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A short history of the Tapestry: an excerpt

The true purpose of the Tapestry has long been understood, and is crucially bound up with the fact that, as attested in the fifteenth century, it was hung each year in the nave of the cathedral ‘on the day and through the octaves of the relics’, in other words, according to the liturgical calendar of Bayeux, during the second week in July, which included the anniversary of the dedication of the church. For upon closer examination it is clear that the central theme of the narrative is not the conquest of England, as fifteenth-century viewers imagined, but the oath taken in 1064 by Harold at Bayeux on the relics contained in two caskets – an oath whose causes and circumstances are explained in detail (even though its terms and conditions are left in obscurity) and whose eventual consequence was catastrophic defeat for the perjured Harold at Hastings.

If the Tapestry had been entirely secular in character and purpose, there would have been no particular reason for it to start in 1064 rather than, say, 1042 (the accession of Edward the Confessor) or at least 1051, when William of Normandy began to take a serious interest in the English succession. Nor would more than a third of its length have been devoted to a preliminary storyline which does little to explain the political and military course of the Norman Conquest. Moreover, the ending of the story seems unduly abrupt except on the assumption that the death of the perjurer constitutes in itself a satisfactory conclusion. The divine chastisement which terminates an almost sacrilegious reign is an object lesson in the power of relics.

NOW AVAILABLE
272 pages
c.95 colour and c.15 b/w illus.
Size: 25 x 21 cm
ISBN: 1843831635
Binding: Hardback
Publication date: 29/Sep/2005
Price: 47.95 USD / 25.00 GBP
Imprint: Boydell Press