January 2007:  Full contents list for this issue. 

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• A Genealogy of the Grand Komnenoi of Trebizond (Kelsey Jackson Williams)

Winner of the 2006 Charles F H Evans Award

The empire of Trebizond, founded by a grandson of emperor Andronikos I Komnenos in the chaos following the sack of Constantinople in 1204 and the last Byzantine state to fall to the Ottoman Turks (in 1461), occupied a unique position in the later middle ages as a focus for transcontinental commerce and as a state which had close ties with the Georgian and Turkomen polities to its east as well as the Byzantine, French and Italian states to its west. These ties were solidified by a series of astute dynastic marriages that make the Grand Komnenoi, the ruling dynasty of Trebizond for the period of its history as an empire, of particular interest to the genealogist and prosopographer. The present paper corrects the accreted errors of past generations and sets out, for the first time, a scholarly account of the genealogy of the Grand Komnenoi.

• Empire of Trebizond: background note

• Some Internet Resources for Medieval Genealogy: 9 (Chris Phillips)

Anglo-Norman dictionary; Feet of Fines; Henry III Fine Rolls; Ancient Petitions; Domesday Book.

• Who was Malcolm, King of the Cumbrians? (Michael Anne Guido)

John of Fordun has been cited as the source of errors on the descendants of King Dubh by supposedly creating Malcolm mac Dubh, his eldest son, stated to be King of the Cumbrians. Was this really a fabrication or a mistake? This article proposes a solution to some of the problems in Fordun’s work by showing that the tanists were actually governors of Strathclyde based on an analysis of the early chronicles.

• Update on Medieval Lands (Charles Cawley)