Tancred, one of the chiefs of the first crusade, was a son of the Palgrave Otho the Good and Enma, sister of Robert Guiscard, and was born in 1078. He joined his cousin, Bohemund of Tarentum, Guiscard's son, in the first crusade, and specially distinguished himself in the sieges of
Nicæa, Antioch, and Jerusalem. His reward was the principality of Tiberias. For some time he ruled his cousin's state of Antioch, and shortly before his death, on 21st April 1112, he was invested with the principality of Edessa. Tancred figures in the contemporary chroniclers as the bean-idéal of the crusading chivalry: before Tarsus he quarrelled with Baldwin, brother of Godfrey of Bouillon, but generously made up the quarrel when they came to the Holy City; after the storm of Jerusalem he endeavoured to save some hundreds of the captives from massacre; these and many other noble traits are recorded of him. He is the hero of Tasso's great epic.