The Man Behind the Bayeux Tapestry

by Trevor Rowley

  When Palermo fell to the Normans in 1072 it was a busy cosmopolitan city with an estimated population of 350,000; there were 300 mosques, numerous markets, exchanges, streets of craftsmen and a thriving port. Amatus noted that the Normans shared out ‘the palaces … and gave to the nobles the pleasure gardens full of fruit and watercourses; while even the knights were royally provided for in what was veritably an earthly paradise’. In the late twelfth century, Ibn Jubayr, who was the Andalusian Muslim secretary to the Almohad governor of Granada, wrote a description of Palermo on his return from pilgrimage to Mecca. He describes the cultured elegance of the city where Odo died, in between cursing the Christians who had supplanted its Muslim creators:

  Palermo is the capital of the island, the union of the benefits of both opulence and grace. It possesses all the beauty, both internal and external, that you could desire and all the necessities of life, both ripe and verdant. The city is ancient and elegant, wondrous and gracious and seductive to gaze upon. It presents its courtyards with gardens, broad roads, and thoroughfares, it pleases the eyes with the beauty of its outstanding appearance. It is a marvellous place, built in the style of Cordoba, all of it constructed of a stone known as kaddan [a soft limestone]. A river divides the city and four springs flow into it perennially from its remote areas.

  The king roams through the gardens and courts for pleasure … The Christian women of this city follow the fashion of Muslim women, are fluent of speech, wrap their cloaks about them, and are veiled.

  Ibn Jubayr also noted that the king ‘has doctors and astrologers for whom he has great concern and tremendous enthusiasm’ (Jansen et al. 2010, 236).

  Odo might also have wanted to visit some of his many relatives who had taken up residence on the island after the defeat of the Muslims. For instance, Count Roger of Sicily’s second wife was the daughter of one of Odo’s cousins and several of her brothers had acquired Sicilian estates. There were also a number of Norman clerics in Sicily, including one of the new bishops, who came from Rouen. Whatever his motives, it was here that Odo fell seriously ill and died early in 1097. The cause of Odo’s death is not known, but he was by now an old man well into his 60s and even if he was not already sick the arduous journey from the north would have taken its toll on his health. Neither is it certain exactly when he died; his death was commemorated on 6 January at Bayeux, on the 4th at St Augustine’s, Canterbury and on the 2nd at Jumièges, while Orderic Vitalis records it as being in February. On his deathbed he was attended by Bishop Gilbert of Évreux, who ten years earlier had preached the obsequies at the funeral of Odo’s half-brother the Conqueror. Gilbert appears to have returned home to Normandy soon after Odo’s burial and was certainly present at the consecration of the abbey church at St Evroul in 1099. Odo’s final act was to leave his movable wealth to his close friend Arnulf of Chocques, chaplain to the Norman crusader army. Arnulf had been tutor to Odo’s niece, William the Conqueror’s daughter Cecile. He was later to become a controversial Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, briefly in 1099 and again from 1112 to 1118. Although it had been Odo’s wish to be buried at St Vigor in Bayeux, it is recorded that a fine tomb was erected for him by Count Roger in Palermo Cathedral. Before the Muslims occupied Sicily the cathedral had been dedicated to St Gregory, but in the late ninth century it had been converted to a mosque and it would have been in this building that Odo was interred. This monument appears to have been dismantled in the late twelfth century, when the church was rebuilt by an English archbishop, Walter of the Mill. Nothing of his tomb has survived, although it is possible that Odo’s bones were removed and deposited along with those of other Norman nobles in the side chapel dedicated to Mary Magdalene.

  53 Painting of St John of the Hermitage, Palermo by Wolton, 1840. The coloured domes are characteristic Sicilian Arabic tradition used in a Christian church. Chirco, 1992

  The final episode in Odo’s eventful life might be seen as an anticlimax. Just like the Bayeux Tapestry, it ended before reaching a gratifying conclusion. The Tapestry should have ended with William the Conqueror’s triumphal entry into London and his coronation in Westminster Abbey. Perhaps Odo’s story was meant to finish with the bishop participating in the siege of Jerusalem and his triumphal entry into the Holy City, and perhaps even being appointed Patriarch. Although the fall of Jerusalem did not actually occur until over two years later, in July 1099, there is, nonetheless, a form of symmetry here. Palermo was a long way from Conteville, but both were integral parts of Odo’s story and of the Norman achievement at the end of the eleventh century. What is more, Odo was one of a select group of Normans who participated (albeit briefly) in the First Crusade and who had also been at Hastings over thirty years earlier. His life spanned the most important years of Norman achievement in northern and southern Europe and his activities touched upon all the most significant events of that turbulent era. No Norman king or duke had seen as much as Odo; he was the true embodiment of that Norman story, in all its accomplishments and all its flaws. Odo suffered from a ‘bad press’ after his death, particularly from Orderic Vitalis who described the bishop variously as ‘frivolous and ambitious’, ‘the greatest oppressor of the people’ and ‘the destroyer of monasteries’. These were themes taken up and elaborated by later chroniclers and in time they became self-perpetuating. Yet, by the standards of his time, he had not been a particularly wicked or a cruel man; he achieved much in many spheres, but perhaps his ‘sin’ was that he was never content and always wanted still more, ‘wishing only to have authority as pope over the Latins and all the people of the earth’ (OV, 1968–80, viii, 41).

  54 Engraving of Palermo Cathedral in 1761 by A. Bova. This church was built by King Roger in the twelfth century and replaced the church in which Odo was buried in 1097. Chirco, 1992, 33

  55 Portrait of Odo from the Baron Gerard Museum in Bayeux, it originally hung in the Bishop of Bayeux’s castle at Neuilly l’Évêque.

  None of the three surviving versions of Odo’s epitaph are likely to be authentic, but this seventeenth-century version is preferable to Serlo’s obsequious offerings and is more wistful and pious than might have been expected from the man himself:

  To what good have I been bishop of Bayeux? Glory, praise and honour are they not manifestation of sin? Already I am tearing myself from the storms of the abyss, having ruled a bishopric for forty-eight years, and coming to Palermo on my road to Jerusalem I lie dead, a pauper in the Lord. Therefore, O priest, remember me whom I have always loved. Utter for me some prayers of pleasant odour, and groans, and some tears, remembering the sinful woman who obtained grace by tears. Meanwhile by regarding my own death look to your own destinies and see that there is no happy life. This and the joys of life are found in God alone, whence, hastening, my brethren, return.

  (Bates 1970, 281–2)

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