Aaronios

The Aaronios (Template:Lang-el) or Aaron (Template:Polytonic) were a Byzantine noble family of Bulgarian origin, being descended from Emperor Ivan Vladislav of Bulgaria (r. 1015–1018).

After Ivan Vladislav's death before Dyrrhachium in 1018 and the collapse of the Bulgarian state, empress Maria sought refuge in the Byzantine Empire. There Emperor Basil II (r. 976–1025) received her and her offspring and gave them high court titles and offices. The two eldest members of the family, Presianos and Alousianos were involved in rebellions. Presianos became implicated in a plot against Emperor Romanos III Argyros (r. 1028–1033) in ca. 1029, and Alousianos was actively involved in the Uprising of Petar Delyan in 1041–1041. His daughter married Romanos Diogenes.

The third eldest son, Aaron, served as a high-ranking general and governor of important provinces in the Emprie's eastern frontier in the 1040s and 1050s. Strictly speaking, the Aaronios line descended from him. His son Theodore was killed fighting in Armenia against the Seljuk Turks in 1055/1056.

The daughter of the third son, Trajan, Maria, married into the Komnenos clan, as did her aunt Catherine, who married Emperor Isaac I Komnenos (r. 1057–1059). The family became more obscure in the 12th century, but surviving members are still documented until the late 14t century, albeit in lower-ranking posts.

Sources

• Kazhdan, Alexander, ed. (1991), Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, Oxford University Press, p. 1, ISBN 978-0-19-504652-6