From Dragula to Cypelles: Wallachia in the Late 1470s

Abstract

Abstract For Pope Pius II, Vlad was John Dragula and his cruelty completed the lamented fate of the Wallachians, Rome’s Eastern forgotten children, still capable of finding recovery and redemption, Vlad included, under the authority of Matthias, the king of Hungary and of Dacia (according to the same pope). Basarab IV, Cypelles for Beatrice of Aragon, that is either “Little Impaller” or “Little Shoemaker”, seems to have been quite the opposite, though otherwise his and Vlad’s “career choices” were quite similar: Vlad went from pro-Ottoman to pro-Hungarian, “chosing” West over East, and Basarab turned from pro-Hungarian to pro-Ottoman, inheriting also Mara Branković’s “medial” stand between West and East, that favoured a pro-Ottoman status-quo at the borders of divided Christendom. Their short “joint-rule” over Wallachia, turned into Christendom’s trench by King Matthias, Christendom’s hope, and Stephen of Moldavia, the athlete of Christendom, is eloquent for the bi-polar survival of a divided state that gradually came to a – temporary – end once both Ţepeş and Ţepeluş were gone. This occurred under the rules of Vlad IV Călugărul, a former monk, Vlad’s half-brother, and of his son, Radu IV the Great, an “agent” of Venice and of the Porte. At that time, the Greek rite Brankovićs were still barons of the realm of Saint Stephen, as well as “registered voters” at the royal Hungarian elections of 1490, the year that stands for both the end of Matthias’ plans and hopes for his son’s monarchic survival and in fact – in early modern Wallachian chronicles – for the end of Stephen III’s 16/ 17 years of rule over Wallachia.