Hugo Falcandus

Hugo Falcandus was a historian who chronicled the reigns of William I of Sicily and the minority of his son William II in a highly critical work entitled The History of the Tyrants of Sicily. The Latin of the work is polished. The name Hugo Falcandus first appears in a Paris printed edition of 1550, and no surviving medieval manuscript attributes the Liber de Regno Sicilie to that name. There is some doubt as to whether "Hugo Falcandus" is a real name or a pseudonym. Evelyn Jamison argued that he was Eugenius, amiratus from 1190. The Frenchman Hugues Foucaud, abbot of Saint-Denis, has been proposed as an author. His name, Falcandus, is apparently a cacography for Falcaudus, Latin for "Foucaud", a French surname. According to Graham Loud, "Hugo Falcandus", was a native of the Kingdom of Sicily rather than someone from northern Europe.