Constantin Brâncoveanu and Dimitrie Cantemir

Constantin Brâncoveanu, prince of Wallachia from 1688 to 1714, led the country during the great geopolitical changes at the end of the 17th century. He was the nephew of Șerban Cantacuzino, chosen by the boyars for his energy, wealth and wisdom. He managed to keep the state in a fragile balance between the Ottoman Empire, the Habsburg Empire and Russia, paying large sums at Istanbul to keep his throne. His prudent diplomacy secured 26 years of relative peace for the country, in an age of constant wars.

His reign is associated with a period of great cultural flourishing, known as the Brâncoveanu style, which blends Byzantine, Renaissance, Baroque and Oriental elements. Its main achievements are Hurezi Monastery (1690–1697), the palace at Mogoșoaia (1702), the church of Saint George the New in Bucharest and the Palace at Potlogi. Brâncoveanu supported the printing presses run by Anthim the Iberian, a craftsman and scholar who printed books in Greek, Arabic and Romanian. He founded the Princely Academy at Saint Sava in Bucharest, a centre of higher education.

Towards the end of his reign Brâncoveanu began secret negotiations with the Habsburgs and with the Russia of Peter the Great, hoping for liberation from the Ottomans. The sultan found out and deposed him in 1714. The prince was arrested and taken to Constantinople, together with his four sons and his counsellor Ianache Văcărescu. After months of torture, during which he was asked to renounce the Orthodox faith and to reveal his wealth, they were beheaded on 15 August 1714, on the feast of the Dormition of the Virgin Mary. The Romanian Orthodox Church canonized him in 1992.

Dimitrie Cantemir (1673–1723) was prince of Moldavia in 1693 and then in 1710–1711, but he remained in history above all as a scholar. In 1711 he concluded a treaty at Lutsk with Tsar Peter the Great, by which Moldavia was to gain its independence under Russian protection. The joint campaign ended at Stănilești in July 1711 with the defeat of the Russians by the Ottomans. Cantemir had to take refuge in Russia, where he received the title of prince and estates, and in 1714 he was elected a member of the Berlin Academy.

Cantemir’s scholarly work is among the most valuable in Romanian culture. “Descriptio Moldaviae” (1716) is the first great geographical, historical and ethnographic monograph on Moldavia. The “Chronicle of the Antiquity of the Romano-Moldo-Wallachians” upholds the Latin origin and the unity of the Romanians, while the “History of the Growth and Decay of the Ottoman Empire” was for a long time Europe’s main source of information on the history of the Turks. He also wrote treatises on philosophy and music. He died in Russia in 1723, and his remains were brought to Iași, to the church of the Three Hierarchs, in 1935.