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Embroidering history: Reconciliation and recrimination on the Bayeux Tapestry
As the Bayeux Tapestry goes on show at the British Museum, Matthew Symonds explores some of the enigmatic messages encoded in its exquisite needlework.
In September 1476, a brief but illuminating entry in the treasury inventory of Bayeux Cathedral, in Normandy, noted the presence of ‘a very long and narrow embroidered hanging with images and text’ stored in the vestry. The author added that the textile was displayed in the nave for a little over a week every year, and took for its subject matter the ‘Conquest of England’. Thanks to this information, we can be confident that these two and-a-half lines of text represent our earliest confirmed sighting of the Bayeux Tapestry. By 1476, this would already have been a venerable object, as most scholars place its creation in the years following 1072, meaning that production was probably in
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