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Archiver > GEN-MEDIEVAL > 2005-08 > 1125286752


From: "Peter Stewart" <>
Subject: Re: Renaming of Byzantine Empresses
Date: Mon, 29 Aug 2005 03:39:12 GMT
References: <1124653412.342436.3060@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com> <430a86c2$1@quokka.wn.com.au> <sZvOe.7696$FA3.7513@news-server.bigpond.net.au> <1124902259.693755.36900@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com> <1124949154.729181.224950@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> <1124950863.078829.218980@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> <430e5668$1@quokka.wn.com.au> <039b01c5a9d0$c80fd660$0300a8c0@Toshiba> <3ywPe.10776$FA3.7739@news-server.bigpond.net.au> <XZwPe.10808$FA3.4531@news-server.bigpond.net.au> <43127ced$1@quokka.wn.com.au>


"Akrogiali" <> wrote in message
news:43127ced$1@quokka.wn.com.au...
>> The parentage of Ioannes Dalassenos Rogerios is not recorded - it has
>> been conjectured that he was son of the sebastos Konstantinos Rogerios by
>> a Dalassene wife.
>
> The fact is that it is not known who his parents were. And the above does
> not look or sound right. If his father was "Rogerio" then he would have
> called himself Rogerio-Dalassinos and not the other way around.
>
> The De Rogerio family supposed to be a very old Italian one. Some write it
> with two "g" and some as Rogiero.
> If there is any truth in the suggestion that his father was
> "Konstantinos", then obviously he was baptised Orthodox to marry a Greek
> Lady and his son "Ioannis" was born Orthodox.

Whoever said he wasn't? You leapt to a conclusion that he was an Italian,
"Giovanni de Rogerio", but that doesn't make it valid or even meaningful -
your statements rarely are, whether signed with the name Tsambourakis or
not. As a description of this individual, your idea that he was a foreigner
is unsupported by any shred of evidence that he was not a native-born
Byzantine, wherever his ancestors came from.

If his father had called himself Rogerios, from an Italian background, and
his mother Dalassene, from an Armenian one, it would have been perfectly
unexceptional for Ioannes to choose Dalassenos for himself. Many Byzantine
aristocrats chose to be known by a mother's or grandmother's surname. He
wasn't trying to disguise his origins, to pass himself off as an ethnic
"Greek", since he was openly called Rogerios too. He was living in a
civilised society that didn't impose any silly standards of purity, cultural
or genetic, for being "Greek": the people of Byzantium in his time called
themselves "Romans" anyway, and "Greeks" to them were just remote, heathen
antecedents. Your provincial revisionism on this point is false, mere
insecurty compounded by ignorance.

> There is also not very much known about the Dalassinos family and the
> suggestion that is not Greek is highly questionable. Phonetically is very
> much a "Greek" name.
> The first impression is that it is the name "Thalassinos" misspelled not
> uncommon those days.

Do you ever bother to check before posting, or do you imagine that thinking
aloud & in public on matters that you know nothing about is a useful way to
pass the time, like John Brandon?

If you want to find out about the likely Armenian origin of the Dalassenoi,
read first 'Notes armno-byzantines V. Les Dalassnes' by Nikoghaios Adontz
in _Byzantion_ 10 (1935). Or not, as you please - but when you try to make
it up as you go along, as above, you only ever succeed in making a fool of
yourself.

Peter Stewart


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