Tancred of Hauteville

Norman Noble

Tancred of Hauteville (c. 980 – 1041) was an 11th-century Norman petty lord about whom little is known. He was a minor noble near Coutances in the Cotentin. Tancred is primarily known by the achievements of his twelve sons.

Various legends arose about Tancred which have no supporting contemporary evidence that has survived the ages.

Ancestors

The Hauteville family was from one of the places called Hauteville (Latin Altavilla) near Coutances. This cannot be identified with certainty, and some modern scholarship favours Hauteville-la-Guichard.^[1]

Family and descendants

Between his two wives, he had twelve sons and several daughters, almost all of whom left Normandy for Southern Italy and acquired some prominence there.

With his first wife, Muriella, he had five sons and one daughter:

• Beatrix (d. 1101), married first to Armand de Mortain, son of Robert, Count of Eu, and second to a Roger (family unknown)
• William Iron Arm,^[2] count of Apulia and Calabria (d. 1046)
• Drogo,^[2] count of Apulia and Calabria (d. 1051)
• Humphrey,^[2] count of Apulia and Calabria (d. 1057)
• Serlo (stayed in Normandy)
• Geoffrey, lord of Hauteville, count of Loritello (d. 1063)

According to the Italian chronicler of the Norman feats in the south, Amatus of Montecassino, Tancred was a morally upright man, who would not carry on a sinful relationship and being unable also to live out his life in perfect celibacy, he remarried.

Coat-of-arms of Hauteville

With his second wife, Fressenda (or Fredesenda),^[3] he had seven more sons and at least one daughter:

• Robert Guiscard de Hauteville, count of Apulia and Calabria (1057), then duke of Apulia, Calabria and Sicily (d. 1085)^[3]
• Mauger, (d. 1064), count of the Capitanate (part of the Province of Foggia, within Apulia)
• William, count of the Principate (d. 1080)
• Aubrey (Alberic or Alvared, Alveredus in Latin, sometimes called Alvred or Alfred) (stayed in Normandy)
• Humbert (Hubert) (stayed in Normandy)
• Tancred (stayed in Normandy)
• Roger de Hauteville, count of Sicily from 1062 (d. 1101)^[3]
• Fressenda, who married Richard I (dead in 1078), count of Aversa and prince of Capua

Other Tancred of Hauteville

Tancred's great-grandson, also bearing the same name, Tancred, Prince of Galilee, was a leader in the First Crusade. The line of descent was:

• Tancred the elder
• son Robert Guiscard (Duke Robert d'Hauteville)
• granddaughter Emma of Hauteville
• great-grandson Tancred of Hauteville, who became Prince of Galilee and regent of the Principality of Antioch

References

1. Stanley Ferber, Islam and the Medieval West, vol. 2 (1979), p. 46: "the sons of Tancred of Hauteville-le-Guichard, a petty landowner in Normandy..."
2. [https://archive.org/details/zeittafelnderdeu00rich "...Wilhelm, Drogo und Humfred, den 3 ältesten Söhnen Tancreds von Hauteville." Zeittafeln der deutschen Geschichte im Mittelalter von der Gründung des fränkischen Reichs bis zum Ausgang der Hohenstaufen mit durchgängiger Erläuterung aus den Quellen. Dr. Gustav Richter. Halle a. S., Verlag- der Buchhandlung des Waisenhauses. 1881. Page 58. Accessed 20 August 2023.
3. The New Cambridge Medieval History: Volume 4, C.1024-c.1198, Part II, ed. David Luscombe and Jonathan Riley-Smith, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), 760.