Byzantium after Byzantium? Two Greek Writers in Seventeenth-Century Wallachia

What is it about?

This article focuses the works of two Greek writers resident in Wallachia, part of modern Romania, in the early seventeenth century. At the time, Wallachia was a vassal state of the Ottoman empire, though between 1594 and 1601, under prince Michael the Brave (Mihai Viteazul), Wallachians rose in revolt against Ottoman rule. Michael was able to unite, very briefly, the three Romanian-speaking territories of Wallachia, Moldavia and Transylvania, before his assassination in 1601. Of the two writers, Stavrinos the Vestiary, an official in Michael's court, wrote a chronicle in verse of Michael's uprising. The second, the Orthodox Metropolitan Matthew of Myra, continued Stavrinos' chronicle, and also wrote an advice to rulers, in verse, dedicated to one of Michael's successors, and a lament on the Fall of Constantinople, capital of the former Byzantine Empire. All of these poems, in vernacular Greek, were printed together in 1638, in a book which became a best-seller in the Greek-speaking world.

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Why is it important?

This short article draws upon two earlier articles by the same author, which were the first substantial studies in English on these two writers. The study of Stavrinos, in particular, shows how Michael the Brave was transformed into an almost mythical figure very soon after his death.

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