Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index


  • Record Number: 43618
  • Author(s)/Creator(s): Wolsing , Ivo,
  • Contributor(s):
  • Title: “Look, there comes the half-man!” Delegitimising Tancred of Lecce in Peter of Eboli’s Liber ad honorem Augusti
  • Source: Al-Masaq: Journal of the Medieval Mediterranean 31, 3 ( 2019): Pages 323 - 337. Available with a subscription from Taylor & Francis Online: https://doi.org/10.1080/09503110.2018.1557480
  • Description:
  • Article Type: Journal Article
  • Subject (See Also): Eunuchs Masculinity Orientalism Peter of Eboli, Chronicler Tancred, King of Sicily
  • Award Note:
  • Geographic Area: Italy
  • Century: 12
  • Primary Evidence:
  • Illustrations:
  • Table:
  • Abstract: This article argues that Peter of Eboli’s Liber ad honorem Augusti (c. 1196) is the first work to link the classical topos of Sicily as nurse of tyrants to the use of Arabic elements in its contemporary court culture. Throughout the work, Peter associates Tancred with a series of Eastern despots from Classical Antiquity and his own time. In doing so, the book creates an image of the king (Tancred) as a markedly Oriental despot, which serves to antagonise and delegitimise him. The work therefore constitutes a key document in tracing the emergence of an anti-Oriental critique of the type directed at Frederick II about thirty years later. [Reproduced from the journal page on the Francis and Taylor Online website: https://doi.org/10.1080/09503110.2018.1557480]
  • Related Resources:
  • Author's Affiliation:
  • Conference Info: - , -
  • Year of Publication: 2019.
  • Language: English
  • ISSN/ISBN: 09503110 (print); 1473348X (online)