TANCRED of LECCE. - Norman prince, natural son of Roger of Apulia and of Emma of the counts of Lecce, himself invested from 1149 with the title of count of Lecce.

In 1154 he took refuge in Constantinople, fearing the plots of William I, who discerned in him a possible claimant to the crown, despite his illegitimacy. Having returned to his homeland after 1166, and favored by William II, he obtained, through his moral qualities and despite his wretched physique, the sympathies of the nobility of the Kingdom, which in 1189 set him against Henry VI, to whom belonged the crown and the Kingdom of Sicily, as the inheritance of his wife Constance. Crowned in 1190 at Palermo, T. sought allies among the enemies of Henry VI, in Italy, in Germany, in England, in the East. The armies that Henry VI raised against him suffered heavy losses from epidemics and military reverses, but the death of T. in 1194 and the passing of the crown to the young William III favored the final success of Henry VI.

Bibliography3 works

BIBL.: H. Tocche, Kaiser Heinrich VI., Lipus 1867; F. Chalandon, La domination normande en Italie, Paris 1937; F. De Stefano, Storia della Sicilia dal sec. XI al XIX, Bari 1948, and the bibliography cited there.

Gina Fasoli

@incollection{ec11_tancredi_di_lecce, author = {Fasoli, Gina}, title = {Tancredi di Lecce}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {XI}, pages = {1726--1727}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1953}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/tancredi-di-lecce} }

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Tancred of Lecce

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