The Epoch of Matthew Basarab and Its Significance in the South-East European Context

Abstract

This study presents the most important cultural-religious achievements produced during the reign of Matei Basarab, who reigned in Wallachia between 1632 and 1654. The long reign of Matei Basarab was an era of religious fervour and cultural development. It was he who made a major contribution to replacing the Slavonic language with Romanian in official, religious and civil life. He introduced the first written legislation: the Pravila (printed at the Govora Monastery, 1640), as well as the Pravila Îndreptarea legii (Târgoviște, 1652). Matthias Basarab also built dozens of churches from the ground up, as well as rebuilding many others, both in the country and outside – on Mount Athos (in 1645, he paid the taxes for the entire Holy Mountain), and on the territory of present-day Bulgaria, in Vidin and Șistov. The last part of the study therefore examines his role as a protector of south-eastern European culture and as a supporter of Orthodoxy, who was an assiduous advocate of both the unaltered preservation of Orthodox tradition and the promotion of a Christian European civilisation. In this way, the era of Matei Basarab exemplifies historian Nicolae Iorga’s paradigm of “Byzantium after Byzantium”.