Saint Ştefan ‘cel Mare’ of Moldova
Today, the twelfth of July, is the day of the canonisation of Saint Ştefan, the fifteenth-century voivode of Moldavia, who preserved the territorial integrity and Orthodox faith of the territory of Moldavia – that is to say, Moldova – from onslaughts by all three surrounding powers: the Ottoman Empire, Poland and Hungary. His reputation among historians is mixed. But he is highly regarded and treasured by both Romanian and Moldovan historians, particularly after the fall of communism, for his preservation of Moldavian independence amidst the depredations of the great powers around him. He was glorified by the Holy Synod of the Romanian Orthodox Church in 1992; his feast-day is the second of July.
Ştefan Muşat [also in English Stephen, cognomen ‘cel Mare’ or ‘the Great’] was born to Bogdan II of Moldova and his wife Maria Oltea sometime in the mid-1400s; the year is unclear but it was probably sometime before 1440. He had three brothers – Ioachim, Ioan and Christea – and two sisters – Sorea and Maria. He was a very young man when his father seized the throne of Moldavia by force, with the aid of the peasant leader of Hungary Hunyadi János. Bogdan II made his young son his heir and co-ruler, while swearing fealty to Hunyadi as suzerain. However, one of Bogdan’s siblings, Petru Aron, assassinated him in October 1451 and took the throne for himself, being supported by the Kingdom of Poland – forcing the eleven-year-old Ştefan to flee Moldavia for Hungary.
Ştefan Muşat, as a young man, served as a retainer of the (in)famous Vlad Țepeș ‘the Dragon’ around the time he became ruler of Wallachia. Vlad thereafter lent his assistance to young Ştefan when he decided to retake his kingdom in 1456. At the head of an army, 6,000 strong, consisting largely of peasants from the south of the country, Ştefan charged headlong into his country and confronted his uncle Petru Aron at Doljești and Orbic in April 1457, routing his forces and causing him to flee for Poland.
The young Ştefan, most likely not yet being 20 years of age, was crowned as voivode of Moldavia on the 13th of September that year by Metropolitan Teoctist. According to tradition, this took place in an assembly of boyars and clergy on the Plain of Direptate, near to the battlefield where he had fought and defeated Petru Aron. Teoctist, being Serbian-educated and Serbian-consecrated, was apparently one of the few Romanian clergymen who had not approved of the Union of Florence (and thus had significant sway among the Moldavian people). Saint Ştefan emphasised the Orthodox and religious elements of his title, in part to emphasise his connexion to the recently-fallen Orthodox Constantinople.
Ştefan wasted no time in chasing down his usurping uncle into Poland, signing the treaty of Overchelăuţi with the Polish king the following year, on the understanding that Casimir IV would not give his political or military support to Petru Aron. Petru Aron thereafter fled to Hungary, and Ştefan was forced to cede significant degrees of his sovereignty to Poland in exchange for protection from Hungary’s king Hunyadi Mátyás. Subsequent years saw Ştefan mount several campaigns against Hungary in order to protect the borders of Moldavia. During Ştefan’s campaigns against Hungary, in 1465, he managed to recapture Chilia, for which he traded with Poland for some of his northern territory, reëstablishing the historical boundary between Poland and Moldavia.
Both Hungary and Moldavia used disgruntled elements of each other’s landowning classes as military supports in their campaigns, one against the other. Thus, it’s not surprising that Ştefan used his new position to consolidate the power of the voivode over the boyars. Ştefan ruled in a distinctly autocratic manner, and did not flinch from using his friend Vlad Țepeș’s methods of juridical terror and execution – including impalement – against landowners and boyars who defied him. He suppressed Romani and Tatars in his realm, and undertook particularly heavy-handed and cruel administrative actions to prevent them from posing military threats to his power. He welcomed Armenians, Germans and other immigrants to settle in the underdeveloped agricultural regions of Moldova; however, he ruthlessly expropriated property from Jews under his sway and occasionally levied tariffs against merchants who crossed his borders. His policies of centralisation and protectionism, combined with selective open-door policy for immigrants and punitive actions against the nobility, ended up expanding both the powers and the military responsibilities of the Moldovan peasantry.
He expropriated a great deal of land from the more stubborn boyars. Of this land, he gave much of it to the Orthodox Church, and thus earned a certain reputation for religious devotion – and encouraged his loyal boyars to do the same. Over a dozen stone churches were built in Moldavia on his orders, most of these featuring a uniquely-Romanian architectural style which mixed Byzantine and Western principles. He commissioned the consecration of the Putna Monastery, whose votive church would become the resting place for himself and his family, and which is today located in northeastern Romania. He also contributed heavily to a body of Romanian Liturgical literature and music, which was – intriguingly – transcribed in the Cyrillic script. He had, it seems, an affinity for Slavic cultural expressions.
Saint Ştefan repulsed an invasion by Tatars in 1469, and another attempted coup by his treacherous uncle the following year. Capturing Petru Aron along with several of his supporters, Ştefan had them executed, thus putting a decisive end to the Moldavian succession issue. Once this was done, and having nothing more to fear from Hungary, Ştefan turned his attention to the threat from Turkey and the Tatars to his East, on the Black Sea coast. He sparred several times with the Ottoman vassal of Bessarabia, Radu ‘cel Frumos’. When the Ottomans invaded Moldavia in 1475, the holy voivode led a coalition of Christian kings, including those of Poland and Hungary, to expel the Turks from Moldavia and to dethrone Radu once and for all. Ştefan declared Moldavia to be the ‘Gate to Christendom’, and applied to both the Papacy and to the Venetians for help – which, as might be expected, never materialised. Upon the release of Vlad Țepeș in 1476, the Impaler launched a campaign to free Wallachia from the Ottomans – which ended in his death. Ştefan, on a rare occasion, found himself militarily defeated by the Turks, and was forced to flee for safety into Poland. However, with two of his vassals holding firmly in their fastenings, the voivode was able to return to his homeland that same year.
A power vacuum in Wallachia consumed much of the Moldavian monarch’s attention for the following years – though ultimately, after several failed attempts on Ştefan’s part to intervene in the succession, Wallachia is ceded to Ottoman suzerainty. Several treaties Ştefan was forced to sign between 1479 and 1484 ceded considerable degrees of sovereignty to Poland and Hungary in exchange for protection from the victorious Ottomans; however, the Ottomans under Bayezid II still attack and take the valuable port towns of Chilia and Cetatea Albă. Poland ultimately betrays Moldavia to the Ottomans, prompting Ştefan to again turn to Hungary. On the disputed succession of Władysław Jagiełło to the Hungarian throne, Ştefan – though effectively a supporter of Władysław – was again able to effectively play Poland and Hungary off of each other in order to assert Moldavian independence.
Towards the end of his life, in 1499, Saint Ştefan was finally able to leverage the strategic location of Moldavia and the political clout he carried in both Polish and Hungarian courts to force a settlement that would forge a Christian anti-Ottoman alliance – in which Moldavia would be considered a full and independent member. Even so, the continued Ottoman pressure on Moldavia would mean that Ştefan as well as his heirs would continue essentially paying protection money to the Ottomans in exchange for recognition of their sovereignty.
Ştefan married four times: first, to a woman named Mărica (who bore him a son, Alexandru); second, to Evdokia of Kiev; third, to Maria Palaiologina of Doros; and fourth, to Maria Voichița of Wallachia. In addition to his wives he also consorted with a number of women outside, claiming paternity of at least two illegitimate sons. His fourth wife would bear him a son, Bogdan [called ‘cel Chior’ or ‘the One-Eyed’], whom he would raise to take the throne after his death. Saint Ştefan, as the leader of a small state wedged between several large and powerful ones (much like the Kazakh khan Abylaı), skilfully played Poland, Hungary and the Ottomans against each other. His strategic acumen allowed him to make a successful bid for Moldavian independence, and his personal knack for nipping political plots in the bud and ensuring his personal longevity allowed Moldavia a degree of stability, order and internal peace which lasted through the reigns of his son and his grandchildren; and which it seldom had before or since.
Ştefan III makes for a complicated saint, very similar in character to Saint Éadgár the Frithsome of England. His sex life was – to say the least – not particularly saintly, though his fealty to Orthodox doctrine is past doubt, and there are interesting indications of a kind of sæcular asceticism in his life. For example: he did not hold a permanent court, and even in peacetime he liked to live in tents and sleep on the ground. He also prayed and mourned even over the graves of his enemies, and kept a rule of fasting and personal penance after battles. He was also notable for his personal generosity to monastics both at home and in places like the Holy Mountain, as well as to poor and needy people inside his kingdom. Saint Ştefan’s rule was indeed notoriously heavy-handed; however, he was a remarkably astute and tenacious political leader, one who was wholly committed to the defence of his folk and of his Church. The Catholic Pope Sixtus IV described him as an ‘athlete of Christ’. Particularly toward the end of the Cold War, he came to be seen as a heroic figure who is revered by all Romanians and Moldovans. In modern-day Moldova, particularly on the political left, he is considered to be the founder of the state, being the author of Moldovan independence from foreign powers – both Christian and non-Christian. Holy and great prince Ştefan, steadfast defender of the Moldavian land and people, pray unto Christ our God that our souls may be saved!
Apolytikion for Saint Ştefan of Moldavia, Tone 1:
Fearless defender of the True Faith
And protector of the land of your forefathers,
Great founder of holy churches and monasteries,
O Prince Ştefan, pray to Christ God
To deliver us from our needs and sorrows.
Coat of arms of Ştefan cel Mare
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