Theodora Megale Komnene (), (before 1253– after 1285), was Empress of Trebizond from 1284 to 1285. All Michael Panaretos tells us about her is that she was a daughter of Emperor Manuel I of Trebizond by Rusudan, a Georgian princess.Michael Panaretos, Chronicle, ch. 8. Greek text and English translation in Scott Kennedy, Two Works on Trebizond, Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 52 (Cambridge: Harvard University, 2019), p. 7 Although some consider her Manuel's second wife, Michel Kuršanskis has argued that Rusudan may have been simply his mistress.Kuršanskis, "L'usurpation de Théodora Grande Comnène", Revue des études byzantines, 33 (1975), pp. 198f Kuršanskis also notes that the evidence is insufficient to determine if Theodora was identical with one of the princesses of Trebizond mentioned in the Chronicle of Bishop Stephanos who married a noble or the king of Georgia, or if she had been a nun — much as Anna Anachoutlou was before her usurpation in the following century.Kuršanskis, "L'usurpation", p. 200.
In 1284, with the help of Georgian King of Imereti, David VI Narin she managed to seize the crown from her half-brother, Emperor John II.William Miller, Trebizond: The last Greek Empire of the Byzantine Era: 1204-1461, 1926 (Chicago: Argonaut, 1969), p. 30 John II may have taken refuge in Tripolis.Kuršanskis, "L'usurpation", p. 203. Shortly afterwards she was defeated and John regained his throne, but she had managed to reign long enough to have minted her own coins. A few types of silver aspers and bronze nomismas are evidence that she was the only Empress of Trebizond to have coined money.Warwick Wroth, Catalogue of the Coins of the Vandals, Ostrogoths and Lombards and of the Empires of Thessalonica, Nicaea and Trebizond in the British Museum (London: Trustees of the British Museum, 1911), pp. lxxx, 277 has only an example of the asper; Otto Retowski, Die Münzen der Komnen von Trapezunt, 1910 (Braunschweig: Klinkhardt & Biermann, 1974), pp. 132-134 shows two examples of both asper and nomisma. After John's restoration, she went into exile in Georgia, the homeland of her mother.
References