Stephen’s Successors
4. Rareş’s Princely Group
4.2. Stephen Lăcustă (Locust) and Alexander Cornea: a type of interregnum
As a ruler “haunted by the illegitimate-son obsession of affirming his dynastic legitimacy,”655 Peter Rareş never accepted the gap between his two reigns. The chronicle of Macarie quickly passes over the two reigns of Stephen Locust and Alexander Cornea: after a two-sentence description of the
“substitutes,”656 the chronicler suggests that this was enough information on the temporary rulers, and that he, together with his audience, should “return again to our story, to tell it all.”657 Consequently, Peter perceived the two rulers as simple usurpers who were nothing but a parenthesis to his reign,658 which, in his view, lasted for no less than 19 and half years.659
Stephen Locust (1538-1540) was a “princely offspring”660 born in Istanbul sometime between 1496 and 1497,661 as the youngest child of Alexander,662 Stephen the Great’s eldest son who died in 1496. Although he was Stephen the Great’s grandson, certain documents attest the fact that he was titling himself as the actual son of Stephen: “son of the old Prince Stephen.”663 Regardless however of this direct legitimation through Stephen the Great, he was not, at least at the beginning of his short reign, following the precepts of his grandfather’s way of ruling Moldavia: “… he is 30 years of age, and 25 of these years, he spent at the court of the sultan … therefore he is just like a pasha.”664
Being the man of the sultan, Stephen was accepted with difficulty by the boyars who would have preferred a man of their own. This was the main reason why the relationship between the
653 M. M. Székely explained Peter’s physical distress. For a full explanation of the issue and the questions posed by the historian, see: Maria Magdalena Székely, “La curte, la Petru Vodă” [At the court of Prince Peter], Revista Istorică 7-8 (1997): 494-495.
654 Eadem, 494.
655 Răzvan Theodorescu, Civilizaţia românilor între medieval şi modern [Romanian civilisation between medieval and modern] I (Bucharest: Meridiane, 1987), 18.
656 “The Chronicle of Macarie,” 211.
657 Ibidem.
658 Gorovei, Muşatinii, 94.
659 This is attested by the Chronicle of Eftimie who recorded Peter’s second reign. The text recorded that Peter’s reign lasted for 19 years and a half. See: “Cronica lui Eftimie” [The Chronicle of Eftimie] in Ioan Bogdan, Vechile cronice moldovenesci până la Urechia, 214. (henceforth: “The Chronicle of Eftimie”).
660 Ottoman journal from the expedition of 1538. See: Călători străini despre Ţările Române I, 385.
661 Gorovei, “Ştefan Lăcustă,” in Petru Rareş, 163.
662 „...the new prince of Moldavia, who is the natural son of Sandrin [Alexander].” See: Fabio Mignanelli’s account in Călători străini despre Ţările Române I, 466.
663 From the treaty signed between Stephen Locust and Sigismund II, quoted in Gorovei, “Domnia lui Ştefan Lăcustă,” 162.
664 Fabio Mignanelli in Călători străini despre Ţările Române I, 466.
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prince and his Royal Council went through an apparent peace: Stephen was trying to keep the throne, thus he preferred to stay in neutral relations with his boyars.665 His two years at the head of Suceava were thus relatively peaceful, the most extreme event of his reign being a locust invasion, which was so violent that it lent its name to the prince himself.666 However, “Locust” was not the only epithet that Stephen received. A more telling one was recorded by Humor’s Father Superior, Paisie. In 1540, he finished copying a manuscript of the Acts of the Apostles which he dated as following: “And at that time, Prince Stephen the Small and the Mean was ruling, in the year 7048 [1540].”667 Referring to Stephen Locust, his denomination must have implied a comparison668 and the existence of a Stephen “the Great and the Good” – none other than Stephen the Great himself.
Father Paisie made reference to the discrepancy between the two Stephens, enhancing Stephen the Great and and revealing his image in posterity.
Peter Rareş’s actions eventually led to the end of Stephen’s reign. Receiving the news that Peter was on his way to the sultan with the purpose of regaining Moldavia’s throne, the boyars who betrayed him took action in a way that could assure their continuity in the Royal Council, but, most importantly, that would assure the continuity of their own lives. Feeling threatened by the return of Peter and having no support from Stephen, in the night December 20th or 21st of 1541,669 the boyars Mihul and Trotuşanu, the same who led the plot against Rareş in 1538, entered Stephen’s bedroom and murdered him.670 An anonymous group of boyars later on tried to justify their actions regarding both Peter and Stephen in a letter to King Sigismund, dated between 1540 and 1541: disappointed by two terrible rulers (on the one side, Peter Rareş, who “would not stay at peace, but would have continuously entered wars and spilled Christian blood”671 and who “did not care neither about the blood, nor about the good of Christians”672; and, on the other side, Stephen Locust who was nothing but “a Turk dressed in our clothing”673 who would have eventually led to “his own collapse and this poor country’s collapse”674), they had no other choice than to replace him by force with Alexander Cornea.675
665 Stephen was aware that he could not rely too much on the boyars, especially given the negative welcome he received when appointed as the new prince of Moldavia. See: Gorovei, “Domnia lui Ştefan Lăcustă,” 165-169.
666 Ibidem, 167.
667 Quoted in: Gorovei and Székely, Princeps Omni Laude Maior, 539.
668 Ibidem.
669 Gorovei, “Domnia lui Ştefan Lăcustă,” 174.
670 The murder of Stephen Locust was picturesquely described by Grigore Ureche. See: Ureche, The Chronicle of Moldavia, 160.
671 Scrisori de boieri. Scrisori de domni, ed. Nicolae Iorga, 25.
672 Ibidem.
673 Ibidem.
674 Ibidem, 26.
675 See the full letter in: Ibidem, 25-27.
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Alexander Cornea’s reign (December 1540 – February 1541) lasted for only one month and three weeks and was deemed to fail from its very beginning. The only act that the short-lived prince had the chance to do was send messengers to Sigismund I, Suleyman the Magnificent, and Ferdinand of Habsburg in order to receive their approval as the new occupant of the Moldavian throne and in order to sign new peace treaties with them.676 Of course, these requests remained without outcome as Peter Rareş was already crossing the Danube into Moldavia by the end of January 1541.677 Under these circumstances, Alexander Cornea and some of his boyars678 faced an uncertain future.
While the old collaborators of Rareş abandoned Alexander and allied once more with Peter,679 Alexander had no other choice than to beg for his life, asking the newly-restored prince to cut his nose off instead of receiving execution.680 Unsurprisingly, Peter did not comply and had him executed, but the fact that he asked for his nose to be cut off might reveal Alexander’s identity: as only members of the princely family had the right to have their noses cut instead of being executed, Alexander Cornea could have been a member of the dynasty.681 This descendance from Stephen the Great is also confirmed by the above-mentioned boyars’ letter to Sigismund: “And we took a new prince, whom we all know is descending from rulers, son of prince Bogdan and grandson of old Prince Stephen, rightful heir of the principality of Moldavia.”682 While several other official documents attest Alexander’s connection to the family of Stephen,683 the unofficial version, pled by his enemies, stated that he was nothing more than boyar Mihu’s page.684
Regardless of the fact that they descended from the Muşatin dynasty, the two reigns of Stephen Locust and Alexander Cornea prove that in order to be able to fulfil the so-called dynastic project of Stephen the Great, it was not enough to be related in blood to the great predecessor: one had to also have the personality and ardor of Stephen, just like both Peter and, later on, Alexander Lăpuşneanu, who were both thrown off their throne, but successfully returned in full competence.
676 Ştefan S. Gorovei, “Domnia lui Alexandru Cornea,” in Petru Rareş, 177-178.
677 Ibidem, 178.
678 The most important boyars who led the revolts against Stephen the Young, Peter Rareş, and Stephen Locust were members of the great Găneşti and Arbureşti families. For a thorough description of the two families, see:
Ştefan S. Gorovei, “Găneştii şi Arbureştii” [The Găneşti and the Arbureşti families], Cercetări istorice 2 (1971):
143-159.
679 Székely, Sfetnicii lui Petru Rareş, 315.
680 Eadem, 165.
681 For this hypothesis, see: Constantin Rezachevici, “Originea şi domnia lui Alexandru vodă Cornea (c. 21 decembrie 1540 – 9 sau 16 februarie 1541) – după documente inedite din Polonia” [The origin and the reign of prince Alexander Cornea (about December 1540 – 9 or 16 February 1541) – from unique documents from Poland], Revista Istorică 7-8 (1992): 803-827, esp. 820.
682 Scrisori de boieri. Scrisori de domni, ed. Nicolae Iorga, 26.
683 See these documents in: Gorovei, “Domnia lui Alexandru Cornea,” 176.
684 Ibidem.
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The eldest son of Peter Rareş, Elijah (Iliaş) (1546-1551), was ethroned in Suceava soon after the death of his father, receiving the immediate approval of the sultan. This prompt confirmation from Sulyeman the Magnificent leads to the hypothesis that Peter arranged the succession of his son, just like Stephen the Great did for Bogdan III: “Prince Peter, the father of Iliaş, he is now dead, and his eldest son [Iliaş] is now ruler of Moldavia in his place, being recognized by the Ottoman Emperor.”685
Should one superficially compare the reign of Peter to those of his two sons’, the conclusion would be that the sons were anomalies. While Rareş was a prince with strong ideals and ambitions, fully capable to fulfil his goals, Elijah and his younger brother Stephen seem to have been nothing but deviations from the path of the dynastic project: while one of them willingly converted to Islam, the other one, quite the opposite, started a mass persecution of non-Christians in Moldavia. However, one cannot judge these deviations without looking a bit deeper into the issue.
4.3.1. Breaking with the dynastic project?
Although Elijah “ruled over all his subjects with goodness and with the greatest wisdom and care, but also with gentleness,”686 he did something bound to surprise the people of Moldavia: being in Istanbul, on the Saturday of May 30th 1551, the prince abandoned his Christian faith and embraced Islam under the name of Mehmed, receiving the office of sanjak-bey of Silistra,687 on the southern bank of the lower Danube. This reverberated outside the border of Moldavia with such a force that on the 15th of May, before the actual conversion, Poland’s Sigismund wrote to all his important counsellors, asking for advice on the eve of such a serious situation: learning that Elijah left for the Porte for his conversion, he told his counsellors that when the Moldavian prince would return to his principality, he would firstly send all those who would not embrace Islam to the empire and secondly, he would “fill” Moldavia with Ottomans. Feeling threatened by the proximity of a principality “filled” with Ottomans, “very dangerous enemies to Poland,” the king feared that in such conditions, war with the Ottoman Empire was inevitable.688
The circumstances of Elijah’s conversion were presented in similar terms by contemporary chronicler Eftimie, who saw in the prince a “wolf in sheep’s clothing.”689 Sent by his father to Istanbul
685 Documente privitoare la istoria României culese din arhivele polone, ed. Ilie Corfuş, document no. 61, 124.
686 Sixteenth-century anonymous description of Moldavia. See: Călători străini despre Ţările Române I, 200.
687 Nagy Pienaru, “Un act otoman privitor la convertirea voievodului Iliaş (30 mai 1551) – An Ottoman Document Concerning Prince Iliaş’ Conversion to Islam (30 May 1551),” Studii şi Materiale de Istorie Medie 27 (2009): 101.
688 See the entire letter of King Sigismund in: Documente privitoare la istoria României culese din arhivele polone, ed. Ilie Corfuş, document no. 77, 153-154.
689 “The Chronicle of Eftimie,” 216.
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as guarantee for his fidelity to the Ottoman Empire, Elijah spent there about a year and four months,690 returning to Moldavia shortly before Peter died.691 Eftimie furiously described the prince’s reign as closely related to the period he spent in the Ottoman capital: he brought to his court in Moldavia several Ottoman counsellors,692 he adopted Ottoman fashion which was also taken on by some of his boyars,693 and he also exasperated his Moldavian opponents by bringing women from the Ottoman Empire to his court.694 However, despite Ottoman flourishing in Suceava, Elijah did not step away from his father’s and grandfather’s Ottoman policy: he followed the same policy that Peter followed during his second reign, meaning that he preserved mindful and positive relations with the Porte, while continuing to search for possibilities of rising against it.695 Moreover, regardless of his inclination towards Islam, he continued to donate goods, lands, and money to several monastic settlements: Dobrovăţ,696 Probota,697 and Voroneţ.698
Nevertheless, the young prince in his very early twenties699 responded to the sultan’s call to personally bringing the tribute.700 He arrived to Istanbul loaded with gifts – horses, money, brocades, fine silk – and asked the sultan to give him five hundred janissaries to take them to Moldavia in order to help him regain some of his Transylvanian fortresses.701 All these gifts and the plea to complete his army with janissaries lead to one conclusion: Elijah’s intention was to return to Moldavia, despite the
690There was an initial confusion regarding the time he spent in Istanbul. It was initially believed that Elijah was sent to the Sultan in 1542, when, in fact, a different son of Peter Rareş was sent: Alexander. Elijah was sent only after Alexander died in Istanbul and remained there for almost a year and a half. See: Rezachevici, Cronologia critică, 589. For this same subject, see also: Idem, “Petru Rareş între sultan şi lumea creştină în 1541-1542, după noi izvoare polone – Solia hatmanului Petru Vartic din 1542” [Peter Rareş between the sultan and the Christian world in 1541-1542, based on new Polish sources – the mission of Petru Vartic from 1542], Revista Istorică new series 5 (1990): 442-443.
691 Rezachevici, Cronologia critică, 589.
692 The Chronicle of Eftimie, 214.
693 Ştefan Andreescu, “Presiune otomană şi reacţie ortodoxă în Moldova urmaşilor lui Petru vodă Rareş – Ottoman Pressure and Orthodox Reaction in Moldavia in the Time of Prince Petru Rareş’ Descendants,” Studii şi Materiale de Istorie Medie 27 (2009): 35.
694 “The Chronicle of Eftimie,” 215. See also: Andreescu, “Presiune otomană şi reacţie ortodoxă,” 34.
695 Rezachevici, Cronologia critică, 590.
696 Documenta Romaniae Historica, A. Moldova IV (1546-1570), ed. Ioan Caproşu (Bucharest: Editura Academiei Române, 2008), document no. 29, 59-61. (henceforth: DRH A. IV)
697 Ibidem, document no. 42, 84-85; document no. 43, 86; document no. 59, 103.
698 Ibidem, document no. 61, 106-114.
699 On the possible age of Elijah, see: Ştefan S. Gorovei, “Familia lui Petru Rareş” [The Family of Peter Rareş], in Petru Rareş, 268.
700 After Peter Rareş’s return to the throne for the second time, the Sultan asked that the taxes be brought to him every two years by the prince himself. As Peter never did this, and as Elijah had no son to send in his place to Istanbul, he had no choice but to go himself. See: Rezachevici, Cronologia critică, 595.
701 Giovanni Maria Malvezzi, the mission of the Habsburgs to the Ottoman Empire, reported all these issues.
See: Hurmuzaki II.1, 263.
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beliefs of his Moldavian opponents and boyars.702 One question however remains unanswered: why did the prince convert, breaking one of the most important aspects of the dynastic project?
Although Elijah seemingly left Moldavia believing that he would return, his conversion was nevertheless a voluntary act,703 making the understanding of his decision more difficult.
Consequently, something must have happened in Istanbul which led to his conversion. Did the sultan force him to convert or did the circumstances in Moldavia oblige him to do so? Sources indicate several hypotheses, none of which can be, however, thoroughly supported with concomitant documents:
A letter written in 1551 by Bernanrd Pretwicz, based on the testimony of a member of Elijah’s suite to Istanbul, attested that Sultan Suleyman forced the Moldavian to convert: he was faced with the decision of choosing between exile or becoming a high-ranking Ottoman official. The boyars accompanying him seem to have been faced with the same decision.704
A different reason for the conversion was connected to Peter Rareş’s widow, Elena Branković.705 The sixteenth-century report of Bernardo Navagero pointed to the fact that Elena was a woman who loved the company of many men, but Elijah had one of her lovers executed.706 Similarly, a Venetian report from Istanbul, dated June 7th 1551, revealed the fact that the conversion was the result of Elijah’s conflict with his mother who preferred to have one of his other brother’s on the throne: “… per haver visto la madre sua più inclinata agli altri fratelli che a lui.”707
Moreover, both of the above-mentioned reports pointed to the close relationship between Elena Branković, the boyars, and Stephen Rareş, the younger brother of Elijah.708 As a consequence of this relationship, Elijah might have feared to be deposed and executed,
702 In Eftimie’s view, the principality was aware of Elijah’s desire to convert. He presented this in the episode of the gathering at Huşi were the prince reassured his skeptical boyars that he had no intention of converting and that he would return to Moldavia. See: “The Chronicle of Eftimie,” 216.
703 The greatness and pomp of the conversion ritual of May 30, 1551, in contradiction with the official austere regime, leads to the conclusion that the conversion was a voluntary act, transforming it into an occasion for celebration. Moreover, the sultan seemed to have used the conversion of Elijah as a subtle act of propaganda for Islam. See: Pienaru, “Un act otoman privitor la convertirea voievodului Iliaş”, 102-103.
704 See the presentation of this letter in: Matei Cazacu, “La Conversion à l’Islam du prince Iliaş Rareş. Un nouveau témoignage,” Studii şi Materiale de Istorie Medie 27 (2009): 75-78.
705Based on extant documents, one cannot affirm whether Elena was Elijah’s biological mother or his step-mother.
706 See: Ovidiu Cristea, “<Si e fatto Turcho: di ricco povero, di Signor Schiavo.> Bailul veneţian Bernardo Navagero despre turcirea lui Iliaş Rareş” – <Si e fatto Turcho: di ricco povero, di Signor Schiavo.> The Venetian Bailo Bernardo Navagero on Iliaş Rareş’ Conversion to Islam,” Studii şi Materiale de Istorie Medie 27 (2009): 89.
707 For the document, a report written by the Venetian Lodovico Beccadelli, see: Ştefan Andreescu, “În legătură cu proiectul lui Iliaş Rareş” [On the project of Iliaş Rareş], Anuarul Institutului de Istorie şi Arheologie A. D.
Xenopol Iaşi 19 (1982): 653.
708 For the report of Lodovico Beccadelli, see: Ibidem, 653-654; for the report of Bernardo Navagero, see:
Cristea, “Si e fatto Turcho,” 89-90.
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eventually preferring to convert.709 Based on this same theory, historian Constantin Rezachevici developed the hypothesis of a coup d'etat in Moldavia: supposedly, Stephen was enthroned while his brother was in the Ottoman Empire, on the basis of the belief that Elijah left Moldavia with the sole purpose of converting. Consequently, facing his deposement and fearing for his life, Elijah decided to embrace Islam, this being the only way to stay alive.710 This theory is reinforced by Bernardo Navagero’s report, who recalled the echoes coming from Moldavia soon after the conversion of the former price. According to that report, Stephen declared that should his brother not have converted to Islam, he would have executed him in order to take the throne.711
Sources are proven to be complex and sometimes contradicting each other when presenting the most significant event in the reign of Elijah. It is difficult to discern the actual factors which led to the deviation from the dynastic project, but it is also difficult to belive that Elijah converted based solely on his beliefs and without being influenced by external factors. The only sources which argue for the willing conversion of Elijah are, unsurprisingly, internal documents – the chronicles of Eftimie and later on that of Grigore Ureche, viciously describing a menacing Christian turned Muslim.712 Whichever the reasons however, the Moldavians visibly condemned him and consequently did all their best to erase him from history.
4.3.2. Art and condemnation
Of course, it was not the breaking with the dynastic project that was condemned by the people of Moldavia, but it was the fact that Elijah brought to his court certain aspects of Ottoman lifestyle and that, eventually, he abandoned his Christian faith. Probably the most eloquent argument for this affirmation is the Last Judgment scene in the Râşca monastery [Fig. 32]. Built during the time of Peter Rareş and fully painted during that of Stephen Rareş, the monastery, with its exterior painting, is a representation of the fatalistic state of mind713 in which Moldavia entered after the events in 1538 and after Elijah’s conversion. It is not surprising therefore to see a character standing out from the
709 Cristea, “Si e fatto Turcho,” 89.
710 Rezachevici, Cronologia critică, 595.
711 Cristea, “Si e fatto Turcho,” 92.
712 Certainly, because the debates on the conversion have not yet been solved, historians are also arguing for the conversion as a personal decision of the ruler. See, for example: Pâslăriuc, Raporturile politice dintre marea boierime și domnie, 128.
713 Without going into too much detail, it is useful to mention the feelings of threat and fear which reverberated in Europe regarding the advancement of the Ottoman Empire after the fall of Constantinople. The belief that the Ottoman advance prefigured an impending catastrophe, up to the scale of the end of the world, was felt in Moldavia as well. For European representations of the fears concerning the Ottoman Empire in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, see, for instance: Heather Madar, “Durer’s depictions of the Ottoman Turks:
A case of early modern Orientalism?,” in The Turk and Islam in the Western Eye, 1450-1750. Visual Imagery before Orientalism, ed. James G. Harper (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011): 155-158.