Reviewing the early architectural history of St Augustine’s, Richard Gem concluded that because the early Anglo-Saxon churches “were regarded as relics of their saintly founders,” they were not rethought or substantially rebuilt but rather “acquired new elements that were grafted on to the old.” In some ways the scholarly literature on the Bayeux Embroidery has garnered a similar relic-like status. The foundational hypothesis – that the work was commissioned by Odo of Bayeux to justify the Norman conquest of England and celebrate his own role in it – has remained largely untouched since the nineteenth century. To this widely accepted hypothesis that the great baron-prelate was the textile’s patron and determined its story and message, scholars since the 1950s have annexed a number of new assumptions:

• • that Odo arranged for the work to be made at St Augustine’s, Canterbury, a major monastic center of artistic production with which he was closely connected

• • that without an “external patron” such as Odo, the monks of St Augustine’s could not have conceived of undertaking an ambitious pictorial narrative

• • that Odo appropriated the hanging for his own use, so that he could have it displayed in a place where it would celebrate the conquest and his role in it

• • that the patron’s intended audience consisted of Norman lords and knights, who would have appreciated the embroidery’s “Norman Story” for justifying William I’s conquest of England and for (inaccurately) assigning Odo a starring role in this great event

• • that a French-speaking interlocutor would have explained the story to the less knowledgeable of its Norman viewers, while the presence of well-informed Normans in the audience guaranteed the story’s accuracy

• • that the embroidery not only justifies William I’s claim to be King Edward’s legitimate successor, but can be read as a documentary record of the events leading up to the conquest

Both the original hypothesis about the Bayeux Embroidery’s patron and purposes and these additional assumptions about its provenance, materials, display, audience, context, and reliability as a “source” for the conquest survived a mini-crisis in embroidery scholarship during the 1970s and 1980s. At that point, scholars began to raise doubts as towhether the embroidery truly justified the Norman Conquest in the way that Odo would surely have wanted; and they even saw hints that it told an “English Story” of the conquest that justified Harold Godwineson’s claim to the English throne.