Dracula 9004349219, 9789004349216

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Dracula

East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 450–1450 General Editor Florin Curta

VOLUME 46

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/ecee

Dracula By

Matei Cazacu Edited, with an Introduction, by

Stephen W. Reinert Translations by

Nicole Mordarski, Stephen W. Reinert Alice Brinton, and Catherine Healey

LEIDEN | BOSTON

Cover illustrations: Front: © The British Library Board. Frontispiece woodcut portrait of Vlad Dracula from Hans Sporer’s 1491 pamphlet Ein wünderliche und erschröckenliche hystori von einem groszen wüttrich genant Dracole wayda. Back: Portrait of Vlad Dracula, Ochsenbach Stammbuch, Fol. 74r HB.XV.2. With kind permission of the Württemburgische Landesbibliothek. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Cazacu, Matei, author. | Nizet, Marie, 1859–1922. Capitaine Vampire. Title: Dracula / by Matei Cazacu ;  edited, with an introduction, by Stephen W. Reinert ; translations from the French, etc. by Nicole  Mordarski, Stephen W. Reinert, Alice Brinton, and Catherine Healey. Other titles: Dracula. English Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2017. | Series: East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages,  1450–1450 ; volume 46 | “Editions Tallandier, 2011.” | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017021919 (print) | LCCN 2017022384 (ebook) | ISBN 9789004349216 (E-book) |  ISBN 9789004347250 (hardback : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Vlad III, Prince of Wallachia, 1430 or 1431–1476 or 1477. | Wallachia—Kings and rulers—  Biography. | Vampires. | Dracula films—History and criticism. | Dracula, Count (Fictitious character) |  Stoker, Bram, 1847–1912. Dracula. Classification: LCC DR240.5.V553 (ebook) | LCC DR240.5.V553 C39 2017 (print) | DDC 949.8/014092  [B]—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017021919 Dracula © Editions Tallandier, 2011 Published by special arrangement with Editions Tallandier, France in conjunction with their duly appointed agents L’Autre agence and 2 Seas Literary Agency. Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 1872-8103 isbn 978-90-04-34725-0 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-34921-6 (e-book) Copyright 2017 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents Preface to the 2004 Edition, by Matei Cazacu ix Introduction to the 2004 Edition, by Matei Cazacu xii Introduction to the English Translation, by Stephen W. Reinert xxi List of Abbreviations xxvi List of Illustrations, Genealogies, and Map xxviii Map and Genealogies xxx 1 Exile as a Way of Life 1 “A Fortress on the Water” 1 The Basarab Dynasty 3 Mircea the Old 6 The Ottoman Danger 7 Wallachia—Strategic and Economic Issues 9 The Succession Crisis of 1420 11 Vlad Dracul’s Youth 13 Transylvania, Land of Welcome 18 Vlad Dracul, Protector of Transylvanians 22 Finally, the Throne of Wallachia 26 2 A Prince and His Sons (1436–1448) 27 A Peace Treaty with Murad II 27 The Remarriage of Vlad Dracul 31 Murad II’s 1438 Campaign in Transylvania 32 Vladislav, King of Poland and Hungary 35 János Hunyadi, Defender of the Transylvanian Frontier 36 Vlad Dracul, Prisoner of the Turks 38 The Disaster of Varna 43 The Campaign of 1445 on the Danube 45 The Conflict with János Hunyadi and the Death of Vlad Dracul 49 Vladislav II Installed on the Wallachian Throne 52 3 First Reign and New Exile (1448–1456) 54 A Transylvanian Childhood 54 A Wallachian Adolescence 58 Hostage in Ottoman Territory (1444–1448) 63 Dracula’s First Reign (1448) 66

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Exile in Moldavia 69 The Accord with János Hunyadi 76 4 The Reign (1456–1462) 79 “Mark of Red Iron” 79 “A Fierce and Dreadful Appearance” 84 The Princely Council of Wallachia 88 Wallachian Society in the Fifteenth Century 92 Very Restless Neighbors 97 “To Rule and Govern Accordingly” 103 Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary (1458) 108 Vlad Dracula Alone Against Everyone 114 Bloody Easter 117 “And Beheaded Him Near His Tomb …” 124 A Moldavian Danger? 130 5 The Conqueror of Constantinople 135 Five Hundred Young Men 136 Dracula’s Danubian Campaign 141 Alone Against the Turks 145 Warrior of the Night 148 Radu the Handsome Assumes Power 156 Crusade or Internal Peace? 160 6 Propaganda, Exile, and Death (1463–1476) 164 The Improbable Treachery 164 The 1463 German Pamphlet 167 The Hungarian Manipulation 173 Dracula’s Liberation 176 “But He Was Pierced by Many Lances …” 179 A Face Covered With a Silk Cloth 182 Vlad and Mihnea: The Children of “The Devil” 185 The Descendants of the Sons of the Impaler 191 7 Tyrant or Great Sovereign? 199 The Evolving Die Geschicht Dracole Waide (The History of Voievod Dracula) 200 The Incarnation of Evil 205 A Pious Prince? 209

Contents

Dracula “The Beloved” 216 Discovery of the Russian Accounts of Dracula 219 The Tale of Voievod Dracula, A Political Manual Used by Ivan III 222 Laonikos Chalkokondyles 234 In the Entourage of Mahmud Pasha 237 Chalkokondyles’ Disappearance 243 8 Dracula and Bram Stoker 248 Of Bats in General … 248 … and of Dracula in Particular 251 “Not On the Lips But On the Throat …” 253 Stoker a Plagiarist? 260 Marie Nizet and her Captain Vampire 262 The Romanian “Journey” of Marie Nizet 263 A Family History 269 Billy the Kid Versus Dracula 274 A New Golden Age 275 9 The Vampire in Romania 279 How to Proceed with a Strigoi 280 The Vampire’s Identity Card 285 The Christianization of Vampirism 288 Vitamin C, Weapon Against Vampires 294 Conclusion 301 Dead Vampires and Living Vampires 302

Appendices Chronology 307 Geschichte Dracole Waide (Anonymous, 1463) 310 Von ainem wutrich der hies Trakle waida von der Walachei (Michel Beheim, 1463, or as late as 1466) 317 ΑΠΟΔΕΙΞEΙΣ ΙΣΤΟΡΙΩΝ (Laonikos Chalkokondyles, c. 1423–c. 1474) Historiarum Demonstrationes (Proofs of History) 347 Skazanie o Drakule voevode (Fyodor Kuritsyn, 1486) 357 Die Geschicht Dracole Waide (Anonymous, 1488) 364

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viii Glossary of Terms 370 Illustrations 375 Bibliography 391 Index of Personal Names 445

Contents

Preface to the 2004 Edition Matei Cazacu The story of this book goes back almost forty years. As a young student at the University of Bucharest, I completed a master’s thesis entitled Vlad the Impaler: A Historical Monograph (1969).1 The topic, which might seem strange, was suggested to me by Professor Constantin C. Giurescu (1901–1977), the most celebrated Romanian historian of the times, who was also overseeing the work of an American of Romanian origin, Radu R. Florescu, recipient of a Fulbright scholarship to Bucharest. We thus formed a little band of Dracula enthusiasts keenly on the track of both the medieval prince known as “The Impaler,” as well as Bram Stoker’s Transylvanian vampire. This darker side of our research was the specialty of Florescu’s colleague Raymond T. McNally. Together with George D. Florescu, Radu’s Romanian uncle, and Mihai Pop, Director of the Bucharest Institute of Ethnography and Folklore, we toured Romania extensively, following in the footsteps our “hero.” Neither castles, monasteries, abandoned churches, lost Carpathian villages, nor German cities in Transylvania kept their secrets from our team. Of all our countless expeditions, Castle Dracula proved itself especially difficult to “conquer.” A first attempt involved a shortcut to the fortress which in reality led nowhere. On our second visit, seventy-five year old “Uncle George” accidentally fell and broke his hip. Our third try seemed promising. Once we arrived at the castle, however, McNally was brutally paralyzed and was found prostrate on the ground, unable to go any further. I then jokingly raised the spectre of “Dracula’s curse on Florescu,” stemming from the enmity his boyar ancestor Vintilă bore to Dracula in 1468, five hundred years before our mountain climbing ventures in the Carpathians. This alleged curse disturbed Florescu terribly and he always armed himself with a little icon on our expeditions. Around the same time, a friend told me that, as a child, she used to pray before a picture of Vlad the Impaler as if he were a patron saint. Should I view this one-of-a-kind saint as the protector who enabled me to escape the terrible scrutiny of the Securitate, the political police of Ceaușescu, who himself was so passionate about Vlad the Impaler? It is true that in the early 1970s I had emerged as the only specialist in this field in the country, and the minister for Romanian Tourism had even asked me to write the guide for the Dracula tours 1  “Vlad Ţepeș: Monografie istorică [Vlad the Impaler: A Historical Monograph]” (Master’s thesis, Facultatea de Istorie, Universitatea din București, 1969).

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targeted for western tourists. My renown rested on the discovery of Vlad’s hitherto unknown first reign in 1448, which I had published in a scholarly journal as well as a Romanian student newspaper. I did, however, experience Dracula’s “hostility,” in Paris in 1992. I had been invited to a private showing of Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula in a Parisian cinema. My wife and I had set forth under a gloriously sunny sky, but suddenly, a few hundred meters from the cinema, we were caught in a violent downpour which seemed to want to prevent us from going any further. Our emotions were all the more heightened when, a bit later, we viewed the same scenario on the big screen—a storm induced by Dracula against the vampire hunters. A confusing situation which would have terrified my American friends, if they had been there! But let’s return to our story. In 1971, Florescu asked me to participate in writing a work on Dracula. Unfortunately, the laws of communist Romania forbade such collaboration. I would have had to submit my text—and the entirety of the work—for inspection by the Central Committee of the communist party, which had the right to veto any publication abroad. It was a losing battle. The party bureaucrats would never have approved a text dealing with vampires. So, I gave up the project and entrusted my master’s thesis to my American friend. And in 1972, Florescu and McNally published In Search of Dracula, which was subsequently translated into numerous languages.2 I recognized in their book a number of my ideas and was delighted at their world-wide circulation. In the meantime, I had left Romania and begun my studies in Paris at the École nationale des chartes. Dracula was far behind me. Or so I thought until my professor HenriJean Martin proposed that I make him the subject of my doctoral thesis. This I developed on the basis of the fifteenth century Dracula stories in German, Latin, Slavonic, Russian, and Greek (1979).3 When this was accepted for publication by the École pratique des hautes etudes, I was asked to cut the work by half. This then appeared in 1988 as L’histoire de Prince Dracula en Europe Centrale et Orientale (XV siècle), which addressed only a limited aspect of the subject.4 2  Raymond T. McNally and Radu Florescu, In Search of Dracula: A True History of Dracula and Vampire Legends (Greenwich, Connecticut: New York Graphic Society Ltd., 1972). 3  “Le Thème de Dracula (XVe–XVIIIe siècle): Présentation, édition critique, traduction et commentaire” (PhD diss., University of Paris 1, 3e cycle: Histoire et civilisations du monde byzantin et post-byzantin, 1979). 4  L’histoire du prince Dracula en Europe centrale et orientale (XV e siècle): Présentation, édition critique, traduction et commentaire. École pratique des hautes études, IV e section, Hautes études médiévales et modernes, vol. 61. Geneva: Droz, and Paris: Champion, 1988.

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Subsequently I only published a few articles, drawn from chapters which had been cut from my thesis. However, the more I thought about the subject, the more dissatisified I was with the way I and others had dealt with it. I realized I was, in truth, dealing with many Draculas—the Wallachian prince, the tyrant of the German stories, the grand sovereign of the Russian accounts, the “revolutionary” prince of the post-byzantine Greek historians, and finally the vampire. I expressed these ideas in a conference held in 1987 at Boston College, which this time facilitated Florescu and McNally’s publication Dracula: Prince of Many Faces. His Life and Times.5 I was right in proposing this new direction, but professional preoccupations deterred me from further work on the subject. In 1989, the Romanian revolution overthrew Ceaușescu. I thought that a recovered freedom of expression would stimulate Romanian historians to broach this sensitive subject. Another disappointment. My colleagues directed their research to the history of the last hundred years which had been hidden or falsified by the communists. I languished about in this frustration, with no resolve to write, until once again inspiration came from the outside. I received a proposal that I bring the fruits of my discoveries to the first true biography of Dracula. I accepted enthusiastically, ready to face this task equipped with some forty years of research, reflection and above all passion. I set to work with a genuine jubilation which, I hope the reader will share. Not, of course, that such feeling is appropriate for the subject. After all, this is about a “murky affair,” as Balzac woud say. But I nevertheless feel in tune with the subject, and have always felt an interest for the “unloved” of history, and for the dark legend which surrounds Dracula. My purpose is not to whitewash Dracula of the charges which have assured him a place side-by-side with the great tyrants of history. The reader will discover here a portrait of this incredibly complex medieval prince, brought up in an equally complex political and diplomatic world, which intends to be as honest and accurate as possible. Don’t expect here the standard clichés essentializing people as either good or bad, pious or hostile to religion, courageous or craven, or reflective or impulsive. Vlad Dracula is an exemplary case reminding us that a biographer must approach his work with humility, even if the result is incomplete and one-sided. M. C.

June 2004

5  Radu R. Florescu and Raymond T. McNally, Dracula: Prince of Many Faces. His Life and Times (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1989).

Introduction to the 2004 Edition Matei Cazacu In the middle of June in the year 1463, the small city of Wiener Neustadt, fifty kilometers south of Vienna, the favorite residence of Emperor Frederick III Habsburg (1440–1493), had become the center of attention of all of Europe. A large Hungarian delegation of three thousand knights, a veritable small army, had arrived to conclude peace between the emperor and his toughest adversary, the young king of Hungary, Matthias Corvinus. War between the two sovereigns had raged for five years. At issue was the possession of the crown of Hungary. Upon the death of Ladislas the Posthumous (1457), Frederick III, his guardian, was proclaimed king of Hungary by the nobles who wished to strengthen their country’s ties with the Empire. This they did despite the fact that another party of the Hungarian nobility had already elected as “national king” a young man aged fifteen, namely Matthias, son of the previous governor János Hunyadi. At this time, Frederick III was likewise fighting against the king of Bohemia, George Podiebrad, who was accused of being a Hussite heretic. The emperor’s strategy was to keep the two border kingdoms, rich in gold and silver ore, under his tutelage. The two kings, however, strongly supported by their nobles, were resisting this solution, which for a century had effectively drained the resources of their countries to the imperial treasury. To both these cases, Frederick III applied his famous motto, which he even had engraved on his tableware: Austriae est imperare omni universo (AEIOU), literally “It is for Austria to rule the entire world.” However, the young Matthias had managed to resist the emperor. A man of noble birth, he derived on his father’s side from the lesser Wallachian (Romanian) nobility of Transylvania, the richest of the Hungarian provinces but also the one most exposed to foreign dangers. His father, János Hunyadi, was born Iancu (Ianko) of Hunedoara. He had learned the profession of arms in the service of the duke of Milan, Filippo Maria Visconti. Through his marriage to a noble Hungarian woman, he moved up in the ranks of society, eventually becoming regent of the kingdom and voievod1 (governor) of Transylvania during the minority of Ladislas the Posthumous (1444–1456). A military leader without equal, János Hunyadi had defended the country against the Ottomans, even launching attacks on their 1  In English this term is often rendered as “voivode” or “voivod.” Since the oldest form of the word is actually “voievod,” I have adopted this spelling throughout the book. Likewise I employ the term “voievodate” rather than “voivodate.”

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territory, variously victor and vanquished in an endless struggle lasting more than fourteen years. Along with John of Capistrano, he had died heroically defending Belgrade, Hungarian at that time, against the assaults of Mehmed II the Conqueror (1456). He left two sons, the elder of whom, accused of conspiring against his sovereign, was decapitated by King Ladislas. Matthias only survived owing to his tender age. After King Ladislas’s death—he was allegedly poisoned with half of an apple cut with a knife covered with poison— Matthias was proclaimed king by the supporters of his maternal uncle and his allies. However, to enjoy full and complete royal legitimacy, he needed the holy Crown of Hungary, held by the emperor. This crown was a powerful symbol for the people of Hungary. Adorned with two diadems—the first purportedly sent by Pope Sylvester II in the year 1000 to the first Christian king of Hungary, the second a gift of the Byzantine emperor at some other date—this crown symbolized the unity of the country and could not by replaced by any other. When summoned to return it, the emperor counter-attacked by having himself crowned by the Hungarian higher aristocracy who were hostile to the “Wallachian kinglet” (regulus Valachorum) and wished to be part of the nobility of the Empire. The war had escalated despite appeals for concord made by Pope Pius II (Enea Silvio Piccolomini), who needed soldiers for the crusade he launched against the Turks in 1459. Finally, after five years of fruitless fighting, negotiations, and intrigues,2 the belligerent parties met to establish peace. The accord provided that the emperor would receive 80,000 golden ducats for redemption of the crown; that Matthias would show all possible deference by considering Ladislas as a “father;” that the two sovereigns would remain allies against their respective enemies; and, above all, that the crown would be returned to the emperor if the king of Hungary died without a legitimate heir, which in fact would be the case.3 Such was the situation when the Hungarians brought the ransom to Wiener Neustadt in June 1463. Their frustration must have been great when the emperor would not receive them in Vienna, but the capital was in open revolt since April. His own brother, Albert of Habsburg, duke of Austria, gathered a party of conspirators, cut the lines of communication, and launched pillaging raids against residences in Wiener Neustadt and Ödenburg, heightening the insecurity. Even the empress, Eleanor of Portugal, had been robbed by a 2  The king of Poland also presented himself as a candidate for the crown of Hungary, hoping to renew the experience of Louis of Anjou, king of Hungary (1342–1382) and Poland (1370–1382), and also that of his brother Vladislav between 1440 and 1444. 3  After a Polish interlude (1490–1526), the Hungarian crown would return to the Habsburgs, who lost it only in 1918.

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master thief who had stolen her pure linen garments. Despite this precarious situation, Frederick dragged on the negotiations by presenting new demands. It required the vigorous intervention of the papal representatives, Rudolf of Rüdesheim, bishop of Lavant, and Domenico de’ Domenichi di Lucca, Archbishop of Torcello, for the treaty to be concluded (July 19 and 26, 1463), payment to be sent, and the crown at last to be rendered to Matthias Corvinus. The presence of the Hungarian army south of Vienna was the decisive event of that year 1463. However, around the same time there was printed, probably in Vienna, a pamphlet of four to six sheets. It was decorated with a portrait placed on the front page, a novelty for this era, when the printing press was still in its infancy. Gutenberg had only published his Bible, the first printed book, in 1454.4 This pamphlet bore the German title Geschichte Dracol Waide [The History of Voievod Dracula].5 Dracula was the epithet of the prince of Wallachia, Vlad III, vassal of Matthias Corvinus, whom the king had arrested the previous year and imprisoned in a castle on the Danube. The origin of this epithet is still debated. For most scholars, it indicates the membership of his father, Vlad Dracul, in the Order of the Dragon (Societas draconistarum), founded by the emperor Sigismund of Luxemburg in 1408, at which time he was not king of Hungary.6 Others posit that since the Latin term draco is ancestral to the Romanian drac, meaning “devil,” Dracul could thus mean “the devil,” and Dracula (in its popular form Drăculea) would signify “the

4  Since 1454, the Gutenberg press had only produced religious works and a calendar of the Turks for 1455. Books printed up to 1500 are called incunabula, literally “in the cradle.” 5  See Appendix, pp. 310–316, for a full translation of the text. 6  On the Order of the Dragon, see most recently Mihailo Popović, “The Order of the Dragon and the Serbian despot Stefan Lazarević,” in Emperor Sigismund and the Orthodox World, eds. Ekaterini Mitsiou et al., Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophischhistorische Klasse, Denkschriften, vol. 410 = Veröffentlichungen zur Byzanzforschung, vol. 24 (Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2010), 103–106, with bibliography on the Order in notes 1 and 2. Also Constantin Rezachevici, “From the Order of the Dragon to Dracula,” Journal of Dracula Studies 1 (1999): 3–7, and Jonathan Boulton, The Kights of the Crown: The Monarchical Orders of Knighthood in Later Medieval Europe 1325–1520 (Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 1987), 348–355, with excellent illustrations. Still useful from the older literature are Henri Gourdon de Genouillac, Nouveau dictionnaire des ordres de chevalerie: Créés chez les différents peuples depuis les premiers siècles jusqu’à nos jours (Paris: E. Dentu, 1891), 107, and Elemér Mályusz, Kaiser Sigismund in Ungarn 1387–1437 (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1990), 75–77.

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son of the devil.”7 A third interpretation, finally, is that the sense of the epithet Dracul is along the lines of “devil of a man.” At the beginning of the nineteenth century, William Wilkinson, former British Consul in Romania, expressed this view as follows: Dracula in the Wallachian language means Devil. The Wallachians were, at that time, as they are at present, used to give [sic, i.e. giving] this as a surname to any person who rendered himself conspicuous either by courage, cruel action, or cunning.8 This is likewise the view of the Romanian linguist Vasile Bogrea, utilizing comparative data including the use of the name Dracula among the Greeks of the Sporades Islands; several Romanian synonyms—such as Goldrac, who seems to have inspired the author of the Japanese comic strip Goldorak!; the Turkish term Șaitan; the Hungarian term Ördög; the German terms Teuffel, Manteuffel, and Deibel; and so on.9 One could add to this list the name of the French brigand: Robert the Devil. Let us also note the resemblance of the word Dracul with the Old Slavic drukol (pronounced dreukol), meaning “lance” or “alpenstock,” from which is derived kolu, meaning “stake” or “pole.” In Romanian the term is “ţeapă,” whence derives our hero’s second epithet: Ţepeș, “the Impaler” (kazıklı in Turkish).10 Dracula was, we are told by the anonymous author of the pamphlet, a tyrant whose cruelty surpassed Herod, Nero, Diocletian and all the other tyrants and torturers the world has ever known. The simple enumeration of the pains and tortures Dracula inflicted not only on his subjects, but also on other people— “pagans, Jews, Christians,” Turks, Germans, Italians, Gypsies—can hardly leave 7  See Grigore Nandriș, “A Philological Analysis of Dracula and Rumanian Place-names and Masculine Personal Names in -a/-ea,” The Slavonic and East European Review 37, no. 89 (1959): 371–377. 8  William Wilkinson, Esq., Late British Consul Resident at Bukorest, An Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, With Various Political Observations Relating to Them (London: Longman, Hurst, Reese, Orme & Brown, 1820), 19, Note. 9  V. Bogrea, “Mărunţișuri istorico-filologice, XII: Incă o pomenire germană a lui Ţepeș [Historico-philological varia, XII: Another German reference to Ţepeș],” in his Pagini istorico-filologice [Historical-philological pages], ed. with introduction and indices by Mircea Borcilă and Ion Mării (Cluj: Editura Dacia, 1971), 39–41. Reprinted from Anuarul Institutului de Istorie Naţională 2 (1923): 359–362. 10  See also Gianfranco Giraudo, Drakula: Contributi alla storia delle idee politiche nell’Europa Orientale alla svolta del XV secolo, Collana Ca’Foscari, Seminario di storia, Studi e ricerche, vol. 4 (Venice: Libreria universitaria editrice, 1971), 42–48.

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the reader indifferent. And above all his favorite punishment, impalement. Doubtless of Assyrian origin, it had been “perfected” by no longer utilizing sharpened stakes, which rapidly kill the “patients,”11 but rather employing rounded and greased stakes to prolong the torture. Designed to support an entire body weight, the stake was inserted into the rectum and pushed forward without damaging vital organs until it emerged through the mouth. Exposed thus, the unfortunate victim was not immediately killed, but would die of thirst after two or three days, his eyes eaten out by crows, but still in possession of all his senses. Another contemporary author recounts that Dracula had planted a forest of stakes, three kilometers long and one kilometer wide, right before his palace windows so he might comfortably contemplate the convulsions of his victims. The great Turkish lords and pashas had the benefit of higher than average stakes, which were completely gilded! The author adds that the prince often liked to take his meals at a table in the shade of these stakes, conversing with his “guests” and toasting to their health. Even in an extremely harsh and brutal world, which had known bloody tyrants such as Ezzelino III da Romano in the thirteenth century (50,000 victims), Ferdinand (Ferrante) I of Naples and Sigismondo Malatesta in the fifteenth century, or Mehmed II (873,000 victims, according to a contemporary), this pamphlet’s account of Dracula’s “novelties” are impressive indeed: impalement of men, women, and children by the thousands (sometimes mothers with their children in their arms), including 25,000 Turks (here the author’s figures are precise); a thieving Gypsy boiled in a cauldron, and forced to be eaten by his clansmen; a pregnant mistress, disemboweled so the prince could see where the fruit of her womb was, or had been; a feast in which Dracula served his nobles crayfish nourished with the brains of their parents and friends; a pyre for all the beggars and cripples of his country; mothers forced to eat their roasted children; husbands forced to do the same with the breasts of their wives. The cynicism and sarcasm with which the tyrant treated his victims rendered these atrocities all the more painful. When they cried out under torture, Dracula would exclaim: “Harken to pleasant entertainments and delicious delights!” And before the spectacle of impaled people writhing: “Amazing! How adroitly they move, with great dexterity.”12 To the poor and the beggars 11  For a realistic depiction, see Jerzy Hoffman’s film Pan Wołodyjowski [Colonel Wołodyjowski]. 12  Michael Beheim, Song Poem on Dracula, translation here from Appendix, p. 323. For the original German with parallel English translation, see ed. and trans. McDonald, ll. 184– 185, p. 204. and ll. 357–358, p. 209. For the original German with facing French translation, see ed. and trans. Cazacu., ll. 184–185, pp. 114 [German], 115 [French], and ll. 357–358, pp. 122 [German], 123 [French].

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whom he had burned in two large buildings, he said he wished to help them to get to paradise more quickly so they would not have to suffer any longer on the earth. Finally, to those who were asking him why he was persecuting people in this way, he responded, quoting Saint Peter, that rulers are appointed by God to punish those who are wrongdoers and to reward those who do good.13 This story of Dracula’s cruelties was doubtless written in the court of Matthias Corvinus who, alerted by the cries of victims and their families, seized his vassal and put him in irons. The first such account, most likely written in Latin, was sent to the pope, Venice, and other princes. It is still preserved, translated into German, in four independent manuscript copies, and had been incorporated into several contemporary works. This same year 1463, the German minstrel Michael Beheim collected other stories from Vienna and Wiener Neustadt and composed a poem of 1,070 lines about the misdeeds of the Wallachian prince. It begins like this: The worst despot and / tyrant that I know / on all this earth / under the wide vault of heaven, / since the world began; no-one was ever so despicable. / I want to tell you about him.14 The 1463 brochure, produced most likely in Vienna by an itinerant printer (possibly Ulrich Han), was copied, adapted, and then reprinted between 1488 and 1568 in the principal cities of Germany, from Leipzig and Hamburg to Strasbourg and Nuremberg. All copies include a portrait of Dracula, or a scene from his life (i.e., dining amidst the impaled, cf. figs. 11 and 12). At the other end of Europe, an independent Russian version had circulated at the end of 1486.15 To our knowledge this was never printed, but there were at least twenty-two manuscript copies. Here Dracula is presented as a stern but just sovereign, defending his country against the Turks, a wise and cultivated prince. In some way this was a model for Ivan the Terrible, who read this account with profit, since he imitated some of the tortures devised by the Romanian prince. 13  “For the sake of the Lord, accept the authority of every social institution: the emperor, as the supreme authority, and the governors as commissioned by him to punish criminals and praise good citizenship.” 1 Peter 2:13–15 (The Jerusalem Bible, gen. ed. Jones, 402–403). 14  Beheim, Song Poem on Dracula, translation here from Appendix, p. 317. For the original German with parallel English translation, see ed. and trans. McDonald, ll. 1–7, p. 199. For the original German with facing French translation, see ed. and trans. Cazacu., ll. 1–7, pp. 106 [German], 107 [French]. 15  A full English translation is printed below, in the Appendix, pp. 357–363. For the original Russian with facing French translation, see ed. and trans. Cazacu. For another English version, see trans. McNally.

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The contemporary Greek and Turkish historians in turn recorded various episodes and accounts, adding new material which was circulating orally. One Greek historian credited Dracula with a veritable revolution in his country, a notion which only partially corresponds to the actual sense of the term. But still, let us keep this image of Dracula as a “revolutionary prince.” The echoes of his deeds reached all the way to France, to Jean Bodin, who unfortunately summarily dismissed them in his République (1580): “I leave aside these strange cruelties of Dracula, duke of Transylvania.”16 Paradoxically, in his country of origin, Wallachia, today part of southern Romania, the memory of Dracula’s deeds and actions was lost over the course of several centuries. Even the official chronicle of Wallachia, written in the sixteenth century and reworked in the next, hardly mentions the bloody prince. All that survive are stories (unknown in the Latin, German, and Russian versions) connected with his castle in the southern Carpathians (castle Poienari). The peasants of seven surrounding villages benefitted from important financial privileges in exchange for the care and maintenance of this eagle’s nest situated on the Transylvanian border. The prince’s memory is perpetuated there even to our days, thanks to the fortress which strikes the imagination and keeps alive the memory of its founder. The rediscovery of Dracula didn’t occur until the nineteenth century, when German, Russian, and Hungarian historians published the incunabula and the manuscript accounts. When modern Romanian scholars in turn discovered these texts, they found themselves faced with a dilemma. This prince, cruel beyond all measure, had nonetheless shown exceptional courage in confronting the army of Mehmed II the Conqueror. Heroes on this scale were not legion in Romania’s past. What to do? How to reconcile the two faces of this character? Finally, after much hesitation, Dracula—or rather Vlad the Impaler—was inscribed on the list of national heroes who had defended the independence of Romania, which became a nation state in 1918 with Wallachia and Moldavia’s union with Transylvania. Nicolae Ceaușescu even celebrated the five hundredth anniversary of Dracula’s death in 1976, and a goodly number of publications presented him as a great reformer, peerless military commander, and a harsh but just prince. The atrocities committed by this “hero” were simply brushed off by Ceaușescu as falsehoods or exaggerations by enemies of the Romanian people. However, a new worry arrived, adding to those already poisoning the life of the Romanian “Carpathian of Thought.” In 1972, two American historians, Radu R. Florescu and Raymond T. McNally had published in Connecticut their 16  “Je laisse les cruautés estranges de Dracula duc de Transylvanie …” See Cazacu, L’histoire du prince Dracula, 53.

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In Search of Dracula,17 a work which established a link between the historic Romanian character (who was, moreover, completely unknown in the west) and the father of all modern vampires. Immortalized, if you will, by the Irish writer Bram Stoker in 1897, the vampire Dracula, count of the Carpathians, had for quite some time conquered the British Empire and indeed the entire world—invading library shelves, theater stages, and Hollywood screens. Brought to life on the screen by Bela Lugosi (a native of Transylvania), Lon Chaney Jr., Christopher Lee, and more recently Gary Oldman in Francis Ford Coppola’s film, the vampire was decidedly the shadow—even if vampires don’t have them!—of Vlad the Impaler. This is why Ceaușescu, who as a son of peasants must have known Romanian popular beliefs regarding vampires very well, outlawed discussion on this subject. The pretext was that this was part of the sad heritage of centuries of ignorance and the misery of the people, subjected to the exploitation of the Turks and the boyars. Despite the persistence of such beliefs in certain remote areas, the Romanian leader decreed that vampirism was unknown in the country, and moreover that Vlad the Impaler never drank the blood of his fellow men. Even if he made blood flow like rivers, and even if, as one contemporary says, he took delight plunging his hands into it, especially that of his great enemies. Truth be told, however, these beliefs have existed and still exist in Romania, as Ioanna Andreesco has shown in her book Où sont passés les vampires?,18 just as they’ve existed in the Balkans, the Greek islands, Hungary, Slovakia, Bohemia, Moravia, Ukraine, and Russia. It was from this fertile ground that Bram Stoker derived his figure of the vampire. And he contrived, for the first time, an oriental aristocrat bearing a historic name—a reincarnation, he affirms, of a valiant prince of the fifteenth century—, who did not really need this transformation to inspire fear. Vampirism has interested the west since the eighteenth century, because it intersects with a larger debate on the external signs of death, on apparent death, on incompleted death, and on questions relating to tombs outside of cities. Also pertinent is the need for a death certificate, which was campaigned for by French scholars such as the anatomist Jacques-Bénigne Winslow (1669–1760) and his disciple Jacques-Jean Bruhier d’Ablaincourt (1685–1756), whose works have been reconstructed with talent and erudition by Claudio Milanesi.19

17  McNally and Florescu, In Search of Dracula (1972). 18  Ioanna Andreesco, Où sont passés les vampires? (Paris: Payot & Rivages, 1997). 19  Claudio Milanesi, Mort apparente, mort imparfaite: Médecine et mentalités au XVIII e siècle, Bibliothèque scientifique (Paris: Payot, 1991).

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The present work aims to paint a picture of the little known historical figure Vlad III, known as “the Impaler.” To be sure, this is not to forget the tyrant Dracula as he is presented in the Latin, German, Russian, and Balkan accounts, all of which exploited and manipulated his image according to political and ideological interests which we must endeavor to detect. We shall likewise address Dracula the vampire, both as a literary character and hero of cinema, from Murnau’s Nosferatu the Vampire up to the present. In summary, the hero and his times, the tyrant and his public, and the vampire and the world of shadows. That Dracula continues to excite such keen interest in our own times proves that we’re dealing with a genuine foundation myth in the human psyche. Its elements include life after death, fascination with blood as a source of life, obsession with evil and violence, the “beyond” intruding into our lives, and “the undead” which has haunted humans since they built the first tombs and created complicated ceremonies, intended to ensure that the spirit of the deceased will travel to the other side unhindered, and not return.

Introduction to the English Translation Stephen W. Reinert The genesis of any book has its particular history, and Matei Cazacu has eloquently memorialized the origins of his Dracula in his preface to the 2004 edition. The coming to life of this edited English translation likewise has its tale, dating back to the spring of 2014. In that semester, at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, I launched my first semester length lecture course entitled “Dracula: Facts and Fictions,” but was uncomfortable with the absence of readily available, up-to-date, quality biographical material on Vlad III Dracula—in the English language—to assign as basic reading. My considered opinion, over the years, has been that Cazacu’s Dracula is not only the most accomplished scholarly work in the field, but a masterpiece of historical writing on account of the author’s remarkable linguistic acumen, consummate facility with the sources, and sophisticated historical imagination and interpretive skill.1 But since it was published in French, and heretofore had never been translated into English, it was impossible to adopt for classroom purposes. I expressed this conviction to my students in an introductory lecture on Dracula historiography, along with my disappointment that I could not assign Cazacu’s Dracula, in an English version, as their basic textbook. At the end of the hour, one of my students approached me, introducing herself as a joint French-History major and wondering if she might undertake the translation of a few chapters of Cazacu’s Dracula for an extra-credit project. I was delighted by the proposal, and even more stunned when, by the end of the semester, this amazing young scholar— Nicole Mordarski—had produced an impressive opening translation of much of Cazacu’s narrative, from preface through conclusion. We agreed, then, that over the summer of 2014 I would assess the possibility of a collaboration, with the goal of publishing the first English translation of Cazacu’s biography. Although preoccupied with final touches on a collection of my own scholarly papers,2 I carried out my agreement and, week by week, worked together 1  For erudite appreciations of Cazacu’s lifetime’s research on Dracula and kindred subjects, see Emanuel Constantin Antoche’s “Matei Cazacu à la recherche de Dracula,” Turcica 37 (2005): 355–364, and “Matei Cazacu, l’un des derniers historiens européens de l’exil,” in Cazacu, Au carrefour des Empires et des mers, 11–15. 2  Stephen Reinert, Late Byzantine and Early Ottoman Studies, Variorum Collected Studies Series: CS 902 (Farnham, Surrey, England: Ashgate Publishing, 2014).

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with Nicole on various revisions, with an eye to rendering Cazacu’s rather complicated and elegant style into something approximating standard AngloAmerican prose. I increasingly realized, however, that transforming Cazacu’s French Dracula into an English version could not simply be a project of straightforward translation, as was the case with eight of the nine translations to date.3 Accepting that our goal was to produce a version at a scholarly standard equivalent to the original publication, a variety of editorial interventions would be needed, in addition to basic translation of Cazacu’s narrative. These fall into three key categories: 1. Ensuring Accurate Translation of Primary Source Quotations and Texts. What makes Cazacu’s biography of Vlad III Dracula so remarkably rich and engaging is the range of primary sources which he utilized and translated, from all pertinent languages. In the 2004 original, these translations were of course into French, since the targeted readership was Francophone. But subsequent translators “rotely” rendering Cazacu’s French translations of the original sources into other languages have frequently made errors, ranging from minor to egregious, because they have not seen it as necessary to revisit the originals and check for accuracy on a systematic basis. My intention, in overseeing the first English translation of Cazacu’s Dracula, has been to ensure that the translation of all parts of the work—the author’s own narrative of the component themes, and the primary sources he quotes or incorporates—are as accurate as possible. In the case of source quotations from English texts (e.g., Bram Stoker, William Wilkinson, Emily Gerard, etc.), the procedure is simple and straightforward: Replace the French translation with the English original. With other quotations—variously from Latin, Byzantine Greek, Ottoman Turkish, early Italian and French, Middle High German, Old Slavic and Russian—I have either checked our translations of Cazacu’s French translations against the originals, making modifications as necessary, or in several cases have replaced Cazacu’s rendering with recently published, quality scholarly translations into English. In particular, for De Wavrin, Doukas, Chalkokondyles, Michael Beheim’s Song Poem on Dracula, and Pius II’s Commentaries, we have incorporated quotations from the reliable English translations of Colin Imber, Harry

3  The “straightforward,” unedited translations are those in Greek, Italian, Latvian, Polish, Russian, Slovenian, Spanish, and Turkish. The Romanian translation reveals, throughout, careful editorial work and a frequent rechecking of Cazacu’s citations with the original works (Dracula, translated from the French by Dana-Ligia Ilin, Bucharest: Humanitas, 2008).

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Magoulias, Anthony Kaldellis, Willam C. McDonald, and Florence A. Gragg.4 I have, of course, retained and translated whatever notes Cazacu appended to his original French versions. 2. Updating Primary Source References. The most significant development in Dracula studies since 2004 has been the launch of a comprehensive source collection entitled Corpus Draculianum: Dokumente und Chroniken zum walachischen Fürsten Vlad dem Pfähler 1448–1650, edited by Thomas M. Bohn and colleagues. Projected to be three volumes, the third of these appeared in 2013, dealing with Überlieferung aus dem Osmanischen Reich: Postbyzantinische und osmanische Autoren, and edited by Adrian Gheorghe and Albert Weber. Citations to this volume have been incorporated throughout the notes. Unfortunately volumes one and two had not yet been published when our work went to press, but we envision adding references from the completed Corpus Draculianum in a subsequent update. 3. Updating Secondary Literature. Since the original publication date of 2004, there has been, as with any thriving research field, a steady outpouring of new publications. As the translation proceeded, I attempted to incorporate the most important new English publications at relevant points throughout the footnotes, bearing in mind that our targeted readership is Anglophone. When the manuscript was finished, Cazacu reviewed every chapter and the annex, and provided extensive additional citations, covering in particular recent significant work in French and Romanian scholarship. 4. Organizing a Systematic Bibliography. The bibliography in the original French version was limited, and did not delineate all the primary and secondary sources Cazacu used throughout the work. Our bibliography addresses this deficiency, and citations are formatted according to The Chicago Manual of Style,5 with which most Anglo-American readers will be familiar. The foregoing, then, are the major “editorial interventions” applied in the production of this English translation, which I undertook as my primary role in the project. In addition, we secured the collaboration of two additional translators, Alice Brinton and Dr. Catherine Healey, both of whom have native fluency in French as well as English, and a long history of French-to-English translation experience, in particular with political and historical texts. Alice and Cathie 4  Owing to length of passages quoted, permissions were sought and received from Professors Imber and McDonald, and Harvard University Press for Professor Kaldellis’ translation. For these we express our gratitude. 5  University of Chicago Press, The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th edition (Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 2010).

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not only revised and polished some of the most difficult of Cazacu’s passages, but reviewed the entire manuscript for accuracy and style. An additional change, in this English version, is that I have opted not to include a translation of Marie Nizet’s 1879 Le Capitaine Vampire: Nouvelle Roumaine. In the original 2004 publication, Cazacu edited and republished the latter as the final section of his book. But since Cazacu provides such an extensive précis of the novel in Chapter Eight, appending a full English translation in this version is not essential for comprehending the author’s arguments, particularly vis-à-vis Stoker’s possible use of Nizet in constructing the plot of his Dracula. Moreover, in 2007, a good English translation of Nizet’s work was published by Brian Stableford, entitled Captain Vampire (Encino, California: Black Coat Press). Interested readers may consult this independently, and it is currently readily available both in paperback and ebook format. It remains to acknowledge individuals and institutions for assistance rendered in the course of this endeavor. First and foremost, the author, Matei Cazacu, quickly responded to all my inquiries with his characteristic profound learning, and the patience of Job. The Interlibrary Loan and Article Delivery Services at Rutgers’ Alexander Library, New Brunswick, were unfailingly efficient, helpful, and courteous. Through their assistance, I was able to review nearly every article and book cited in the 2004 edition, and thus ensure (so I hope) the bibliographic accuracy of citations in our edited translation. Dr. James Niessen (World History Librarian, Alexander Library) kindly answered a variety of bibliographic questions and resolved my uncertainties in Romanian and Hungarian. Michael Siegel (Staff Cartographer, Geography Department, Rutgers University) designed the map and genealogies for this edition. Other Rutgers colleagues who likewise provided assistance include Professors Rebecca Davis, Peter Golden, and Barry V. Qualls, whose proofreading skills are unrivaled. Beyond Rutgers, Professor Sarah Bassett (Dept. of Art History, Indiana University) clarified a number of art historical matters, as did Dr. Alice Isabella Sullivan (History of Art, University of Michigan), whose help at numerous points was extraordinarily collegial and invaluable. Mrs. Anette Phillips Nicolls, and my fellow UCLA graduate student Dr. Carol Gilmor, helped me comprehend the behavior of horses in pitched battle. Professor William C. McDonald (Dept. of Germanic Languages & Literatures, University of Virginia) elucidated some tricky passages in Beheim and the German pamphlets. Turning overseas, staff from the Biblioteca Centrală Universitară “Lucian Blaga” ClujNapoca Help Desk, and its counterpart at Sibiu, have likewise been wonderful in elaborating references, and providing PDFs in particular of nineteenth century newspaper articles that Cazacu cited. Dr. Mircea-Cristian Ghenghea (History Dept., Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, Iași) similarly lent his exper-

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tise in resolving problems in this area, and kindly conveyed PDFs of difficult to find articles. Staff at the Koninklijke Bibliotheek van België—Bibliothèque royale de Belgique were very helpful in researching queries on the Nizets, Marie and Henri. The Romanian Academy Library generously provided us with photos of Dracula’s “Halley’s Comet” coin from its numismatics special collection. The good nuns of the Mănăstirea Suceviţa graciously provided fresh photos of two manuscript paintings from a tetraevangelion in their library. And finally, Robin MacCaw, great-grandson of Bram Stoker himself, kindly allowed us to include a photo of the first and most important page of Stoker’s typewritten notes from William Willkinson’s Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, whence he discovered the name “Dracula.” To all the aforementioned, our most sincere thanks. And last, but by no means least, we express our gratitude to the superb Brill editors with whom it was our good fortune and pleasure to work: Kate Hammond (Acquisitions Editor, Medieval Studies & Military History), Marcella Mulder (Assistant Editor), and Judy Pereira (Production Editor).

List of Abbreviations Cazacu, Au carrefour  des Empires et  des mers

Cazacu, Matei. Au carrefour des Empires et des mers: Études d’histoire médiévale et moderne. Florilegium magistrorum historiae archaeologiaeque Antiquitatis et Medii Aevi, eds. Victor Spinei and Ionel Cândea, vol. 18. Bucharest and Brăila: Editura Academiei Române and Muzeul Brăilei “Carol I” Editura Istros, 2015. Cazacu, Dracula Cazacu, Matei. Dracula, suivi du Capitaine Vampire, une nouvelle roumaine par Marie Nizet (1879). Paris: Tallandier Éditions, 2004. Cazacu, L’histoire du Cazacu, Matei. L’histoire du prince Dracula en Europe  prince Dracula centrale et orientale (XV e siècle): Présentation, édition critique, traduction et commentaire. 2nd ed. Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1996. Corpus Draculianum, Gheorghe, Adrian and Weber, Albert, eds. Die Überlieferung  vol. 3 aus dem Osmanischen Reich: Post­byzantinische und osmani­ sche Autoren. Vol. 3 of Corpus Draculianum: Dokumente und Chroniken zum walachischen Fürsten Vlad dem Pfähler 1448– 1650, eds. Thomas M. Bohn et al. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2013. Documente, vol. 2, Hurmuzaki, Eudoxiu de, and Densușianu, Nicolae, eds.  pt. 1 Documente privitoare la istoria românilor [Documents concerning the history of the Romanians]. Vol. 2, part 1, 1346– 1450. Bucharest: [Stabilimentul Grafic Socecu & Teclu], 1890. Documente, vol. 2, Hurmuzaki, Eudoxiu de, and Densușianu, Nicolae, eds.  pt. 2 Documente privitoare la istoria românilor [Documents concerning the history of the Romanians]. Vol. 2, part 2, 1451–1510. Bucharest: [Stabilimentul Grafic Socecu & Teclu], 1891. Documente, vol. 4, Hurmuzaki, Eudoxiu de, ed. Documente privitoare la istoria  pt. 2 românilor [Documents concerning the history of the Romanians]. Vol. 4, part 2, 1600–1650. Bucharest: [Stabili­ mentul Grafic Socecu & Teclu], 1884. Documente, vol. 15, Hurmuzaki, Eudoxiu de, and Iorga, Nicolae, eds. Documente  pt. 1 privitoare la istoria românilor [Documents concerning the history of the Romanians]. Vol. 15, part 1, 1358–1600: Acte și scrisori din archivele oraselor Ardeleue (Bistriţa, Brașov, Sibiu) [1358–1600: Documents and letters from archives of Transylvanian cities (Bistriţa, Brașov, Sibiu)]. Bucharest: [Stabilimentul Grafic Socecu & Teclu], 1911.

List Of Abbreviations DRH B, vol. 1

DRH B, vol. 25

DRH D, vol. 1

GDW 1463 GDW 1488 = MHH AE, vol. 4 [A]

MHH AE, vol. 4 [B]

McNally and Florescu,  In Search of Dracula   (1994) Treptow, Vlad III  Dracula

xxvii Documenta Romaniae historica, eds. Andrei Oţetea et al., series B, Ţara Românească [Wallachia], vol. 1, 1247–1500, eds. P. P. Panaitscu and Damaschin Mios. Bucharest: Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste România, 1965. Documenta Romaniae historica, eds. Ștefan Pascu et al., series B, Ţara Românească [Wallachia], vol. 25, 1635–1636, eds. Damaschin Mioc et al. Bucharest: Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste România, 1985. Documenta Romaniae historica, eds. Mihai Berza et al., series D, Relaţii între Ţările Române [Relations between the Romanian countries], vol. 1, 1222–1456, eds. Ștefan Pascu et al. Bucharest: Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste România, 1977. Geschichte Dracole Waide [The History of Voivode Dracula]. Die Geschicht Dracole Waide [The History of Voivode Dracula]. Nagy, Iván and Nyáry, Albert, eds. Mátyás király korábol [1466–1480] [The Age of Matthias Corvinus (1466–1480)]. Vol. 4 [A] of Monumenta Hungariae historica. Series IV Acta extera. Budapest: Magyar Tudományos Akadémia Könyvkiadó-Hivatalában, 1875. Nagy, Iván and Nyáry, Albert, eds. Mátyás király korábol [1466–1480] [The Age of Matthias Corvinus (1466–1480)]. Vol. 4 [B] of Monumenta Hungariae historica. Series IV Acta extera. Budapest: Magyar Tudományos Akadémia Könyvkiadó-Hivatalában, 1877. McNally, Raymond T. and Florescu, Radu. In Search of Dracula: The History of Dracula and Vampires. New updated and revised edition. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1994. Treptow, Kurt W. Vlad III Dracula: The Life and Times of the Historical Dracula. Iași: The Center for Romanian Studies, 2000.

List of Illustrations, Genealogies, and Map Illustrations 1

Fresco of Vlad II Dracul and his wife, in Dracula’s House, Sighișoara, Romania 375 2 Dracula’s House, Sighișoara, Romania 375 3 Silver ban of Vlad II Dracul with dragon on the reverse 376 4 Golden bull of Emperor Sigismund I, August 10, 1433 376 5 Portrait of Vlad Dracula, second half of sixteenth century 377 6 Martyrdom of Saint Andrew, with cryptoportrait of Vlad Dracula, ca. 1470–1480 378 7 First page of Cod. Sang. 806, St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, narrating Die Geschichte Dracole Waide 379 8 Frontispiece colored woodcut portrait of Vlad Dracula from Peter Wagner’s 1488 pamphlet Die Geschicht Dracole Waide 380 9 Frontispiece uncolored woodcut portrait from Bartholomaeus Ghothan’s 1488–1493 pamphlet Die Geschicht Dracole Waide 380 10 First two text pages of Bartholomaeus Ghothan’s 1488–1493 pamphlet Die Geschicht Dracole Waide 381 11 Frontispiece woodcut depiction of Vlad Dracula dining amidst impaled victims, in Matthias Hupfuff’s 1500 pamphlet Die Geschicht Dracole Waide 382 12 Modern colorized version of the Hupfuff woodcut 382 13–14 Silver ban of Vlad Dracula, with depiction of Halley’s Comet on reverse 383 15 Postcard of Dracula’s Palace at Târgoviște, during 1906 Bucharest Jubilee Exhibition 384 16 Bucharest, remains of the Old Princely (Voievodal) Court 384 17–18 Castle Poienari, built by Dracula in the southern Carpathians 385 19 Portrait busts in relief of Matthias Corvinus and his wife Beatrice 386 20 Mehmed II “the Conqueror,” portrait by Nakkaș Sinan Bey 386 21 Votive portrait of Basarab III Laiotă, Dracula’s assassin 387 22 Snagov Monastery Church, wherein Dracula most likely was buried 387 23 Suceviţa Monastery Manuscript Portrait of Alexander II Mircea, son of Mircea III Dracula, and great-grandson of Dracula (MS 23, fol. 303 vo) 388

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24 Suceviţa Monastery Manuscript Portrait of Mihnea II the Turk, son of Alexander II Mircea, and great-great grandson of Dracula (MS 23, fol. 238 vo) 388 25 Photo of Bram Stoker, author of Dracula, with Stoker’s autograph. Dated 1906, the year of the Bucharest Jubilee Exhibition 389 26 Stoker’s typewritten notes, with handwritten pen annotations, from William Wilkinson’s Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia (1820) 389 27 Max Schreck as Count Orlok, in Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922) 390 Genealogies 1 2 3

The House of Basarab—The Dăneștii Branch xxxi The House of Basarab—The Drăculeștii Branch xxxii The House of Basarab—Vlad Dracula’s Descendants in Transylvania xxiii

Map Wallachia and its neighbors in the 14th and 15th centuries xxx

Wallachia and its neighbors in the 14th and 15th centuries.

Map and Genealogies

THE HOUSE OF BASARAB – THE DĂNEŞTII BRANCH Map And Genealogies

xxxi

Basarab i 1320–1352 Nicholas Alexander 1352–1364 m. 1 Chiajna m. 2 Clara Dobokai

Vladislav i 1363–1377

Radu i a. 1364–1377 1377–1383 m. Anna Calinchia

Dan i 1383–1385

Mircea i the Old [see Drǎculeştii Branch]

Dan ii 1420–1431 with interruptions

Dan d. 1440

Basarab ii 1442–1444

Basarab iv Ţepeluş (The Little Impaler) 1477–1482 m. Maria

Basarab iii Laiotă 1473–1474 1475–1476 1477

Boldface: ruler in Wallachia + dates a. + dates: associate ruler in Wallachia m.: married The House of Basarab—The Dăneștii Branch.

Vladislav ii Dan iii 1447–1456 Pretender killed by Dracula (1460)

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And Genealogies THE HOUSE OF BASARAB – THE DRĂCULEŞTIIMap BRANCH Radu i Mircea i The Old a. 1383–1385 1386–1418 m. Maria Tolmay, Hungarian noblewoman

Dan i [see Dăneştii Branch]

Michael i a. 1391–1418 1418–1420

Vlad Dracul Alexander Aldea 1436–1442, 1444–1447 1431–1436 m. Marina of Moldavia m. 1 Hungarian noblewoman, name unknown m. 2 Marina of Moldavia

Vlad Dracula Radu the Handsome (The Impaler) 1462–1475 1448, 1456–1462, 1476 m. Marina Despina c. consort, name unknown m. 1 dtr. of János Hunyadi, name unknown m. 2 Justina Szilágyi [Pongrácz]

Mircea [1428/9–1447]

Alexandra

Mihnea Maria Volchiţa Boyars Vlad Mircea (?) 1508–1509 m. Stephen the Great of Săteni claimant to 1482/3 at Buda m. 1 Smaranda Wallachian throne m. 2 Voica (1495) Ludovicus Drakula De Sinteşhi

Miloş d. 1519

Alexander Mircea 1568–1577 m. Catherine Salvaresso

Bogdan iii Mircea Voievod of Moldavia (1504–1517) a. 1509–1510 m. Maria Despina

Peter The Lame Maria Five Voievod of Moldavia: m. Michael daughters 1574–1579, 1582–1591 Cantacuzino m. 1 Maria Amirali Şeytanoglu m. 2 Irina

Mihnea ii 1577–1583, 1585–1591 m. 1 Neaga de Hotărani m. 2 Vişa

Stephen (1584–1602)

Milos d. 1577

Cantacuzino family of Romania, Russia, Crimea, etc.

Radu Mihnea Wallachia 1601–1602, 1611–1616 Modavia 1616–1619, 1623–1626 m. Arghira Minetti Alexander The Child (Coconul) Wallachia 1623–1627 Modavia 1629–1630 The House of Basarab—The Drăculeștii Branch.

Boldface: ruler in Wallachia + dates a. + dates: associate ruler in Wallachia c: consort m.: married

THE HOUSE OF BASARAB Map And Genealogies VLAD DRACULA’S DESCENDANTS IN TRANSYLVANIA Vlad iii Dracula (The Impaler) 1448, 1456–1462, 1476

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Justina Szilágyi [Pongrácz] cousin of Matthias Corvinus

Vlad

Ludovicus Drakula De Sinteşti Vlad Drakulya de Sinteşti m. Anna Gyulay

John Drakulya De Sinteşti

George Drakulya

John Drakulya Band Nobleman Anne m. Stephen Géczy-Papp notary at Sucutard George Géczy commander of the fusiliers at Kanizsa Catle, Hungary

Andrew d. 1614 pretender to throne in Transylvania (1612) m. Euphosine Soos de Poltar

Peter d. 1612 at Istanbul, kapukehaia (representative to the Porte)

d.: date of death m.: married The House of Basarab—Vlad Dracula’s Descendants in Transylvania.

Stephen Géczy-Papp alias Dracula, Band nobleman, priest, notary at Sucutard m. Anna Dracula de Band Paul Géczy alias Papp noble of Sucutard

CHAPTER 1

Exile As a Way of Life

“A Fortress on the Water”

Vlad Dracula1 was born sometime between 1429–1430 and 1436, most likely in Schässburg, today Sighișoara, a German city in the center of Romania, in the province of Transylvania. First recorded in 1280 as Castrum Sex, the form Schässburg appears a few years later, in 1298. Nicknamed “the Saxon Nuremberg,” Sighișoara achieved a certain fame in 2003 when the minister of Romanian Tourism announced that a “Dracula Land” theme park would be built nearby. After numerous protests, this project was finally abandoned. The city has preserved its ancient walls, watch towers, narrow streets, and fifteenth and sixteenth century houses. In 1938, the Enciclopedia României described the city as follows: Imagine that from the depths of the sea a coral island, on which light gently rains, appears before your eyes. Behold Sighișoara. Contemplating it, you truly have the illusion of a fortress on the water. Its gray walls, over which a crown of red ivies tumbles down; the winding streets; the slender flowering towers at dawn, their thresholds glistening with the colors of the night’s cool dew; the belts of green walkways surrounding the cemetery and the old town center; […] the moody shadows … It all resembles a game of sea crystals, the gentle plash of pensive waters. The somber, rough Saxon architecture […] is here sublime, with its sharply angular towers and multi-colored houses. Nature in Transylvania generously extends herself everywhere, with rugged forests enveloping the dream-like citadel with warm intimacy, as if to re-establish harmonious union between creation and the work of man. The city is caressed by the sweet banks of the Târnava River, with its gently moving, languid waters. The overall feeling is of abundance, and of full surrender to the rhythms of nature. Still in all, Sighișoara remains serene and unruffled. Stranger to the rich landscape of the surrounding forests, Sighișoara leads its ascetic existence in the milieu of a complex Gothic style, with soaring lines 1  Before 1475, Dracula signed his name simply as “Vlad.” From 1475, however, he uses the form Ladislaus Dragwlya (or Dragkwlya, Drakulya), which likewise appears on his seal. Cf. Bogdan, Documente privitoare la relaţiile, nos. CLXVI–CLXVII, pp. 323–324.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi ��.��63/9789004349216_002

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CHAPTER 1

in silent longing for the absolute. And yet, viewed from the south in the morning, she appears to shimmer in the mist caressed air, ready to sail forth, smiling like a city by the sea.2 The house where Dracula was presumably born, a massive but inelegant building, still exists in the old (or upper) city (figs. 1 and 2). An inscription placed in 1976 attests that this, indeed, is where the Impaler was born.3 Heretofore, however, the house was noted only for having functioned as a mint, between 1433 and 1436. Scholars agree that Vlad the Impaler was probably born during his father’s exile in Transylvania. We also know that between 1431 and 1436 Vlad Dracul had, as a source of revenue, minting of coins in Sighișoara. It is highly probable, therefore, that Vlad was born in this house. Even so, the 1976 inscription is hardly justified in eliminating all doubt. In reality, we don’t know where Vlad’s father lived before February of 1431. Possibly in Constantinople, then still Byzantine, or somewhere else in Transylvania? If Vlad was born before 1431, his place of birth remains unknown. But from 1431 to the autumn of 1436, there is, of course, the house in Sighișoara. From the autumn of 1436, his father occupied the throne of Wallachia, where Vlad may have been born if he had come into the world at the end of this year. We do, however, know that his older brother, Mircea, their father’s first born, was aged thirteen or fourteen in 1443. A Burgundian knight, Jehan de Wavrin, confirms this in his account of Vlad Dracul’s captivity among the Turks in 1442: At this time, the Lord of Wallachia had only a single son, aged between thirteen and fourteen, who was not capable of governing