the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. By Decree of the President of the Republic, in 1973 the National Italian Association of the Knights of the Sacred Military Constantinian Order of St. George. The order is on the Orders, decorations, and medals of Italy list. History Origins The legendary origins of the Sacred Military Constantinian Order of Saint George trace its foundation to an apocryphal order founded by Constantine the Great. Although it has sometimes been held that the order would have been restored/created by the Byzantine emperor Isaac II Angelos, any claimed connection between chivalric orders and the Eastern Roman Empire are pure fantasy, as chivalric orders in the modern Western sense were completely unknown in the Byzantine world. At best, any connection to some ancient group would be excessively indirect and abstracted. The order was actually founded by Albanian nobles of the Angelo Flavio Comneno family (claiming connection to the Byzantine houses of Angelos and Komnenos) in the 16th century, attested in association with a man by the name Andrea Angelo Flavio Comneno, and his brother Paolo Angelo Flavio Comneno, in 1545. In 1545, the brothers Andrea and Paolo were officially acknowledged as descendants of the Angeloi emperors (a claim seen as doubtful today) by Pope Paul III. The brothers were also guaranteed the right to inherit territory in the former Byzantine Empire, should such territory be recovered from the Ottomans. Their family remained grand masters of the order until 1698 when Giovanni Andrea Angelo Flavio Comneno Lascaris Paleologo, who also claimed the titles of "Prince of Macedonia", "Duke of Thessaly" and "Count of Drivasto, Durazzo etc." upon his death assigned the order not to any living relatives but to Francesco Farnese, the duke of Parma. Outside the generally recognized line of grand masters from its origin in the 17th century to the present day, there have been many people claiming to be grand masters who have been forgers and title-seekers hoping to gain support for invented lines of descent from ancient and medieval nobility. Farnese family, male primogeniture Its incorporation as a religious order of the Catholic Church hereditary in the House of Farnese and its heirs, the Bourbons, dates from the transfer to Francesco Farnese on 11 January 1698, an act confirmed in an imperial diploma, "Agnoscimus et notum facimus", of the emperor, Leopold I, dated 5 August 1699, and the apostolic brief, "Sincerae Fidei", issued by Pope