International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

Dejan Dželebdžić
Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Institute for Byzantine Studies, Belgrade, Serbia; 
[e-mail] 
On the Origin of the Provincial Aristocratic Families 
from the Territory of the State of Epirus during the Reign of Theodore Doukas
The most complete survey of local aristocratic families in the Balkans from the late tenth to the 
beginning of the thirteenth centuries is given in the book 
Pouvoir et contestations à Byzance
by Jean-
Claude Cheynet. It shows that sources provide very little information on this particular segment of 
the Byzantine society. On the contrary, the data for the beginning of the thirteenth century provided 
by the court records and letters of John Apokaukos, the metropolitan of Naupaktos, and, especially, 
Demetrios Chomatenos, the archbishop of Ohrid, are abundant, since many persons mentioned in 
them apparently belonged to the provincial aristocracy. 

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The purpose of this communication is to present some important conclusions regarding the 
origin of provincial aristocratic families, notably from Byzantine Macedonia, Epirus and the island 
of Corfu. The conclusions
are partly based on the accounts of the two ecclesiastics, but in the first 
place on an analysis of their family names. Apokaukos’ and Chomatenos’ writings indicate changes 
in the local society caused by the catastrophe of 1204, such as war damages, frequent changes of local 
authorities, losses and (often illegal) acquirements of property, cases of fleeing a hometown and a 
later return to it. Yet, Chomatenos’ court records (not those of Apokaukos) clearly demonstrate that 
persons mentioned in them belonged to the families that had been established in the same town for 
at least two or three generations, sometimes even longer. The family names themselves show that a 
considerable percentage of the families mentioned by both authors were probably branches of (more 
or less) prominent Byzantine aristocratic families of the eleventh – twelfth centuries. Among them 
are, for example, Komnenoi, Pakourianoi, Argyroi, Krateroi, etc. On the other hand, there are many 
families that are unknown from the previous period, but were notable during the Palaeologan Era. 
To the third category belong those families that do not appear either before or after the Apokaukos 
and Chomatenos’ time, but solely in their writings. 
In this paper a special attention is paid to the fact that more than twenty family names are 
derived from the names of various cities and regions, since they indicate the origin of these families. 
The majority of these family names are derived from the names of the cities or regions in the eastern 
provinces of the Byzantine Empire (e. g. Attaliotai, Atramytenoi, Achyraitai, Gabadonitai, etc.), 
while there are only a few that derived from the geographical names from the Balkans and South 
Italy. Surprisingly, there are several family names of that kind that are derived from the names 
of the Constantinopolitan quarters (e.g. Chrysobalantitai, Paradeissiotai, Skoutariotai, etc). Their 
existence itself opens the question of when and why certain Constantinopolitan families moved 
from the capital to the Balkan provinces. One should note that it is clear that it did not happen 
because of the fall of the City as they left prior to 1204.