GEORGE BEECH, Was the Bayeux Tapestry Made in France? The Case for Saint-Florent of Saumur. Pp. xii + 142 (The New Middle Ages). New York, Basingstoke, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. 40.00 (ISBN 1 4039 6670 2).

Abstract

POPULARLY supposed to be French, and the work of nuns or Queen Mathilda, the Bayeux Tapestry is today accepted by most English and American specialists as dependent on models from St Augustine's, Canterbury, manuscripts, and probably commissioned by Odo of Bayeux, half-brother of William the Conqueror. George Beech challenges these assumptions by testing a series of hypotheses: that the Tapestry was commissioned by William the Conqueror; that it was made neither in Canterbury nor Normandy, but at the Loire Valley abbey of Saint-Florent at Saumur; and that the connection between the two was William, abbot of Saumur, who was (briefly) lord of Dol in Brittany before he became a monk. The account of textile production at Saumur which is the keystone of Beech's argument reveals much, but not necessarily what he would like to deduce. The information that in the eleventh century secular male workers were employed in-house to execute the monastery's textile commissions usefully counterbalances popular conceptions of production. The information about the elaborate cloths produced and displayed at what is now an obscure monastery is interesting; however, the documentary evidence never identifies the workers as embroiderers – they could be tapestry weavers. The detail that the abbot commissioned woollen hangings does not support Beech's conclusion that these were linen hangings embroidered with wool like the Bayeux Tapestry. Clearly Saint-Florent of Saumur produced textiles, but there is no proof that these included the Bayeux Tapestry or anything like it.