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From: "Pierre Aronax" <>
Subject: Re: another Seljuk gateway
Date: Sun, 18 Apr 2004 17:29:15 +0200
References: <f9785a84.0404171445.398fb134@posting.google.com>


"David Hughes" <> a crit dans le message de
news:...
> re: another Seljuk "gateway"

<...>
> 17. Alexis III, Tyrant of Trebizonde 1349-1390
> = Theodora, niece of Byzantine Emperor John VI
> 18. Eudoxia, ex-wife of Tadj-ed-din, Prince of Sinope
> = Constantine Dragas, Prince of Velbuzde [Serbia] [her 2nd =]
> 19. Helene Dragas
> = Manuel II, Byzantine Emperor 1391-1425
<...>

Other points are debatable in the line proposed here, but it's enough to say
that it doesn't work at all here and that the connection suggested is
absolutely in contradiction with the sources.

First of all, a marriage between Konstantin Dragash and Eudokia (not
Eudoxia) Komnn is only an hypothesis (which I find convincing for my part
in the lack of a better solution). This hypothesis is intended to explain an
extraordinary mistake of the historian Laonikos Chalkokandyls (at least
modern erudition considers it as a mistake). Chalkokandyls, who wrote in
the second half of the 15th century, says that Emperor John V Palaiologos
had as his second wife Eudokia Komnn, who, always according to the same
author, was sent to Constantinople to become the wife of Manoul, the
emperor's son: that is in obvious contradiction with all contemporary
sources which show that John's first and probably only wife Hln
Kantakouzn died more than six years after him. On the author hand,
Grgios Sphrantzs, who was more or less a contemporary of Chalkokandyls
(who perhaps knew and wrongly interpreted his text), speaks also of that
story (which so must have been widely known) but in slightly different
terms. Justifying a matrimonial project between emperor Constantine XI and
the sultan's widow, Sphrantzs argues that this would not be something new:
"...that also is not and obstacle, since the despoina Eudokia also had had a
Turkish husband, the lord of a little and unimportant territory, and had
given him a son, and nevertheless your grandfather took her as his wife..."
(Sphrantzs, Chronikon, XXXI,6). If the anonymous grandfather of Constantine
XI (that is to say John V) was his paternal grandfather, it would be strange
that Sphrantzs didn't call him "the emperor your grandfather". More
important "despoina" is not a title for a reigning emperor and it is hard to
believe that Sphrantzs made such a fault of protocol, particularly in the
summary of an official report. So, to find a solution to this
contradictions, it has been suggested that Eudokia was the wife of
Constantine's maternal grandfather, Konstantin Dragash, who was precisely
invested with dignity of despot, and not of Constantine's paternal
grandfather (as Chalkokandyls would have wrongly supposed). Many pages have
been written for or against this hypothesis. There are some objections: for
example, "despoina" is no more the normal title for a despot's wife.

Secondly, and anyway, even admitting the hypothesis that Eudokia Komnn
indeed married Konstantin Dragash, she can simply not be the mother of
Hln, wife of Manuel II: Eudokia is supposed to have been the widow a
Turkish princelet, according to Chalkokandyls the Turkish emir Tadjeddin.
That first marriage is confirmed by Michal Panartos, the Trapezuntin
chronicler, who also gives some chronological frame: Eudokia became
Tadjeddin's wife on 8 of October 1379, and he died in 1386. So, Eudokia
married Constantin XI's grandfather, whoever it was, only after 1386 and she
can obviously not be the mother of Hln who married Manuel II on 10
February 1392.

Briefly put, I suggest to stop constructing pseudo gateways using only more
or less spurious genealogical charts and without paying any consideration to
what the sources actually say. The list's archives can also be useful since
I remember that the question of Eudokia's marriage was already discussed
here at length.

Pierre


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