Kata or Katay () was a daughter of King David IV of Georgia. She married into the Byzantine imperial family 1116, but the identity of her husband is not revealed in the medieval sources. There are three modern hypotheses regarding her marriage.Lynda Garland & Stephen Rapp. Mary 'of Alania': Woman and Empress Between Two Worlds, p. 121. In: Lynda Garland (ed., 2006), Byzantine Women: Varieties of Experience, 800-1200. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., .
Marriage Medieval chronicle Kata's marriage is mentioned by the 12th-century History of the King of Kings David, part of the compiled Georgian Chronicles, which does not specify the name of her husband.Toumanoff, Cyril (July 1940), "On the Relationship between the Founder of the Empire of Trebizond and the Georgian Queen Thamar", Speculum, Vol. 15, No. 3: p. 307, fn. 2. The chronicle extols Kata and her sister, Tamar, a wife of the shah of Shirvan, as luminaries of the West and the East, respectively, reflecting the splendor of their father. Brosset, Marie-Félicité, (1849) Histoire de la Géorgie de l'Antiquité au XIXe siècle, p. 360. St. Petersbourg: A la typographie de l'Academie Impériale des Sciences.Prinke, Rafał T. (2011), "Kata of Georgia", Foundations 3 (6): 489-502.
Modern theories There are different scholarly opinions as to who exactly was Kata's spouse. According to a hypothesis commonly accepted by historians in Georgia, Prinke, Rafał T. (1998), Krew Bagratydów. Genealogiczne związki Rurykowiczów i Komnenów z Bagratydami w XII wieku . in: Nuntius Vetustatis, sive Opuscula diversa Professori Georgio Wisłocki septuagenario dedicata, Posnaniae, Anno Domini MCMXCVIII. she married Isaac Komnenos, the third son of the emperor Alexios I Komnenos,Suny, Ronald Grigor (1994), The Making of the Georgian Nation, p. 36. Indiana University Press, . and became Irene, a name recorded by the Byzantine sources as that of Isaac's wife. If the hypothesis is true and Helene, a daughter of Isaac and Kata, was indeed the wife of the Rurikid Rus' prince Yuri Dolgorukiy, then it may provide, through descent from antiquity, a Bagratid ancestry to numerous Russian and Polish descendants. Alternatively, Isaac's wife Irene may have been the same person as an anonymous daughter of Volodar of Peremyshl known from the Slavonic Primary Chronicle to have married the likewise unnamed son of the emperor Alexios.Magdalino, Paul (2002), The Empire of Manuel I Komnenos, 1143–1180, p. 205. Cambridge University Press. .
Another version given currency, among other scholars, by Cyril Toumanoff, holds that Kata was married to the megas doux Alexios Komnenos, a son of Nikephoros Bryennios the Younger and Anna Komnena.
The third hypothesis, supported by Paul Gautier and Mihail-Dimitri Sturdza, states that Kata's husband was Alexios Komnenos, the eldest son and co-emperor of the Byzantine emperor John II Komnenos. The Byzantine chronicle of Joannes Zonaras mentions the arrival of the Georgian (Abasgian) bride of the elder son of John II at Constantinople immediately after his accession to the throne, not long after 1118.Kazhdan, Alexander & Franklin, Simon (1984), Studies on Byzantine literature of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, p. 94. Cambridge University Press, .
See also Family of David IV of Georgia
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