Re: Tancred de Hauteville, and 'Muriel, the sister of Richard princeps'

I had expected to stay out of SGM, and do not intend to follow up on the
present post; but then I had also hoped that old errors would not be so
blithely compounded for readers, and for compilers of databases, without
even checking the sources and extensive literature on one of the more
consequential points that has come up here lately.

Rum that this has stood virtually unchallenged so far. Comments
interspersed.

"John P. Ravilious" <therav3@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:2b8bd273-570f-459b-bfde-6cdc4d0d3c9a@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Dear Stewart, Todd, et al.,

There is a lengthy paper trail re: Tancred de Hauteville
and his wives, Muriel(la) and Fressenda/Fredesende, on SGM
and elsewhere with special emphasis on their alleged
paternity. Muriel is widely accepted (but not proven) to
have been the illegitimate daughter of a young Richard II of
Normandy, with the possibility that she was actually Richard
II's illegitimate sister also put about.

Todd had noted in 2001 concerning certain contemporaneous
(or near-contemporaneous) documents,

' One of these calls William, son of Tancred and Murielle
"nepos Richardi Magni ducis Normandie", while the other
says of Robert Guiscard "... inter quos nepos ipsius
Ricardi, Robertus nomine, in Appuliam precectus est".
Adding in chronology, which would seem to make the two
women of the same generation as Richard III, it would seem
to make them daughters of his father, Richard II.' [1]

This is wrong in several respects: first the sources in question are not
contemporaneous or even nearly so with the individuals under discussion, and
secondly one of them flatly does not say what is claimed at all - and this
same misreading appears likely to have been the pretext for the other.

Szabolcs de Vajay made a mess of this matter in his paper 'Mahaut de
Pouille, comtesse de Barcelone et vicomtesse de Narbonne, dans le contexte
social de son temps', _Actes du XLIIIe Congrès de la Fédération historique
du Languedoc méditerranéen et du Roussillon: Béziers et le Biterrois_
(Montpellier, 1971), and unfortunately he has been followed in this by
Thierry Stasser.

The earlier of the two narrative sources adduced by Vajay, taken from Pierre
Pithou's collection _Historiae Francorum ab anno Christi DCCCC ad annum
MCCLXXXV scriptores veteres XI_ (Frankfurt, 1596) page 84, was doubly
mistaken by him. He wrongly titled this 'Aquitanicae historiae fragmentum',
whereas the latter actually ended on page 83 of the work and his quotation
was taken from the following extract beginning on page 84. The correct title
of this is 'Fragmentum historiae Francorum a Roberto ad mortem Philippi
regis'. It is a partial version, written at Fleury, derived from the
somewhat slapdash history compiled in 1114 by Hugo de S. Maria, a monk at
the same abbey, titled 'Liber qui modernorum regum Francorum continet
actus', edited by Georg Waitz in MGH SS IX 376-395.

The version by Hugo states that a certain Norman knight named Richard, a
vigorous man of worthy birth but not of great nobility ("quidam miles
Normannus nomine Richardus, vir quidem strenuus et ingenuus, sed non magnae
nobilitatis") encouraged his countrymen to join him in winning wealth and
honour in Apulia. One of those who did was his "nepos" (i.e. nephew or
kinsman) Robert Guiscard ("Inter quos nepos prefati Richardi Rotbertus eo
profectus est"). In the later version (inaccurately) quoted by Vajay, this
has become "Ricardus quidam Normannus eo tempore in Apuliam profectus", who
made the same appeal to his fellow Normans "Inter quos nepos ipsius Ricardi
Robertus nomine profectus est". So Robert Guiscard is said in both versions
to be the "nepos" of a certain Norman named Richard, NOT of a Norman duke of
the same name.

Vajay also misplaced the alleged sources for his argument, giving these in
reverse order of composition to emphasise his misreading of the above: he
quoted only "nepos ipsius Ricardi" (nepos of Richard himself") on the false
assumption that the text was about a Norman duke and not a simple knight.

The same misreading possibly led to the other medieval passage quoted in
support of the same proposition, written by Tolomeo of Lucca (aka Ptolomeus
de Fiandis) in the early 14th century. He used Hugo of Fleury for
information about the Franks and Normans, and apparently thought like Vajay
that his source said Robert Guiscard was "nepos" of a Richard duke of the
Normans, calling him "nepos Richardi Magni ducis Normandiae". On this
erroneous basis, his mother Fressendis has been made into an illegitimate
daughter of Duke Richard II, since she was too young to have been born by
the time Richard I died.

I have noted a reference in the Acta of William I (the
Conqueror) that provides some food for thought on this. Among
the various grants and benefactors named, we find the
following:

' Ebremar gave forty acres of land in
Englesqueville-la-Percée, twenty acres at Cairon, two
sheaves of half the tithe of Cairon, and the tithe at
Villons-les-Buissons which he had bought from Muriel, the
sister of Richard princeps, all on behalf of his daughter
who had become a nun of the abbey.' [2]

This does not prove anything concerning a marriage or
descent to Tancred de Hauteville, but does provide an
interesting statement as to Richard 'princeps' having had a
sister Muriel. If the identification of Richard 'princeps' as
Count/Duke Richard is correct, this would in fact provide an
element of support to the (near) contemporaneous statement
that William, son of Tancred de Hauteville and Muriel, was
in fact "nepos Richardi Magni ducis Normandie".

This charter of William the Conqueror and Queen Matilda was also adduced as
evidence by Vajay in his article, taking this from Ernst Friedrich Mooyer's
_Über die angäbliche Abstammung des normannischen Königsgeschlechts
Siziliens von der Herzöge der Normandie_ Minden, 1850). The resulting claim
that Tancred of Hauteville's first wife Muriel and his second wife
Fressendis were sisters is implausible in the extreme. No contemporary
source mentions anything of the kind, much less that they were closely
related to the ducal family in Normany. It is hardly credible that this kind
of unequal marriage would ever have taken place, when ducal daughters had
far greater value in the marriage market, or if it did that chroniclers
would have neglected for 300 years to mention such an interesting fact as
the immediate relationship between two Norman ducal and royal families.

However, this purported evidence is highly problematic in itself. First, the
term "princeps" was scarcely used for earlier Norman dukes by the late 11th
century, when this charter was written ca 1080/82; secondly the description
"Murier sorore Ricardi principis" is given to distinguish this lady from a
namesake "Murier de Guitot" occurring earlier in the document, not to assert
incidentally that she was a relative of Duke William; thirdly because
Tancred's wife Muriel would not have been remembered as acting in her own
right in this way, as someone's daughter, when she had long since become
someone's wife and mother of many celebrated sons; fourthly because she was
a deceased wife and mother long before anyone could have bought a tithe to
present on behalf of his daughter to an abbey that was not founded until
decades after the death of Tancred's first wife; and fifthly because the
word "princeps" in the 10th and 11th centuries was used for leading men of
different status, not just for rulers - for instance, the lords of
Montmirail and Déols consistently used it as their title - and not
exclusively in feudal terms anyway, so that it could for all we know be just
a nickname rather than a title here.

Peter Stewart


.

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