Hello again!
The clocks here in the UK have gone back for winter, it’s nearly dark by 5pm and it has turned cold. I know some people dream of hibernating through the winter, but I’m focussing on the bright side: I like my winter wardrobe and there are plenty of excuses for cosy nights in. I might even get back to reading for my next book! Wherever you are, I hope you’re safe and well and managing whatever the weather is throwing at you.
In the meantime, as promised, here are some things I’ve been thinking about the past.
Ten Objects
This semester, I’m teaching on a rather excellent module called ‘The Medieval World in Ten Objects’. I lead two seminar groups but I don’t choose the objects. Consequently, each week I get chance to look at something chosen by one of my colleagues.
Last week the chosen object was the Bayeux Tapestry, which is, in the first place, not a tapestry. (The design is embroidered, not woven, but the ship has sailed on calling it the Bayeux Embroidery. Just think of it as like a historical tomato: we can know it’s a fruit and still talk about it like a vegetable.)
Like most people brought up in Britain with any interest in history, I can’t remember not being vaguely familiar with the Bayeux Tapestry. It has inspired cartoon intros to TV programmes; the image of King Harold getting shot in the eye has graced magazine covers, posters, memes...
(For what it is worth, the man apparently getting shot in the eye with an arrow is almost certainly neither Harold nor a man getting shot in the eye. The ‘arrow’ is a nineteenth-century restoration that doesn’t match our oldest pictures of the Tapestry. The man in very colourful armour, holding a large axe and falling to the ground before a mounted Norman warrior is much more likely to be the man himself.)
If you have not encountered the Bayeux Tapestry, or have that vague familiarity without the details, it is a 70m-long-by-50cm-high embroidered account of the conflict over the English throne, culminating in the Battle of Hastings in 1066. King Harold Godwinson lost (see above), and Duke William of Normandy won and became King William I of England.
The Tapestry tells a complicated story, which is not quite the same as the story of 1066 from other sources. That isn’t really surprising. There were at least four contenders for the throne after Edward the Confessor died in 1066. Every source we have presents its own version of a complex reality. Probably nobody taking part knew all of the details anyway and everybody looking back undoubtedly remembered things their own way.
A Norman story
The Bayeux Tapestry was almost certainly commissioned by Bishop Odo of Bayeux, a half-brother and courtier of William of Normandy/William I. Unsurprisingly, it tells a Norman-friendly version of the story.
Nevertheless, the Tapestry isn’t completely partisan. It does not, for example, dispute that Harold Godwinson was a rightful king, or a good Christian or a brave man. Instead, it argues that before he became king Harold had sworn an oath on sacred relics to William, meaning that, when William also made a claim for the English throne, Harold should have supported William’s claim and given up his own.
Did Harold swear the oath? Was he forced to? Did he think that meant he should give William the throne? Was that a reasonable understanding of how oaths and royal succession worked in eleventh-century Normandy and England? Honestly, I don’t think we can really know, and personally, I don’t care that much. This isn’t my patch and I’m not really that kind of political historian. I do care about the stories people tell to explain their world, though, and for that the Bayeux Tapestry is a gem.
So, here are a few things that delighted me and made me think.
Odo here, Odo there, Bishop Odo everywhere!
The Bayeux Tapestry tells its story as a long cartoon, with sequences of images accompanied by brief, often weirdly bland Latin text. In some medieval sources, words provide more information about the images with them. In others, they can appear unrelated on first glance and, on deeper reading, offer subtle commentary or make you see the image differently. By contrast, the text on the Bayeux Tapestry is often kind of obvious. Take this, for example:
The text says ‘Here, Duke William crossed the sea in a big ship’. No kidding!
Okay, so it might be handy to know that this is William, not some other random person the Tapestry isn’t about but it’s hard not to feel that this commentary isn’t adding much.
Maybe the story was mainly designed for illiterate viewers (always a popular go-to explanation for medieval objects). Maybe the text was given to the embroiderers to let them know what should be included and they decided to add the words into the design. Maybe the text is a series of cues for an oral telling of the story and the Tapestry was originally meant to be a kind of prop for some sort of annual festival or something.
We will never know why, but often, the text seems a bit redundant. There are some times, though, when the words and the images join up beautifully and here is probably my favourite of those:
On one side of this scene, servants prepare food and drink for the Norman army, now arrived in England. This includes, among other things, some delectable-looking rotisserie chicken!
Next, above men sitting around a table, we are told that ‘Here, the bishop blessed the food and the drink’. The bishop is the one holding a loaf of bread in his arms (fourth from left at the table). Beside him is an unnamed figure in red who is pointing to his left (viewer’s right).
Following that pointing finger, we see three named figures sitting in some sort of attractive garden shed arrangement (probably just intended to denote their importance by showing them inside a building. I’m not suggesting that William was a keen gardener). This isn’t really an action scene: the three men are not visibly doing anything and the inscription does not tell us that they are doing anything. Instead, it is more of a reminder of key characters.
The people sitting in the shed, we are told, are William in the middle (obviously!), one Robert (Rotbert) to his left, one of his senior men at arms, and, in the place of honour to William’s right, ‘Odo Eps’. This is an abbreviation for ‘Odo Episcopus’, or Bishop Odo, and this is where our pointing man at the dinner table comes in. In the dining scene, the bishop is not named, only labelled ‘episcopus.’ Here, the man in red makes clear to us that, yes, these are the same man: Bishop Odo, commissioner of the tapestry, blesser of food and drink, advisor to Duke William. Odo Episcopus, always right where he’s needed most. What a guy!
Check out his horse
Another feature of the Bayeux Tapestry that brought me joy this past week is the care taken over observation and detail. Food is one case in point. As we’ve seen, it is often possible to identify something like a real menu, far beyond the narrative necessity of showing some lumps of stuff on tables and labelling it ‘cibus’.
Those embroiderers also, indubitably, knew their horses. The Tapestry has inspired serious debate about the use of cavalry in eleventh-century Normandy and England which, like the political hopscotch of the 1060s, isn’t really my bag, but I still found myself entranced by the horses: colourful, naturalistic, sometimes clearly male, always… alive. Take a look at this scene of the Norman army ‘arriving at the battle against King Harold’:
The movement of the charge ripples forwards, from horse to horse. At the back, a chestnut leans forward, lifting one leg, and his others angled backwards as if he is straining to break free. Further forward, a black stallion pushes off with his rear legs while his front legs rise, one by one into a canter. At the front, a sandy coloured horse and another chestnut (artistically matching the colours of the horses at the front and the rear of the charge) stretch out their front and rear legs in a full gallop. The whole sequence captures the swelling momentum of collective movement.
There is so much fun and fascination in this object, and I’d never really paid attention before. It was just sort of… there, in the background of a national consciousness. Diving into the Bayeux Tapestry has been a brilliant reminder that joy and wonder are two of the greatest gifts of studying the past.
So, on that note, if Coffee with Clio is something that you read to take a break from things that are not joyous and wonderful, I invite you to stop here, with some chicken on a stick, gorgeous horses and the All-round, All Around Awesomeness of Bishop Odo.
Stop here if this is your happy place
This next bit isn’t some fancy conclusion. It is just that, for me (and maybe also for some of you), history is also a way that I process the present. For me, looking away is often the more stressful choice.
With terrible news from so many parts of the world right now, I couldn’t help noticing other things as I looked at the Bayeux Tapestry.
At the end of the story is the battle. Considering that the Tapestry was commissioned by and for a Norman, we might have expected the end to be William’s victorious coronation. In fact, some scholars have suggested that we have simply lost that bit. Nobody knows.
We might also expect the Norman victory to be shown as a glowing triumph. To some extent, as in the cavalry charge above, I guess it is. In other places, it is not.
I was shocked when I looked at the lower part of this battle scene. It isn’t just a few limp, horizontal figures, like dummies in a bad horror movie.
While the battle rages, the bottom margin tells another tale: fallen men stripped of shields and armour; a man yanking the chainmail off another, leaving him naked, the body left blank, a simple outline on pallid white cloth. Further along there are just mutilated limbs.
Elsewhere in the narrative, haircuts, weapons, clothes and labels help the viewer tell Normans and English apart. Not here.
The Middle Ages are often characterised as especially violent. My instinct is to defend the people I study, especially as they are so often judged unfairly. I could tell you that more people have died by violence in the last couple of centuries than in probably most of the Middle Ages put together. (Guesstimate only, but a very plausible one.)
Looking at these marginal images from the Bayeux Tapestry, though, I don’t feel like defending anybody’s violence, past or present. It is a sad, awful scene but at least it reminds me, across the centuries, that while there has always been hurt and bloodshed, there has always been compassion and empathy, too. I choose to imagine that the final message from those embroiderers, who put so much time into this remarkable object, who chose every stitch with care, including the ugly ones, was that the thing we all share is our vulnerability.