Bryennios

Bryennios (Βρυέννιος) is the name of a prominent Byzantine aristocratic family dedicated to the civil service at Constantinople. The feminine form of the name is Bryennissa.
==History==
Founded in the ninth century by general Theoktistos Bryennios, who quelled a Slavic rebellion in Greece in 842, the Bryennioi rose to prominence in the eleventh century, as the Macedonians faded. They were one of the most important military families at the time, first under Nikephoros the Ethnarch, then his son Nikephoros the Elder and at last Nikephoros the Younger, the Ethnarch's grandson. All were senior officers in the Byzantine army. The Ethnarch commanded the mercenary contingents and the Elder was one of the several generals to claim the purple in the turbulent 1070's, but it was truly under Nikephoros Bryennios the Younger that the family reached their apogee. Married to the famed historian and princess Anna Komnena, he was Alexios I's son-in-law and John II's brother-in-law, which granted him nearly unparalleled influence in the Komnenid court. Nikephoros the Younger served the Komnenids as a major general, diplomat and statesman, and left behind considerable works as a historian. Under his aegis, the family mostly migrated to the civil service, the halls of learning and the ecclesiastical bureaucracy, and remains respectable to this day
Category:Byzantine families