Byzantium after Byzantium by Nicolae Iorga

Author:Nicolae Iorga
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Histria Books
Published: 2022-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

II. The Romanians in Constantinople

Radu Paisie or Petru from Argeş — three names, of a layman, of a monk, and of a prince — was the first who, as an exile in Egypt, lived in a Byzantine world. The situation of the Romanian princes in relation to the Patriarchate in Constantinople, their character of continuators of Byzantium appeared already in this epoch in the muniment through which Radu created the new eparchy of Buzău “to be a parish and judgement seat where there is need of pastoral service: according to the pious faith and the Christian religion,” following the tradition established “by those before us old princes,” consulting only with “our all-holy and all-glorious father and Ecumenical Patriarch chir Jeremiah and with the other hierarchs, bishops, and abbots, and with the entire synod and with all my boyars, great and minor” (17 September 1544).45

His successor, Mircea, dealt for a long time, as purveyor of the court in Constantinople, with commerce in sheep, in great demand, on the Danube; that is why he was nicknamed “the Shepherd.” His wife, Chiajna, half Serbian, descendant of the Branković family on her mother‟s side, but a Moldavian on the side of her father, Petru Rareş, kept the Greeks brought in the country by her husband; the word was that, having remained a widow, she had an impermissible relationship with one of them.46 His rival, Alexander, was, as we have said, an old Constantinopolitan, married in Pera.

From then on, the princes of the two rival families that succeeded each other left for the capital of the empire or for eastern exile places to wait for their turn on the throne: they were therefore marked by all that meant Byzantine tradition. This was the case of Petru, the son of Mircea and Chiajna, who was exiled in Alep and whose tombstone, written in an elevated Greek, was found in Asia Minor;47 it was also the case of Mihnea, the son of Alexander and his Levantine wife, who must have known Rhodes and Tripoli in Africa. An unexpected adversary, Petru Cercel, came through France and Italy from Damascus,48 his place of exile during his childhood and adolescence.

In Moldavia, Alexandru Lăpuşneanu, driven away by the Cretan Basilikos, who aspired to rule the former Byzantine Empire, was the first of the lineage of Stephen the Great to know, through his forced exile there, the capital of the empire. We have seen that he and his wife Ruxandra, the sister of Chiajna, were generous in gifts to Mount Athos, where one can still see the portrait of this prince, in imperial dress — the richly jagged crown, set on a veil, the brocade mantle — placed between his sons Bogdan and Constantin49 —, as well as the portrait of his wife. Mount Sinai also enjoyed their generosity.50 The letter addressed by the monks at Karakalu to Ruxandra, Alexandru‟s wife, who became their patron, has been preserved.51 She redeemed one of the monasteries on Athos at the time when Sultan Selim II was putting up for auction all the properties of the Orthodox Church (1568).

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