Matei Basarab, Vasile Lupu and the Culture of the 17th Century

In the Romanian Principalities the 17th century was a period of internal consolidation and cultural development. After the troubled period that followed Michael the Brave, Matei Basarab (1632–1654) brought peace, order and prosperity to Wallachia. He was an elderly, wise ruler who avoided major wars and invested in building. He restored Arnota Monastery and Căldărușani Monastery, founded churches and supported the printing presses. In 1652, the “Îndreptarea Legii” (“The Correction of the Law”) was printed at Târgoviște. It was a civil and criminal code based on Byzantine law and the custom of the land.

In Moldavia, Vasile Lupu (1634–1653) was a Greek prince of Albanian origin and an outstanding figure in diplomacy, commerce and culture. In 1639 he built the church of the “Three Hierarchs” in Iași, a unique monument for its carved stone decoration. In 1640 he founded the College of the Three Hierarchs, where professors from Kiev taught, on the model of the European academies. He supported the printing of Varlaam’s “Book of Sermons” (1643) and of the “Romanian Book of Teaching”. Under his reign Iași grew as the cultural and economic centre of Moldavia.

The rivalry between Matei Basarab and Vasile Lupu degenerated into armed conflict. At the battle of Finta in 1653, Matei, helped by Gheorghe Ștefan, defeated the army of Vasile Lupu, who lost his throne. Not many years later, in the second half of the century, rulers such as Gheorghe Ghica or Antonie Vodă of Popești tried to maintain a balance between the great powers. They were, however, caught in the conflict between the Ottoman Empire, Poland, Russia and the Habsburgs, which turned the Romanian Principalities into a battlefield and a land of plunder.

Romanian culture flourished in the national language. The chroniclers Grigore Ureche (“The Chronicle of Moldavia”), Miron Costin (“On the Moldavian Nation”) and Ion Neculce (“A Collection of Sayings”) upheld the Roman origin of the people and its continuity. Metropolitan Dosoftei printed at Iași the “Psalter in Verse” (1673), the first Romanian book in verse, and made Romanian a language of the church. In response to tendencies towards Slavonization, he laid the foundations of the literary language. In Wallachia, the steward Constantin Cantacuzino wrote the “History of Wallachia”, based on foreign sources.

In 1688, during the reign of Șerban Cantacuzino (1678–1688), the “Bible of 1688” was printed in Bucharest, the first complete translation of the Bible into Romanian, an essential achievement of Romanian culture, to which the Greceanu brothers and Metropolitan Daniil contributed. The work played a decisive role in fixing the literary language and in bringing Romanians everywhere closer together. Șerban Cantacuzino had ambitious political ideas, for he conducted negotiations with the Habsburgs with a view to freeing the country from the Turks, but he died in 1688, before he could carry them out.