Images in the Bayeux tapestry and Rodes Bible

Abstract

This paper analyses images from two masterpieces of 11th-century Romanesque art, namely the Bayeux Tapestry (Musee de la Tapisserie de Bayeux) and the Rodes Bible (Paris, Bibliotheque nationale de France, MS Lat. 6) – with a view to examining how and why shrines or reliquaries were depicted. The artefacts in question were respectively created in monastic houses at Canterbury and Ripoll, both of which housed Carolingian psalters of great significance. In Canterbury, the Utrecht Psalter, opera magna of the school of Reims, lies at the root of a magnificent school of manuscript illumination before the Norman Conquest and had an impact on the expressive styles adopted in the Bayeux Tapestry. The colophon of the lost Ripoll Psalter allows us to infer that it was produced in a palatine scriptorium from the time of Charlemagne or of Charles the Bald. The Carolingian style of the first and most remarkable of the miniaturists of the Rodes Bible speaks for itself. A single folio of the Bible is here studied: that carrying the miniature of the Temple of Jerusalem, depicting the great Old Testament shrine – the Ark of the Covenant – along with the Prayer of Solomon, and the Feast of the Dedication of the Temple. As regards the Tapestry, the scene considered is the oath sworn by Harold between two reliquaries for which a new interpretation is offered.