1. Origin

The Nestongos family, probably of Bulgarian origin,¹ settled on Byzantine territory after 1018. The family appears for the first time on the public life of the Empire in 1136, on the typikon of Pantokrator monastery at Constantinople, where the house of Nestongoi and part of their land property is mentioned.² However, there is not enough evidence on the members of the family that period.³

2. Political presence

On the contrary, in the 13^th century Nestongoi reached their heyday and were listed among the wealthiest and most illustrious aristocratic families of the Byzantine court. Its members went up the hierarchy of the honorary titles and played an important role in the events of the Empire. They acquired ties of relationship at first with the family of Vatatzes and later with that of Palaiologoi and Tarchaneiotes.

The Nestongos’ ties of relationship with the family of Vatatzes were not an obstacle for two of its members, Andronikos and his brother Isaac, cousins of John III Vatatzes, emperor of Nicaea, to organize a conspiracy against him during the first years of his reign. Nevertheless, the relationships of the two families were not shuttered; on the contrary, they became tighter when John III's son Theodore II Laskaris ascended to power and wanted to marry one of his daughters with George Nestongos, illustrious member of the family. The close relationship of the two families is attested as well by the fact that a little later, after the death of the emperor, Nestongoi laid claim upon the regency of John IV Laskaris, the underage heir of the throne.

During the period of the reign of Theodore II Laskaris, many members of the Nestongos family distinguished themselves as military commanders and governors of big provinces within the wider region of Macedonia. In 1255 Theodore Nestongos was in charge, along with John Angelos, of the Byzantine garrison at Melenikos (Melnik), which was being besieged by the Bulgars, whereas in 1256 George Nestongos undertook the task of drive Cumans (mercenary Bulgarians) outside the area of Didymoteichon. Next year, Isaac Nestongos⁴ was appointed by praetor George Akropolites commander of Macedonia and later kephale of Ohrid.

By the time Palaiologoi assumed power, Nestongoi were continuing to play an important role on the public life of the Byzantine Empire. They were supporters of the policy of Palaiologoi and some of them received important offices, as for example Michael Nestongos, who became protosebastos in 1259, and Alexios Doukas Nestongos, who was appointed kephale of Thessalonike in 1267. During that period, certain of the family’s members were active in regions of Asia Minor as well, as for example Constantine Doukas Netongos, brother of Alexios and uncle of the later emperor Andronikos II Palaiologos, who was appointed commander of Nyssa in Lydia in 1284, and the one Nestongos that undertook the dignity of kephale of Magnesia in 1304. The ties of certain members of the family with the region of Asia Minor are dated even earlier, as it appears from the documents of the Theotokos of Lembos monastery, where they are recorded as holders of land property in the district of Smyrna and as donators of land to the monastery.⁵

During the same period the addition of the family name of Doukas on the epithet of many of Nestongoi is attested, eventually because of the relationship that existed before with the family of Vatatzes. However, it is probable that this name came from the marriage of some of the Nestongos family’s female members with a cousin of the emperor Michael VIII.⁶ Nestongoi established ties with the family of Tarchaneiotes. The nun Nostongonissa,⁷ who Andronikos II Palaiologos sent along with a message of reconciliation to the Arsenites monks of the Mosele monastery, was the daughter of megas domestikos Nikephoros Tarchaneiotes and of a daughter of protostrator Andronikos Aprenos.

During the second half of the 14^th century megas papias Nestongos Doukas is singled out from the Nestongos family, who offered his services to the Serbian tsar Stephan IV Dušan (1331-1355). Thereafter the traces of the family on the written sources are lost and we possess no evident for their later course.