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Archiver > GEN-ANCIENT > 2004-04 > 1082314354


From: Don Stone <>
Subject: Re: [Gen-Ancient] Georgia & the Caucasus - Garden of Eden? [Was: Edessa, Judea, and Armenia]
Date: Sun, 18 Apr 2004 14:52:44 -0400
References: <002201c42506$11f84010$0500a8c0@SAINTNINO>
In-Reply-To: <002201c42506$11f84010$0500a8c0@SAINTNINO>


Carolyn Clark Campbell wrote:

> 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.

This basically agrees with the information in Toumanoff's _Les Dynasties de
la Caucasie Chrétienne_, as updated by the research of Rafal Prinke on Kata,
daughter of David the Builder. (Though Toumanoff says that Isaac was
sebastocrator, not emperor.)

> 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,
[etc.]

This is the Emp. Isaac II about whom I was talking in my previous post.
Hiestand hypothesized that his first wife (mother of Irene who married
Philip of Swabia) might be a daughter of Georgios Palaiologos Komnenodoukas,
megas hetaireiarches (Grand Heteriarque). This first wife, at any rate, is
not a daughter of Andronicus I Comnenus. On 12/4/1996 (before Hiestand
published his article), W. A. Reitwiesner said:
> The identity of the first wife of Isaac II (and mother
> of Eirene) is unknown. See Lindsay L. Brook, "The Byzantine Ancestry of
> H.R.H. Prince Charles, Prince of Wales", in *The Genealogist* (APSG),
> vol. 2, no. 1 (Spring 1981), pp. 3-51, especially note 19 on p. 39; and
> M. L. Bierbrier, "Modern Descendants of Byzantine Familes", in
> *Genealogists' Magazine*, vol. 20, no. 3 (September 1980), pp. 85-96, at
> p. 89 (col. 177).

-- Don Stone

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