tumbling from
their horses and losing their swords as if in imitation of the Bayeux
Tapestry: it is to be found in Claverley Church in Shropshire. The likeness
to the Bayeux Tapestry is striking.11
Wilton Abbey residents in the mid-eleventh century would be no
strangers to wall paintings in the Anglo-Saxon style with their
ornamental scroll and chevron borders and trees of good and evil
dividing the scenes. In Saint Edith's time , we know that her tutor, the
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New Light on the Bayeux Tapestry
105.
monk Benno of Triers, a scholar and a gifted artist, adorned Wilton
Abbey Church with paintings of the Passion of Christ and Edith's little
Chapel with the life story of Saint Denis, following her drawings. These
paintings would be lost when the wooden buildings were replaced in
stone but doubtless others would take their place, it being the custom
to use bright colours and bold designs on stone walls, capitals and even
on the statues outside a Cathedral on the West front where traces of
colour can still be found. In Salisbury Cathedral, finely painted
sarcophagi have retained their colour.
The same vivid colours of the wall paintings appeared in the Bayeux
Tapestry which also had to impress viewers from afar within the dim
interior of a large ecclesiastical building. Collecting the materials, such
as the dyes for the embroiderers' wools would have involved the same
processes as for the wall paintings. Certainly it would have been a very
large undertaking for such a huge project, given the time limit.
Geographically, Shaftesbury and Wilton Abbeys , which thrived upon
their wool and linen trade, were well placed and rich enough to share
the task and the materials; also large enough to provide the man power.
The linen cloth for the hanging would be supplied locally, from flax
grown locally, after the lengthy process of bleaching and preparing. 12 In
1249, the Sheriff of Wiltshire was ordered to obtain 2000 ells of linen
cloth at Wilton and send them to the Keeper of the Wardrobe in
London.13 In the second half of the eleventh century, there were two
dyers known to be living at Wilton.14
Five rivers converge in the Salisbury, then Sarum, water-meadows
and cloth was a local product. Water from the clear chalk streams was
available for the bleaching and dying processes and the chalk downs
were teeming with a great variety of wild flowers, the roots of one of
them at least, the Green Alkernet, known to have been used in medieval
times for its deep terracotta red dye: this plant still grows in abundance
near the site of Wilton Abbey. Conditions for creating a masterpiece of
embroidery in this region of Wessex would seem to have been ideal.
Patricia Stephenson.
New Light on the Bayeux Tapestry
106.
The master designer would have been well known to all those working
on the project as well as being answerable to his patron, who would
himself want to keep an eye on the work: yet still the identity of
the artist eludes us. We might agree that his name could be Turold,
deliberately named in the Tapestry; but which Turold we cannot say
even though his style is so similar to the Turold's of the Chanson de
Roland. All we can say with certainty about the Tapestry designer is that
he created another great epic story, a tragedy of Greek proportions, its
fated outcome announced not by a Chorus but through omens such
as Halley's Comet, ghost boats auguring invasion and even AElfgyva's
blindness in her right eye, a forewarning of how Harold would die: the
blinding of his right eye by an arrow causing his fall to the ground
from which position he was slaughtered.
We are meant to understand, however, that Harold's real fall was a fall
from grace. Breaking his oath sworn upon Holy Relics was the cause of
Harold's tragedy and the lesson being relaid to the public in the Nave of
Bayeux Cathedral. The power of the Church was being preached and a
miracle celebrated. A contemporary audience would have understood
these things. For us in the twenty-first century, the miracle is that this
piece of embroidered linen cloth, usually so perishable, has survived for
nearly a thousand years.
Notes
1 David M. Wilson, The Bayeux Tapestry (Thames and Hudson 1985) p.212.
2. Wolfgang Grape, The Bayeux Tapestry. Monument to a Norman Triumph.
(Prestel, Munich-New York 1994) pp.44-54.
3. David J. Bernstein, The Mystery of the Bayeux Tapestry (London 1986)
Chapters 13-15.
4. Marjorie Chibnall, Anglo-Norman England 1066-1166 (Basil Blackwell, Oxford
1986) pp.20-21.
5. Marjorie Chibnall, The World of Orderic Vitalis. Norman Monks and Norman
Knights (The Boydell Press, 1984) pp.184-186.
6. Scene 35, enthroned with William, ordering the fleet to be built;
Scene 48, blessing the meal at table, followed by the war council with William
and brother Robert;
Patricia Stephenson.
New Light on the Bayeux Tapestry
107.
Scene 67, in the midst of the fighting at the Battle of Hastings, wearing helmet
and battledress and wielding a baton to encourage the soldiers to fight on.
Also, perhaps, Scene 35, on the Breton expedition, wearing similar battledress
against the backcloth of the monastery of Mont- Saint.- Michel.
7. E.W. Tristram, English Medieval Wall Painting, Twelfth Century, (pub. on behalf
of the Pilgrim Trust by Humphrey Milford of the O.U.P. 1944) p.15.
8. David Knowles and R. Neville Hadcock, Medieval Religious Houses in England
and Wales (Longmans Green and Co. 1953)
9 David M. Wilson, The Bayeux Tapestry (Thames and Hudson 1985) pp.206-208
for a discussion of this find.
10. For illustrations of these examples see E.W. Tristram, English Medieval Wall
Painting, Twelfth Century, (pub. on behalf of The Pilgrim Trust by Humphrey
Milford of the O.U.P. 1944)
11. Ibid. see illustration of panel based on the Psychomachia of Prudentius
in Claverly Church, Shropshire.
12. Carola Hicks, The Bayeux Tapestry. The Life Story of a Masterpiece (Chatto and
Windus, London 2006) pp.40-44.
13. Victoria History of Wiltshire, p.13.
14. G.M. Young, Origin of the West Saxon KIngdom (Oxford 1934) pp.8-9.
Patricia Stephenson.
New Light on the Bayeux Tapestry
108.
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