Aaron the Tyrant () or Aron Vodă ("Aron the Voivode"; ),Damian P. Bogdan, "O străveche matrice de pecete românească", in Studii și Materiale de Istorie Medie, Vol. I, 1956, p. 248 sometimes credited as Aron Emanoil or Emanuel Aaron (,Mureșianu, p. 198; Sterca-Șuluțiu, p. 81 ,Iorga (1932), p. 227; Mârza (1998), p. 156 Maxim (1994), p. 23 or Zalim;Kohen, p. 103 before 1560Sterca-Șuluțiu, p. 98 – May 1597), was twice the Prince of Moldavia: between September 1591 and June 1592, and October 1592 to May 3 or 4, 1595. He was of mysterious origin, and possibly of Jewish extraction, but presented himself as the son of Alexandru Lăpușneanu, and was recognized as such in some circles. His appointment by the Ottoman Empire followed an informal race, during which candidates engaging in particularly exorbitant bribery and accepted unprecedented increases of the haraç. Though resented by the Janissaries, he was backed by a powerful lobby, comprising Solomon Ashkenazi, Edward Barton, Hoca Sadeddin Efendi, and Patriarch Jeremias II. Victorious but heavily indebted, Aaron allowed his creditors to interfere directly in fiscal policy, while adopting methods of extortion against the taxpaying peasantry. He eventually turned against the bankers, staging the execution of Bartolomeo Brutti.
Following such moves, and his heavy-handed repression of rebels in Lăpușna and Orhei, Aaron was ordered to step down by the Porte. The order was rescinded after two months, which had seen the ascendancy of a rebel Prince, Peter the Cossack. Aaron took back his throne, being increasingly reliant on support from the Principality of Transylvania. He entered his second reign as an obedient vassal of the Ottomans, while also turning against Moldavian Catholicism and expelling the Society of Jesus. In secret, he began negotiating Moldavia's participation in the anti-Ottoman "Holy League", defining himself as an ally of the Holy See and the Holy Roman Empire. This project drew support from Transylvania, which was then under Sigismund Báthory, as well as from Wallachia's Michael the Brave. With the start of the Long Turkish War in 1593, Moldavia became a secondary theater, invaded successively by the Crimean Khanate and the Zaporizhian Sich; after long negotiations, Aaron was able to ally himself with the latter. He then helped Michael of Wallachia attack the Ottoman flank, extending his rule into the Budjak and Northern Dobruja. During the events, he ordered a series of massacres, killing Ottoman Army prisoners and 19 Jewish financiers.
Despite his military commitment and his quashing of a pro-Ottoman uprising, Aaron was viewed with suspicion by Báthory. Their relationship became tense after Aaron declined to swear fealty at the Transylvanian court, preferring instead for Moldavia to be ruled as a component of the Holy Roman Empire. Báthory reportedly undermined the League, depicting Aaron as untrustworthy; he also endorsed the Moldavian general Ștefan Răzvan, who arrested the Prince and took over his throne. Aaron and his family were exiled to Corona (Brașov), then detained at Martinuzzi Castle, Alvinc (Vințu de Jos)—where Aaron died, allegedly poisoned. He was survived by his stepson Marcu Cercel, who attached himself to the Wallachian court and briefly served as Michael's subordinate Prince of Moldavia. Aaron's name is preserved by Aroneanu Church and eponymous village, both of which are located outside Iași. He is also celebrated as a sponsor of the First Romanian School in Șcheii Brașovului.
Biography Debated origins Aaron's origins and early life are a matter of scholarly dispute. His second or non-regnal name, rendered as Emanuel or Emanoil, has been deduced from a German-language document dealing with his bid for the Moldavian throne; historian A. D. Xenopol proposed using it consistently, to distinguish between Aaron and his 15th-century predecessor, Peter Aaron.Xenopol V, p. 110 He depicted himself as a son of Alexandru Lăpușneanu, who had twice ruled upon Moldavia in the 1550s and '60s. He was also recognized as such by the Lviv Dormition Brotherhood, who asked him to resume the patronage of his "saintly deceased father".Mircea Pahomi, "Fundații românești în Galiția — Ucraina", in Analele Bucovinei, Vol. II, Issue 1, 1995, p. 105; Petre P. Panaitescu, "Fundațiuni religioase românești în Galiția", in Buletinul Comisiunii Monumentelor Istorice, Vol. XXII, Fascicle 59, January–March 1929, pp. 2–3 In 1594, a Pan Drożyński of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth noted that Moldavians recognized kinship between Aaron and the Lăpușneanus: Aaron and Alexandru's daughter Mărica Orzechowska viewed each other as brother and sister, and Orzechowska even joined his court to serve as a translator of Polish.Gorovei, pp. 195–197. See also Iorga (1898), pp. 47, 53 Orzechowska also raised her orphaned niece, Anna Czołhańska, who, according to genealogist Ștefan S. Gorovei, was Aaron's own niece.Gorovei, p. 196
Modern scholars who accept Aaron's genealogical claims include Alexandru Lapedatu, who thus argues that Aaron was the final male representative of the Bogdan-Mușat dynasty.Alexandru Lapedatu, "Antecedente istorice ale Independenții române", in Anuarul Institutului de Istorie Națională, Vol. IV, 1926–1927, pp. 296, 298 In some of his work, historian Nicolae Iorga also credits the genealogy. He once described Aaron as an "unrecognized child" of the Prince, whom he nevertheless resembled, being "mean and gluttonous".Sterca-Șuluțiu, p. 84 Elsewhere, he credited reports that Aaron was a direct descendant of Stephen the Great.Iorga (1932), pp. 222, 227 Cultural historian Răzvan Theodorescu also endorses the claim.Theodorescu (1979), p. 57 & (1987), p. 213
The Moldavian classical historian Ioan Neculce renders a conflicting account. This depicts young Aaron as the nephew and servant of Moldavian Metropolitan Nicanor, with whom he lived at Agapia Monastery. While there, Aaron seduced a nun, and was caught by Nicanor while returning from her chambers. The bishop punished him with a public beating, then chased him out of the country.Sterca-Șuluțiu, p. 85 A variant of the story was recorded in 1886 by jurist Iancu Cerkez, who refers to Aaron's uncle as Starets Silvan, and notes that the beating occurred when Aaron failed to respect a curfew. According to Cerkez, the boy was not expelled, but rather "fled out of shame and returned only when he could return as a Prince".Iancu Cerkez, "Un concediu în 1886", in Magazin Istoric, July 1998, p. 61
Writing before Neculce, the physician Penzen recounted that Aaron was "of the Jewish race".Sterca-Șuluțiu, p. 84; Xenopol V, p. 110 According to researcher Constantin Gane, Aaron was a "Jewish Prince", born as "Solomon Tedeschi [...] to one of our voivodes and a Jewish woman."Gane, p. 126 The identification of Aaron and Tedeschi is nonetheless contradicted by period sources: Solomon Ashkenazi, also known as "Tedeschi", was in fact an influential court Jew of the Ottoman Empire, who backed Aaron in his quest for the throne.Maxim (1994), p. 23; Sterca-Șuluțiu, p. 84 Xenopol also argues against the possibility that Aaron was born to a Prince and his Jewish mistress, and proposes that he may have been fully Jewish. He notes that any royal descent would clash with details provided by the chronicler Reinhold Heidenstein; Heidenstein depicts Aaron as a former stablehand for the Moldavian boyardom, and as "having usurped, under whatever circumstances, the title of boyar."Sterca-Șuluțiu, pp. 83–85; Xenopol V, p. 110
Jewish studies academic Elli Kohen also noted the story regarding Aaron's beginnings in horse grooming, but describes him as a "Pole of hypothetical Jewish extraction".Kohen, pp. 102–103 Another researcher, Iosif Sterca-Șuluțiu, rejects both Penzen and Heidenstein's accounts, noting that, if they had been true, they would also have been taken up in political literature.Sterca-Șuluțiu, pp. 83–84, 86–88, 102 His version, based on theories circulated by the Transylvanian School, is that Aaron was the son of a Romanian expatriate from Royal Hungary, Aron of Pozsony, who in the 1540s had wanted to seize the Moldavian throne as a Habsburg candidate; though existentially opposed to Lăpușneanu, this Aron may have been Lăpușneanu's brother—and son of Bogdan III.Sterca-Șuluțiu, pp. 98–102 Sterca-Șuluțiu reads Aaron's references to "my father" Lăpușneanu as clues that the reigning Prince had adopted him in the 1560s.Sterca-Șuluțiu, pp. 97–98
Some uncertainty also covers Aaron's matrimonial alliances. One interpretation of period texts suggests that he was the son-in-law of the Ottoman Greek businessman and kingmaker, Andronikos Kantakouzenos; also according to this reading, Kantakouzenos' other daughter was married to Wallachia's Stephen the Deaf.Cazacu, p. 176; Gane, p. 126; Iorga (1971), pp. 123–124 This take was rejected by historian Matei Cazacu, who notes that it is based on a mistranslation by Iorga.Cazacu, p. 176 Several contemporary accounts mention that Aaron was in fact married to a former wife or concubine of Wallachia's Prince Petru Cercel, whose name was probably Stanca. She was most likely the mother of Marcu Cercel, and possibly also of his brothers Ionașcu and Radu Petru.Pascu, pp. 87–96; Rădulescu, pp. 52–53, 55 Stanca may have been an ethnic Turk and a Muslim apostate whose original name was Sultana,Rezachevici (2000), p. 10 and was perhaps also a renegade member of the Köprülü family.Rădulescu, p. 52
Scandalous rise Aaron's career overlapped with a generalized political and economic crisis, observed in both Moldavia and Wallachia (the Danubian Principalities), as well as throughout their suzerain power, the Ottoman Empire. During the late stages of Romanian medieval history, there was a "continuous degradation of the princely office",Denize, p. 158 bringing Moldavia to the "wretched state which had already taken hold in Wallachia".Xenopol V, p. 113 Art historian Corina Nicolescu also describes a "relative stagnation" of cultural development in both states, correlated with the "ever-increasing subjugation" and the "backward characteristics of Turkish society".Nicolescu, p. 197 This decline corresponded with the Ottoman drive for funds: in 1589, Grand Vizier Koca Sinan Pasha acknowledged that his fiscal regime could only supply one third of the imperial expenses.Maxim (1994), p. 26 In 1591, Peter the Lame, "unable to meet the incessant demands for money that came from Stamboul", relinquished his Moldavian throne, "rather than to await his own ousting, exile, or killing."Gane, pp. 118–119
As historian Mihai Maxim notes, Peter was unable to pay his main tribute, or haraç, after the Ottomans' stabilization policy, which included pegging the exchange rate.Maxim (1994), pp. 21–22, 23–24 The Prince also lost the crucial backing of Sinan Pasha, who had been deposed.Maxim (1994), pp. 21–22, 23–24; Pilat, p. 53 According to the 17th-century chronicler Grigore Ureche, Peter was ultimately pushed to resign and flee by his patriotism, dismissing the alternative of increasing revenue through taxation: "he did not want the curse of his country to be on him."Gane, p. 119; Xenopol V, p. 109 Xenopol dismisses this reading as "apologetic" and charitable, noting that Peter was well acquainted with the Ottoman practices, and would still have bribed his way to the throne under normal circumstances.Xenopol V, p. 109