What Makes the Bayeux Tapestry a Medieval Wonder?

The “Canterbury Embroidery” might be a more accurate moniker for the medieval masterpiece. Despite its title, the Bayeux Tapestry is actually an embroidery, with pictures and text inscriptions stitched in wool onto a linen canvas as opposed to a tapestry, which is woven on a loom with images created during the weaving process.

While the artwork is named for the northern French city of Bayeux, where it resides, many scholars believe its true birthplace to be Canterbury, England, which was home to a renowned tapestry school that produced works of similar style. In addition, its lettering appears in Old English form, and its imagery mirrors Anglo-Saxon illustrations found in Canterbury’s monastic libraries.

Most historians point to William’s half-brother, Bishop Odo of Bayeux, as the driving force behind the tapestry’s creation. Shortly after the Battle of Hastings, Odo likely commissioned the work to both commemorate William’s victory and adorn his new cathedral, believed to have been consecrated in 1077. Elevated to Earl of Kent after the conquest, Odo also maintained connections to Canterbury—another possible link to the embroidery’s English origins. And while he appears only briefly in historical accounts of the time, the tapestry casts him in a far larger role, rallying the Normans in the thick of the battle. As historian Marc Morris observes in his book The Norman Conquest, Odo comes across as “self-importantly portrayed throughout as being the driving force behind the planning and execution of the invasion.”

If history is written by the victors, the Bayeux Tapestry fits the mold—only this chronicle tells its story in pictures, crafted for a mostly illiterate medieval audience. It portrays William the Conqueror as the rightful heir to the English throne, and casts Harold Godwinson, Earl of Wessex, as a treacherous usurper. In the embroidered panels, Harold sails to France at the behest of his brother-in-law, the childless King Edward the Confessor, where he pledges fealty to William, the monarch's cousin. The tapestry shows him between two reliquary shrines, swearing an oath on the holy relics within to back William’s right to the English crown. But historians say the nature of the oath isn't fully known, and he may have actually been a captive of William's and given it under duress. Later, when Edward dies, Harold seizes power himself—which according to the tapestry's narrative, constitutes a betrayal of epic proportion. In response, William raises an army of 7,000, sails from Normandy to England and defeats Harold at the Battle of Hastings, claiming the English throne.

With a belief that Normans and Germans shared common Nordic roots, the Nazis and SS chief Heinrich Himmler took a keen interest in the Bayeux Tapestry during Germany’s occupation of France in World War II. The Ahnenerbe, a pseudoscientific SS branch founded by Himmler that sought historical evidence to promote the myth of Aryan superiority, dispatched textile experts to examine the tapestry as evidence of the supremacy of the medieval Normans.

In late June 1944, a few weeks after the Allies liberated Bayeux, the Nazis moved the tapestry to the Louvre. As Allied forces closed in on Paris in late August, Himmler ordered his operatives to transfer the artifact to Berlin, calling it “important for our glorious and cultured Germanic history.” But when SS officers arrived, the French Resistance had already seized the museum and its contents. Eighty years later, a tapestry fragment likely taken by the Nazis turned up in German state archives.

The Bayeux Tapestry ends abruptly after a Norman arrow fatally pierces King Harold II’s eye and English forces scatter from the battlefield. The sudden stop has led many historians to believe that the artwork either remained unfinished or lost a final section—possibly as much as eight feet. Scholars theorize that the full tapestry once concluded with William’s triumphant coronation, a fitting bookend to the first scene, which shows Edward the Confessor on the English throne.

Three months after King Harold II’s coronation, a blazing comet appeared in the April skies over London. “Throughout all England, a portent such as men had never seen before was seen in the heavens,” the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle reported. The comet, later named for British astronomer Edmond Halley, was seen as a terrible omen for the new king.

In a tapestry scene immediately after Harold’s coronation, a crowd of frightened Englishmen point to a streaking object in the sky. As Halley’s Comet appears above the English king’s head, a fleet of warships beat against the waves below his feet. According to NASA, the embroidered woolen image of the celestial fireball marks the first illustration of Halley’s Comet.

The tapestry’s upper and lower borders feature a rich array of animals and mythological figures from fables attributed to Aesop, such as “The Fox and the Crow” and “The Wolf and the Lamb.” While some scholars, like Canadian medievalist Paul Edward Dutton, see these images as simply decorative, others interpret them as moral commentary on themes like deception, betrayal and power, which echo the drama of the Norman Conquest depicted in the main panel. Some even suggest the fables served as subversive messages subtly stitched by the conquered English artisans seeking to undercut the tapestry’s overtly pro-Norman slant.