Eudokia Komnene

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Eudokia Komnene or Eudocia Comnena (Greek: Ευδοκία Κομνηνή, Eudokia Komnēnē), (c. 1162–c. 1203) was a niece of Byzantine Emperor Manuel I Komnenos, and wife of William VIII of Montpellier.

Eudokia was a daughter of the sebastokratōr Isaac Komnenos by his second wife, Irene Synadene. Her father was a son of Emperor John II Komnenos and Piroska of Hungary, the daughter of King Ladislaus I of Hungary. Her sister Theodora Komnene married King Baldwin III of Jerusalem and was afterwards the lover of Andronikos I Komnenos. Her older half-sister Maria Komnene married King Stephen IV of Hungary.

Eudokia Komnene was sent to Provence by Manuel in 1174 to be betrothed to King Alfonso II of Aragon, but, on her arrival, she found that he had just married Sancha of Castile. As the troubadour Peire Vidal put it, he had preferred a poor Castilian maid to the emperor Manuel's golden camel. After much indecision she married William VIII of Montpellier in 1179, having made it a condition (to which all male citizens of Montpellier were required to swear) that their firstborn child, boy or girl, would succeed him in the lordship of Montpellier.

Eudokia was sometimes described by contemporaries, including the troubadours Folquet de Marselha and Guiraut de Bornelh, as an empress (Occitan emperairitz) and was commonly said to be a daughter of the emperor Manuel, which has led to some confusion among modern authors about her family links. Other sources, such as Guillaume de Puylaurens, correctly identify her as Manuel's niece.

William and Eudokia had one daughter, Marie of Montpellier, born in 1181 or 1182. In 1187 William divorced her (because she encouraged the advances of Folquet de Marselha, according to the Biographies des Troubadours; because William wanted a male heir, according to documents likely to be more reliable). Eudokia was thereafter held at the monastery of Aniane. She died about 1203, shortly before her daughter's third marriage to King Peter II of Aragon.

[edit] Sources

• Biographies des troubadours ed. J. Boutière, A.-H. Schutz (Paris: Nizet, 1964) pp. 476-481.
• Stanislaw Stronski, Le troubadour Folquet de Marseille (Krakow: Académie des Sciences, 1910) pp. 156-8.
• Ruth V. Sharman, The Cansos and Sirventes of the Troubadour Giraut de Borneil (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. ISBN 0-521-25635-6) p. 59.
• Duvernoy, Jean, editor (1976), Guillaume de Puylaurens, Chronique 1145-1275: Chronica magistri Guillelmi de Podio Laurentii, Paris: CNRS, ISBN 2910352064 pp. 62-3.

[edit] Bibliography

• W. Hecht, 'Zur Geschichte der "Kaiserin" von Montpellier, Eudoxia Komnena' in Revue des études byzantines vol. 26 (1968) pp. 161-169.
• K. Varzos, Ē genealogia tōn Komnēnōn (Thessalonica, 1984) vol. 2 pp. 346-359.