Three Obscure Figures on the Bayeux Embroidery

Since the early nineteenth century, writers on the Bayeux Embroidery have used the widely separated images of three men identified by inscription as Turold, Wadard, and Vital to facilitate the process of dating the hanging, characterizing its audience, identifying the place or places where it was made and intended for display, and, above all, determining who had it made and why. Although the argument was originally formulated and documented by historians, it was eventually taken up as well by art historians, who found various ways of further developing it. Turold is depicted in a scene where two messengers from William, duke of the Normans, have come to free Harold, duke of the English, from a lord called Guy, while to the messengers’ right a small bearded male figure holds the reins of their horses (W11; Plate IV; Fig. 6). Since the name “Turold” is inscribed between the second messenger and the small bearded figure, it might conceivably apply to the former. However, the inscription’s unusually low positioning in the main frieze suggests that Turold should be identified as the latter. Wadard appears on the embroidery many scenes later, shortly after Duke William’s invading army has landed at Pevensey (W43) and four of his milites have hurried to Hastings to seize food (W44: “Et hic milites festinaverunt hestinga ut cibum raperentur”). On horseback, clad in a hauberk and armed with a shield and spear, Wadard (W46: “Hic Est Wadard”; Plate XIV; Fig. 23) oversees the rendering up of animals that are to be slaughtered by the axe-wielding figure behind him (W45; Fig. 22). Considerably later on the embroidery, Vital is shown, just after the embroidery presents Duke William at the head of a long line of horsemen, who, according to the accompanying inscription, “came to battle against Harold the king” (W52–4: “venerunt ad prelium contra Haroldum rege[m]”). Vital is shown as he rides back from the right toward the duke, who “asks if Vital had seen the army of Harold” (W55: “interrogat si vidisset Vital exercitum Haroldi”; Fig. 27). There is no reason to doubt the identification of the textile’s Wadard and Vital with the men of the same names in Domesday Book for Kent.