The Man Behind the Bayeux Tapestry

by Trevor Rowley

  10 The Bishop of Bayeux’s estate at Neuilly l’Évêque.

  The bishop also had access to sea-fishing revenues. He held an estate at Port-en-Bessin where the fishermen paid a fee called aquagium to the bishop. The size of the fee depended upon whether or not nets were used for the catch (Gleason, 61). Along the coast and in the estuary of the River Vire there were many diocesan salt pans and in some areas the bishop enjoyed a monopoly of salt production. In addition, the bishop would have controlled stretches of river fishing and would have had his own fish ponds for freshwater fish farming, normally located close to his castles and palaces. The bishop also had fish ponds on the River Aure at Bayeux. At Neuilly, close to Odo’s castle in the Vire Valley, there was an integrated economy, with fish ponds, dovecotes, apiaries, fisheries, salt pans, mills, marsh and reed beds, woodland and parkland operating under the bishop’s control. There were extensive water-management schemes and the bishop also controlled navigation on the River Vire (Casset). Another lucrative area for the bishop was milling, as he enjoyed a monopoly of corn milling in Bayeux where everyone using the bishop’s mills was liable for a fee called a multure. If the bishop’s tenants were found grinding their grain elsewhere, they forfeited the flour to the miller and the horse which carried it went to the bishop.

  Such a wide-ranging economic enterprise required a large group of administrators. The oversight of the administration was in the hands of dapifers or seneschals, who supervised port reeves, toll receivers, tithe collectors, foresters, millers and revenue collectors. Thus, the diocese had its own administrative structure, which had to be cared for in addition to the cathedral chapter and the upkeep of all episcopal buildings, including the cathedral.

  • Bayeux •

  In the eleventh century there was a bridge over the River Aure, which ran immediately to the east of the walled town; the bridge led directly to St Martin’s Gate. There were four other bridges in 1100, but several were destroyed in the fire of 1105. The river was used intensively for milling, fishing, tanning, the provision of drinking water and to fill the city’s defensive ditches (Neveux 1997). By the eleventh century Bayeux was expanding again, as witnessed by the establishment of new parish churches and of four or five satellite bourgs, one of which was burgus episcopi. Such burgi were often relatively small, but laid out in a planned design, sometimes enclosed within their own defensive circuit. It was a feature of ducal Normandy that burghal privileges were accorded to some of these settlements, such as that sited around Odo’s new abbey of St Vigor (Clout, 340), where four burgesses were recorded in 1098. The other bourgs recorded at the end of the eleventh century were Bourg Turold, to the immediate south of the city, the Bourg du Champ-Fleuri, to the north-east of the city on the road leading to St Vigor, the Bourg du Pont Olbert and the Bourg l’Évêque, between Champ-Fleuri and St Vigor. Several of these bourgs disappear after the 1105 fire which destroyed much of Bayeux, although most have reappeared by the late Middle Ages (Neveux 1997).

  11 Plan of Bayeux and immediate surrounding area in the eleventh century. After Neveux, 1996

  The presence of financiers and property dealers in Bayeux, particularly from 1050 onwards, is noticeable and linked to the developing organisations of the cathedral chapter and ducal government. Only Rouen and Bayeux in Normandy had mints and Bayeux continued to produce coin in an archaic Carolingian style into the eleventh century. Descriptions of Bayeux in the early twelfth century emphasised the magnificence of the town and the cathedral with shining rooftops and soaring towers. Serlo, the canon/poet, described Bayeux as a town with a population of 3,000 and at least ten parish churches; in addition to the cathedral and the bishop’s palace there seem to have been many stone buildings, including some Odo built for the canons close to the cathedral. In 2003 excavations immediately to the south-east of the cathedral uncovered the lower part of a high-status dwelling, believed to have belonged to the Treasurer of the cathedral. A contemporary of Odo’s called Conan was a member of the chapter and Treasurer in 1092 and must have occupied this building. He is recorded as having a stone house and a small wood on the outside of the city wall next to the bishop’s gate. The poet Serlo described his house as being ‘a remarkable residence’. It was destroyed in the 1105 fire and rebuilt by Conan, but he appears to have fallen into debt as a result. It later passed into the hands of the cathedral’s clerk of the works. The excavations here also demonstrated that the city walls had been restored during the Carolingian era (Delacampagne 2006, 159–76).

  Tortaire, a monk from Fleury, was particularly impressed with the cathedral, although with characteristic regional bigotry he condemned the local cider as unpalatable and the inhabitants as distastefully coarse. Warming to this theme, Serlo accused the citizens of Bayeux of counterfeiting coins, theft, the oppression of widows and orphans, and cowardice (Bates 1970, 149). Serlo saw the fire of 1105 as divine retribution for the evils of the townspeople. Nonetheless, Bayeux in the second half of the eleventh century appears to have been a ‘prosperous and busy community, elevated a little above its station by the exuberant extravagance of bishop Odo’ (Bates 1982, 129–30).

  Odo was perhaps trying to emulate his half-brother, William, who at the same time was busy developing Caen as a ducal capital city, quite distinct from the ancient regional capital of Rouen. Caen had the advantage of lying in the Jurassic limestone belt with ready access to a plentiful supply of excellent building material. Caen also had the benefit of being located on the River Orne, which provided adequate access to the sea, but compared to Rouen it was much less vulnerable to attack from the river. Caen was also chosen in order to provide William with a powerful base in Lower Normandy, where the duke’s control had always been at its weakest. The rise of Caen would also deprive Bayeux of its claim of being the second city of Normandy.

  Caen was growing as an important trading centre before William’s ambitious development plans; around 1025 William’s grandfather Richard II had included the villa of Caen, with its churches, toll, fair and markets, in his wife’s dowry (Gibson 1978, 99). By 1060 William had a stone castle built at Caen on a rocky spur overlooking the Orne and had founded the abbeys of St Stephen and the Trinity. These were created in part penance for his marriage, which the pope deemed uncanonical and led to his excommunication for a while. The new foundations were particularly important for William as they provided a strong ducal ecclesiastical presence in a town which had no cathedral. St Stephen’s was designated as William’s burial place, thus, effectively designed to replace Fécamp as the ducal monastery. The new abbeys provided a supply of literate men and written documents, a means of control over a complex of estates, a source of ready cash, communities to pray for the duke and his family, and an impressive mausoleum. The first abbot, installed here in 1063, was the Italian cleric Lanfranc, who in 1070 went on to become Archbishop of Canterbury. Although the abbey lay within the diocese of Bayeux it was specifically placed under papal protection and the rights of the Bishop of Bayeux in relation to St Stephen’s were strictly limited. Nevertheless, bishop and abbot seem to have worked in harmony and there is no suggestion of a strained relationship between Odo and Lanfranc before 1066, although in England after the Conquest they were to cross swords on several occasions (Cowdrey 2003, 25–7).

  • Odo and Bayeux Cathedral •

  Odo was not only the wealthiest of the Norman bishops, he was the first in precedence after Rouen; but the Bessin was still a border region, and a highly conservative area. The Church had suffered badly and traces of Viking paganism survived well into the eleventh century. Cerisy, founded by Duke Robert in 1032, was the first monastery in the diocese to be re-established after all the earlier institutions had been broken up during the Viking era. Religious differences between Upper and Lower Normandy were one of the principal causes of the 1046–47 revolt, which was focused in the Bessin.

  According to William of Poitiers, Odo played a major role in the ecclesiastical revival of Lower Normandy. In addition to acquiring estates f
or the cathedral he encouraged the establishment of new monasteries. There were six new foundations in his diocese between 1050 and 1066; these included the two ducal monasteries in Caen, and St Martin’s in Troarn, reputedly consecrated by Odo in 1059. In addition to Odo’s own foundation of St Vigor in Bayeux, Duke William endowed the hospital of St Nicholas as part penance for his marriage to Matilda. Bishop Odo continued the work of diocesan reform and on the new cathedral at Bayeux. The Carolingian cathedral had been destroyed by the Vikings and a replacement or restoration, about which we know little, was destroyed by fire in 1046, after which Bishop Hugh began work on the building which was completed by Odo (Neveux 1996). Orderic Vitalis observed that, ‘After his consecration Odo built a new cathedral in honour of Mary the holy mother of God, where he increased the number of able clerks and which he admirably enriched with many ornaments.’

  12 Eleventh- and twelfth-century monasteries in Normandy.

  Other Norman churches, such as the abbey at Jumièges and Coutances Cathedral were being built at the same time that Odo’s cathedral of Notre Dame was being constructed. Bayeux Cathedral was particularly significant in the contribution that it made to the development of Norman Romanesque architecture. Like Coutances it had five bays, but it was a larger building than its contemporaries and integrated the nave with the western towers to give a new, unified composition to the church. New methods of construction included the use of ribbed vaulting in the towers – its first application in Normandy. Other innovations included the use of great arcades with high windows and the lavish use of Corinthian capitals as at Rouen. Perhaps the most audacious feature was the great west front, which may have been the inspiration for the grand west façade at Duke William’s St Stephens in Caen (Gibson 1978, 101). Perhaps because relatively little of Odo’s work survived the 1105 destruction and the twelfth-century rebuilding, he is not normally portrayed as an architectural innovator. Methods of construction and design used at Bayeux had an influence which extended far into Normandy and England after 1070 and Odo the ‘prelate enjoyed an important role in the evolution of eleventh-century architecture’ (Bayle 1995, 167–72).

  13 Reconstruction of the interior of Bayeux Cathedral. After R. Leiss

  Odo’s new cathedral incorporated elements from an earlier group of Carolingian churches that had made up the pre-Viking cathedral. The choir was dedicated to Notre Dame and the nave to St Saviour, the latter also gave his name to the cathedral parish. A third sanctuary, adjacent to the cathedral, was dedicated to St Étienne; this church survived until the seventeenth century (Neveux 1996). In 1856 numerous capitals carved before the Conquest were found below later masonry at the crossing in the cathedral; opinions on their quality vary, but they represent an important link with the earliest years of Odo’s bishopric. The most unusual of the capitals is that which is believed to be one of the earliest representations of the Incredulity of Thomas (Allen 135). The sculptors came from outside the duchy and were influenced by a variety of styles found from Provence to England. The presence of a cosmopolitan group of craftsmen confirms twelfth-century opinions of Bayeux ‘which paint the city created by Odo as a sophisticated centre of international trade and commerce’ (Allen 2009, 128). An early twelfth-century writer, Rodulf Tortaire, a monk of Fleury-sur-Loire, claimed that the cathedral was covered with statues. Although there is no other evidence to support this statement, it is possible that the exterior had a Romanesque frieze similar to that which survives at Lincoln Cathedral. The Lincoln frieze is, however, somewhat later than Odo, dating from Bishop Alexander’s episcopacy (1123–48), although it is tempting to view the cartoon designs of the frieze in the context of the Bayeux Tapestry. The surviving work from Odo’s time shows that he operated on a grander and more lavish scale than his colleagues and ‘indicates a monumentality, ambition, and stylistic range of reference of a quite remarkable kind’ (Bates 2004–11).

  14 Drawing showing the south side of Bayeux Cathedral in 1664. Neveux, F., 2007. A chapel dedicated to St Stephen and the St Vignor Gate are on the right.

  Odo was responsible for other buildings associated with the cathedral, notably, the bishop’s palace and canons’ houses. After its destruction by fire in 1046 the bishop’s palace was moved to the north of the cathedral, where it has remained ever since. It seems to have been rebuilt at the same time as the cathedral as it was on the same alignment as the western towers. There are twelfth-century references to an aula (hall) and a camera (bishop’s lodgings) in Odo’s palace, and the palace appears to have had an L-shaped plan. Odo’s palace was rebuilt after the 1105 fire (Renoux 195–6). Serlo described the ‘precious chapter house’ damaged by Henry I in 1105 (Bates 1975). In the eleventh century the cathedral served the only parish within the walls. There were a number of chapels, such as St Ouen in the castle and St Martin by the east gate, as well as the extramural suburban parish churches.

  • Treasures and Holy Relics •

  The cathedral was generously endowed with treasures during Odo’s time as bishop, but it is only possible to obtain a glimpse of the true extent of these riches, as many were lost during the Huguenot uprisings in the sixteenth century. Tortaire was particularly impressed by the great gilded crown that hung at the crossing, which was said to be 5m high and almost wide enough to touch the cathedral walls. It was made of copper gilded in silver and carried ninety-six candles as well as verse inscriptions which included a prayer in Odo’s honour. The monk also commented on the amount and quality of the cathedral’s plate and vestments. Close members of Odo’s family are known to have donated precious gifts to the cathedral; for example, William gave a gilded casket as well as the cloaks that he and Matilda had worn during their wedding service. It is possible that these gifts were donated when their daughter Agatha was interred in the cathedral in 1068 (Allen, 139), at a time when Odo’s standing with his half-brother must have been at its highest. Odo and his half-brother Robert gave two enormous vessels to the cathedral, each in the form of a unicorn’s horn. It is not clear what their function was, but a cathedral inventory of 1476 records that they measured 3m and 5m in length and were ‘very precious’. Items crafted to represent ‘curious creatures’ such as whales and crocodiles were commonly found in other cathedral treasuries in medieval France (Allen, 137).

  In the eleventh century holy relics represented the most precious possessions of a church. There was a hierarchy in the importance of relics and those associated with the bodies and lives of Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary and the Apostles were the most highly prized. Such relics gave those cathedrals, abbeys and churches holding them enormous status and created a powerful attraction for pilgrims. Below these were the relics of local saints, whose potency increased in proportion to the number of miracles associated with them. Although it was believed that saints might offer protection and perform miracles wherever they were venerated, their primary loyalty belonged to the places where their bodies were preserved. As cathedrals and monasteries were being re-established in the wake of the Viking era in Western Europe there was a scramble to reclaim dispersed relics or obtain new ones. This was particularly true of Normandy, where during the ninth century many relics had been moved, broken up or lost as a result of Viking attacks. There followed a tussle for relics, land and influence between the revived monasteries of Upper Normandy, led by the ducal monastery of Fécamp, and those of Lower Normandy. By 1027 Jumièges, St Wandrille, St Ouen, Fécamp and Mont-Saint-Michel all possessed lands, churches and privileges in the Bessin. These were largely acquired by ducal grants as the dukes attempted to re-establish control in the region. There was rivalry not only over the merits of different relics, but even concerning the relative sanctity of neighbouring cathedrals. For example, Coutances Cathedral claimed that its dedication to the Virgin Mary was more sacred than that at Bayeux and, therefore, more worthy of veneration. There was also rivalry between institutions in the same city; for example, competition between the abbey of St Ouen and Rouen Cathedral over the relative sanctity of thei
r relics sometimes led to violence (Herrick, 39).

  15 Bishop’s throne Bayeux, probably contemporary with Bishop Odo.

  16 Eighteenth-century drawing of the Carolingian Abbey of St Riquier, Somme, where the relics of St Vigor were kept in the eleventh century.

  This competition was illustrated by the case of St Vigor, a sixth-century bishop of Bayeux, whose relics were the source of considerable contention. The remains of St Vigor were mainly held at St Riquier in Ponthieu, where they had been taken in the tenth century after being displaced from Bayeux during the Viking period. According to Hariulphe of St Riquier (d. 1143), a cleric from Bayeux took St Vigor’s relics from Bayeux around 987 and sold them to the abbey of St Riquier, where they remained and enjoyed considerable veneration. This story appears in various forms and confirms that Bayeux was not securely in ducal hands at the end of the tenth century. The monks of St Ouen in Rouen also claimed a jawbone of the saint and by diplomatic means had gained control of the cult of St Vigor, that is, appraisal of relic claims and dissemination of the vita. When Duke Robert founded a monastery at Cerisy he dedicated it to St Vigor as a political move to consolidate ducal power along what was essentially a frontier region at the time. He also placed it in the charge of St Ouen, the leading monastery in the capital, Rouen (Herrick, 43). The first abbot of Cerisy and probably the monks accompanying him came from St Ouen. It appears that Vigor was also being commemorated at Fécamp from the second half of the eleventh century, as part of what has been called the ‘monastic reconquest’ (Potts 1997), and it may have been as a response to this that Odo founded the monastery of St-Vigor-le-Grand just outside Bayeux (c. 1066), as an affirmation of the saint’s ties to his episcopal city. Odo made strenuous efforts to have the relics of St Vigor translated from St Riquier to Bayeux, but his petitions were of no avail. The abbey of St Riquier was in Ponthieu, which, although subject to Duke William’s overlordship, was not under any obligation to Bayeux, and the abbey argued that Bayeux should have taken better care of its relics in the first place. It has been claimed that the St Vigor episode was an exercise in control by Rouen, tying the people of Bayeux and the archiepiscopal capital. Vigor’s relic lodged in Rouen directed the veneration of the Bessin faithful towards the ducal capital and sanctioned the submission of Odo’s abbey and region to Rouen. ‘By implication, the saint likewise approved the authority emanating from Rouen, and accepted the duke as his distant successor to control the Bessin’ (Berkhofer III et al., 20).