Eugenio Lascorz y Labastida (26 March 1886 – 1 June 1962) was a Spanish lawyer who claimed to be a descendant of the medieval Laskaris family, which had ruled the Byzantine Empire in Nicaea from 1204 to 1261. In 1917 he legally changed his paternal surname from Lascorz to Láscaris, alleging that the former was a Hispanicization of the latter. Later he began styling himself as Príncipe Eugenio Láscaris Comneno (Prince Eugene Laskaris Komnenos). As the supposed titular Emperor of Constantinople, Eugenio used the regnal name Eugene II Lascaris Comnenus. In addition to his royal and imperial claims, which he supported with fabricated and contradictory genealogies, Lascorz also claimed the titles "Prince Porphyrogenitus", Duke of Athens and Grand Master of the self-proclaimed "Sovereign and Imperial Order of Constantine the Great" (not to be confused with the Constantinian Order of Saint George) and the "Order of Saint Eugene of Trebizond".
In the 1920s, Lascorz established himself as a successful attorney in private practice in Zaragoza. He combined that legal career with historical and literary studies focused on Ancient and Byzantine Greece, publishing works of both fiction and non-fiction that explored what he regarded as the history of his ancestors. In 1923 he proclaimed himself to the Greek people as the legitimate heir to the throne of the historical Byzantine Empire and as claimant to the crown of the modern Kingdom of Greece.
After the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, Lascorz served as a military judge in the Nationalist forces led by General Francisco Franco. Between 1939 and 1943, he served the new Francoist state as a judge under the terms of the Law of Political Responsibilities. In 1943, Lascorz resigned his judgeship and moved to Madrid, where he dedicated himself full time to his dynastic claims and to the government of his orders of chivalry. The exposure of his Byzantine genealogy as fraudulent caused a minor scandal within the high society of Madrid in 1953 and 1954, but Lascorz persisted in his claims until his death in 1962. His son Teodoro (1921–2006) and grandson Eugenio (born 1975) have continued those claims as "Theodore IX" and "Eugene III", respectively.
Biography
Ancestry and early life Eugenio Lascorz y Labastida was born in Zaragoza on 26 March 1886 and as per Spanish naming customs, took the surnames of both of his parents, Manuel Lascorz y Serveto (born in 1849) and Carmen Labastida y Pascual (born in 1857). He was baptised two days after his birth in the Basilica of Our Lady of the Pillar. His paternal grandparents were the labourer Victorián Lascorz and his wife Raimunda Serveto; his maternal grandparents were Manuel Labastida and Ramona Pascual. His great-grandfather (Victorián's father) was a man named Alonso Lascorz y Cerdán. The surname Lascorz is not uncommon in High Aragon, and there is a village of that name in the province of Huesca. The name is probably of Basque origins. The Lascorz family emigrated from the village of Plan to Zaragoza in the third quarter of nineteenth century, part of the large influx of immigrants from rural Aragon to its capital at around that time.
The Lascorz family enjoyed significant wealth and social status in Zaragoza. Eugenio's father, Manuel, was a lawyer as well as a doctor of philosophy and letters, who served as secretary of the local provincial council. Manuel and Carmen had three children, Eugenio being the youngest. He had an older brother, Lorenzo (1877–1900), and a sister, Josefina (1881–1956). Both Eugenio and Lorenzo studied at the University of Zaragoza. Lorenzo studied medicine while Eugenio studied law. At the university, Eugenio became fascinated by Byzantine history. Lorenzo died in 1900 at the age of 22, making Eugenio the "heir" to Manuel. Eugenio began his professional career as an attorney in 1917. Exactly when Lascorz began his Byzantine claims is unclear. Later family tradition is that his father "revealed" their family history on his deathbed on 5 August 1906, declaring to Eugenio and Josefina that he was not just Manuel Lascorz y Serveto, but Prince Alexios Manuel Lascáris-Comneno, who had arrived with his father Prince Andronikos in Spain after fleeing from Ottoman persecution. Manuel's obituaries stated that he was a "descendant and heir of the ancient Greek imperial family of the same surname, fleeing from the ruins of his homeland".
Eugenio was a brilliant student, and he received his doctorate in law from the University of Zaragoza in 1911. In 1917 he was admitted as Procurador de Tribunales ("Procurator of the Courts"), which in the Spanish system is a legal professional who specializes in court procedures and who is licensed to represent clients before the courts. From 1933 to 1937 he would serve as Dean of the College of Procurators of Zaragoza.
Byzantine claims and aspirations
Attempt at gaining the throne of Greece Lascorz, possibly inspired by his father, believed that his last name was a corruption of Laskaris, the name of a medieval Greek dynasty that had ruled the Byzantine Empire in Nicaea from 1204 to 1261. Lascorz was a proponent of the Greek Megali Idea: the Greek aspirations of conquering former Byzantine territory, including Constantinople. He embarked on a campaign to secure recognition of his royal descent by substituting "Lascorz" for "Láscaris" before the Spanish courts. Lascorz believed that his descent from the Laskarids gave him a claim to the throne of the Kingdom of Greece, an idea to which he dedicated the rest of his life. Eugenio had his paternal surname legally "corrected" from Lascorz to Láscaris, and later began to style himself "Eugenio Láscaris Comneno". At the time, Greece was embroiled in a political crisis, following the abdication of King Constantine I, which put the future in Greece of the ruling House of Glücksburg in doubt.
In 1923, Lascorz issued a manifesto to the Greek people, proclaiming himself "Prince Eugene Lascaris Comnenus, heir to the Emperors of Byzantium and Pretender to the Throne of Greece". In 1924, King George II was forced to abdicate and the Second Hellenic Republic was proclaimed. Lascorz saw in these events the fall of the House of Glücksburg and an opportunity to claim the Greek throne for himself. According to Lascorz, he had received the blessing of the Patriarch of Constantinople, Meletius IV, in 1922. In 1927 Lascorz and his oldest son Teodoro were supposedly granted some honours by the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, Damian I. The Láscaris family archives contain documents that they claim show that former Greek prime minister Eleftherios Venizelos, while in self-exile in Paris in the early 1920s, seriously considered Lascorz as a candidate for the Greek throne. According to contemporary newspapers and radio broadcasts in Spain, several Greek deputies expressed interest in offering the Greek crown to Lascorz. That nothing came of this after Venizelos became prime minister again in 1928 is explained away by Lascorz's modern descendants as due to the economic crisis and political instability plaguing the country.
Genealogical forgeries In 1920, Lascorz married a woman named Nicasia Justa Micoláu Traver, with whom he would go on to have six children. Each received names of ancient Byzantine royalty, such as Teodoro, Constantino, Alejandro and Juan Arcadio. The maternal surname was altered first to Micolav and then to Micolaw, apparently to give the impression that it was Slavic. In fact, Nicasia's father and grandfather had been confectioners in small towns of Lower Aragon, in the province of Teruel. In 1935, Lascorz also invented an elaborate genealogy for himself, which notably altered his own familial history. His grandfather Victoriano was substituted by "Prince Andronikos Theodore Laskaris", supposedly described by his father on his deathbed. Eugenio's paternal great-grandfather, Alonso, was substituted by a "Prince Theodore Laskaris, Porphyrogenitus".
As a lawyer, Lascorz was principally concerned with practical tasks and he did not make intellectual contributions to legal studies. During the Spanish Civil War (1936 – 1939), Lascorz served as honorary captain of the Aragonese Requeté, an armed group that fought alongside General Francisco Franco's Nationalist faction and which was directly tied to the traditionalist and legitimist movement known as "Carlism". Lascorz served as a military judge under the Nationalist faction, and after the Nationalist victory of 1939 he was appointed as judge in San Sebastián under the terms of Franco's draconian Law of Political Responsibilities. In 1942 he moved to Barcelona, taking up another position in Franco's system of military justice. A strong supporter of the new regime, Eugenio, his wife, and his son, Teodoro, wrote to Franco several times. Franco's office responded, addressing Eugenio and his family with their self-proclaimed titles.
Known at this stage as the "Prince Eugenio Flavio Láscaris-Comneno", Eugenio resigned his military judgeship in 1943 and moved to Madrid, where he dedicated himself to promoting his dynastic claims and his orders of chivalry. He was also devoted to the study of Ancient and Byzantine Greece, and he wrote several works on Greek history. His publications on Byzantine themes were not restricted to historical works. In 1943, he published Calígrafia griega y bizantina ("Greek and Byzantine Calligraphy"), a collection of calligraphic exercises, beginning with tracing and then moving to reproductions of real ancient Greek and Byzantine initials, manuscripts and signatures. In 1956, Lascorz published "Caliniki: Evocación histórica", a short story centering on a fictional Lacedaemonian girl named Cali Cabasileas who falls in love with Andrónico, a courtier of Despot Manuel Kantakouzenos.
In 1946, Eugenio attempted to expand his "Sovereign and Imperial Order of Constantine the Great" and his own order of Saint Helena into international organisations. In 1948, he began publishing his own magazine, Parthenon, with the Asociación Cultural Greco-Española (the Greco-Spanish Cultural Association, an organization based in Madrid) and on 15 September 1950 he founded the International Philo Byzantine Academy and University (IPHBAU), a "cultural extension" of his self-proclaimed chivalric orders, which also had its own magazine.
Eugenio published new genealogies in 1947 and 1952, changing the names of some of his ancestors, adding more supposed princes, and altering their relationships relative to the original genealogy of 1935. The 1952 version, the first to refer to Eugenio's father as "Alexios Manuel", explicitly contradicts Eugenio's earlier versions, which he had attempted to have validated by the Spanish courts. He did obtain "recognition" from several courts in Italy. Those courts did not investigate his genealogy, nor did they have the competence or authority to validate claims to the throne of the Byzantine Empire or the Kingdom of Greece.
The Hidalguía controversy