Louis Lascaris

Notes:

Also called Louis de Lascaris de Vintimille. Lord of the Brigue and the Limnone. Seigneur de la Briga.

Family/Spouse: Tiburge Grimaldi de Beuil. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

1. Rainier Lascaris died before 16 Feb 1424.

Notes:

Called by Genealogics (citation details below) Manuel Lascaris.

Notes:

Count of Vintimille and the Tende.

Notes:

Called by Genealogics (citation details below) Guillaume Pierre de Tenda. Count of Vintimille and the Tende. Lord of Roquebrune. Mentioned 1249.

Guillaume married Eudokia Laskarina about 1263. Eudokia (daughter of Theodoros II Doukas Laskaris, Emperor of Nicaea and Elena of Bulgaria & Vlachia) was born about 1248 in Nicaea, Asia Minor; died in 1311 in Zaragoza, Aragón, Spain. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

From Wikipedia (accessed 13 Dec 2021):

Eudoxia was the fourth daughter of the Nicaean emperor Theodore II Laskaris and of Elena Asenina of Bulgaria. Eudoxia grew up as a princess at the court of Nicaea, where Constance II of Hohenstaufen, widow of her grandfather John III Doukas Vatatzes, also lived. As a young girl, Eudoxia was promised to the royal family of Aragon as a bride for their son, the future king Peter III of Aragon. After the Palaiologan usurpation of the imperial throne, both ladies (dowager empress Constance and Eudokia) fled, travelling the same route from Constantinople to Tende and Sicily, respectively, and, years later, both sought protection at the kingdom of Aragon under king James I.

Soon after the re-conquest of Constantinople in 1261, Michael VIII Palaiologos, until then regent and co-emperor for the infant John IV Laskaris, had himself declared sole emperor, solidifying his position by having John IV blinded and imprisoned. John's three sisters, Eudoxia among them, were hurriedly married off to foreigners, so their descendants could not claim to the imperial succession.

The young Eudoxia was married in Constantinople on 28 July 1261 to Count Guglielmo Pietro I of Ventimiglia and Tenda (1230–1283), count of Ventimiglia and Tende, a Ligurian region then at the service of Genoa, allies with Michael VIII. This marriage originated the house Lascaris de Vintimille, which stood until the 19th century as a powerful French family. [...]

Before reaching 30, Eudoxia fled from Liguria to Aragon with her daughters Beatrice and Vatatza. Some say it was at the time of her husband's death or on being refused by him. Living at Xàtiva and Zaragoza and Castella, she travelled on diplomatic missions for King James II of Aragon.

Notes:

Lord of Roquebrune.

Notes:

From Wikipedia (accessed 13 Dec 2021):

Theodore II Doukas Laskaris or Ducas Lascaris [...] was Emperor of Nicaea from 1254 to 1258. He was the only child of Emperor John III Doukas Vatatzes and Empress Irene Laskarina. His mother was the eldest daughter of Theodore I Laskaris who had established the Empire of Nicaea as a successor state to the Byzantine Empire in Asia Minor, after the crusaders captured the Byzantine capital, Constantinople, during the Fourth Crusade in 1204. Theodore received an excellent education from two renowned scholars, Nikephoros Blemmydes and George Akropolites. He made friends with young intellectuals, especially with a page of low birth, George Mouzalon. Theodore began to write treatises on theological, historical and philosophical themes in his youth.

Emperor John III arranged for Theodore to marry Elena of Bulgaria in 1235, to forge an alliance with her father, Ivan Asen II, against the Latin Empire of Constantinople. According to Theodore himself, their marriage was happy, and they had five or six children. From 1241, Theodore acted as his father's lieutenant in Asia Minor during his frequent military campaigns in the Balkan Peninsula. From around 1242, he was his father's co-ruler, but was not crowned as co-emperor. During this period, his relationship with some prominent aristocrats, particularly Theodore Philes and Michael Palaiologos, grew tense.

Theodore succeeded his father on 4 November 1254. He dismissed many high officials and army commanders of aristocratic origin, replacing them with loyal friends, including those of low birth. He made a defensive alliance with Kaykaus II, the Seljuk Sultan of Rum, against the Mongol Empire. He repelled a Bulgarian invasion of Thrace and Macedonia and forced Michael II Komnenos Doukas, the ruler of Epirus, to cede Dyrrachium on the coast of the Adriatic Sea to Nicaea. He reformed the military, recruiting more soldiers from among the native peasantry of Asia Minor. Eventually, Michael II of Epirus forged an alliance with Stefan Uroš I, King of Serbia, and Manfred of Sicily against Nicaea. Theodore's newly appointed generals could not resist their joint invasion in 1257. Theodore fell seriously ill and could rarely take part in state administration during the last months of his life. He appointed George Mouzalon regent for his underage son, John IV, before he died of either chronic epilepsy or cancer. In ten days, Mouzalon fell victim to an aristocratic plot, and Michael Palaiologos assumed the regency, usurping the throne soon after

Theodoros married Elena of Bulgaria & Vlachia in 1235. Elena (daughter of Iwan Asen II, Tsar of Bulgaria and Maria of Hungary) was born in 1224; died before 1254. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Also called Elina Asenina.

Notes:

Count of Ventimiglia. Denis Beauregard does not include this generation.

Notes:

Also called John III Doukas Vatatzes, Ducas Vatatzes.

From Wikipedia (accessed 13 Dec 2021):

A successful soldier from a military family, John was chosen in about 1216 by Emperor Theodore I Laskaris as the second husband for his daughter Irene Laskarina and as heir to the throne, following the death of her first husband, Andronikos Palaiologos. This arrangement excluded members of the Laskarid family from the succession, and when John III Doukas Vatatzes became emperor in mid-December 1221, following Theodore I's death in November, he had to suppress opposition to his rule. The struggle ended with the Battle of Poimanenon in 1224, in which his opponents were defeated in spite of support from the Latin Empire of Constantinople. John III's victory led to territorial concessions by the Latin Empire in 1225, followed by John's incursion into Europe, where he seized Adrianople.

John III's possession of Adrianople was terminated by Theodore Komnenos Doukas of Epirus and Thessalonica, who drove the Nicaean garrison out of Adrianople and annexed much of Thrace in 1227. The elimination of Theodore by Ivan Asen II of Bulgaria in 1230 put an end to the danger posed by Thessalonica, and John III made an alliance with Bulgaria against the Latin Empire.

In 1235 this alliance resulted in the restoration of the Bulgarian patriarchate and the marriage between Elena of Bulgaria and Theodore II, respectively Ivan Asen II's daughter and John III's son. In that same year, the Bulgarians and Nicaeans campaigned against the Latin Empire, and in 1236 they attempted a siege of Constantinople. Subsequently, Ivan Asen II adopted an ambivalent policy, effectively becoming neutral, and leaving John III to his own devices.

John III Vatatzes was greatly interested in the collection and copying of manuscripts, and William of Rubruck reports that he owned a copy of the missing books from Ovid's Fasti (poem). Ruburck was critical of the Hellenic traditions he encountered in the Empire of Nicaea, specifically the feast day for Felicitas favored by John Vatatzes, which Risch suggests would have been the Felicitanalia, practiced by Sulla to venerate Felicitas in the 1st Century with an emphasis on inverting social norms, extolling truth and beauty, reciting profane and satirical verse and wearing ornamented "cenatoria", or dinner robes during the day.

In spite of some reverses against the Latin Empire in 1240, John III was able to take advantage of Ivan Asen II's death in 1241 to impose his own suzerainty over Thessalonica (in 1242), and later to annex this city, as well as much of Bulgarian Thrace in 1246. Immediately afterwards, John III was able to establish an effective stranglehold on Constantinople in 1247. In the last years of his reign Nicaean authority extended far to the west, where John III attempted to contain the expansion of Epirus. Michael's allies Golem of Kruja and Theodore Petraliphas defected to John III in 1252.

John III died in Nymphaion in 1254, and was buried in the monastery of Sosandra, which he had founded, in the region of Magnesia. [...]

John III Doukas Vatatzes was a successful ruler who laid the groundwork for Nicaea's recovery of Constantinople. He was successful in maintaining generally peaceful relations with his most powerful neighbors, Bulgaria and the Sultanate of Rum, and his network of diplomatic relations extended to the Holy Roman Empire and the Papacy, while his armed forces included Frankish mercenaries.

John III effected Nicaean expansion into Europe, where by the end of his reign he had annexed his former rival Thessalonica and had expanded at the expense of Bulgaria and Epirus. He also expanded Nicaean control over much of the Aegean and annexed the important island of Rhodes, while he supported initiatives to free Crete from Venetian occupation aiming toward its re-unification with the Byzantine empire of Nicaea.

Moreover, John III is credited with carefully developing the internal prosperity and economy of his realm, encouraging justice and charity. In spite of his epilepsy, John III had provided active leadership in both peace and war, claimed to be the true inheritor of the Roman Empire, and was known for bountiful harvest festivals which reportedly drew on traditions from the Felicitas feast days described in the missing 11th book of Ovid's Book of Days.

A half-century after his death, John III was canonized as a saint, under the name John the Merciful, and is commemorated annually on November 4. George Akropolites mentions that the people saw to the construction of a temple in his honour in Nymphaeum, and that his cult as a saint quickly spread to the people of western Asia Minor. On the same day, since 2010, the Vatatzeia festival is organized at Didymoteicho by the local metropolitan bishop. Alice Gardiner remarked on the persistence of John's cult among the Ionian Greeks as late as the early 20th century, and on the contrast she witnessed where "the clergy and people of Magnesia and the neighbourhood revere his memory every fourth of November. But those who ramble and play about his ruined palace seldom connect it even with his name."

His feast day is formally an Eastern Orthodox holiday, although it is not commemorated with any special liturgy; there are two known historical akolouthiai for him, including an 1874 copy of an older Magnesian menaion for the month of November, which shows that in the 15th and 16th century, he was venerated as "the holy glorious equal of the Apostles and emperor John Vatatzes, the new almsgiver in Magnesia." The relevant hymns are preserved in only one known manuscript in the library of the Leimonos monastery on Lesbos, Greece, and include references to the feast day for the almsgiver John Vatatzes. John III Vatatzes' feast day has largely fallen out of favor other than in the church dedicated to him in his birth city of Didymoteicho.

The generations after John Vatatzes looked back upon him as "the Father of the Greeks."

According to [the Legend of the Reposed King], his incorrupt relics were transferred to Constantinople, which had been liberated from the Franks, where the legend of the reposed King became associated with him. At time of the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks, his relics were hidden in a catacomb, and were guarded by a family of Crypto-Christians, which kept them secret from generation to generation. The legend states that since that time, he has been awaiting the liberation of Constantinople.

Ioannes married Eirene Doukaina Komnene Laskarina in 1212. Eirene (daughter of Theodoros I Komnenos Laskaris, Emperor in Nicea and Anna Komnena Angelina) was born about 1200; died in 1239. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Also called John Asen, John Asan.

Iwan married Maria of Hungary in Jan 1221. Maria (daughter of András II, King of Hungary and Gertrud von Meran) died in 1237. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]