Komnenoi of Trebizond (was: Bagratid- kings of Georgia Part I and II)
Stewart, Peter
> From: Rafal T. Prinke [mailto:raf...@amu.edu.pl]
> Sent: Monday, 16 July 2001 5:10
> To: GEN-MED...@rootsweb.com
> Subject: Re: Bagratid- kings of Georgia Part I and II
>
>
>
> "omega" <om...@thoroughbreds.com.au> wrote:
>
> > Secondly, the Greek word "Megalos", when used properly
> > can be interpreted as "The Great". Anna's father may have
> > been "The Great", but "Greatness" is not inheritarry.
> > Furthermore, in this particular case the translation of
> > "Megale" is "Grown-up" and I am sure, who ever used it
> > did not have that meaning in mind.
>
> The Mega-Komnenoi was the dynasty of the Emperors of
> Trebizond, descendants of Alexios I.
>
> > Unless she got the nickname "Anna the grown-up" because
> > she married at the age of 10, than the word "Megale" as part
> > of her name is an insult and shouldn't be there. Anna
> > Komninos was her name.
>
> So the whole dynasty is constantly being insulted by many authors.
And indeed insulted by themselves, in the unimaginable event that Dr
Tsambourakis actually knew what he was writing about, since almost all the
known descendants of the Byzantine emperor Andronikos I's grandson Alexios I
of Trebizond surnamed themselves either Megas Komnenos (masculine) or Megale
Komnene (feminine) from 1204, when the style was first adopted, until 1461
when the remnant Trapezuntine "empire" finally succumbed to Sultan Mehmed
II. Apart from surviving coins, seals, documents and works of art, there is
a very large scholarly literature to substantiate this.
The history of the dynasty should be of interest to anyone who cares about
the medieval period. Its last representatives suffered perhaps the most dire
& miserable tragedy that ever befell a ruling house - the events surrounding
the end of their state & bloodline may eventually be coming to a cinema near
you, since negotiations are underway for a film to be based on a novel about
this.
For the sake of those who haven't come across it before, the story in
outline is as follows:
The Komnenoi of Trebizond managed to sustain themselves after the
catastrophe of 1453 through great wealth from a flourishing trade, and from
their fabled silver mines, staving off defeat by payment of vast sums in
tribute to Sultan Mehmed or in bribes to his opponents. However, the
uncertain friendship of local warlords could not save the empire for long
against the ambition of the Ottomans. Mehmed II finally sent his navy to
blockade the Black Sea coast, and came himself at the head of an
overwhelming army to demand unconditional surrender. The chancellor of
Trebizond, a fascinating & prodigious character named Georgios Amiroutzes,
was sent to negotiate terms, but reported back that any show of defiance
would bring utter ruin and massacre. The reigning emperor chose to spare his
people by yielding & going himself into captivity as the sultan ordered. All
the remaining imperial family were taken away with him, and active
resistance ended. Amiroutzes had perhaps used his diplomatic mission to play
a double game, since he soon accepted service with Mehmed as a confidential
adviser.
At first the exiles were treated well, although strictly guarded because the
people of Trebizond did not give up hope of restoring their deposed emperor
to the throne. The sultan was impatient for complete submission to his rule,
and jealous of the ancient bond between the Komnenoi and their former
subjects. All the family were imprisoned in the fortress of the Seven Towers
in Constantinople, until Mehmed decided to eliminate the surviving males. He
condemned them to a most ignominious end: their throats were cut,
decapitating the younger boys, and their bodies were thrown down from the
walls of the city to be scavenged by dogs and crows. The empress Helena
(born Kantakuzene) was sold her freedom for a huge ransom collected by the
people of Trebizond. She refused to leave the place of her torment - defying
Mehmed she went out secretly by night and scraped the earth with her bare
hands to bury her husband and sons, then set up a hut to live by their
graves until she too died shortly afterwards.
Peter Stewart
Pierre Aronax
Stewart, Peter <Peter....@crsrehab.gov.au> a écrit dans le message :
BE9CF8DEAB7ED311B05E...@v003138e.crsrehab.gov.au...
<...>
> At first the exiles were treated well, although strictly guarded because
the
> people of Trebizond did not give up hope of restoring their deposed
emperor
> to the throne. The sultan was impatient for complete submission to his
rule,
> and jealous of the ancient bond between the Komnenoi and their former
> subjects. All the family were imprisoned in the fortress of the Seven
Towers
> in Constantinople, until Mehmed decided to eliminate the surviving males.
He
> condemned them to a most ignominious end: their throats were cut,
> decapitating the younger boys, and their bodies were thrown down from the
> walls of the city to be scavenged by dogs and crows. The empress Helena
> (born Kantakuzene) was sold her freedom for a huge ransom collected by the
> people of Trebizond. She refused to leave the place of her torment -
defying
> Mehmed she went out secretly by night and scraped the earth with her bare
> hands to bury her husband and sons, then set up a hut to live by their
> graves until she too died shortly afterwards.
All the story is essentially based on the account of Théodoros Spandounes
Kantakouzénos, "Discorso... dall'origine de' principi Turchi", probably
written around 1513-1519, so at least 50 years after the end of the empire.
There is now an English translation by the polygraph D. M. Nicol of the
edition of 1538 (Theodore Spandounes, "On the Origin of the Ottoman
Emperors", Cambridge U.P., 1997). The text of Spandounes was early edited
and so very accessible, which explain why he was largely used by
Byzantinists since Du Cange; Spandounes was himself related to the house of
Kantakouzenos, so the facts he provides on them where never questioned until
a short time ago. But, for what is of the poor Empress Héléna, a recent
article demonstrates convincingly, using unpublished sources closer of the
events, that she never existed ! Spandounes confused the Emperor Alexis IV
Mégalos-Komnenos, who effectively was married with the aunt of his
grandfather, Théodora Kantakouzene, with is son David II, the last Emperor
of Trebizond. The only know wife of David II is in fact Maria of Gothia,
whose marriage is attested by the Trapezontan historian Panarétos,
contemporary of the facts : scholars have imagined she died shortly after
the marriage, but it was just to manage to reconcile the data of Spandounes,
traditionally received, and who is the only source mentioning the doubtful
impress Héléna, with the more reliable Panarétos. If the melodramatic story
of Spandounes is real, which is dubious, it was Maria of Gothia and not an
imaginary Héléna of Gothia who buried secretly the bodies of the last
Mégaloi Komnenoi. See Th. Ganchou, "Une Kantakouzene impératrice de
Trébizonde : Théodora ou Héléna ?", in <Revue des Etudes byzantines>, 58
(2000), p.216-229.
Pierre
Stewart, Peter
> From: Pierre Aronax [mailto:pierre...@hotmail.com]
> Sent: Monday, 16 July 2001 19:31
> To: GEN-MED...@rootsweb.com
> Subject: Re: Komnenoi of Trebizond (was: Bagratid- kings of
> Georgia Part
>
> <snip>
> article demonstrates convincingly, using unpublished sources
> closer of the events, that she never existed ! Spandounes
> confused the Emperor Alexis IV Mégalos-Komnenos, who
> effectively was married with the aunt of his grandfather,
> Théodora Kantakouzene, with is son David II, the last
> Emperor of Trebizond. The only know wife of David II is
> in fact Maria of Gothia, whose marriage is attested by the
> Trapezontan historian Panarétos, contemporary of the facts:
> scholars have imagined she died shortly after the marriage,
> but it was just to manage to reconcile the data of Spandounes,
> traditionally received, and who is the only source mentioning
> the doubtful impress Héléna, with the more reliable Panarétos.
> If the melodramatic story of Spandounes is real, which is
> dubious, it was Maria of Gothia and not an imaginary Héléna
> of Gothia who buried secretly the bodies of the last Mégaloi
> Komnenoi. See Th. Ganchou, "Une Kantakouzene impératrice
> de Trébizonde : Théodora ou Héléna ?", in <Revue des Etudes
> byzantines>, 58 (2000), p.216-229.
Thanks for this reference - I still need some convincing on this. Can you
give us a summary of the points of proof adduced to show that Helena did not
exist after all? Or is this largely on a revisionist basis that the silence
of earlier sources is preferred to Spandounes where there are inconsistenies
& another plausible account can be argued to the entrancement of academics?
Peter Stewart
Stewart, Peter
> From: Pierre Aronax [mailto:pierre...@hotmail.com]
> Sent: Monday, 16 July 2001 19:31
> To: GEN-MED...@rootsweb.com
> Subject: Re: Komnenoi of Trebizond (was: Bagratid- kings of
> Georgia Part
> I and II)
>
>
> <snip>
> Nicol of the edition of 1538 (Theodore Spandounes, "On
> the Origin of the Ottoman Emperors", Cambridge U.P.,
> accessible, which explain why he was largely used by
> Byzantinists since Du Cange; Spandounes was himself related
> to the house of Kantakouzenos, so the facts he provides on
> what is of the poor Empress Héléna, a recent article
> demonstrates convincingly, using unpublished sources closer
> of the events, that she never existed ! Spandounes confused the
> Emperor Alexis IV Mégalos-Komnenos, who effectively was
> married with the aunt of his grandfather, Théodora
> of Trebizond. The only know wife of David II is in fact Maria
> of Gothia, whose marriage is attested by the Trapezontan
> historian Panarétos, contemporary of the facts : scholars have
> imagined she died shortly after the marriage, but it was just to
> manage to reconcile the data of Spandounes, traditionally
> received, and who is the only source mentioning the doubtful
> impress Héléna, with the more reliable Panarétos. If the
> melodramatic story of Spandounes is real, which is dubious, it
> was Maria of Gothia and not an imaginary Héléna of Gothia
> who buried secretly the bodies of the last Mégaloi Komnenoi.
> See Th. Ganchou, "Une Kantakouzene impératrice de
> Trébizonde : Théodora ou Héléna ?", in <Revue des Etudes
> byzantines>, 58 (2000), p.216-229.
I have now read this article and, with due respect to Pierre, I can't agree
that it's even a worthwhile contribution to study of the later Komnenoi of
Trebizond (which the same author has certainly made elsewhere), much less a
convincing demonstration that Helena did not exist.
The idea put forward is that the last emperor David II's mother Theodora was
in fact a daughter of Theodoros Palaiologos Kantakouzenos, and therefore he
cannot have married a woman described (by his first cousin twice removed
Theodoros Spandounes) as having the same parentage - i.e., his own maternal
aunt.
Thierry Ganchou admits that Spandounes probably heard his mother talk about
her imperial cousins during his childhood as an exile in Venice, but was
confused about the details. We are asked to believe that this confusion took
a peculiar form, in that Spandounes forgot he was actually related by blood
to the last emperor of Trebizond himself, and instead invented a wife for
the man, who was great-grandfather's sister to the chronicler. The
conclusion drawn is that David II did not have a second wife, and that Maria
of Gothia was therefore mother of all his offspring and presumably heroine
of the last act in the Komnenos tragedy (if indeed that can be taken as
read).
However, the chronological problems with this are somewhat startling, unless
the Kantakouzene family were prodigious breeders and Spandounes was an
inveterate, silly fabricator. Theodora Kantakouzene died on 12 November
1426, and is supposed to have married Alexios IV of Trebizond in 1395,
having at least three sons and a daughter, all married in the 1420s or 30s.
The trouble here is that, if Theodora belonged to the immediate family in
which Ganchou places her, she had no known siblings of her own age and a
number of juniors who married about twenty years after her and died in the
1450 or 60s, with at least two brothers killed fighting in 1453. The
probability that Theodora Kantakouzene was perhaps not of this immediate
family, and that she and her son were correctly not thought to be blood
relatives by Spandounes, isn't critically examined by Ganchou, despite the
extraordinary consequences he derives from her supposed paternity.
The next problem for his theory is that David II is recorded as marrying
Maria of Gothia in 1429, and yet he had no known adult offspring in 1461,
while Spandounes relates that he had young sons who were killed and a
daughter taken at tender age into a harem some years after that, all
apparently born in the late 1440s or after - in other words, his sole wife
apparently took a long while to produce heirs and must then have remained
fertile a good twenty years after her marriage at least. The alternative
preferred by Ganchou is that Spandounes invented a female relative in
Helena, downgrading his own blood connection to the imperial Komnenoi, and
then gave her a brood of imaginary children who died in ghastly
circumstances. If Helens was supposed by Spandounes, who should have known,
to have the same aprents as now attributed to Theodora (married in 1395 and
giving birth not long afterwards), how is it that she was getting married
and having a family after 1429? However, this latter chronology fits
perfectly well with what is known of the other siblings in the family of
Theodoros Palaiologos Kantakouzenos. Ganchou tries to pull the chronology
towards the clearly older Theodora as their sister, rather than to a less
notably younger Helena, whom he already presumes to be fictitious. The best
evidence he gives is that Georgios Sphrantzes, writing in 1451, calls a
known granddaughter of Theodoros "exadelphia" (cousin) to David II's elder
brother Ioannes IV of Trebizond. Anyone who has studied medieval genealogy
will know of similar vague statements, and will sensibly shrink from writing
off another person's existence on the strength of them.
Many things are obscure about this period in Trebizond, but the stark
narrative of Spandounes can't be so lightly dismissed as misleading - or
melodramatic, for that matter. Similar episodes are considered to be the
stuff of great tragedy in classical literature, and are hardly less valid if
these things took place in medieval reality. Certainly Spandounes would be a
nasty kind of liar to have invented or twisted such a story about his own
family, and the idea that he was genuinely in such gross error about things
that took place a few years before his own birth is simply preposterous.
Peter Stewart
Pierre Aronax
the author, and so probably not the more rightful advocate of his theory.
but I'm still convinced by his demonstration, and if you like I will answer
to some of your pertinent objections with arguments taken from his works,
and with others which are of my own. As always, please, excuse my English.
> I have now read this article and, with due respect to Pierre, I can't
agree
> that it's even a worthwhile contribution to study of the later Komnenoi of
> Trebizond (which the same author has certainly made elsewhere), much less
a
> convincing demonstration that Helena did not exist.
Nevertheless, you must admit she is mentioned ONLY by Spandounčs. And by all
the subsequent literature of course, which is probably why it is so
difficult to admit she didn't exist.
> The idea put forward is that the last emperor David II's mother Theodora
was
> in fact a daughter of Theodoros Palaiologos Kantakouzenos,
I must precise that it is not only an hypothesis, but an information founded
by Mr Ganchou in an unpublished genealogy of the Kantakouzenos family. You
didn't mentioned this new source, which is the immediate cause of the
revision proposed by Ganchou. This genealogy is only of the 16th century, as
is the book of Spandounčs, but is very well informed and always concordant
with other sources of information, especially where Spandounčs is wrong (and
he is often).
> and therefore he
> cannot have married a woman described (by his first cousin twice removed
> Theodoros Spandounes) as having the same parentage - i.e., his own
maternal
> aunt. Thierry Ganchou admits that Spandounes probably heard his mother
talk about
> her imperial cousins during his childhood as an exile in Venice, but was
> confused about the details. We are asked to believe that this confusion
took
> a peculiar form, in that Spandounes forgot he was actually related by
blood
> to the last emperor of Trebizond himself, and instead invented a wife for
> the man, who was great-grandfather's sister to the chronicler.
Yes, but here there are some arguments which, even if not absolutely
convincing in themselves, give some doubts about the version of Spandounčs.
For example, the Cypriot knight Hugues Busac, also related to the
Kantakouzenoi, had a basic stock of information about the family very
similar to Spandounčs, and he didn't give the name of the Kantakouzčna who
was Empress Trebizond or the name of his husband.
> The
> conclusion drawn is that David II did not have a second wife, and that
Maria
> of Gothia was therefore mother of all his offspring and presumably heroine
> of the last act in the Komnenos tragedy (if indeed that can be taken as
> read).
Exact.
> However, the chronological problems with this are somewhat startling,
unless
> the Kantakouzene family were prodigious breeders and Spandounes was an
> inveterate, silly fabricator. Theodora Kantakouzene died on 12 November
> 1426, and is supposed to have married Alexios IV of Trebizond in 1395,
> having at least three sons and a daughter, all married in the 1420s or
30s.
And so probably born at the beginning of the 15th century and not before :
princes and princesses of Trebizond were married young. So Théodora was
probably herself very young when married in 1395, and can be born in 1380 if
not after.
> The trouble here is that, if Theodora belonged to the immediate family in
> which Ganchou places her, she had no known siblings of her own age and a
> number of juniors who married about twenty years after her
> and died in the 1450 or 60s,
A perfectly normal age to expire for someone born around the end of the 14th
century. I don't see where is the impossibility. Théodoros Kantakouzenos
died in 1410, an we know he didn't expire at a "natural" age (he died from a
pest) : he can have produced children until the beginning of the 15th
century (particularly if, for example, he married more than once).
> with at least two brothers killed fighting in 1453.
One of them was the Great Domestikos, Andronikos Palaiologos Kantakouzenos.
It is absolutely not strange for a man who can be born around 1390 or before
to have fight in 1453 (he is said by a source to have been "senex" in 1453).
If we add that in 1453 he had himself three sons, of whom at list one
already married, who themselves fight defending the city, I can see
absolutely no chronological absurdity to imagine he was born even before
1390. He would have had less than ten years of difference with his sister
Théodora. To give an other example, the Emperor John VIII was born in 1392
and his brother Thomas Palaiologos in 1408, which give us a difference of 16
years; and they were born of the same mother, which was perhaps not the case
for the children of Théodoros Kantakouzénos.
> The
> probability that Theodora Kantakouzene was perhaps not of this immediate
> family, and that she and her son were correctly not thought to be blood
> relatives by Spandounes, isn't critically examined by Ganchou, despite the
> extraordinary consequences he derives from her supposed paternity.
Of course, because he has a source, the unpublished genealogy of the
Kantakouzenoi, which again you omitted to mention, which he judges more
reliable than Spandounčs, and this genealogy says explicitly she was ! You
can discuss of course the reliability of this source compared with
Spandounčs, but not its existence.
> The next problem for his theory is that David II is recorded as marrying
> Maria of Gothia in 1429, and yet he had no known adult offspring in 1461,
But, if we exclude Spandounčs, he had no know offspring at all...
> while Spandounes relates that he had young sons who were killed and a
> daughter taken at tender age into a harem some years after that, all
> apparently born in the late 1440s or after - in other words, his sole wife
> apparently took a long while to produce heirs and must then have remained
> fertile a good twenty years after her marriage at least.
Again, all is based on Spandounčs : you have no alternative sources to
confirm that, but you have a source who says explicitly that Maria of Gothia
was his only wife...
> The alternative
> preferred by Ganchou is that Spandounes invented a female relative in
> Helena, downgrading his own blood connection to the imperial Komnenoi, and
> then gave her a brood of imaginary children who died in ghastly
> circumstances. If Helens was supposed by Spandounes, who should have
known,
> to have the same aprents as now attributed to Theodora (married in 1395
and
> giving birth not long afterwards), how is it that she was getting married
> and having a family after 1429?
I don't understand your point here.
> However, this latter chronology fits
> perfectly well with what is known of the other siblings in the family of
> Theodoros Palaiologos Kantakouzenos.
Which was certainly why, when searching where to put his "aunt" the Empress
in the genealogy of the Emperors of Trebizond, Spandounčs decided to
attribute her to the last Emperor. But he was wrong.
> Ganchou tries to pull the chronology
> towards the clearly older Theodora as their sister, rather than to a less
> notably younger Helena,
Yes, because the chronology is rather more difficult with a younger Héléna
than with an older Théodora : if we accept the story of Spandounčs, Héléna
is supposed to have had eight children from David, the last being born in
1460... from a wife who had at least 40 years ! If we refused to admit more
than, saying, 10 years between Héléna and the first born of his father (as
you refuse to admit in the other way for Théodora in Ganchou' theory),
Héléna can not be born after 1400 (his supposed brother Andronikos - who was
perhaps not the first born - being probably not born after 1390, otherwise
he can not have been said "senex" in 1453 and with three sons in age to be
decapitated). So, she would have given his last son to her supposed husband
at 50 or more...
> whom he already presumes to be fictitious. The best
> evidence he gives
No, he gives many other chronological evidences, like the one I resume
previously.
> is that Georgios Sphrantzes, writing in 1451, calls a
> known granddaughter of Theodoros "exadelphia" (cousin) to David II's elder
> brother Ioannes IV of Trebizond. Anyone who has studied medieval genealogy
> will know of similar vague statements, and will sensibly shrink from
writing
> off another person's existence on the strength of them.
See my previous comment.
> Many things are obscure about this period in Trebizond, but the stark
> narrative of Spandounes can't be so lightly dismissed as misleading
Indeed, the more we know about this period, the more we see that Spandounčs,
who lived all is life in exile an wrote at least 50 years after the facts,
is not an absolute reliable sources when he is not confirmed by others, and
especially of course when he is in contradiction with other sources which
seams more reliable, in which case we are presently.
> - or
> melodramatic, for that matter. Similar episodes are considered to be the
> stuff of great tragedy in classical literature, and are hardly less valid
if
> these things took place in medieval reality. Certainly Spandounes would be
a
> nasty kind of liar
More simply someone who had peaces of information and, wanting to produce a
comprehensive narrative, complete the mosaic with his imagination. More
recent (and some very recent) historians did the same, and were not called
liars for that.
> to have invented or twisted such a story about his own
> family,
In fact of rewriting familial history, we have seen more strange things.
> and the idea that he was genuinely in such gross error about things
> that took place a few years before his own birth
But half a century after he began to write. That the facts happen little
before his birth is of little significance : his relatives had left
Byzantium since many years when the fall of Trebizond happen
> is simply preposterous.
I can not agree with this condescending statement, which I found laughable
from someone who has discovered the question yesterday.
Pierre
Chris Bennett
behind Ganchou's analysis is apparently a newly-discovered and as yet
unpublished genealogy of the Cantacuzene family. Does the author make any
statement about plans to publish the genealogy itself?
Chris
Pierre Aronax
Chris Bennett <cben...@adnc.com> a écrit dans le message :
3b5443f1$0$14535$19c6...@news.siscom.net...
Yes. He says that he will publish this document with a revised prosopography
of the Kantakouzenos family in the 15th century. He give already some very
mouth-watering quotations of this genealogy. For example here is the
paragraph quoted by Ganchou about the children of Théodoros Kantakouzenos (+
1410) : "Il signor Theodoro [...] hebbe otto figlioli : 5 maschi et tre
femine, cioe : Demetrio, Manuel, Giorgio, Andronico, et Thoma, Theodora,
Maria, Erigni. Theodora fu maritata in Alexio Comminio Imperator di
Trapesonda. Fece due figliole, Maria, che fu maritata in Giovanni Paleologo
Imperator di Costantinopoli, che non fece figlioli; et un'altra, che fu
moglie dell'Imperator di Iveria in le parte di Soria, et tre fliglioli :
Giovanni, Alexandro et David...". I think there must be a Greek source
beyond this, because the "imperator di Iveria" is the King of Georgia, but
named "basileus" in Greek, the same word used for the sovereign of
Constantinople, and so probably translated here in the same way (that's my
point of view of course, and not Ganchou's one). That's the first document
who says explicitly that Theodoros was the father of this individuals;
several of them (except Theodora of course...) are mentioned by Spandounès,
but he didn't know the name of their father. A modern scholar, H. Hunger,
had already demonstrated, using Byzantin sources, that Théodoros was their
father, as recalled by Ganchou, but it is now confirmed by this genealogy.
Similarly, Thomas Kantakouzenos is not mentioned by Spandounès or by Hugues
Busac (by the way, in fact, is correct French name was probably "Boussac",
whose "Busac" is a Latine transliteration), but he is again know by
independent sources. So, this genealogy seems to be remarcably well
informed, more informed anyway than Spandounès, and that's way Ganchou give
it more attention.
Pierre
Stewart, Peter
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Pierre Aronax [mailto:pierre...@hotmail.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, 17 July 2001 20:36
> To: GEN-MED...@rootsweb.com
> Subject: Re: Komnenoi of Trebizond (was: Bagratid- kings of
> Georgia Part
> I and II)
>
>
> Thank you Mr Stuart for your interesting remarks on that
> article. I'm not the author, and so probably not the more
> rightful advocate of his theory. but I'm still convinced by
> his demonstration, and if you like I will answer to some
> of your pertinent objections with arguments taken from
> his works, and with others which are of my own. As
> always, please, excuse my English.
>
> > I have now read this article and, with due respect to
> > Pierre, I can't agree that it's even a worthwhile
> > contribution to study of the later Komnenoi of
> > Trebizond (which the same author has certainly made
> > elsewhere), much less a convincing demonstration that
> > Helena did not exist.
>
> Nevertheless, you must admit she is mentioned ONLY by
> Spandounčs. And by all the subsequent literature of course,
> which is probably why it is so difficult to admit she didn't exist.
In which other surviving sources would one expect to find Helena mentioned?
The anonymous continuation of the chronicle of Michael Panaretos often
neglects to give marriages & other important genealogical information about
the Komnenoi, as Ganchou notes, and in any case is silent on events after
the late 1430s/early 1440s when Spandounes suggests that Helena was living
in Trebizond.
> > The idea put forward is that the last emperor David II's
> > mother Theodora was in fact a daughter of Theodoros
> > Palaiologos Kantakouzenos,
>
> I must precise that it is not only an hypothesis, but an
> information founded by Mr Ganchou in an unpublished
> genealogy of the Kantakouzenos family. You didn't
> mentioned this new source, which is the immediate cause of the
> revision proposed by Ganchou. This genealogy is only of the
> 16th century, as is the book of Spandounčs, but is very well
> informed and always concordant with other sources of
> information, especially where Spandounčs is wrong (and
> he is often).
It isn't the source that is new so much as the use Ganchou makes of it -
Donald Nicol cited this work by Massarelli in his edition of Spandounes in
1997, and others have used it with reservations cast aside by Ganchou.
"Other sources of information" on this subject are so scarce that the value
of concordance between any two is of very limited assessability: Massarelli
could have been right about every other detail & still mistaken on this
point - ditto (vice a versa) Spandounes.
> > and therefore he cannot have married a woman described
> > (by his first cousin twice removed Theodoros Spandounes)
> > as having the same parentage - i.e., his own maternal
> > aunt. Thierry Ganchou admits that Spandounes probably heard
> > his mother talk about her imperial cousins during his childhood
> > as an exile in Venice, but was confused about the details. We are
> > asked to believe that this confusion took a peculiar form, in that
> > Spandounes forgot he was actually related by blood to the last
> > emperor of Trebizond himself, and instead invented a wife for
> > the man, who was great-grandfather's sister to the chronicler.
>
> Yes, but here there are some arguments which, even if not absolutely
> convincing in themselves, give some doubts about the version
> of Spandounčs. For example, the Cypriot knight Hugues Busac, also
> related to the Kantakouzenoi, had a basic stock of information about
> the family very similar to Spandounčs, and he didn't give the name of
> the Kantakouzčna who was Empress Trebizond or the name of his
> husband.
As an indicator, this lack of names in Busac is completely neutral between
Theodora/Alexios and Helena/David as the subjects of his sketchy reference.
> > The conclusion drawn is that David II did not have a second
> > wife, and that Maria of Gothia was therefore mother of all his
> > offspring and presumably heroine of the last act in the
> > Komnenos tragedy (if indeed that can be taken as read).
>
> Exact.
>
> > However, the chronological problems with this are somewhat
> > startling, unless the Kantakouzene family were prodigious breeders
> > and Spandounes was an inveterate, silly fabricator. Theodora
> > Kantakouzene died on 12 November 1426, and is supposed to
> > have married Alexios IV of Trebizond in 1395, having at least
> > three sons and a daughter, all married in the 1420s or 30s.
>
> And so probably born at the beginning of the 15th century and
> not before : princes and princesses of Trebizond were married young.
> So Théodora was probably herself very young when married in 1395,
> and can be born in 1380 if not after.
Certainly - but remember that her third son David II was born probably not
long after 1404, and yet married for the first time (or only time according
to Ganchou) in 1429, so the members of his family did not invariably marry
young. In David's case the succession was not at stake before the late
1450s, and his prospects in early life of a grand inheritance were far from
outstanding. He would almost certainly not have commanded a highly eligible
child bride from Constantinople in the 1420s.
> > The trouble here is that, if Theodora belonged to the
> > immediate family in which Ganchou places her, she
> > had no known siblings of her own age and a
> > number of juniors who married about twenty years after her
> > and died in the 1450 or 60s,
>
> A perfectly normal age to expire for someone born around the
> end of the 14th century. I don't see where is the impossibility.
I'm not alleging an impossibility, just reviewing likelihood. The dates are
only a loose guide, of course. Amongst the more certain children of
Theodoros Palaiologos Kantakouzenos (both specified by Massarelli and
Spandounes), his daughter Eirene was married in 1414 (probably born ca 1400,
about 20 years after Theodora) and his son Georgios had children married in
the early 1440s so was himself perhaps married in the mid-1420s, up to 30
years after his purported elder sister. Of course this is a possible scheme,
but not an everyday occurrence.
> Théodoros Kantakouzenos died in 1410, an we know he didn't
> expire at a "natural" age (he died from a pest) : he can have
> produced children until the beginning of the 15th century
> (particularly if, for example, he married more than once).
Certainly - and then he might have had a posthumous child (or twins for that
matter) born late in 1410 or in 1411. There are also various ways in which
Massarelli and Spandounes can be reconciled, which Ganchou doesn't consider
- for instance, Theodora could have been born from an early marriage, a
half-sister to Georgios and Eirene and almost a generation older than them.
Helena could than have been born to their mother from a subsequent
Kantakouzenos husband (Spandounes never names her father as Theodoros, while
many widows remarried their dead husband's relatives - the name Kantakouzene
(or Cantacusina) is given to Helena, but Spandounes never calls her
Palaiologina as well, which he might have done in the 1550s if he thought
she was closely connected to that then-resounding name). There would in this
case have been no barrier to marriage between Helena and Theodora
Palaiologina Kantakouzene's son. Helena was clearly a good deal younger than
her siblings named by their relative Spandounes, since she was having
children into the 1450s. However, scholars have tended to make the
elementary mis-assumption that she must have been a young bride when she
married David and therefore that this must have occurred shortly after his
known marriage to Maria of Gothia in 1429. But there is no particular reason
to suppose that Helena wasn't a widow at the time, and married in Trebizond
in her mid- to late- 30s. David was not a figure of note to chroniclers
between 1429 and his accession in April 1460 (if Ganchou is correct on that,
which I do not doubt). Spandounes mentions that Georgios Kantakouzenos
visited his sister Helena in Trebizond between those dates (ca 1440), and
mistakenly gives her the title of empress at the time, but that is hardly
compromising to his general veracity, especially when we know so little of
the Trapezuntine polity during the reigns of David's immediate family.
>
> > with at least two brothers killed fighting in 1453.
>
> One of them was the Great Domestikos, Andronikos Palaiologos
> Kantakouzenos.
> It is absolutely not strange for a man who can be born around
> 1390 or before to have fight in 1453 (he is said by a source to
> have been "senex" in 1453). If we add that in 1453 he had himself
> three sons, of whom at list one already married, who themselves
> fight defending the city, I can see absolutely no chronological
> absurdity to imagine he was born even before 1390. He would
> have had less than ten years of difference with his sister
> Théodora. To give an other example, the Emperor John VIII was
> born in 1392 and his brother Thomas Palaiologos in 1408, which
> give us a difference of 16 years; and they were born of the same
> mother, which was perhaps not the case for the children of
> Théodoros Kantakouzénos.
Agreed - again, I wasn't trying to suggest impossibility or absurdity here,
but rather to look at the pattern of likelihood in Ganchou's reconstruction.
> > The probability that Theodora Kantakouzene was perhaps not
> > of this immediate family, and that she and her son were correctly
> > not thought to be blood relatives by Spandounes, isn't critically
> > examined by Ganchou, despite the extraordinary consequences
> > he derives from her supposed paternity.
>
> Of course, because he has a source, the unpublished genealogy of the
> Kantakouzenoi, which again you omitted to mention, which he
> judges more reliable than Spandounčs, and this genealogy says explicitly
> she was ! You can discuss of course the reliability of this source
> compared with Spandounčs, but not its existence.
His judgement is somewhat arbitrary on the evidence offered, and one
alternative reconciliation of sources - which he negligently doesn't even
attempt - is suggested above.
> > The next problem for his theory is that David II is recorded as
> > marrying Maria of Gothia in 1429, and yet he had no known adult
> > offspring in 1461,
>
> But, if we exclude Spandounčs, he had no know offspring at all...
In which case there would have been a succession crisis in Trebizond after
his succession to the throne at the age of ca 55 that would have resounded
throughout Greek & Ottoman spheres in the circumstances. Where is there even
the dimmest echo of such a turn?
> > while Spandounes relates that he had young sons who were
> > killed and a daughter taken at tender age into a harem some
> > years after that, all apparently born in the late 1440s or after -
> > in other words, his sole wife apparently took a long while
> > to produce heirs and must then have remained fertile a good
> > twenty years after her marriage at least.
>
> Again, all is based on Spandounčs : you have no alternative sources to
> confirm that, but you have a source who says explicitly that
> Maria of Gothia was his only wife...
Not as I read the bit of Massarelli I have seen quoted. Can you please post
the passage where he says explicitly that David was married only once?
> > The alternative preferred by Ganchou is that Spandounes invented
> > a female relative in Helena, downgrading his own blood
> > connection to the imperial Komnenoi, and then gave her a brood
> > of imaginary children who died in ghastly circumstances. If Helena
> > was supposed by Spandounes, who should have known,
> > to have the same parents as now attributed to Theodora
> > (married in 1395 and giving birth not long afterwards), how is it
> > that she was getting married and having a family after 1429?
>
> I don't understand your point here.
Apologies - I was writing in distracted haste, with a plane to catch. I
think I've covered this more clearly above.
> > However, this latter chronology fits perfectly well with what is
> > known of the other siblings in the family of Theodoros
> > Palaiologos Kantakouzenos.
>
> Which was certainly why, when searching where to put his "aunt" the
> Empress in the genealogy of the Emperors of Trebizond, Spandounčs
> decided to attribute her to the last Emperor. But he was wrong.
Not proven - you haven't addressed the real absurdity that I allege in
Ganchou, of supposing that Spandounes would forget his blood relationship to
the last Komnenoi and instead invent a connection by marriage. The
chronicler was born just after the extirpation of this family, living and
writing at a time when they loomed very large in the nostalgia of his
compatriots. Do you seriously think his mother (herself the daughter of a
woman named Helene Kantakouzene) would have fudged her account of these
"cousins" so completely that her son was wildly confused, and left to
extemporise like a clown when some of his readers would have known he was
making it up? Do you think there were no Trapezuntine exiles alive in Italy
knowing about such personages as David II and his widow when his account was
published? Do you think, if the basic events are true, that no-one living in
Constantinople remembered even the name of that latter-day Antigone outside
the city walls in 1463?
>
> > Ganchou tries to pull the chronology towards the clearly
> > older Theodora as their sister, rather than to a less
> > notably younger Helena,
>
> Yes, because the chronology is rather more difficult with a
> younger Héléna than with an older Théodora : if we accept
> the story of Spandounčs, Héléna is supposed to have had
> eight children from David, the last being born in 1460...
> from a wife who had at least 40 years ! If we refused
> to admit more than, saying, 10 years between Héléna and
> the first born of his father (as you refuse to admit in the
> other way for Théodora in Ganchou' theory), Héléna can
> not be born after 1400 (his supposed brother Andronikos -
> who was perhaps not the first born - being probably not
> born after 1390, otherwise he can not have been said
> "senex" in 1453 and with three sons in age to be
> decapitated). So, she would have given his last son to her
> supposed husband at 50 or more...
As above, Helena could have been born as late as 1411 if she was the
daughter of Theodoros Palaiologos Kantakouzenos - but this is never stated
by Spandounes, and would make it pretty unlikely that she was gining birth
much after ca 1455 anyway. I don't think he was necessarily exact about the
age range of her sons.
> > whom he already presumes to be fictitious. The best
> > evidence he gives
>
> No, he gives many other chronological evidences, like the one I resume
> previously.
I said "the best evidence", not the "only" evidence. The chronology cannot
be conclusive either way.
> > is that Georgios Sphrantzes, writing in 1451, calls a known
> > granddaughter of Theodoros "exadelphia" (cousin) to
> > David II's elder brother Ioannes IV of Trebizond. Anyone
> > who has studied medieval genealogy will know of similar
> > vague statements, and will sensibly shrink from writing
> > off another person's existence on the strength of them.
>
> See my previous comment.
>
> > Many things are obscure about this period in Trebizond, but
> > the stark narrative of Spandounes can't be so lightly dismissed
> > as misleading.
>
> Indeed, the more we know about this period, the more we see
> that Spandounčs, who lived all is life in exile an wrote at least
> 50 years after the facts, is not an absolute reliable sources when
> he is not confirmed by others, and especially of course when he
> is in contradiction with other sources which seams more reliable,
> in which case we are presently.
But Massarelli's credentials, as so far another voice in the semi-dark on
the subject of the Komnenoi of Trebizond, are not well tested. Even if it
could be proved absolutely that Theodora was the eldest child of Theodoros
Palaiologos Kantakouzenos, this doesn't preclude Helena from having existed,
and indeed from having been a half-sister to the siblings claimed for her by
Spandounes.
> > - or melodramatic, for that matter. Similar episodes are
> > considered to be the stuff of great tragedy in classical literature,
> > and are hardly less valid if these things took place in medieval
> > reality. Certainly Spandounes would be a nasty kind of liar
>
> More simply someone who had peaces of information and,
> wanting to produce a comprehensive narrative, complete the
> mosaic with his imagination. More recent (and some very
> recent) historians did the same, and were not called
> liars for that.
What "historian" made up a woman and children supposedly related to him by
bood, and then narrated a tragic fate for them that was equally bogus? And
then published the account for all the Greek world to see was a false
witness he had given....
>
> > to have invented or twisted such a story about his own
> > family,
>
> In fact of rewriting familial history, we have seen more strange things.
Not in remotely similar circumstances.
>
> > and the idea that he was genuinely in such gross error about things
> > that took place a few years before his own birth
>
> But half a century after he began to write. That the facts
> happen little before his birth is of little significance : his relatives
> had left Byzantium since many years when the fall of Trebizond
> happen
Again, we are not talking about small discrepancies, but wholesale fiction
if Ganchou is even nearly correct. Spandounes is in fact a very
conscientious historian on earlier events by the standards of his time, and
the proven mistakes in his record are comparatively minor.
>
> > is simply preposterous.
>
> I can not agree with this condescending statement, which I
> found laughable from someone who has discovered the
> question yesterday.
Not the question, just Ganchou's treatment of it - so much for condescension
in this exchange. Helena has been to a degree passed over by others who
demand sources closer to time & events than Spandounes, including the
*Prosopographisches Lexikon der Palaiologenzeit*, but no-one has yet
examined the question on legitimate grounds of whether or not she even
existed. If you will kindly think what is being implicitly alleged, on
slender & contentious evidence, against Spandounes as a man and family
member, much less as an historian, I can't see what is laughable about
calling Ganchou's half-baked article preposterous. If he wishes to carry his
argument, he will have to do a much more thorough and professional job of
it.
Peter Stewart
Stewart, Peter
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Stewart, Peter [mailto:Peter....@crsrehab.gov.au]
> Sent: Wednesday, 18 July 2001 10:48
> To: GEN-MED...@rootsweb.com
> Subject: RE: Komnenoi of Trebizond (was: Bagratid- kings of
> Georgia Part
> I and II)
> There are also various ways in which Massarelli and
> Spandounes can be reconciled, which Ganchou doesn't consider
> - for instance, Theodora could have been born from an early
> marriage, a half-sister to Georgios and Eirene and almost a
> generation older than them. Helena could than have been born
> to their mother from a subsequent Kantakouzenos husband
> (Spandounes never names her father as Theodoros, while
> many widows remarried their dead husband's relatives - the
> name Kantakouzene (or Cantacusina) is given to Helena, but
> Spandounes never calls her Palaiologina as well, which he
> might have done in the 1550s if he thought she was closely
> connected to that then-resounding name).
I haven't been able to check the dates, but the "discorso" of Theodoros
Spandounes was written well before the 1550s - an edition was published in
Italy in 1538 (used by Donald Nicol for his translation) and from memory
there was an earlier one in Germany.
Spandounes (or Teodoroa Spandugino Cantacusino) was born in exile ca 1470,
very shortly after the end of the Trapezuntine Komnenoi to whom he was
related - and his mother, of course, was living in the Greek world during
the events he describes & no doubt heard about from her and other
contemporary observers.
Peter Stewart
Peter Stewart
omega
> Tsambourakis actually knew what he was writing about, since almost all the
> known descendants of the Byzantine emperor Andronikos I's grandson Alexios
I
> of Trebizond surnamed themselves either Megas Komnenos (masculine) or
Megale
> Komnene (feminine) from 1204, when the style was first adopted, until 1461
> when the remnant Trapezuntine "empire" finally succumbed to Sultan Mehmed
> II. Apart from surviving coins, seals, documents and works of art, there
is
> a very large scholarly literature to substantiate this.
You don't know what your are talking about.
Megas is a special word that translates most of the time as "great" if it is
placed ahead of the name (Prefix).
Megale is the feminine form or Megalos (Megalos - Megale - Megalon). It
translates to: Big in size, Old, Grown up or Large in size. The position of
the word in a sentence and the sentence itself are important.
Megale Komninnos, means the old Komninos, Anna megale komninos, means Anna
"the grown up" Komninos.
Anna "E megale" Komninos, and "E megale" Anna Komninos both mean, Anna "The
Great", Komninos.
In both cases the "The great" refers to Anna and not to Komninos.
But of course, you know better.
Dr George Tsambourakis
Omega Thoroughbreds
e-Mail: om...@thoroughbreds.com.au
http://www.thoroughbreds.com.au
Stewart, Peter
> From: omega [mailto:om...@thoroughbreds.com.au]
> Sent: Wednesday, 18 July 2001 12:06
> To: GEN-MED...@rootsweb.com
> Subject: Re: Komnenoi of Trebizond (was: Bagratid- kings of
> Georgia Part
> I and II)
>
>
attentive casual reader. The male Komnenoi of Trebizond used the compound
surname/title Megas Komnenos, usually translated into English as "Grand
Komnenos" and occasionally given in the form Megalos Komnenos, and their
wives and sisters called themselves Megale Komnene. I am not making any
point about modern Greek usage - as before, Dr Tsambourakis seems to think
that speaking the demotic language of today somehow qualifies him to know
more about Byzantine usage than the actual users did.
In the medieval period in Trebizond, "Anna 'E megale' Komninos", insofar as
it had any meaning, would have been taken to indicate "Anna the big
(transvestite) Komnenos (man)". A little knowledge is a dangerous thing,
although Dr Tsambourakis is pretty safe on the downside of this particular
menace.
Peter Stewart
Stewart, Peter
> To: GEN-MED...@rootsweb.com
> Subject: RE: Komnenoi of Trebizond (was: Bagratid- kings of
> Georgia Part
> I and II)
>
> Theodoros Spandounes was written well before the 1550s -
> an edition was published in Italy in 1538 (used by Donald
> Nicol for his translation) and from memory there was an
> earlier one in Germany.
>
> in exile ca 1470, very shortly after the end of the Trapezuntine
> Komnenoi to whom he was related - and his mother, of course,
> was living in the Greek world during the events he describes &
> no doubt heard about from her and other contemporary
> observers.
My memory made a slight hash of the bibliographic history.
The first version of this chronicle was written before 1515 and translated
from Italian into French in 1519, giving rise to the only edition available
in print for a long while from 1896. A few years later Spandounes prepared a
revision for Pope Leo X and then another, final version in 1538, which was
first published in 1550 and reprinted several times. Donald Nicol made his
translation [*On the Origin of the Ottoman Emperors* (Cambridge, 1997)]
working from the 1890 edition of this version, published in Paris.
Some interesting details of Spandounes are given by Nicol. He was born in
Venice ca 1470, and sent as a youth to be a ward of his great-aunt the
sultanina Mara Brankovic, favoured step-mother of Sultan Mehmed II, the
conqueror of Trebizond. Mara lived in some state in Macedonia with her
sister Catherine, countess of Cilly - together these ladies "operated a kind
of unofficial foreign office" [D Nicol, *The Byzantine Lady* (Cambridge,
1994) p 116], receiving ambassadors from Venice and the Porte. Spandounes
also lived in Constantinople for a time under Ottoman rule, and understood
the Turkish language.
It is notable that Mara and Catherine would have had received & disseminated
good information about the history Spandounes made known in the West. It is
also obvious that Massarelli and others had the opportunity and every reason
to contradict Spandounes if they thought his famous work was inaccurate, and
yet they did not. Nicol quotes Christianne Villain-Gandossi, as he says an
"authority on the text of Spandounes and its worth among the first western
accounts of the Ottomans", who concludes "that its author 'rates a special
position of honour for the objectivity of his account and his profound
knowledge of Turkey'." Thierry Ganchou has so far utterly failed to shake
this reputation in my opinion.
Peter Stewart
Pierre Aronax
Stewart, Peter <Peter....@crsrehab.gov.au> a écrit dans le message :
BE9CF8DEAB7ED311B05E...@v003138e.crsrehab.gov.au...
I haven't seen this one when responding to your previous post.
> The first version of this chronicle was written before 1515 and translated
> from Italian into French in 1519, giving rise to the only edition
available
> in print for a long while from 1896.
First published in French in 1569 I think and not 1519 ?
> A few years later Spandounes prepared a
> revision for Pope Leo X and then another, final version in 1538, which was
> first published in 1550 and reprinted several times. Donald Nicol made his
> translation [*On the Origin of the Ottoman Emperors* (Cambridge, 1997)]
> working from the 1890 edition of this version, published in Paris.
>
> Some interesting details of Spandounes are given by Nicol. He was born in
> Venice ca 1470, and sent as a youth to be a ward of his great-aunt the
> sultanina Mara Brankovic, favoured step-mother of Sultan Mehmed II, the
> conqueror of Trebizond. Mara lived in some state in Macedonia with her
> sister Catherine, countess of Cilly - together these ladies "operated a
kind
> of unofficial foreign office" [D Nicol, *The Byzantine Lady* (Cambridge,
> 1994) p 116], receiving ambassadors from Venice and the Porte. Spandounes
> also lived in Constantinople for a time under Ottoman rule, and understood
> the Turkish language.
>
> It is notable that Mara and Catherine would have had received &
disseminated
> good information about the history Spandounes made known in the West. It
is
> also obvious that Massarelli and others had the opportunity and every
reason
> to contradict Spandounes if they thought his famous work was inaccurate,
No edition were available when Massarelli wrote. He doesn't mentioned the
book of Spandounes, but, even if he didn't know his work, he certainly
contradict him.
> and
> yet they did not.
Don't see your point. Has Massarelli to say "Spandounes was wrong" ?
> Nicol quotes Christianne Villain-Gandossi,
Whose study is of course know and mentionned by Ganchou.
> as he says an
> "authority on the text of Spandounes and its worth among the first western
> accounts of the Ottomans", who concludes "that its author 'rates a special
> position of honour for the objectivity of his account and his profound
> knowledge of Turkey'." Thierry Ganchou has so far utterly failed to shake
> this reputation in my opinion.
I don't see how the objectivity of Spandounes in regard of the Turks is
concerned here. (And, this has also nothing to do with the question we
discuss but I have discussed with an Ottomanist who is far to be convinced
of the objectivity of Spandounes about Mehme II... but here I will probably
agree rather than Christiane - and not "Christianne" - Villain-Gandossi
rather than with him, because I think sincerely Mehmet II was a paedophilic
serial-killer.) Anyway, does a brevet of reliability like this one dispenses
to reconsider a page of an historian when a new contradictory source is
produced ?
Pierre
Pierre Aronax
Stewart, Peter <Peter....@crsrehab.gov.au> a écrit dans le message :
BE9CF8DEAB7ED311B05E...@v003138e.crsrehab.gov.au...
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Stewart, Peter [mailto:Peter....@crsrehab.gov.au]
> > Sent: Wednesday, 18 July 2001 10:48
> > To: GEN-MED...@rootsweb.com
> > Subject: RE: Komnenoi of Trebizond (was: Bagratid- kings of
> > Georgia Part
> > I and II)
> > There are also various ways in which Massarelli and
> > Spandounes can be reconciled, which Ganchou doesn't consider
> > - for instance, Theodora could have been born from an early
> > marriage, a half-sister to Georgios and Eirene and almost a
> > generation older than them. Helena could than have been born
> > to their mother from a subsequent Kantakouzenos husband
> > (Spandounes never names her father as Theodoros, while
> > many widows remarried their dead husband's relatives - the
> > name Kantakouzene (or Cantacusina) is given to Helena, but
> > Spandounes never calls her Palaiologina as well, which he
> > might have done in the 1550s if he thought she was closely
> > connected to that then-resounding name).
>
> I haven't been able to check the dates, but the "discorso" of Theodoros
> Spandounes was written well before the 1550s - an edition was published in
> Italy in 1538 (used by Donald Nicol for his translation) and from memory
> there was an earlier one in Germany.
The "Discorso... dall'origine de' principi Turchi", was probably written
around 1513-1519, and first published in Italian in 1538, as I wrote in my
first post
in this thread.
>
> Spandounes (or Teodoroa Spandugino Cantacusino) was born in exile ca 1470,
> very shortly after the end of the Trapezuntine Komnenoi to whom he was
> related -
He has no relation with Trebizond except by the supposed Empress Hélèna
(which can not be alleged here as testimony, because she is herself in
question). Spandounes was born in exile, and as far as I know there is no
evidence he was ever in contact with people of Trebizond.
> and his mother, of course, was living in the Greek world during
> the events he describes
His mother Eudokia has moved in the West before the fall of Constantinople
in 1453 (cf. the preface of Nicol in his translation of Spandounes), and so
long time before the end of the Empire of Trebizond (1461) and the supposed
dramatic end of her supposed heroïc aunt (1463).
> & no doubt heard about from her and other
> contemporary observers.
There were contemporary, but not contemporary observers of this events.
Pierre
Pierre Aronax
Stewart, Peter <Peter....@crsrehab.gov.au> a écrit dans le message :
BE9CF8DEAB7ED311B05E...@v003138e.crsrehab.gov.au...
<...>
> > Nevertheless, you must admit she is mentioned ONLY by
> > which is probably why it is so difficult to admit she didn't exist.
>
> In which other surviving sources would one expect to find Helena
mentioned?
Firstly in the unpublished genealogy of the Kantakouzenoi quoted by Ganchou,
or in western sources where his husband the Emperor David is well attested.
For the last decades of Byzantium, western sources are probably as
important, and even more, than Greek sources.
> The anonymous continuation of the chronicle of Michael Panaretos often
> neglects to give marriages & other important genealogical information
about
> the Komnenoi, as Ganchou notes, and in any case is silent on events after
> the late 1430s/early 1440s when Spandounes suggests that Helena was living
> in Trebizond.
Nobody says the contrary, and certainly not Ganchou.
>
> > > The idea put forward is that the last emperor David II's
> > > mother Theodora was in fact a daughter of Theodoros
> > > Palaiologos Kantakouzenos,
> >
> > I must precise that it is not only an hypothesis, but an
> > information founded by Mr Ganchou in an unpublished
> > genealogy of the Kantakouzenos family. You didn't
> > mentioned this new source, which is the immediate cause of the
> > revision proposed by Ganchou. This genealogy is only of the
> > 16th century, as is the book of Spandounès, but is very well
> > informed and always concordant with other sources of
> > information, especially where Spandounès is wrong (and
> > he is often).
>
> It isn't the source that is new so much as the use Ganchou makes of it -
> Donald Nicol cited this work by Massarelli in his edition of Spandounes in
> 1997,
Yes, and Ganchou says Nicol did, but if Nicol cited hastily this work, he
didn't use it and didn't take care of its contradictions with the text of
Spandounès. So it was nearly as he didn't know it. And nevertheless, you don
't mention this genealogy when summarizing Ganchou's demonstration, which
makes certainly your summary incomplete on a fundamental point. In
particular, it gives the impression to the reader that the fact that
Théodoros Kantakouzènos was the father of Théodora was only an hypothesis of
Ganchou, which is not. I'm sure you will agree on that point
> and others have used it with reservations cast aside by Ganchou.
Anyway, the source is still unpublished, has not been used except on few
particular points, and so can be regard as new.
> "Other sources of information" on this subject are so scarce that the
value
> of concordance between any two is of very limited assessability:
Massarelli
> could have been right about every other detail & still mistaken on this
> point - ditto (vice a versa) Spandounes.
No, because, as I remark before, Massarelli is better informed than
Spandounès, and Spandounès make many other mistakes of that king. Also, the
work of Massarelli is purely genealogical, and probably based on written
sources, when Spandounès, working only with his familial oral tradition,
wanted to produce a narrative, and so was in need of dramatic situations.
>
<...>
> > Yes, but here there are some arguments which, even if not absolutely
> > convincing in themselves, give some doubts about the version
> > of Spandounès. For example, the Cypriot knight Hugues Busac, also
> > related to the Kantakouzenoi, had a basic stock of information about
> > the family very similar to Spandounès, and he didn't give the name of
> > the Kantakouzèna who was Empress Trebizond or the name of his
> > husband.
>
> As an indicator, this lack of names in Busac is completely neutral between
> Theodora/Alexios and Helena/David as the subjects of his sketchy
reference.
Busac has been used abusively by scholars to confirm Spandounès, and his
text shows also that someone with the same basic information that had
Spandounès (id est, the familial tradition), who was related in a similar
way with the Empress of Trebizond, didn't know her name and the name of her
husband. It is at least an interesting comparison, which was my point here.
>
> > > The conclusion drawn is that David II did not have a second
> > > wife, and that Maria of Gothia was therefore mother of all his
> > > offspring and presumably heroine of the last act in the
> > > Komnenos tragedy (if indeed that can be taken as read).
> >
> > Exact.
> >
> > > However, the chronological problems with this are somewhat
> > > startling, unless the Kantakouzene family were prodigious breeders
> > > and Spandounes was an inveterate, silly fabricator. Theodora
> > > Kantakouzene died on 12 November 1426, and is supposed to
> > > have married Alexios IV of Trebizond in 1395, having at least
> > > three sons and a daughter, all married in the 1420s or 30s.
> >
> > And so probably born at the beginning of the 15th century and
> > not before : princes and princesses of Trebizond were married young.
> > So Théodora was probably herself very young when married in 1395,
> > and can be born in 1380 if not after.
>
> Certainly - but remember that her third son David II was born probably not
> long after 1404, and yet married for the first time (or only time
according
> to Ganchou) in 1429, so the members of his family did not invariably marry
> young.
The princesses were generally married earlier than the princes (that's not
very original), and the case of David could be an exception. I don't have my
notes on Trebizond here, but I don't see why David could not be born after
1404. Anyway, I don't see your argument here : the fact that David married
(with his for me unique wife) lately does not contradict the fact that
princes and princesses of Trebizond were generally married very young, and
so that it seems highly probable that Théodora Kantakouzéna was very young
when marrying Alexios IV, who was heir of the throne (David was not as you
remark yourself next).
> In David's case the succession was not at stake before the late
> 1450s, and his prospects in early life of a grand inheritance were far
from
> outstanding. He would almost certainly not have commanded a highly
eligible
> child bride from Constantinople in the 1420s.
But who says he never did that except Spandounès ? Again, I don't see your
point.
> > > The trouble here is that, if Theodora belonged to the
> > > immediate family in which Ganchou places her, she
> > > had no known siblings of her own age and a
> > > number of juniors who married about twenty years after her
> > > and died in the 1450 or 60s,
> >
> > A perfectly normal age to expire for someone born around the
> > end of the 14th century. I don't see where is the impossibility.
>
> I'm not alleging an impossibility, just reviewing likelihood. The dates
are
> only a loose guide, of course. Amongst the more certain children of
> Theodoros Palaiologos Kantakouzenos (both specified by Massarelli and
> Spandounes), his daughter Eirene was married in 1414 (probably born ca
1400,
> about 20 years after Theodora)
Only if we admit the same age at marriage for the two sisters : being
married in 1395, all we can say is that Theodora was born in 1383 or before.
But Eirènè could perfectly have been married when a little more older.
Anyway, a difference of 20 years is absolutely not impossible in this sort
of extensive brotherhood. I gave a contemporary example in the Palaiologos
dynasty in my previous post.
> and his son Georgios had children married in
> the early 1440s so was himself perhaps married in the mid-1420s,
Or before and without children during some years, or the first children
being died in infancy. The date of marriage of the children of Georgios can
give a terminus ante quem for his own marriage (so before 1425 ca), but it
is certainly not of good method to try to find a terminus post quem in it.
> up to 30
> years after his purported elder sister.
No, I disagree, nothing permits to be so affirmative : he can perfectly have
been married for example in 1420, if not before.
> Of course this is a possible scheme,
> but not an everyday occurrence.
The emperor John VIII married for the first time in 1411. His brother
Demetrios for the first time in 1435, 25 years latter. And here we have two
sons, and sons where married generally at an older age than their sisters :
between an elder sister and a younger brother, the difference would have
been greater. So the scheme doesn't seams to me particularly uncommon in
large Byzantine family.
>
> > Théodoros Kantakouzenos died in 1410, an we know he didn't
> > expire at a "natural" age (he died from a pest) : he can have
> > produced children until the beginning of the 15th century
> > (particularly if, for example, he married more than once).
>
> Certainly - and then he might have had a posthumous child (or twins for
that
> matter) born late in 1410 or in 1411.
It is possible of course, but in my opinion rather more uncommon than more
than two decades between the marriage of a first born and a last born child.
> There are also various ways in which
> Massarelli and Spandounes can be reconciled, which Ganchou doesn't
consider
> - for instance, Theodora could have been born from an early marriage, a
> half-sister to Georgios and Eirene and almost a generation older than
them.
> Helena could than have been born to their mother from a subsequent
All these seems to me highly speculative. Sometimes, it is better to admit
that a source is mistaken than to try absolutely to conciliate contradictory
sources and inventing for that no more than two new marriages and a
mysterious anonymous and unrecorded Kantakouzènos married moreover with the
widow of a relative ! You can not criticise Ganchou to not have consider
such exploratory possibilities.
> Kantakouzenos husband (Spandounes never names her father as Theodoros,
while
> many widows remarried their dead husband's relatives - the name
Kantakouzene
> (or Cantacusina) is given to Helena, but Spandounes never calls her
> Palaiologina as well, which he might have done in the 1550s if he thought
> she was closely connected to that then-resounding name). There would in
this
> case have been no barrier to marriage between Helena and Theodora
> Palaiologina Kantakouzene's son.
> Helena was clearly a good deal younger than
> her siblings named by their relative Spandounes, since she was having
> children into the 1450s. However, scholars have tended to make the
> elementary mis-assumption that she must have been a young bride when she
> married David and therefore that this must have occurred shortly after his
> known marriage to Maria of Gothia in 1429. But there is no particular
reason
> to suppose that Helena wasn't a widow at the time, and married in
Trebizond
> in her mid- to late- 30s. David was not a figure of note to chroniclers
> between 1429 and his accession in April 1460 (if Ganchou is correct on
that,
> which I do not doubt). Spandounes mentions that Georgios Kantakouzenos
> visited his sister Helena in Trebizond between those dates (ca 1440),
Are you sure of that ? I'm not. Could you quote the passage were Spandounès
says Georgios Kantakouzenos visited Trebizond please ? I've not the text
under the hand, but I have only note a visit to his sister Eirene, wife of
the despot of Serbia (who he calls by mistake Helena in that occurrence,
which proves he was not very clear with the first names of his "aunts").
> and
> mistakenly gives her the title of empress at the time, but that is hardly
> compromising to his general veracity, especially when we know so little of
> the Trapezuntine polity during the reigns of David's immediate family.
>
> >
> > > with at least two brothers killed fighting in 1453.
> >
> > One of them was the Great Domestikos, Andronikos Palaiologos
> > Kantakouzenos.
> > It is absolutely not strange for a man who can be born around
> > 1390 or before to have fight in 1453 (he is said by a source to
> > have been "senex" in 1453). If we add that in 1453 he had himself
> > three sons, of whom at list one already married, who themselves
> > fight defending the city, I can see absolutely no chronological
> > absurdity to imagine he was born even before 1390. He would
> > have had less than ten years of difference with his sister
> > Théodora. To give an other example, the Emperor John VIII was
> > born in 1392 and his brother Thomas Palaiologos in 1408, which
> > give us a difference of 16 years; and they were born of the same
> > mother, which was perhaps not the case for the children of
> > Théodoros Kantakouzénos.
>
> Agreed - again, I wasn't trying to suggest impossibility or absurdity
here,
> but rather to look at the pattern of likelihood in Ganchou's
reconstruction.
Which so you agree to find perfectly likely.
>
> > > The probability that Theodora Kantakouzene was perhaps not
> > > of this immediate family, and that she and her son were correctly
> > > not thought to be blood relatives by Spandounes, isn't critically
> > > examined by Ganchou, despite the extraordinary consequences
> > > he derives from her supposed paternity.
> >
> > Of course, because he has a source, the unpublished genealogy of the
> > Kantakouzenoi, which again you omitted to mention, which he
> > judges more reliable than Spandounès, and this genealogy says explicitly
> > she was ! You can discuss of course the reliability of this source
> > compared with Spandounès, but not its existence.
>
> His judgement is somewhat arbitrary on the evidence offered,
Spandounès knows only partly the names of the Kantakouzenoi brothers and
sisters, he makes mistakes about them, he doesn't know the name of their
father. The unpublished genealogy knows the name of ALL those who the recent
research has recognized as children of Theodoros Kantakouzenos (except of
course the problematic Helena...), even those who died young, knows the name
of their father, and gives details on their posterity which are largely
confirmed by other sources. Sorry, but to choose the version of Massarelli
doesn't seems to me an arbitrary judgement.
> and one
> alternative reconciliation of sources - which he negligently doesn't even
> attempt - is suggested above.
As I said before, your reconciliation of the sources implies too many
hypothesis, many more anyway than the theory of Ganchou that Spandounès is
wrong, and so, to use a Byzantin word, his theory is more "economic" than
yours. The word "negligently" is not the right : he doesn't try to reconcile
both sources because it is vain, except if you want to writ a novel.
>
> > > The next problem for his theory is that David II is recorded as
> > > marrying Maria of Gothia in 1429, and yet he had no known adult
> > > offspring in 1461,
> >
> > But, if we exclude Spandounès, he had no know offspring at all...
>
> In which case there would have been a succession crisis in Trebizond after
> his succession to the throne at the age of ca 55 that would have resounded
> throughout Greek & Ottoman spheres in the circumstances.
As you said yourself, we know approximately nothing about the internal
history of the Empire of Trebizond after the end of the continuation of
Panarétos, and in any case the Empire had other crisis than successorial to
manage with at this moment. In fact, I must check but I think now that some
posterity of David II is attested by another source. Anyway, all this is out
of the topic, because the theory of Ganchou doesn't of course implies that
David II had no son, only that this sons were not born from an "Helena
Kantakouzene".
> Where is there even
> the dimmest echo of such a turn?
>
> > > while Spandounes relates that he had young sons who were
> > > killed
By the way, if we admit the story of Spandounes (I don't), only the last son
must have been very young (Spandounès says he was three years old), but not
the seven others, because it was not customary for the Ottomans to execute
young boys, rather to send them with the girls in the harem of the sultan,.
> > > and a daughter taken at tender age into a harem some
> > > years after that, all apparently born in the late 1440s or after -
> > > in other words, his sole wife apparently took a long while
> > > to produce heirs and must then have remained fertile a good
> > > twenty years after her marriage at least.
> >
> > Again, all is based on Spandounès : you have no alternative sources to
> > confirm that, but you have a source who says explicitly that
> > Maria of Gothia was his only wife...
>
> Not as I read the bit of Massarelli I have seen quoted. Can you please
post
> the passage where he says explicitly that David was married only once?
He doesn't mentioned an other wife for him (he says that David "prese per
moglie del signor di Gotthi", cf. Ganchou, p. 220, note 19), and his
information about the grandchildren of Theodoros Kantakouzenos seems
exhaustive. You can of course suppose that David II had a second wife, but
it is not attested by any source, it is not imposed by any chronological
reason, and in any case this virtual second wife was not an Hélèna
Kantakouzènè. So it is an unwarranted useless hypothesis.
>
> > > The alternative preferred by Ganchou is that Spandounes invented
> > > a female relative in Helena, downgrading his own blood
> > > connection to the imperial Komnenoi, and then gave her a brood
> > > of imaginary children who died in ghastly circumstances. If Helena
> > > was supposed by Spandounes, who should have known,
> > > to have the same parents as now attributed to Theodora
> > > (married in 1395 and giving birth not long afterwards), how is it
> > > that she was getting married and having a family after 1429?
> >
> > I don't understand your point here.
>
> Apologies - I was writing in distracted haste, with a plane to catch. I
> think I've covered this more clearly above.
>
> > > However, this latter chronology fits perfectly well with what is
> > > known of the other siblings in the family of Theodoros
> > > Palaiologos Kantakouzenos.
> >
> > Which was certainly why, when searching where to put his "aunt" the
> > Empress in the genealogy of the Emperors of Trebizond, Spandounès
> > decided to attribute her to the last Emperor. But he was wrong.
>
> Not proven - you haven't addressed the real absurdity that I allege in
> Ganchou, of supposing that Spandounes would forget his blood relationship
to
> the last Komnenoi and instead invent a connection by marriage.
A very distant connection in fact, by a Théodora Kantakouzènè who died
around 45 years before Spandounès birth (when her sisters and brothers, more
recently died, where more clearly recorded by the familial memory), and who
probably was not recorded otherwise in the family than as "our aunt the
Empress of Trebizond".
> The
> chronicler was born just after the extirpation of this family, living and
> writing at a time when they loomed very large in the nostalgia of his
> compatriots. Do you seriously think his mother (herself the daughter of a
> woman named Helene Kantakouzene) would have fudged her account of these
> "cousins" so completely that her son was wildly confused, and left to
> extemporise like a clown when some of his readers would have known he was
> making it up? Do you think there were no Trapezuntine exiles alive in
Italy
> knowing about such personages as David II and his widow when his account
was
> published?
I think there must have been very few exiled Trapezuntines in Italy, at
least Trapezuntin courtiers. Do you know any ? I don't. Her mother probably
spoke to Spandounes of "my aunt the Empress", but certainly no more.
Probably the name of his grandmother was an inspiration when Spandounès, 50
years later, when his mother was died and can not give him the name of this
aunt (if she ever know it, which is doubtful), when forging, perhaps
sincerely, the name of this imaginary Empress. Yes, all this seems to me
very coherent.
> Do you think, if the basic events are true, that no-one living in
> Constantinople remembered even the name of that latter-day Antigone
outside
> the city walls in 1463?
You must remember that some years after the conquest, the population of the
City was totally renewed by the Conqueror, and that the Greek elites where
largely beheaded. A very traumatic social context, ideal for the development
of legendary stories (see all the traditions around the "last Emperor" which
appeared shortly after 1453). Perhaps Spandounes, didn't imagine the story,
perhaps it was told to him; and then he recalled he "aunt" of his mother was
empress of Trebizond, and naturally he thought she was the poor Empress of
the story. It was certainly not uncommon to write history in that manner in
the 16th century. It is only an hypothesis of course, to point that to say
the story of Spandounes about the last Empress of Trebizond is not necessary
implying he was a bad intentioned liar.
>
> >
> > > Ganchou tries to pull the chronology towards the clearly
> > > older Theodora as their sister, rather than to a less
> > > notably younger Helena,
> >
> > Yes, because the chronology is rather more difficult with a
> > younger Héléna than with an older Théodora : if we accept
> > the story of Spandounès, Héléna is supposed to have had
> > eight children from David, the last being born in 1460...
> > from a wife who had at least 40 years ! If we refused
> > to admit more than, saying, 10 years between Héléna and
> > the first born of his father (as you refuse to admit in the
> > other way for Théodora in Ganchou' theory), Héléna can
> > not be born after 1400 (his supposed brother Andronikos -
> > who was perhaps not the first born - being probably not
> > born after 1390, otherwise he can not have been said
> > "senex" in 1453 and with three sons in age to be
> > decapitated). So, she would have given his last son to her
> > supposed husband at 50 or more...
>
> As above, Helena could have been born as late as 1411 if she was the
> daughter of Theodoros Palaiologos Kantakouzenos - but this is never stated
> by Spandounes, and would make it pretty unlikely that she was gining birth
> much after ca 1455 anyway. I don't think he was necessarily exact about
the
> age range of her sons.
If you admit he can be wrong on that point, I don't see why you refuse to go
further. If the eighth child of David II was not a little boy in 1463, you
have to explain why he was not executed with his brother. And if you admit
Spandounes has invented this son, I don't see why you are so outraged when
someone says he has also perhaps invented his mother. Anyway, you have
admitted the posterity Spandounes gives to David and the alleged Helena is
not acceptable, and so that something is wrong in his beautiful tall about
the last Empress. That's already a good point.
>
> > > whom he already presumes to be fictitious. The best
> > > evidence he gives
> >
> > No, he gives many other chronological evidences, like the one I resume
> > previously.
>
> I said "the best evidence", not the "only" evidence. The chronology cannot
> be conclusive either way.
If we admit the posterity Spandounes gives to Helena and David, the marriage
become impossible; to save Helena, you have to admit Spandounes wrong about
her posterity. With the other hypothesis, Theodora being the only
Kantakouzene Empress of Trebizond, the chronology doesn't present any
impossibility and the source preferred (Massarelli), does not need any
correction.
>
> > > is that Georgios Sphrantzes, writing in 1451, calls a known
> > > granddaughter of Theodoros "exadelphia" (cousin) to
> > > David II's elder brother Ioannes IV of Trebizond. Anyone
> > > who has studied medieval genealogy will know of similar
> > > vague statements, and will sensibly shrink from writing
> > > off another person's existence on the strength of them.
> >
> > See my previous comment.
> >
> > > Many things are obscure about this period in Trebizond, but
> > > the stark narrative of Spandounes can't be so lightly dismissed
> > > as misleading.
> >
> > Indeed, the more we know about this period, the more we see
> > that Spandounès, who lived all is life in exile an wrote at least
> > 50 years after the facts, is not an absolute reliable sources when
> > he is not confirmed by others, and especially of course when he
> > is in contradiction with other sources which seams more reliable,
> > in which case we are presently.
>
> But Massarelli's credentials, as so far another voice in the semi-dark on
> the subject of the Komnenoi of Trebizond, are not well tested.
There are tested on other points were they appear better than Spandounes,
namely about the genealogy of the Kantakouzenoi, which is at least as
concerned as the Komnenoi of Trebizond by the question of the hypothetical
Empress Hélèna Kantakouene.
> Even if it
> could be proved absolutely that Theodora was the eldest child of Theodoros
> Palaiologos Kantakouzenos,
You have still some doubt on that point ? I don't see why.
> this doesn't preclude Helena from having existed,
> and indeed from having been a half-sister to the siblings claimed for her
by
> Spandounes.
It seems to me very difficult : Spandounès says explicitly she was a
Kantakouzènè, and so certainly believed or wanted to believed her father was
also the father of his own Kantakouzenos great-grandfather. Your hypothesis
of a supposed second marriage of a supposed second wife of Théodoros
Kantakouzenos with a supposed other Kantakouzenos is far to acrobatic for
me.
>
> > > - or melodramatic, for that matter. Similar episodes are
> > > considered to be the stuff of great tragedy in classical literature,
> > > and are hardly less valid if these things took place in medieval
> > > reality. Certainly Spandounes would be a nasty kind of liar
> >
> > More simply someone who had peaces of information and,
> > wanting to produce a comprehensive narrative, complete the
> > mosaic with his imagination. More recent (and some very
> > recent) historians did the same, and were not called
> > liars for that.
>
> What "historian" made up a woman and children supposedly related to him by
> bood, and then narrated a tragic fate for them that was equally bogus?
For example, many episodes narrated by contemporary historians and witness
about the fall of Constantinople are now recognized as literary ornamenting.
Being historian in the 16th century was a literary activity, not a
scientific one.
> And
> then published the account for all the Greek world to see was a false
> witness he had given....
I doubt anybody in the Greek world had still some memory around 1538 of what
was the end of the Megaloi Komnénoi, at least in the Greek world who can
read the text of Spandounès, namely the exiled community in the West, which
was from other part of the ancient Byzantine territories.
>
> >
> > > to have invented or twisted such a story about his own
> > > family,
> >
> > In fact of rewriting familial history, we have seen more strange things.
>
> Not in remotely similar circumstances.
See above.
>
> >
> > > and the idea that he was genuinely in such gross error about things
> > > that took place a few years before his own birth
> >
> > But half a century after he began to write. That the facts
> > happen little before his birth is of little significance : his relatives
> > had left Byzantium since many years when the fall of Trebizond
> > happen
>
> Again, we are not talking about small discrepancies, but wholesale fiction
> if Ganchou is even nearly correct. Spandounes is in fact a very
> conscientious historian on earlier events by the standards of his time,
and
> the proven mistakes in his record are comparatively minor.
Again, he can have twisted the fact partly sincerely, and he would not been
the first historian of his time to do that. That's way there is something
called historical critic.
>
> >
> > > is simply preposterous.
> >
> > I can not agree with this condescending statement, which I
> > found laughable from someone who has discovered the
> > question yesterday.
>
> Not the question, just Ganchou's treatment of it
The question is the contradiction between Spandounès and a source that
Ganchou considers more reliable than Spandounès. I don't think you were
aware of that before. So I maintain what I wrote.
- so much for condescension
> in this exchange. Helena has been to a degree passed over by others who
> demand sources closer to time & events than Spandounes, including the
> *Prosopographisches Lexikon der Palaiologenzeit*,
Here we have a very bad argument. The PLP wants to list all characters of
the Byzantine History of the Palaiologan period mentioned IN GREEK SOURCES.
So, for the PLP, "Héléna Kantakouzèna" doesn't exists because she is not
mentioned in any Greek source ("et pour cause" as says Ganchou). But the PLP
had not to examine the reliability of the only testimony about her, which is
Spandounès, an Italian source : it was not part of its project. That is only
incidentally, in the notice of her supposed husband and relatives, that she
is mentioned, not on the ground of a source which would have been considered
reliable by the author of the PLP, but only because it was something
traditionally alleged by the historiography. In no way the PLP can be allege
as a witness in favour of the reliability of Spandounès in the recent
bibliography : again, it was not part of its project.
> but no-one has yet
> examined the question on legitimate grounds of whether or not she even
> existed.
Now someone has, with good arguments.
> If you will kindly think what is being implicitly alleged, on
> slender & contentious evidence, against Spandounes as a man and family
> member, much less as an historian,
Spandounes is dead now. We don't care if he was a good or a bad man, We don'
t want to make him a process for forgery, and I think he has no need of a
chivalrous advocate. We only need to understood how he wrote his work, to
know how far it is reliable. I wrote from memory, without sources except his
familial oral tradition, and with the intention not only to rapport the
fact, but also to distract his lectors. His text must not be considered with
a religious deference, but can perfectly be questioned and compare with
other testimonies. Sorry, I can not understand your sentimentality on that
point.
> I can't see what is laughable about
> calling Ganchou's half-baked article preposterous.
> If he wishes to carry his
> argument, he will have to do a much more thorough and professional job of
> it.
Sorry again, but Ganchou, one of the most brilliant young French
byzantinists, which has certainly no need of your methodological advices.
His article is well written and above all very well informed, as anybody,
even with a very little knowledge of French, can see only by the impressive
bibliography mentioned in the footnotes. He produces new evidences, and is
demonstration is very convincing. You can disagree with his conclusions of
course and I found your objections sometimes very interesting, but I don't
understand why, here and at the beginning and the end of your previous post,
you choose to make use of a such sententious tone.
Pierre
Ryan
communication is very rude. This has nothing to do "with you know better".
Do you really think that someone like Charles, with the nickname The Fat,
would have like it to be called so? Sometimes names are given by historians
to people or to a dynasty (like the Plantagenet dynasty), but in this case,
records shows that these people called themselve Megas Komnenoi and Megale
Komnena. And because one greek, living in 2001, is saying that these names
are not correct, everybody else is incorrect, including the dead people who
called themselve so?
Come on, use your academic level and try to communicate that way.
Ryan
----- Original Message -----
From: "omega" <om...@thoroughbreds.com.au>
To: <GEN-MED...@rootsweb.com>
Sent: Wednesday, July 18, 2001 4:05 AM
Subject: Re: Komnenoi of Trebizond (was: Bagratid- kings of Georgia Part I
and II)
> > And indeed insulted by themselves, in the unimaginable event that Dr
> > Tsambourakis actually knew what he was writing about, since almost all
the
> > known descendants of the Byzantine emperor Andronikos I's grandson
Alexios
> I
> > of Trebizond surnamed themselves either Megas Komnenos (masculine) or
> Megale
> > Komnene (feminine) from 1204, when the style was first adopted, until
1461
> > when the remnant Trapezuntine "empire" finally succumbed to Sultan
Mehmed
> > II. Apart from surviving coins, seals, documents and works of art, there
> is
> > a very large scholarly literature to substantiate this.
>
> You don't know what your are talking about.
>
> Megas is a special word that translates most of the time as "great" if it
is
> placed ahead of the name (Prefix).
> Megale is the feminine form or Megalos (Megalos - Megale - Megalon). It
> translates to: Big in size, Old, Grown up or Large in size. The position
of
> the word in a sentence and the sentence itself are important.
>
> Megale Komninnos, means the old Komninos, Anna megale komninos, means
Anna
> "the grown up" Komninos.
> Anna "E megale" Komninos, and "E megale" Anna Komninos both mean, Anna
"The
> Great", Komninos.
> In both cases the "The great" refers to Anna and not to Komninos.
>
> But of course, you know better.
>
>
Ford Mommaerts-Meulemans-Browne
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ryan" <ry...@chello.nl>
To: <GEN-MED...@rootsweb.com>
Sent: Wednesday, 18 July, 2001 11:04 AM
Subject: Re: Komnenoi of Trebizond (was: Bagratid- kings of Georgia Part I
and II)
> Do you really think that someone like Charles, with the nickname The Fat,
> would have like it to be called so?
Ryan,
Thanks again for your citing of that fabulous website.
You raise an issue here that I had wanted to raise myself. A foster brother
of mine, (the linguist I've mentioned before), got me hooked on collecting
sobriquets. His favorites are: 'Hugh, the lazy-assed youth'; 'Theophylact,
the Unbearable'; and 'Eystein the Fart'. Mine are: 'Ethelraed, the
Unadvised'; and 'Ashot, the Carniverous'. Are there any outlandish, unusual
or colourful ones that can be added?
Pierre Aronax
Ryan <ry...@chello.nl> a écrit dans le message :
005f01c10fa3$5a7e5840$a99e...@a2000.nl...
> I must say, that for someone with a academic level, <...>
By the way, in what precisely is Dr Omega doctor ? History ? Medicine ?
Pierre
D. Spencer Hines
--
D. Spencer Hines
Lux et Veritas et Libertas
"Thrice they tried to pile Ossa on Pelion, yes, and roll up leafy
Olympus upon Ossa; thrice the Father of Heaven split the mountains apart
with his thunderbolt." Publius Vergilius Maro [Vergil] (70-19 B.C.),
Georgics, I, l. 281.
All replies to the newsgroup please. Thank you kindly.
All original material contained herein is copyright and property of the
author. It may be quoted only in discussions on this forum and with an
attribution to the author, unless permission is otherwise expressly
given, in writing.
Vires et Honor
"Pierre Aronax" <pierre...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:9j4ikf$s52$1...@front1m.grolier.fr...
GRHa...@cs.com
smo...@peoplepc.com writes:
> 'Eystein the Fart
This in old Norse means Eystein the Quick, as I have been informed. He was
the ancestor of many Scottish families.
Gordon Reid Hale
Ryan
----- Original Message -----
From: "Pierre Aronax" <pierre...@hotmail.com>
To: <GEN-MED...@rootsweb.com>
Clagett, Brice
Burke, 15th-century Lord of Clanricarde.
Chris Bennett
Ford Mommaerts-Meulemans-Browne <smo...@peoplepc.com> wrote in message
news:007c01c10fb3$cc90f860$0b4a0404@hppav...
I always liked Boniak the Mangy, a khan of the Cumans -- Chris
Arthur Murata
--- Ford Mommaerts-Meulemans-Browne <smo...@peoplepc.com>
wrote:
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail
http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/
D. Spencer Hines
Aethelred 'The Unready'.
Enrique IV 'The Impotent'
----
D. Spencer Hines
Lux et Veritas et Libertas
"Thrice they tried to pile Ossa on Pelion, yes, and roll up leafy
Olympus upon Ossa; thrice the Father of Heaven split the mountains apart
with his thunderbolt." Publius Vergilius Maro [Vergil] (70-19 B.C.),
Georgics, I, l. 281.
All replies to the newsgroup please. Thank you kindly.
All original material contained herein is copyright and property of the
author. It may be quoted only in discussions on this forum and with an
attribution to the author, unless permission is otherwise expressly
given, in writing.
Vires et Honor
"Ford Mommaerts-Meulemans-Browne" <smo...@peoplepc.com> wrote in
message news:007c01c10fb3$cc90f860$0b4a0404@hppav...
|
|
Pierre Aronax
omega <om...@thoroughbreds.com.au> a écrit dans le message :
e9657.12$0b5...@vic.nntp.telstra.net...
<...>
> Megas is a special word that translates most of the time as "great" if it
is
> placed ahead of the name (Prefix).
> Megale is the feminine form or Megalos (Megalos - Megale - Megalon).
<...>
Hmm... And what is for you the feminine form of Megas :)
Pierre
Jim Miller
Aethelred's sobriquet was originally Unraed or something like that. It
turned out to be a pun because the sobriquet meant "no counsel" and
Aethelred's name supposedly meant "noble cousel." Funny, if true.
In the 1400's and 1500's, one of my Dutch families gradually assumed the
surname of Slecht, which can be translated as bad, evil, naughty, of low or
common origin, etc. Looking through court records, it seems that they earned
the name very well...
-Jim Miller
Arthur Murata
that is any kind of a direct translation, it would suggest
the "fart" name. On the other hand, the "noisy" might
simply be a particular author's attempt to use a euphemism
so as not to offend readers. Bronwen Edwards
Stewart, Peter
> From: Ryan [mailto:ry...@chello.nl]
> Sent: Thursday, 19 July 2001 2:05
> To: GEN-MED...@rootsweb.com
> Subject: Re: Komnenoi of Trebizond (was: Bagratid- kings of
> Georgia Part
> I and II)
>
> And because one greek, living in 2001, is saying that these
> names are not correct, everybody else is incorrect, including the
> dead people who called themselve so?
You have diametrically misread my remarks & the post which prompted them -
it is Dr Tsambourakis who contradicted the dead. And this on a point that he
has stubbornly maintained over time, with absolutely no atempt to provide
supporting evidence, against the overwhelming body of facts pointed out to
him with extraordinary patience by Pierre Aronax, an expert in the field,
and others.
If you or he wish to dispute this further, I suggest that you first open an
edition of Chaucer and note how different his English usage from that of
today. Then consider that he was writing towards the end of the Byzantine
era, but in a culture that has not been overturned between his time and ours
by conquest and long, alienating subjection. Then try to project the insight
you have gained towards the Byzantine Greeks vis a vis the Hellenic peoples
in Greece, Cyprus and the diaspora at present. Chaucer lived in the
afterglow of Norman cultural hegemony in England - the Byzantines looked
back and saw themselves as Roman cultural & political successors. So why on
earth should the modern Athenian be considered a natural authority on the
question of their naming practice? Or treated with polite respect when,
after having his misconseptions put right time & again, he still shows
himself to be a persistent fool, insensitive to rejoinders that would
stagger a dead ox?
Peter Stewart
Stewart, Peter
> > From: Ryan [mailto:ry...@chello.nl]
> > Sent: Thursday, 19 July 2001 2:05
> > To: GEN-MED...@rootsweb.com
> > Subject: Re: Komnenoi of Trebizond (was: Bagratid- kings of
> > Georgia Part
> > I and II)
> >
> > <snip>
> > And because one greek, living in 2001, is saying that these
> > names are not correct, everybody else is incorrect, including the
> > dead people who called themselve so?
>
I do beg your pardon - it is I who misread in this instance, since I
supposed you were calling me "rude" - I didn't think this applied to Dr
Tsambourakis, who whatever his faults as a medievalist is usually
well-mannered enough.
Peter Stewart
Martin Reboul
> Ivar 'The Boneless'.
>
> Aethelred 'The Unready'.
>
> Enrique IV 'The Impotent'
>
> D. Spencer Hines 'The Anally Obsessed'
And Peter Nyikos 'The Confused and Self Righteous'
..............?
GRHa...@cs.com
martin...@virgin.net writes:
> D. Spencer Hines 'The Anally Obsessed'
>
>
Someone beat me to it. Gosh darn.
Gordon Reid Hale
Albert B. Bach
"lacking counsel."
And yes, Athel, is a name element meaning noble, from Old German Adal.
(Edelstahl is the modern German for steel. The edel meaning pure.)
Rad, means counsel, and in Old English was Raed. (A Rathaus is a city
hall in German.)
jpmi...@rochester.rr.com (Jim Miller) wrote in message news:<012001c10fcf$6162db00$0b43...@rochester.rr.com>...
Bill Kent
: Ivar 'The Boneless'.
: Aethelred 'The Unready'.
: Enrique IV 'The Impotent'
: ----
As an undergraduate research assistant entering data from notecards
into the computer I came across a "William le F*cker" from (IIRC)
Wessex. By far the most memorable moment of that project.
: "Ford Mommaerts-Meulemans-Browne" <smo...@peoplepc.com> wrote in
: message news:007c01c10fb3$cc90f860$0b4a0404@hppav...
: |
: | ----- Original Message -----
: | From: "Ryan" <ry...@chello.nl>
: | To: <GEN-MED...@rootsweb.com>
: | Sent: Wednesday, 18 July, 2001 11:04 AM
: | Subject: Re: Komnenoi of Trebizond (was: Bagratid- kings of Georgia
: Part I
: | and II)
: |
: | > Do you really think that someone like Charles, with the nickname The
: Fat,
: | > would have like it to be called so?
: |
: | Ryan,
: |
: | Thanks again for your citing of that fabulous website.
: |
: | You raise an issue here that I had wanted to raise myself. A foster
: brother
: | of mine, (the linguist I've mentioned before), got me hooked on
: collecting
: | sobriquets. His favorites are: 'Hugh, the lazy-assed youth';
: 'Theophylact,
: | the Unbearable'; and 'Eystein the Fart'. Mine are: 'Ethelraed, the
: | Unadvised'; and 'Ashot, the Carniverous'. Are there any outlandish,
: unusual
: | or colourful ones that can be added?
--
Bill Kent
bill...@mail.com
http://www.cif.rochester.edu/~wildcat
Brian M. Scott
>D. Spencer Hines <D._Spence...@aya.yale.edu> wrote:
>: Ivar 'The Boneless'.
>: Aethelred 'The Unready'.
Inaccurate translation; <unræd> is 'folly'.
>: Enrique IV 'The Impotent'
>: ----
>As an undergraduate research assistant entering data from notecards
>into the computer I came across a "William le F*cker" from (IIRC)
>Wessex. By far the most memorable moment of that project.
Much nicer than <Godwin clawecuncte> 1066 (the last <c> is a scribal
error) or <Robert Clevecunt> 1302, though.
Actually, I'm a little surprised to see the article, since <Fucker> is
entirely possible as a variant of the personal name <Fulcher>; <le>
may be a scribal error, especially since the earliest recorded
occurrence of <fuck> is from about 1503.
Brian
GRHa...@cs.com
sc...@math.csuohio.edu writes:
> Aethelred 'The Unready'.
>
>
Shouldn't this mean the "uncounseled"?
Gordon Hale
Bill Kent
: On 19 Jul 2001 18:39:35 GMT, Bill Kent<bill...@mail.com> wrote:
:>As an undergraduate research assistant entering data from notecards
:>into the computer I came across a "William le F*cker" from (IIRC)
:>Wessex. By far the most memorable moment of that project.
: Much nicer than <Godwin clawecuncte> 1066 (the last <c> is a scribal
: error) or <Robert Clevecunt> 1302, though.
Perhaps. Maybe he was just less gifted than Robert?
: Actually, I'm a little surprised to see the article, since <Fucker> is
: entirely possible as a variant of the personal name <Fulcher>; <le>
: may be a scribal error, especially since the earliest recorded
: occurrence of <fuck> is from about 1503.
Our resident expert on such matters suggested that possibility after
we all had a good laugh. The entry in question dated late enough
(mid 16th C.) but there were other indicators that argued for the
possibility you suggest (apparently the particular rolls the entries
came from have been noted for a notoriously high rate of scribal errors).
It wasn't important enough to pursue farther, and besides the ambiguity
is much more fun :)
Tony Jebson
> >: Aethelred 'The Unready'.
>
> Inaccurate translation; <unræd> is 'folly'.
Hmm . . . the translation of hisname I prefer is:
"Good Counsel, Ill Advised"
--- Tony Jebson
A Tsar Is Born
brother
> of mine, (the linguist I've mentioned before), got me hooked on collecting
> sobriquets. His favorites are: 'Hugh, the lazy-assed youth';
'Theophylact,
> the Unbearable'; and 'Eystein the Fart'. Mine are: 'Ethelraed, the
> Unadvised'; and 'Ashot, the Carniverous'. Are there any outlandish,
unusual
> or colourful ones that can be added?
My favorites:
Thorgrim the Lecherous (in an Icelandic Saga footnote, making me think -- as
all these things do -- there must be one hell of a story behind that one)
Pedro IV the Ceremonious (also "He of the Knife"), King of Aragon, Count of
Catalunya (as Pere III)
(I know the stories behind these nicks, actually)
Charles III the Simple of France (He didn't deserve this, but ....)
Ivan IV the Dread (usually mistranslated the Terrible)
Malcolm IV the Maiden
John Lackland and Softsword (pretty evocative, eh?)
Valdemar IV "Anotherday" ("Atterdag" -- this one's a great story)
Charles the Bad (thoroughly deserved) of Navarre
William the Bad (undeserved) of Sicily
Frederick II Wonder-of-the-World, Emperor
Constantine V Shits-on-himself
(a great emperor, hated by the monks who invented the nickname)
Basil II Slayer-of-the-Bulgars
Bayezid Lightningbolt
Margaret Pocket-Mouth, Duchess of Carinthia, Countess of Tyrol
Carlos II the Bewitched
... well, one could go on ....
Jean Coeur de Lapin
atsar...@hotmail.com
Stewart, Peter
> From: A Tsar Is Born [mailto:ench...@herodotus.com]
> Sent: Friday, 20 July 2001 15:17
> To: GEN-MED...@rootsweb.com
> Subject: Re: Sobriquets
>
> <snip>
>
> John Lackland and Softsword (pretty evocative, eh?)
His elder brother Richard, before he was ever called Lionheart, was known in
Languedoc as "Oc-e-Ne" (Yes-and-No). Pace Spencer Hines & others as to his
sexuality, also evocative.
<snip>
>
> Frederick II Wonder-of-the-World, Emperor
I don't know that this was a popular label - he was described in writing
once as "stupor mundi et immutator mirabilis" (the astonishment of the world
and worker of marvels), but I doubt whether this caught on in the vernacular
for his subjects.
Peter Stewart
RMe...@aol.com
ench...@herodotus.com writes:
<< Charles the Bad (thoroughly deserved) of Navarre
William the Bad (undeserved) of Sicily
>>
Why do you say undeserved for Charles and William?
I would like to add another, there is a Harald Barelegs of Norway
Loyaulte Me Lie,
Rania
RMe...@aol.com
daughter Margaret of Norway was Queen of Scotland for a little while and
then he married Isabella Bruce (Robert the Bruce's sister).
Loyaulte Me Lie,
Rania
Ford Mommaerts-Meulemans-Browne
I think that you are conflating two here: Magnus barefoot & Harald
hairy-britches.
Albert B. Bach
Bavaria.
Emperor Constantine V Copronymus, son of Leo III the Isaruian. From a
Numismatics site: "Branded with arguably the worst moniker in history,
Copronymous ("Name of Shit") for having supposedly defecated whilst
being baptized."
Clearly not as romantic as, say, Tadg an Eich Gil mac Cathail, aka
Tadg "of the Bright Steed," King of Connacht.
Nathaniel Taylor
(Ford Mommaerts-Meulemans-Browne) wrote:
> ... Magnus barefoot & Harald hairy-britches.
And, from Septimania, we have
Guifred Pilosus, 'the Hairy' ("...because he was hairy in places not
normally so in men..." [-- 12th-century _Gesta comitum barcinonensium_])
and of course
Bernard Plantapilosa, most commonly rendered 'hairy-foot', to the delight
of Hobbit enthusiasts.
Nat Taylor
RMe...@aol.com
smo...@peoplepc.com writes:
<< I think that you are conflating two here: Magnus barefoot & Harald
hairy-britches.
>>
Well the translation I saw was Magnus (thanks for correcting that) Barelegs.
I dont remember Harald Hairy-britches at all.
Loyaulte Me Lie,
Rania
Nathaniel Taylor
<BE9CF8DEAB7ED311B05E...@v003138e.crsrehab.gov.au>,
Peter....@crsrehab.gov.au (Stewart, Peter) wrote:
>> From: A Tsar Is Born [mailto:ench...@herodotus.com]
>>
>> John Lackland and Softsword (pretty evocative, eh?)
>
>His elder brother Richard, before he was ever called Lionheart, was known in
>Languedoc as "Oc-e-Ne" (Yes-and-No). Pace Spencer Hines & others as to his
>sexuality, also evocative.
Yes, this is in the envoi to Bertran de Born's ripping ode to carnage,
"Be'm platz lo gais temps de Pascor"; but it may have been for their
brother the Young King. As with 'stupor mundi', I'm not sure how widely
used this would have been.
Nat Taylor
The...@aol.com
Hello Nat, Ford, Rania, Jean et al.,
If I might add to the ongoing case of name-calling,
..1. Malcolm 'Ceann-mor' [typically 'Canmore'] = Malcolm the Great-Head
[presumably a physical commentary, not philosophical - ?]
..2. Vladimir 'Monomakh' = supposedly, Vladimir the One-Eyed [this is
based on
a derivation from the Greek, <monomachos> : by way of which, does this
alleged gentleman have a proven descent, e.g. as grandson, from the
Emperor
Constantine 'Monomachos' ?
..3. Thorfinn 'Skull-splitter', Jarl of the Orkneys [d.ca. 954] = no
explanation needed..
For those looking for colorful names, our Norse ancestors were great
resources; in the Orkneyinga Saga, we find besides Thorfinn above,
....Havard the Fecund, a son of Jarl Thorfinn above
....his nephew, Einar Buttered-Bread
....Einar's cousin and eventual murderer, Einar Hard-Mouth
And a cast of interestingly-named [and usually short-lived] thousands.
Good luck, and good hunting to all.
John
Jim Miller
by her marriage to Pepin the short). Not exactly a sobriquet, but one of my
ancestors, Alexander Stewart (son of Robert II, King of Scots) was called
"the wolf of Badenoch."
-Jim Miller
----- Original Message -----
> John Lackland and Softsword (pretty evocative, eh?)
>
> Valdemar IV "Anotherday" ("Atterdag" -- this one's a great story)
>
> Charles the Bad (thoroughly deserved) of Navarre
>
> William the Bad (undeserved) of Sicily
>
Chris & Tom Tinney, Sr.
in understanding attitudes, population physical
characteristics, medical conditions, regional crop
or animal populations and geographic designations.
----------------------------------------------
Phil Moody
I dont remember Harald Hairy-britches at all.
PLM: I don't recall seeing such a critter either but I do know of a Ragnar
Lodbrok (Hairy-britches). This brings to mind his son Sigurd Worm-eye or
Snake-eye
Earl Hákon "the Great" (d. 995) of Norway, was known as "inn Riki" which
means The Powerful or Mighty; there being no word "Great" in Old Norse.
Hákon inn Riki was also known as "Hákon inn illi" by his enemies, which
translates to "Hákon the evil" in Old Norse. It is not uncommon for someone
to have more than one epithet; just as William (I) was known as William the
Bastard by his enemies and William the Conqueror by his admirers. This seems
like a perfectly natural phenomenon to me.
I would like to mention something I find interesting and this is the fact
that some Norse forename have meanings in themselves. For instance, Steinn,
grjót, hallr, and berg, are all synonyms of Stone or Rock in Old Norse and
naturally has a bearing in relation to a prefix or suffix in any given Norse
name.
An ancestor of Earl Hákon inn Riki is said to be Grjótgardr and this name
translates to Rock-wall in Old Norse. The name Hákon also has a meaning
which is derived thus; há (high) + konr (man) = high-man = nobleman.
I have virtually no knowledge of Old Norse but I have received this
information from an authority on the subject who I have been in
correspondence with; so I have no doubt about its validity.
I just thought I would provide you with this interesting facet of
Scandinavia:-)
Cheers,
Phil
-----Original Message-----
From: RMe...@aol.com [mailto:RMe...@aol.com]
Sent: Friday, July 20, 2001 7:32 AM
To: GEN-MED...@rootsweb.com
Subject: Re: Sobriquets
Arthur Murata
Breeks and we should not forget the Berengar ancestor,
Wilfredo the Hairy! Best, Bronwen
Arthur Murata
D. Spencer Hines
carrier ---- where they are briefed, counselled or prepared for a
forthcoming mission.
So, Aethlred The Redeless or Aethelred The Unready.
----
D. Spencer Hines
Lux et Veritas et Libertas
"Thrice they tried to pile Ossa on Pelion, yes, and roll up leafy
Olympus upon Ossa; thrice the Father of Heaven split the mountains apart
with his thunderbolt." Publius Vergilius Maro [Vergil] (70-19 B.C.),
Georgics, I, l. 281.
All replies to the newsgroup please. Thank you kindly.
All original material contained herein is copyright and property of the
author. It may be quoted only in discussions on this forum and with an
attribution to the author, unless permission is otherwise expressly
given, in writing.
Vires et Honor
"Albert B. Bach" <postal...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:3a69c867.01071...@posting.google.com...
| Indeed, I have, for Athelred, another, being "Rćd-less" meaning
Ford Mommaerts-Meulemans-Browne
Respectfully & with all the best wishes,
Ford Mommaerts
----- Original Message -----
From: "Phil Moody" <moody...@prodigy.net>
To: <GEN-MED...@rootsweb.com>
Sent: Friday, 20 July, 2001 12:35 PM
Subject: RE: Sobriquets
> Rania wrote:
> I dont remember Harald Hairy-britches at all.
>
> PLM: I don't recall seeing such a critter either but I do know of a Ragnar
> Lodbrok (Hairy-britches).
Yes, that is who I meant.
> This brings to mind his son Sigurd Worm-eye or
> Snake-eye
whom I was going to mention because sometimes it is rendered 'snot-eye' or
'snot-in-eye'.
The rest of the note, which I snipped for purposes of those who pay by the
minute, mention actual names rather that sobriquets. Native Americans have
many rich examples. I used to have a customer whose family name is 'Brings
Back Her Man'.
William Addams Reitwiesner
>
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Ryan" <ry...@chello.nl>
>To: <GEN-MED...@rootsweb.com>
>Sent: Wednesday, 18 July, 2001 11:04 AM
>Subject: Re: Komnenoi of Trebizond (was: Bagratid- kings of Georgia Part I
>and II)
>
>
>
>> Do you really think that someone like Charles, with the nickname The Fat,
>> would have like it to be called so?
>
>Ryan,
>
>Thanks again for your citing of that fabulous website.
>
>You raise an issue here that I had wanted to raise myself. A foster brother
>of mine, (the linguist I've mentioned before), got me hooked on collecting
>sobriquets. His favorites are: 'Hugh, the lazy-assed youth'; 'Theophylact,
>the Unbearable'; and 'Eystein the Fart'. Mine are: 'Ethelraed, the
>Unadvised'; and 'Ashot, the Carniverous'. Are there any outlandish, unusual
>or colourful ones that can be added?
See Wladyslaw, King of Poland (d. 1333) whose sobriquet in Polish was
"Lokietek", translated into German as "Ellenbogen". In English this would
be "Elbow". Apparently he was really short, and only came up to the elbow
of a person of normal height.
William Addams Reitwiesner
wr...@erols.com
Renia
Translated as Wladyslaw the Elbow-High. At the time, the lokiec (elbow's
length)
was a unit of measurement. Before Wladylaw, was Boleslaw the Wrymouth,
because of
his crooked jaw.
Renia
Brant Gibbard
Mommaerts-Meulemans-Browne) wrote:
>Thanks again for your citing of that fabulous website.
>
>You raise an issue here that I had wanted to raise myself. A foster brother
>of mine, (the linguist I've mentioned before), got me hooked on collecting
>sobriquets. His favorites are: 'Hugh, the lazy-assed youth'; 'Theophylact,
>the Unbearable'; and 'Eystein the Fart'. Mine are: 'Ethelraed, the
>Unadvised'; and 'Ashot, the Carniverous'. Are there any outlandish, unusual
>or colourful ones that can be added?
"Svyatopulk the Accursed", which seems to me to be a bit redundant when
your real name is that horrible to begin with!
Brant Gibbard
bgib...@inforamp.net
http://home.inforamp.net/~bgibbard/gen
Toronto, ON
A Tsar Is Born
<RMe...@aol.com> wrote in message news:126.1b0262...@aol.com...
I did not say undeserved for Charles, Rania. You must learn to read.
J c de l
P A MagLOCHLAINN
Macaomh Tóinleasg. His name is correctly translated into English as "Hugh,
the lazy-arsed youth" - NOT "Hugh the lazy-assed youth". The reference is
to Aodh's backside, not to his donkey. I know that prudish Americans get
these things arse-about-face, but in the interests of clarity I suggest we
stay with the English usage here.
Irish speakers have traditionally been more explicit in their usage, hence
the use of the "impolite" word Tón (Arse) in such a well-known placename as
Tanderagee (Tón le Gaoth - literally Arse to the Wind, so named because the
local topology resembles a cow with its backside to the wind). Tanderagee
is the name of several places up and down Ireland, the best known being a
respectable small town in County Armagh.
It reminds me of the attempt to censor the word "maidenhead" from a
Shakespearian production on BBC radio, an attempt scotched by the retort
that "Maidenhead was a town in the Home Counties in which tens of thousands
of people have contrived to live for years without the slightest sign of
embarrassment!"
Aedh Ó Néill was given this nick-name by his irritated neighbours because he
seemed hardly ever to stop one thing before beginning the next. In other
words, he was anything BUT lazy-arsed! (Compare this with Robin Hood's
giant follower, who was immediately dubbed Little John).
Yours cordially,
P A MagLOCHLAINN
in Belfast, Northern Ireland
====================
Ford Mommaerts-Meulemans-Browne wrote in message
<007c01c10fb3$cc90f860$0b4a0404@hppav>...
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Ryan" <ry...@chello.nl>
>To: <GEN-MED...@rootsweb.com>
>Sent: Wednesday, 18 July, 2001 11:04 AM
>Subject: Re: Komnenoi of Trebizond (was: Bagratid- kings of Georgia Part I
>and II)
>> Do you really think that someone like Charles, with the nickname The Fat,
>> would have like it to be called so?
>Ryan,
>Thanks again for your citing of that fabulous website.
>
>You raise an issue here that I had wanted to raise myself. A foster
brother
>of mine, (the linguist I've mentioned before), got me hooked on collecting
>sobriquets. His favorites are: 'Hugh, the lazy-assed youth';
'Theophylact,
>the Unbearable'; and 'Eystein the Fart'. Mine are: 'Ethelraed, the
>Unadvised'; and 'Ashot, the Carniverous'. Are there any outlandish,
unusual
>or colourful ones that can be added?
=============
Chris Bennett
P A MagLOCHLAINN <magloc...@dnet.co.uk> wrote in message
news:3b86e24f$1...@ni-news.utvinternet.com...
> You have recorded one of these nicknames inaccurately, viz Aedh (Ó Néill)
an
> Macaomh Tóinleasg. His name is correctly translated into English as
"Hugh,
> the lazy-arsed youth" - NOT "Hugh the lazy-assed youth". The reference is
> to Aodh's backside, not to his donkey. I know that prudish Americans get
> these things arse-about-face, but in the interests of clarity I suggest we
> stay with the English usage here.
Its not American prudishness, its American English. In 20 years of living
in the US I have never heard the term "arse" from an American, prude or
otherwise. Cf. buns/bum. Or the differing anatomies of a fanny.
Chris
Todd A. Farmerie
>
> I know that prudish Americans get
> these things arse-about-face, but in the interests of clarity I suggest we
> stay with the English usage here.
Clarity? I suspect 90% of Americans would just give you a
puzzled blank look if you said "arse-about-face" to them. Of the
remainder, 9% would burst out laughing at you, just for being so
obviously Brit, but still wouldn't quite know what you were
saying. Now were you to say ass-backwards (or to censor it,
bass-ackwards) they would certainly know you were not talking
about the retrograde motion of an equid.
taf
Janet Ariciu
or if they are right.
Wrights in the Mist"
Robert Wright (1501-1594)
II.. .Robert Wright of Plowland, Welwick Parish ,Holderness, Yorkshire,
England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth II, the Protestant Queen.
Robert became Sheriff of Yorkshire and was granted Arms by patent under the
hand and seal of William Flower, Norroy.
b 1501 Ploughland Hall d 1594 Plowland , buried in Welwick,
probably in St Mary's
m 1) 1526
spouse: Anne Grimston/e d/o Thomas Grimstone fr Grimstone Garth,
Yorkshire, and Ursula Podation
issue: 3 children
a. WILLIAM WRIGHT (1523-1621) m Ann Thornton
...............(our line)
b Martha Wright
c Anne Wright
m2) abt 1567 Ursula Rudstone,
d/o Nicholas Rudstone of Hayton (near Pocklington) and Jane Mallory
Robert and Ursula were devout catholics and had spent 14 years in Hull
prison in York. Ursula had died in prison.
issue: 5 children
a. John (Jack) Wright of Twigsmore, (1568-1605) at Holbeche
House, Staffordshire m Dorothy ( involved in GunPowder Plot) Shot,
buried, dug up, beheaded and head hung on gates of London
b. Christopher (Kit) Wright(1570-1605) at Holbeche House,
Staffordshire , m Margaret Ward of Mulwith and had issue................
(involved in GunPowder Plot) Shot, buried, dugup, beheaded and head hung
on
gates of London.
c Ursula Wright m 1) John Constable
m2 )Marmaduke Ward
d Alice Wright m 1593 Wm Readshaw
e Martha Wright m 1599 Thomas Percy., one of the
conspirators also killed at Holbeche House during the fight.
sources:
Anne Reed Ritchie, Wright-Washington book.
"The Commoners of Great Britain and Ireland" by John Burke, Vol II p 678,
Vol III pgs 70 72 available Orlando FL library
Bulmer's 1892 History and Directory of East Yorkshire Available Orlando
FL Library
"Historic Peerage of England" John Burke 1857m1882 reprint 1914 Viscontry,
Vide Verykab oo 832 833. Available Orlando FL Library
III. William Wright of Plowland in co, Egorum (or York) England
b abt 1523 place: Plowland England
d Aug 23 l621 place: Powland England, buried St. Mary's
Chapel, Welwick parish
Powland England
m
spouse: Ann Thornton of E Newton
b place
d 1618 place buried with husband
in St Marys Chapel ,Welwick Parish, Plowland, Yorkshire, England
d/o Robert Thornton and Lettuce Newenham of E Newton
issue:
5 sons, l dau
a) FRANCIS WRIGHT of Sowerby b l553
(our line)
b) Robert Wright of Foston, b 1572, m Ann
Girlington of Sandal and had issue:
l. Mary Wright who married Ralph Crathorne of Ness, and
by him had a son Thomas Crathorne
2. Anne Wright
c) William Wright b abt 1560, d 1648 m Ann Mills
d) Nicholas Wright b abt 1550, d 1648
e) John Wright
f) Anne Wright (Marked "o.s.p" on Visitation of Yorkshire in 1584/5
and 1612. p 145)
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
"William conveyed property in Weeton, probably including the manor, to
Richard Legard in 1579, as it is not included in the list of properties
conveyed to William on his fathers (Robert) death.
William and his wife Ann were attainted several times for recusancy. An
interesting ancedote from the Yorkshire Papists says Ann was considered a
"lunaticke Person" and subsequently absented herself from church. Whether
she
was indeed mentally unbalanced, or merely employing thoughtful subtefuge
against church services that were contrary to her belief we cannot say, but
given her previous record it is not difficult to believe her maintaining
some
charade to avoid attending church."
sources:
"The Commoners of Great Britain and Ireland" John Burke, Vol II p679
available Orlando Library, Orlando,. FL
Bulmers 1892 History and Directory of East Riding
Anne Reed Ritchie book: "Washington-Wright Ancestry and 40 Related Families"
"Wrights in the Mist"
IV. Francis Wright of Sowerby York Co Thirsk Parish
b 1547 Place: Sowerby York Co
d Place:
m Place:
spouse: Anne Markham of Sowerby York England
b Place:
d 1618 Place:
d/o Markham
Issue: l son
Francis Wright b abt 1575 d 1663
sources:
"The Commoners Of Great Britian and England 'by John Burke, Vol II, p 678
"Wrights in the Mist"
Francis Wright of Bolton-on-Swale, Catterick Parish, York Co England
b abt 1575 place: Bolton-on-Swale
d. l663 place: on his estate, Bolton-on-
Swale, York Co England. Burial there.
m. 1596 place: Yorkshire
spouse: Grace Beckwith of Aldborough England
b 1567 place: Aldborough
d. 1665 place:
d/o Roger Beckwith of Aldborough and_____Markham.
Issue: 1 son, 3 dau
a. Rev Francis Wright b 1601 d 1655 (our line) m 1626 Ann
Merriton.
b. Elizabeth Wright ( - ) m Frinian alias Niniah Anderson
of Gales in Yorkshire
c. Jane Wright ( - ) m John Palliser of Kirby Wiske,
Yorkshire, England.
d. Grace Wright ( - ) m Thomas Meryton of Yorkshire,
England
Sources
1) "The Commoners of Great Britain and Ireland by John Burke Vol II p 678.
2) "Historic Peerage of England" John Burke 1857,1882 reprint 1914
3) Vicountry, Vide Verulan, pp 832-833.
Wrights in the Mist"
Rev Francis Wright DDS of Bolton-On-Swale England.
b 1601 place: Bolton-on-Swale
d. 1663 place:
m 1626 place:
spouse: Anne Meryton/Merriton of York Co England.
b 1612 place:
d 1670 place:
d/o Very Rev George Merriton ( -1624) Dean of York and Chaplain to the
Queen.
Mother of wife: Mary Randes ( -1630) d/o Thomas Randes of Nettleham,
Lincoln England
Issue:
1) Francis Wright... b 1627. Bolton on Swale....died without issue
2) George Wright. b 1629. heir to his father, m Beatrice Maulevever.
3) Thomas Wright b 163l
4) Richard Wright (1633-1663) (Our line) Immigrated to the Colonies.
5) Christopher Wright
6) William Wright
7) Anne Wright (1639-1671) m Thomas Hewardine of Maltby.
8) Grace Wright (1641- ) m Blakiston of old Malton in Yorkshire.
*all children born in England.
note: in "Vexed and Troubled Englishmen" by Carl Briden 1968 on p287 Ess
Witham is a reference to a "Margaret Claydon, svt of Rev Francis Wright'
sources:
1) Pedigrees of Some of the Emperor Charlemagne's Descendants" by Orton
Buck.
2) Paver's Marriage Licenses of Bolton-on- Swale, Yorks England. Available
Univ of Central Fla library, Orlando, Fla.
3) "The Commoners of Great Britain and Ireland", by John Burke Vol II p 678.
Thank you all for your wonderful help on other matters.
Janet USA
Renia
I can give you a lot of information on the Wright/Meryton/Palliser connections,
which were quite complex, and the Wrights in America.
This is a bit long for us to verify considering the number of sources you cite,
below, from which you could verify the material yourself.
Renia