Tankred from Lecce

Tankred von Lecce - representation from the Liber ad honorem Augusti , Bern, Burgerbibl., Cod. 120 II from 1196, fol. 101r

Tankred of Lecce (also Tankred of Sicily , * around 1138 in Lecce ; † February 20, 1194 in Palermo ) was Count of Lecce from 1149 to 1161 and 1169 to 1194 and King of Sicily from 1190 to 1194.

Parentage and family

Tankred was an illegitimate son of Duke Roger III. from Apulia from the house of Hauteville and a daughter of Count Accardo II of Lecce , whose name has not been passed down. Tankred was the grandson of King Roger II and thus came from the Norman royal family.

It is said of Tankred that he was physically of small stature, which is caricatured in the Staufer-friendly pictorial chronicle by Petrus de Ebulo . The medically educated Peter explains the disparaging theory that Tankred is a freak, which without the participation of the alleged father, Duke Roger III. of Apulia, was conceived by parthenogenesis , since Rogers' inappropriate connection led to the rejection of male semen. The occurrence of such abortions is demonstrated with reference to the doctor Ursus von Salerno using sheep.

Tankred was married to Sibylle of Medania-Aquino , the daughter of Count Rainald I of Aquino and Caecilia of Medania . They had five children in total:

1. Roger III (* 1175, † 1193)
2. William III. († 1198?)
3. Maria Elvira (* after 1185, † after 1216), married Walter III in 1199/1200 . from Brienne
4. Konstanze (married Pietro Ziani in 1221 , Doge of Venice; † after 1232)
5. Mandonia or Medania († 1256/1257 in Venice)

Life

Tankred was brought up at the court of Rogers II in Palermo after the death of his father in 1149, who bequeathed him the title of Count of Lecce . After a failed conspiracy against the Sicilian King Wilhelm I , Tankred fled to Constantinople in 1156 , but returned later. In 1161 Tankred was exiled because of another conspiracy against William I, until after his death he was pardoned and reappointed Count of Lecce and Field Marshal and Chief Justice of Apulia and Campania.

In 1174 Tankred commanded a Norman fleet of 284 ships and an army of allegedly 30,000 men in an attack against Egypt that had been agreed with the King of Jerusalem Amalrich I the year before . However, Amalrich's death caused the company to fail. In 1177 he and Roger von Andria commanded a land army that defended Sicily against the Hohenstaufen troops under the command of Archbishop Christian von Mainz . The Normans suffered a defeat at Carsoli .

Tancred commanded in 1185 by order of William II. A Norman fleet against Thessaloniki and Konstantin Opel to there, Alexios Komnenos to bring with Norman aid to power. This company also failed.

Tankred of Lecce under the wheel of Fortuna while his rival Emperor Henry VI. triumphs. - Illustration from the Liber ad honorem Augusti , Bern, Burgerbibl., Cod 120 II from 1196, fol. 146r. with the accompanying distich : Glorior elatus, descendo minorificatus, infimus ax teror, rursus in alta feror . Raised I boast, humiliated I descend, at the bottom I am crushed by the bike and again I am carried up.

In the Kingdom of Sicily, succession to the throne was subject to inheritance law. As a result, the childless King Wilhelm II recognized the right to inheritance from his aunt Konstanze , the daughter of Rogers II, who had been with the German heir to the throne Heinrich VI since 1186 . was married. Nevertheless, Tankred settled in December 1189 with the express support of Pope Clement III. Elected by an anti-Hohenstaufen party at the instigation of Vice Chancellor Matheus as King of Sicily. On January 18, 1190 he was crowned by Archbishop Walter of Palermo .

The usurper Tankred proved to be a skilled ruler. He was able to overwhelm the mainland Sicilian barons around Roger von Andria, who were clinging to the legitimacy of Constance's hereditary claims. At the end of 1190 he was able to conclude a short-term military alliance with Richard the Lionheart . The attempt of Emperor Henry VI to enforce his and his wife's claims to the Sicilian heritage militarily failed in 1191 off Naples as a result of the outbreak of an epidemic in the imperial siege army. In this struggle for rule in the Kingdom of Sicily, the empress Konstanze was captured by the betrayal of the citizens of Salerno . Through papal intervention, she was released in 1192 and returned to her husband. As a result of the failure of the campaign of 1191, the Pope, as feudal lord of the Kingdom of Sicily, recognized the usurpation in formal legal terms by concluding the Gravina Concordat with King Tankred in the summer of 1192 . This intensified the conflict between the emperor and the pope over the legitimate exercise of rule in the kingdom.

In 1192 Tankred appointed his eldest son Roger as co-king in order to secure rule over Sicily for his family. However, he died at the end of 1193. Tankred only survived his son by a few weeks and died on February 20, 1194. His still underage son Wilhelm III. was by Pope Celestine III. recognized as the legitimate successor in the kingdom, but this was defeated by Henry VI in the same year, so that the kingdom of Sicily fell to the imperial couple. Tankred's widow Sibylle was exiled to the Hohenburg monastery on the Odilienberg after a conspiracy was discovered . Little Wilhelm III. came to Alt-Ems Castle of the Lords of Ems in Vorarlberg on Lake Constance, where he is said to have been blinded and probably died soon afterwards.

literature

• Christoph Reisinger: Tankred from Lecce. Norman King of Sicily. 1190-1194. Böhlau, Cologne 1992, ISBN 3-412-02492-9 ( Kölner Historische Abhandlungen 38), (At the same time: Cologne, Univ., Diss., 1991).
• Theo Kölzer , Marlis Stähli (ed.): Petrus de Ebulo. Liber ad honorem Augusti sive de rebus Siculis . Codex 120 II of the Burgerbibliothek Bern. A pictorial chronicle of the Staufer period. Text revision and translation by Gereon Becht-Jördens. Thorbecke, Sigmaringen 1994, ISBN 3-7995-4245-0 (Text: Latin / German; Comment: German).
• Hartmut Jericke: Imperator Romanorum et Rex Siciliae. Emperor Heinrich VI. and his struggle for the Norman-Sicilian kingdom. Lang, Frankfurt am Main et al. 1997, ISBN 3-631-32572-X ( Europäische Hochschulschriften. 3, 765), (At the same time: Vienna, Univ., Diss., 1997).
• Hartmut Jericke: Emperor Heinrich VI. The unknown Staufer. Muster-Schmidt, Gleichen et al. 2008, ISBN 978-3-7881-0158-9 ( Personality and History 167).

Web links

Commons : Tankred of Lecce  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Tankred von Lecce in the catalog of the German National Library
• Tancred King of Sicily (English)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Theo Kölzer, Marlis Stähli (ed.): Petrus de Ebulo. P. 66f. with ill. (fol.103r)

predecessor	Office	successor
Wilhelm II.	King of Sicily 1189–1194	William III.