The Mystery of the Bayeux Tapestry

by David J. Bernstein

Ten years of research have convinced David Bernstein that this unique 'tapestry' (in fact an embroidery) has a more complex significance than appears on the surface, its apparently naive images actually concealing layers of deeper meaning. To solve the msytery, the author investigates the unusual circumstances in which the Tapestry was made, its distinctive style and foramt, and how its version of history frequently departs from accounts by contemporary authors. This contreversial and completely original examination of one of the great landmarks of history will fascinate scholars and lay public alike.

Genres: History

Hardcover

First published October 30, 1986

Reviews

[Dimitri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Who made the tapestry, who designed it, what influenced the maker and what messages does it contain?

Those four questions are the spine of the book once the context of the Norman Conquest is told.

Bernstein's main opinion is Bischop Odo, one of William's right hand men , as the patron. A warrior of burgundian tastes, he wanted a gorgeous piece of Norman propaganda to decorate his hall - not the Bayeux cathedral, where a fascimile hangs akwardly and unreadable between pillars.

BUT the artist was Anglo-Saxon. The English were skilled embroiderers, some located in the Christian complex of Canterbury, with a wealth of illustrated Bibles and assorted texts to draw inspiration from.

Perhaps not quite in the way Odo intended. The main pictures are as often pro Norman and pro Odo (who is often depicted more prominently even than William when they share the stage) as they are ambigiously anti.

Harold is subtly drawn as the legitimate successor to King Edward, even if his arrow-in-the-eye death is a symbol of a traitor's demise, while animal fables in the margins mock the Normans as cunning predators.

The third part of the book goes into the biblical alligories of the Tapestry, specifically the Babylonian exile of the Jews, whereupon the Persians conquered Babylon.

While England's new rulers made you drag the stones to build their castles and spoke to you in a foreign tongue and bloodily crushed rebellions by what was left of the English nobility after Hastings ["collaborators" aside, you know there are]...

.. These hints whisper "just wait."

[Lukerik · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent first book to read on the subject. I’ve not seen the American edition, but the British one is a well made hardback, pleasingly heavy, on good paper. And oversized so you can actually see the illustrations, of which there many.

At the back is a full reproduction of the tapestry and Bernstein opens the book by talking you through it narratively. Then there’s a section on history and provenance before he delves into the art and teases out some fascinating details that normal people just wouldn’t notice. It’s a close examination and at one point, on the question of which one Harold is, he goes literally stitch by stitch. He’s good at summarising other scholars’ opinions before giving his own, all cogently argued.

In the final part of the book Bernstein argues that the artist is deliberately drawing comparisons between the Norman conquest and the Babylonian conquest of the Jews in 586 BC. I can’t be sure because this is the first book I’ve read on the subject, but I suspect this interpretation may be controversial. When I’d ‘read’ through the tapestry earlier I’d noticed that at one point Harold appears to swear his oath on the Ark of the Covenant. And I was pretty sure it was the Ark because I’ve seen Indiana Jones. I didn’t think much about it at the time. If you’d asked me I probably would have said that people simply built reliquaries that looked like it. Bernstein argues that the artist is signalling here and in other places to an interpretation of events that would not be obvious to his Norman patron. Earlier in the book Bernstein had examined and rejected the analysis of a chap called Werckmeister that the tapestry took inspiration from Trajan’s column. I note that Bernstein’s argument for his own hobby-horse is essentially that same as that he rejected for Werckmeister. But then I had found his argument for the rejection of Werckmeister’s theory to be unconvincing. What Bernstein lacks in his argument is a smoking gun. He can see that details in the tapestry appear to reference details from the Old Testament pseudepigrapha that by the date of the tapestry had passed into Jewish folklore. What he can’t prove is that the artist was aware of the folklore. As it happens, I’ve read those pseudepigrapha and in many cases you have a base Jewish text, abandoned when the Jews closed their Canon, but then taken up, used and amended by Christians over the following centuries. Personally, I find his argument convincing.

[Julie Yates · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book because in Marc Morris's book The Norman Conquest, he uses some potentially pro-Anglo-Saxon imagery in the Tapestry to show the Native English, at least, believed Harold was named the successor by Edward the Confessor. As someone that was unaware there even WAS a hint of English trying to tell their own story under the nose of their Norman oppressor's I simply had to learn more. Thus I was specifically interested in Part 2: Iconography: Mixed Messages - An inquiry into how the unusual circumstances of the conquered telling the story of their own defeat at the command of the victors affected the selection of what to include and that to leave out, the ordering of events and the creation of the Tapestry's iconography. This section hit it out of the park and was SO INFORMATIVE!! It goes scene by scene what is going on, and, more importantly, what the English embroiders are leaving out. I found the discussion around the death scene reordering to be particularly interesting.

Overall an extreemly deep and often facinating look at the detailed meaning behind each scene in the tapestry and how the English told their own story under Bishop Odo's nose. I found the way to get the most of of these chapters was to have the web link to the actual Bayeux Tapestry up to move frame by frame and expand as needed:
https://www.bayeuxmuseum.com/en/the-b...

Part One
The Making of the Tapestry A Discussion of the Bayeux Tapestry, where and when it was made, why it has a distinctive style and shape, it's relationship to other works of art, and how it might have been displayed.
Chapter I The Patron
Chapter II Provenance: Normandy or England
Chapter III Canterbury: from Anglo-Saxon to Norman
Chapter IV The Englishness of the Tapestry: Style
Chapter V The Englishness of the Tapestry Borders
Chapter VI Continuous Narrative, Distinctive Forman and the Idea of Triumph
Chapter VII Conclusion to Part One

Part Two Iconography: Mixed Message
Iconography: Mixed Messages - An inquiry into how the unusual circumstances of the conquered telling the story of their own defeat at the command of the victors affected the selection of what to include and that to leave out, the ordering of events and the creation of the Tapestry's iconography.
Chapter VIII: The Politics of Art
Chapter IX: Visual Polyphony: Animals in the Borders
Chapter X: Center Stage: King or Bishop
Chapter XI Victory at Hasting and the Death of Harold
(For a completely alternate take on the death scene & good discussion about what of this scene is original: https://www.medievalists.net/2022/10/... )
Chapter XII Conclusion to part Two

Part Three: By the Waters of Babylon. The Case for suggesting there is a previously unsuspected source for the Iconography of the Bayeux Tapestry.
Chapter XIII The Bayeux Tapestry and the Hebrew Scriptures
Chapter XIV A Story Fraught with Meaning

[Allison6876 · Rating 5 out of 5]

ARTH 3009 paper

[Kitren Glozer · Rating 4 out of 5]

the third book on the tapestry I have. A good read with pertinent info