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From: "Carolyn Clark Campbell" <>
Subject: RE: [Gen-Ancient] Georgia & the Caucasus - Garden of Eden? [Was: Edessa, Judea, and Armenia]
Date: Sun, 18 Apr 2004 10:28:51 +0500
In-Reply-To: <4081F0DC.1000200@verizon.net>


Thank you, Don! I do have another possible descent from Georgia to
European royal houses, but so far as I know it hasn't been officially
verified.

According to the oral history of the Georgian Andronikashvili family,
Byzantine Emperor Isaac I married Katai, the daughter of David the
Builder of Georgia and his wife Gurandukht -- Katai being the sister of
Dimitri I (Demetre I), and the son of Katai and Isaac I was Andronicus I
Comnenus, Byzantine Emperor.

According to their oral history, when Andronicus was overthrown, some of
his children came back to Georgia where, being great-grandchildren of
David the Builder, they were given vast lands in East Georgia, and their
descendants, the Andronikashvili family [which name means child of
Andronicus], were the most powerful aristocratic (feudal) family in East
Georgia. Purportedly the last of the direct line, Princess Nana
Andronikashvili (now Princess Nana Andronikashvili von
Sachsen-Altenburg) has taken me to the ruins of the Andronikashvili
castle which dates to about the 8th Century (prior to the acquisition of
the family name), and which has generations of her ancestoral graves up
through her great-grandfather, and which is now unprotected public land.
She recently recovered the remains of her grandparents' summer palace in
Kakheti (which was intentionally demolished by a neighbor who was former
Communist Party Boss of the region when he discovered the court was
going to award it to her), and we have observed that the neighbors
continue to treat her with the respect and attentiveness one would
expect is due the feudal overlord's family.

Andronicus I Comnenus did apparently marry Philippa di Antioch and it
appears they had a son, and a grandson, Manuel I Comnenus, Emperor of
Trebizond, but I have been unable to find records of this line of
descent beyond a few generations. On the other hand, The International
Society of the Descendants of Charlemagne, Inc. lists an ahnentafel of
George Washington that shows another lineage. (Sorry original resources
and even good secondary hard-copy materials are inaccessible here, so I
now have to take whatever I can find online.) [This information posted
some years back by Lowell A. Barker, Ph.D., L.H.D. (hc), Secretary
General, The International Society of the Descendants of Charlemagne,
Post Office Box 5259, Titusville, Florida 32783-5259]

It shows another wife of Andronicus I Comnenus as having been Theodora
Comnena (b. circa 1118) [granddaughter of John II Comnenus, Emperor],
and they had a daughter Irene Comnena (1144-1185) who married Isaac II
Angelus, Byzantine Emperor (b ca. 1155 - 1204), from whom (if this
lineage is correct) are descended several European royal lines via their
daughters Irene and Theodora. For example, apparently Irene m. Philip
II von Hohenstaufen, Duke of Swabia, and one of their daughters (Ethiza?
Beatriz? Elizabeth of Swabia?) married (Saint) Ferdinand III, King of
Castile, and their other daughter Marie married Henri II Duke of
Brabant, whose granddaughter Marie married Philippe III of France, etc.
The various royal trees get crowded here -- various lineages lead to
England, Denmark, etc.

All of this, if the lineages are correct, means that IF the
Andronikashvili oral history is accurate, and Andronicus I Comnenus was
the grandson of David the Builder, then this is another gateway from
Georgia to the royal houses of Europe.

I should make absolutely clear that I am an amateur and have simply
"gathered" this information, so there can be many errors -- so I would
appreciate corrections. Since I am a lawyer and understand evidence, I
know there are things in the gatherings that are unverified and look to
those of you who are experts to get at the "real thing." However, I do
follow speculative leads, not because I can verify them, but because
perhaps someone will one day do so and I don't think the leads should be
lost.

Best wishes,
Carolyn

Carolyn Clark Campbell
Tbilisi, Georgia


-----Original Message-----
From: Don Stone [mailto:]
Sent: Sunday, April 18, 2004 8:07 AM
To:
Subject: Re: [Gen-Ancient] Georgia & the Caucasus - Garden of Eden?
[Was: Edessa, Judea, and Armenia]

Don Stone wrote:
[snip]
> This is as far as I can go with the resources I have at home, but it
> looks like Henry IV of England is descended from the sister of
Izyaslav
> II, the Grand Duke of Kiev who married the daughter of Dimitri I of
> Georgia.

There is a possible descent from the Georgian royal family via the first
wife of Emperor Isaac II, whose daughter married Philip of Swabia. This
has
been discussed in soc.genealogy.medieval/GEN-MEDIEVAL. I append a
number of
excerpts of postings relating to this.

If anyone knows of any further information relevant to this issue, I
would
be quite interested in hearing it.

-- Don Stone


Under the subject heading "First Wife of Isaac II Angelos," on
2000/01/18 I
said the following:
> An article by Rudolf Hiestand, "Die Erste Ehe Isaaks II Angelus und
Seine
> Kinder" in _Jahrbuch der Osterreichischen Byzantinistik_ 47 (1997):
199-208,
> gives the children of Isaak II [I'll follow his spelling] by his first
wife
> Eirene as Euphrosyne (who became a nun), Eirene-Maria (m. 2nd Philipp
of
> Swabia), and Alexios IV, and the children by his second wife
> Margarete-Maria of Hungary [later married to Bonifaz of Montferrat] as
> Manuel and Johannes. This is basically in agreement with ES II: 179,
for
> example. Some of the new information in this list comes from
necrology
> notices of Speyer Cathedral, which name the Empress [Irene-] Maria,
her
> parents Isaac and Irene, her elder sister Euphrosyne (named, following
> the Byzantine pattern, after her paternal grandmother) and brother
> Manuel.
>
> Morris Bierbrier's "Medieval and royal genealogy update" column in the
> March 1999 issue of _Genealogists' Magazine_ gives a partial summary
of
> the article by Hiestand; this is where I learned of its existence.
>
> Hiestand's article is of special interest because it explores the
> hypothesis that the first wife of Isaac II is a member of the
> Palaiologos family, perhaps the daughter of Georgios Palaiologos
> Komnenodoukas, megas hetaireiarches (Grand Heteriarque). This is
based
> on a reference to Andronikos Palaiologos (probable son of Georgios) as
> beloved "gambros" [brother-in-law or son-in-law, though the former is
> more likely] of Emp. Isaac II in a document (from 1191, I think)
printed
> in A. Papadopoulos-Kerameus's _Analekta ..._, II, Petersburg, 1894, p.
> 362. Unfortunately, the genealogy of the early Palaiologoi is
somewhat
> murky; Lindsay Brook's "The Byzantine Ancestry of the Prince of
Wales,"
> _The Genealogist_ 2 (1981): 3-51, gives (p. 22) Andronikos as son
rather
> than brother of Alexios, son of Georgios, and _The Oxford Dictionary
of
> Byzantium_, 1991, v. 2, p. 1558, gives Andronikos as son-in-law of
> Alexios. (From the latter source we also learn that palaiologos means
> "junkman.") In any case, _The Doukai_ by Demetrios I. Polemis, 1968,
> asserts (top of p. 156) that Georgios had a son Alexios by an
> unidentified wife.
>
> Georgios Palaiologos's wife might be Aspae, a cousin of the Georgian
> princess Kata or Katae; Aspae and Katae are mentioned in a scholion to
> the histories of John Tzetzes. (See, e.g., Paul Gautier, "La Curieuse
> Ascendance de Jean Tzetzes," _Revue des Etudes Byzantines_ 28 (1970):
> pp. 207, ff., esp. pp. 208-9. See also A. Kazhdan, "Rus'-Byzantine
> Princely Marriages in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries," _Harvard
> Ukrainian Studies_ 12/13 (1988/1989): 414-429, esp. p. 423. And
> finally, see Jean-Claude Cheynet and Jean-Francois Vannier, _Etudes
> Prosopographiques_, 1986, esp. pp.156-158, 162-163.)
>
> Katae married (as second wife) Alexios, son of Emp. John II Komnenos.
> This is a different princess Kata from the one (probably a generation
> earlier), daughter of David IV the Builder (b. 1070, king from
> 1089-1125, d. 1125), who Rafal Prinke has shown was the wife of the
> sebastokrator Isaak Kommnenos and the mother of Emp. Andronikos I
> Komnenos. Cheynet and Vannier, p. 162, say that Alexios married his
> first wife Dobrodeja in 1122, that she died in 1131, and that he then
> married Katae, who was probably (from chronological considerations) a
> daughter of the Georgian king Demetrios I (d. 1156/8), son of David
the
> Builder. At court Katae used the first name Eudocia. On the
following
> page they say that Aspae was married to a Palaiologos ca. 1135;
Hiestand
> says (p. 206) the marriage took place ca. 1145. Cheynet and Vannier
> call attention to a letter of Tzetzes addressed to the wife of the
Grand
> Heteriarque at the time of the march of the Germans against
> Constantinople in July-Aug. 1147; they believe that this Grand
> Heteriarque is George Paleologus and that his wife (to whom the letter
> was addressed) is perhaps Aspae.
>
> There is thus the possibility of a Georgian royal descent for the
first
> wife of Isaac II Angelos, though it may be hard to confirm or pin down
> details.

Then followed this from me:

> Cheynet and Vannier have an entry (no. 23) for the Andronikos
> Palaiologos who was among the dignitaries present at the synod held
> under Emperor Isaac II Angelos in September 1191 and who was
> referred to as beloved gambros (brother-in-law or son-in-law) of the
> emperor.
>
> Since "son-in-law of the emperor" would have to mean "husband of a
> daughter of the emperor", I think that this meaning of gambros can be
> rejected. Of Isaac's two daughters, Euphrosyne became a nun before
1185
> (according to ES) and thus hardly could have married Andronikos
> Palaiologos prior to becoming a nun, while Eirene-Maria was about 10
at
> the time of this synod and married her presumed first husband, Roger
of
> Apulia, in 1192.
>
> On the other hand, "brother-in-law of the emperor" could have three
> different meanings:
> (1) brother of the emperor's wife,
> (2) husband of the emperor's sister, or
> (3) husband of the sister of the emperor's wife.
> Of these, (1) is what Hiestand is promoting.
> Re (2): ES gives two sisters for Isaac; both of them married, but not,
> evidently, to Andronikos Palaiologos. (2) seems to me to be somewhat
> less likely than (1); if Andronikos P. had married a sister of the
> emperor, it seems fairly likely that we would have heard of that.
> Re (3): this seems to me also to be somewhat less likely than (1);
since
> it is a less direct connection than (1), there is less reason for
> special favor to be shown to the brother-in-law. However, I realize
> that these arguments about relative likelihood can't carry much
weight.
>
> Cheynet and Vannier say that one can suppose that Andronikos is the
> husband of a cousin or a niece of the emperor, which is stretching the
> literal meaning of brother-in-law. Can an expert on Byzantine
genealogy
> comment on how likely this interpretation is (i.e., this stretching of
> the literal meaning)?
>
> At any rate, Cheynet and Vannier say that they don't know where this
> Andronikos fits into the Palaiologos family. They view him as
distinct
> from the Andronikos who married the daughter of Alexios, son of
> Georgios.

On 2/28/03 in the same forum, Pierre Aronax said:
> "History Writer" <> a écrit dans le message de news:
>
>> But John of Guant's father Edward III's matrilineal line, if correct
>> per roglo, includes a member of Palaiologos family. Interesting to
>> see that Edward appears to have had Bagratid Georgian/Armenian mtDNA:
>>
>> 1. Aspae Bagratid=Georgios Palaiologos Komnenodoukas, sebastos
>> +1167/1168 (son of Alexios Palaiologos)
>> 2. Eirene Palaiologina +1185=Emporer Isaak II Angelos
>
> Accumulation of hypothesis.
>
> The identification of Emperor Isaak II's first wife with a
Palaiologina is
> only an hypothesis, based on the fact that the protopanhypersebastos
> Andronikos Palaiologos (+ after 1191) was Isaak II's "gambros" (a word
which
> can describe more than one kind of relationships by marriage,
particularly
> "son-in-law" or "brother-in-law"). Even her Christian name, Eirènè, is
known
> only by a Western source. For my part I don't believe Isaak II was
married
> with a Palaiologina: for various reasons, I think it is Andronikos'
wife who
> was a relative of Isaak II, and not the reverse.
>
> This hypothesis is combined here with an other hypothesis, making of
> Andronikos Palaiologos a son of the sebastos Geôrgios Palaiologos (I
think
> that, for anthroponomical reasons, this is highly probable).
>
> Then come a third hypothesis (suggested firstly by Jean-François
Vannier)
> making of Aspaè, a relative of Kataè of Georgia wife of the
porphyrogenetos
> Alexios Komnènos (but not for that a Bagratide as stated above) , the
wife
> of Geôrgios Palaiologos. It can be exact, but that makes not for that
of
> Aspaè the mother of the supposed son of Geôrgios, and even less the
mother
> of the supposed sister of this supposed son.

On 3/1/03, Pierre Aronax said:
> [Vannier's] hypothesis is very convincing of course, but that is not
for that
> that Geôrgios Palaiologos had only one wife. So, I think it is more
prudent
> to consider that Geôrgios Palaiologos' children are from an unknown
mother.
>
> Now to the question of Andronikos the "gambros": my basic reason to
think he
> was married to a relative of Isaak II, and not the reverse, is the son
I
> give to him. I think that, if he was a son of Geôrgios the megas
> hetaireiarches, and since his (supposed) brother had probably no son,
then
> for anthroponimical reasons he must be the father of an other
Geôrgios,
> attested in the last years of the 12th century.
>
> Then, this Geôrgios took part in the plot against Isaak II: speaking
of the
> conspirators, among which this Geôrgios, Nikètas Choniatès says that
they
> were all "related by blood to the emperor" ("kata genos tô basilei
> sunaptomenoi"). I am not a scholar in Choniatès, but I would be
surprise if
> he considered as a parentage "kata genos", "by the race", the fact to
be the
> son of the brother of a previous wife. On the other hand, if
Andronikos was
> married to a relative of Isaak II (probably a cousin), and if, as I
suspect,
> Geôrgios was the son of this marriage, to describe him as a relative
"kata
> genos" suits better. And so, Hiestand notwithstanding, I don't think
Isaak
> II was [ever] married with a Palaiologina. But perhaps I am wrong and
"kata
> genos" can have a broder meaning in Choniatès and can refer to a
parentage
> which is not really by blood: only a specialist of Choniatès
vocabulary can
> answer this question.

And then later the same day, Pierre Aronax said:
> The possibility of the relationship I propose (Andronikos married to a
> cousin/niece of Isaak II) was already suggested by J.-F. Vannier but,
if I
> record corectly, he didn't use the argument of the relationship
between
> Geôrgios Palaiologos, son (in my hypothesis) of Andronikos), and Isaak
II,
> since he didn't make of this Geôrgios a son of Andronikos.



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