It is well known that, in the tradition of the Romanian voivodes, it was customary, following a victory in war, to erect a church dedicated to a military saint. In researching the history of our homeland, we have found that one of the favourite saints, alongside the great martyrs George and Demetrius, was also Saint Procopius the Great Martyr (†303), owing to the holiness of his life and his valour in the face of the enemy. He lived during the reign of Emperor Diocletian (244–311). He was born in Jerusalem; his father, Christopher, was a Christian, whilst his mother, Theodosia, was a pagan, and he was named Neania. When his father died, his mother raised him in the pagan faith. When he came of age, Theodosia presented him to Emperor Diocletian, so that he might become a soldier. Because of his intelligence, learning and ability, he was appointed a magistrate in Alexandria and sent there with orders to persecute the Christians. On the way, however, a miracle occurred: he saw flashes of lightning, heard thunder, and a voice from heaven called him by name. The saint prayed to see the One who was calling him, and he saw a crystal Cross, and the voice said to him: ‘I am Jesus the Crucified, the Son of God’. Following this vision, Neania became a Christian and was named Procopius1us.
Of the churches dedicated by the Romanian princes to Saint Procopius the Martyr, two remain in Moldova, founded by Stephen the Great (1457–1504). The first was built following the victory achieved on 8 July 1481 – the feast day of Saint Procopius – by the Moldavian voivode, in the Battle of Râmnicu Sărat against Basarab IV the Younger, Prince of Wallachia (1477–1481, 1481–1482); the second was erected at Mișilăuți, which reads: ‘In the year 6989 (1481), on 8 July, the feast day of the Great Martyr Saint Procopius, I, Stephen, voivode, by the grace of God ruler of Moldavia, son of Bogdan the voivode, together with my dearly beloved son Alexander, waged war at Râmnic against Basarab the Younger, voivode of Wallachia, nicknamed Țepeluș. And God helped Voivode Stephen, and he defeated Voivode Basarab; and there was a very great loss of life amongst the Basarabs. Therefore, Voivode Stephen, out of his own goodwill and with good intentions, saw fit to build this church in the name of the Holy Great Martyr Procopius, in the year 6995 (1487); and work began on the 8th of June; and it was completed in the same year, on the 13th of November’2
In Wallachia, there are also two places of worship dedicated to Saint Procopius the Martyr, built following victories in various wars.
Thus, at the entrance to the Bistrița Gorge in Vâlcea County, a hermitage dedicated to Saint Procopius the Martyr was founded. Regarding this, the Russian scholar Kovalevski noted, around 1845, that there had been a hermitage here dedicated to Saint Procopius the Great Martyr, founded before the establishment of Bistrița Monastery 3. Furthermore, the biography of Barbu Craiovescu recounts that, when he was 18 years old, he was captured by the Turks and taken to Constantinople, where he was put in chains and sentenced to death. On the eve of his execution, scheduled for 8 July, the young man spent the night in prayer, beseeching the Great Martyr Procopius to save his life. In the morning, upon entering the cell, the jailers were astonished to find that the condemned man was missing. That same morning, the abbot of the Bistrița Hermitage found Barbu in the church, prostrate before the icon of Saint Procopius, his hands and feet bound with iron shackles. In gratitude for his supernatural deliverance, the young boyar resolved to replace the modest hermitage with a monumental monastery, thus founding the Bistrița Monastery in Oltenia 4. The miracle of the young boyar’s rescue is immortalised in an 18th-century icon depicting Saint Procopius the Martyr freeing Barbu Craiovescu from his chains. Painted in black on a yellowish-white background, the icon bears the inscription: ‘Ban Barbu’5.
Furthermore, the Polish chronicler Maciej Stryjkowski (1547–1593), referring to the Battle of Posada in 1330, between King Charles Robert of Anjou of Hungary and Voivode Basarab I of Wallachia, reported that ‘at that very spot where the battle took place, the people of the Mountains built a monastery and erected three stone pillars, which I myself saw in the year 1575, whilst travelling from Turkey, beyond the town of Gherghița, a two-day’s journey from Sibiu’6’.”
Subsequently, the records state that in the year 1641, Matei Basarab defeated Vasile Lupu at Nenișori, not far from Gherghița, and built a Princely Church in Gherghița, dedicated to Saint Procopius. It is known that the village of Gherghița is an ancient settlement, having been marked on a map around the year 1100, downstream from where the Teleajen flows into the Prahova. By 1431, Gherghița was already a market town, having existed for some time 7. On the site of the church seen by the Polish traveller, there must have been an older building, probably made of wood, which Matei Basarab is said to have rebuilt, naming it the ‘Saint Procopius – Royal’ Church.
The information provided by the Polish chronicler is extremely valuable, as it is the only source to state that a monastery dedicated to Saint Procopius was built on the site of the Battle of Posada.
However, some clarifications are in order here. The chronicler Stryjkowski saw the monastery at Gherghița in 1575, approximately a century after the disappearance of the hermitage at Bistrița. Consequently, a confusion arose in the collective memory: with the disappearance of the hermitage founded on the site of the Battle of Posada – where Bistrița Monastery had been established – the local population attributed the site of the battle to the monastery at Gherghița, which is incorrect, as that is not where it took place.
It is known that, from the beginning of his reign, Voivode Basarab I (1310–1352) was a vassal of the Kingdom of Hungary. In 1324, the Wallachian voivode appears in Hungarian documents under the title: ‘Basarab, our transalpine voivode’8 This phrase reflects the lord-vassal relationship that existed between the Hungarian king and the Romanian voivode. The same document mentions the success of the mission undertaken by the king’s trusted envoy, Count Martin Bogár, who had been sent on several occasions to meet with Basarab. The king accepted the political existence of the new voivodeship in exchange for the recognition of his suzerainty. However, a year later, Basarab conquered the fortress of Severin, causing a sudden strain in bilateral relations. The royal document, issued on 18 June 1325, refers to the voivode as: ‘Basarab the Transalpine, unfaithful to the Hungarian crown’9 and recounts how Stephen, son of the Cuman count Parabuh, humiliated the king whilst extolling the voivode instead. Furthermore, from 1327 onwards, Basarab refused to pay the vassal tribute. These events prompted the king, on the advice of Dionisie – who later became ban of Severin – to undertake an expedition to recapture the lost territory and punish his vassal10.
Thus, in September 1330, Charles Robert of Anjou set out from Timișoara at the head of an army to punish Basarab. The Vienna Illustrated Chronicle recounts that: ‘The king assembled a large army, though not his entire force, for he had assigned a great many warriors to various expeditions against the kingdom’s enemies’11. According to some experts on military matters, the king’s army ‘is said to have numbered around 10,000 men’. At his side were Dionisie Szecsi, the castellan of Mehadia, and Tamas Szecsenyi, the voivode of Transylvania; the former had been promised Severin, whilst the latter was to receive a large part of Wallachia.
The king occupied the Banat of Severin – which also included, from Oltenia, parts of Mehedinți, Gorj and Vâlcea – and advanced towards Curtea de Argeș, along the main communication route that ran through medieval Oltenia, namely the ‘Great Road or Mehedinți Road’, which linked the west with the east of the region via the route: Tismana – Târgu Jiu – Horezu – Vâlcea, crossing the River Olt and leading directly to Curtea de Argeș. The area had previously been laid waste by Basarab’s followers. Owing to this defensive strategy, famine began to take hold amongst the ranks of the invading army as soon as they entered Wallachia.
However, whilst on the march, Carol Robert received a peace envoy from Basarab I, in which he proposed to the king that, in addition to relinquishing Severin ‘and all that pertains to it’, recognition of vassalage to Hungary and the payment of 7,000 silver marks for the effort expended in mustering the army; he offered an annual tribute and one of his sons to the Hungarian Court as a guarantee, requesting: ‘Only return in peace and keep yourselves safe from danger, for if you come any further, you will not escape them’12 But the king rejected it with supreme arrogance.
The Hungarian army continued its advance towards Curtea de Argeș, the voivode’s residence, but no decisive battle took place. After a failed siege of the capital fortress, Carol Robert set it alight. It was not the crushing victory the king had hoped for, and the diseases and shortages afflicting the army – caused by the devastation of Wallachian lands by Basarab I – forced the haughty Carol Robert to order a retreat to their base of operations along the familiar route they had taken. Normally, any army leaves detachments to defend its lines of communication and stores of non-perishable food supplies, and the support points for the Hungarian monarchy were Severin, Orșova and Mehadia 13.
Some Hungarian documents, as well as Jan Długosz’s Chronicle, report a truce concluded between the two warring parties: Charles Robert ‘ordered a reconciliation with Bazarad’, and the latter assured him “that he would obey the king and that he would guarantee the king and all his men safe passage home and that he would show him a safe route” 14. According to the terms of the agreement, so that the Romanians might lead the Hungarian army along the shortest route, at a certain point they were advised to take a route heading north, towards Transylvania. From the Mehedinți road, which passed exactly through the spot where Bistrița Monastery now stands, the most plausible ‘winding route’ was the Bistrița Gorge.
The documents – both the Illustrated Chronicle and the Diplomas of the Hungarian Chancellery – refer to a canyon-like gorge: ‘a narrow and dark place’ (2 January 1333); ‘narrow, wooded places’ (19 May 1335); a path ‘enclosed on both sides by dizzying precipices’ (13 December 1335), whilst Peter of Duisburg’s Teutonic Chronicle refers to ‘a wooded region’, noting that ‘the peasants of that region sawed the trees of the forest in half with saws along the path the Hungarians had to take on their return, so that if one fell, it would strike another and bring it down, and so on. Hence, when the Hungarians entered the aforementioned forest, the peasants mentioned above shook the trees so that they would fall one upon another, and thus all those felled on either side crushed the great multitude of Hungarians’; this method is ineffective in wide gorges, but only in narrow passages, up to a few dozen metres wide. Now, the Bistrița Gorge is the narrowest in our country, with a width of between 8 and 14 metres in some areas. According to historical evidence, this gorge has been inhabited since the Neolithic period, with remains from the Cucuteni culture and from the Dacian, Roman and medieval periods having been discovered; it was traversed by a sheep track and a cart track along the river, that ‘cursed path’, as King Carol Robert called it.
According to documents issued by the Hungarian Chancellery, the battle took place at ‘our exit from this country’. It is known that the northern part of Vâlcea was part of the Banat of Severin, and was therefore a disputed border region. In a charter issued by Carol Robert of Anjou in 1332—two years after the Battle of Posada— the king acknowledged the acts of valour performed by Laurențiu, Count of Zarand, and his brother in the aforementioned battle, writing: ‘And especially when, having set out with our army assembled by royal command, we arrived in certain borderlands of our kingdom, which were unjustly held in Wallachia by Basarab, the schismatic, son of Thocomerius’15; it is therefore understood that this was in the northern part of Oltenia. Furthermore, King Carol Robert noted that “as we were returning with our men, along a path eternally cursed by God, flanked on both sides by dizzying precipices, and where it widened ahead, it was fortified in several places by strong palisades’ (13 December 1335).
The route of retreat for the Hungarian troops was the one by which they had come: the Mehedinți road, as the king himself states in the document of 13 December 1335: ‘As we were returning with our men’. Thus, as the Hungarian army withdrew from Curtea de Argeș along the route taken during the invasion, and relying on the Romanian guides to lead them along the shortest route to Transylvania—16—a turn off the main road towards the north, where the area desired by the king was situated, seemed entirely credible. Thus, the Romanian guides, placed at the king’s disposal by Basarab, left the straight road and took a detour, leading the Hungarians into a gorge where a trap had been laid for them. The illustrated chronicle states that: ‘The king arrived on a certain path with his army, but this path was winding and enclosed on both sides by very high cliffs all around, and as the king and all his men had not truly anticipated such a thing, the innumerable multitude of Wallachians high up on the cliffs rushed in from all sides and rained arrows down upon the king’s army, which found itself at the bottom of a deep pass, which could scarcely be called a path, but rather a sort of narrow passage, where, due to the crowding, even the most agile horses and soldiers were falling from all sides in the fray’.
The Annals of Jan Długosz provide accounts similar to those in the Illustrated Chronicle, stating: “Basarab came along a path with his entire army, and the path, winding and flanked on both sides by very high cliffs, was enclosed on all sides, and where the said path was wider, there the Wallachians had fortified it in several places with ditches dug all round. Yet the king and all his men had truly not foreseen such a thing. The countless throng of Wallachians, racing up the cliffs from all sides, rained arrows down upon the Hungarian army at the bottom of the track—which, however, ought not to have been called a track, but rather a sort of narrow ship, where, because of the crush, even the swiftest horses and soldiers were falling in battle; for, owing to the precipitous slope of the path, they could not climb up to confront the Wallachians on either of the ravines flanking the pass; nor could they advance, nor did they have any place to flee, as ditches had been dug there; instead, the king’s soldiers were completely trapped, like fish in a net or a trap”. Thus, the battle was not fought on a road, but on a path, ‘a sort of narrow ship’, as Jan Długosz calls it.
What is certain is that on 9 November 1330, the Hungarians arrived at a “shady, wooded place”, in that “narrow, precipitous valley”, where they were attacked by the army of Basarab I, which was divided into four corps: two operating from the top of the cliffs, and two blocking the passage through the gorge.
In the first attack, the felled trees and stones hurled by the Wallachian fighters blocked both the retreat and the advance of the Hungarian forces, probably leading to their fragmentation into separate corps, forced to defend themselves independently, unable to come to each other’s aid. The confusion amongst the Hungarian forces, exacerbated by the losses they had suffered and the panic caused by their inability to advance or retreat, rendered them incapable of mounting a strong counter-attack. The second attack followed the same tactic, but on the northern side of the gorge. Their task was greatly facilitated by the fact that, in this area, the gorge narrowed considerably.
The illustrated chronicle recorded that ‘the countless multitude of Wallachians high up on the cliffs rushed from all sides and hurled arrows at the king’s army, which was at the bottom of a deep valley’. With the northern exit of the gorge blocked by ditches and earthworks, and the southern exit blocked by felled trees, the Hungarian soldiers “could neither advance nor had any space to retreat, nor could they rise up against the Wallachians on the sloping ridges”. The Hungarians were forced to break through the Romanian defences step by step as there were no alternative routes; the narrow passage encouraged the column to spread out, which meant it could be struck at any point without the possibility of a swift reaction. Thus, after nearly three days of struggling in the massive ambush prepared by the Romanian voivode, the haughty army that had invaded Romanian soil suffered ‘a terrible disaster’. ‘Young and old, princes and nobles alike, fell without distinction. For this tragic event lasted a long time, from the sixth day of the week until the second day of the following week, during which time the chosen soldiers clashed with one another as infants are rocked and shaken in a cradle, or like reeds swaying in the wind. A most terrible slaughter took place here, for a multitude of soldiers, princes and nobles fell, and their number cannot be counted.’
From the very first day of the fighting, thousands of knights lost their lives; crushed beneath stones and tree trunks, pierced by thousands of Wallachian arrows, they saw their victory turn into a catastrophic defeat. Among the victims, alongside numerous nobles, were Toma, Voivode of Transylvania, Andrei of Alba, the keeper of the royal seal, and the king’s personal priest. Some of the survivors were taken into slavery; the king himself acknowledged, two years later, that in the wake of the battle ‘there ensued no small amount of slavery, torment and peril for the Hungarian people’. The medieval chronicler wrote that “there was a terrible disaster here, for a great many soldiers, princes and nobles fell, and their number cannot be counted”. Many prisoners were also taken, and ‘the Romanians… laid hands on a great quantity of booty, weapons, expensive garments, gold and silver coins, and many valuable vessels’, which ensured the enrichment of the Wallachian army 17.
According to the notes of King Charles Robert of Anjou, the battle reached its climax when “the Wallachian knights” repeatedly charged the survivors 15. The king himself was in mortal danger. To save himself, “he had changed the insignia on his armour, which Desev, the son of Dionisie, had donned; believing him to be the king himself, the Vlachs cruelly killed him. And the king himself barely escaped with a few men’18”, states the Illustrated Chronicle.
In a Charter dated 13 December 1335, granted to Nicolae Radoslav, the king mentions how, “with God’s help, the fervour of the enemies was quelled and the right flank of the enemy wall was breached, and, advancing on foot through the breach created by the unexpected battle… we seized the opportunity for deliverance and made our way home”. The “right flank” mentioned by the king is a distinct clearing in the Bistrița Gorge, through which the Hungarians escaped and managed to return to the Mehedinți road, retreating – as a number of historians maintain, based on Hungarian chronicles – towards Timișoara, their point of departure.
The observation by the scholar Maciej Kovalevski regarding the existence of a hermitage dedicated to Saint Procopius the Great Martyr, founded before the establishment of Bistrița Monastery, is very important; but a monastic settlement with a church dedicated to a military saint – suggesting an event of the kind to which Saint Procopius belongs – is significant. Generally speaking, monasteries are dedicated to pious saints or to soteriological events in the history of Christianity. Furthermore, the account by the Polish chronicler M. Stryjkowski regarding the monastery founded by Basarab, ‘on that spot where the battle took place’ at Gherghița, does not correspond to the possible site of the battle at Posada.
Furthermore, around the year 1350, the Monastery of the ‘Transfiguration’ was built near the ‘Saint Procopius’ Hermitage under the influence of the Hesychast movement 19. It is known that Nicolae Alexandru Basarab, Prince of Wallachia, was a follower of this movement, which had developed at Paroria, south of the Danube. In the correspondence of Saint Gregory of Sinai, the teacher at Paroria, with the ‘kings of the earth’, Nicolae Alexandru I of Wallachia is also mentioned; he was initially co-ruler with his father, Basarab I, and later ruler in his own right (1352–1364).
We believe that the prince intended to commemorate the events of 1330, which took place in these parts, by founding a monastery that still stands today, known as the ‘Bolniță Church’ of Bistrița Monastery.
Unfortunately, there are no images or other documents concerning the “St Procopius” Hermitage at Bistrița, other than those already mentioned.
- 1
Proloagele, vol. II, with an introductory study by His Eminence Dr Nestor Vornicescu, Metropolitan of Oltenia, edited and expanded by Archimandrite Dr Benedict Ghiuș, Craiova, 1991, pp. 889–890.
- 2
http://www.stefancelmare.ro/Biserici-si-manastiri.
- 3
Archimandrite Veniamin Micle, Bistrița Olteană Monastery, Bucharest, 1996, pp. 14–15.
- 4
“Trajan’s Column” (1872), pp. 51–52; cf. Ștefan Ștefănescu, Bănia in Wallachia, Bucharest, 1965, p. 120, note 1.
- 5
Dimensions: 80.4/18 cm. Originally part of the Museum of Religious Art’s collection, the icon was transferred to the Museum of Art: Inv. No. 115.
- 6
The Battle of Posada. The feudal state of Wallachia, at https://www.istorielocala.ro/index.php/biblioteca-judeteana-antim-ivireanul-valcea/item/409-b%C4%83t%C4%83lia-de-la-posada-statul-feudal-%C5%A3ara-rom%C3%A2neasc%C4%83.html.
- 7
http://wikimapia.org/.
- 8
Constantin C. Giurescu, Dinu C. Giurescu, The History of the Romanians from the Earliest Times to the Present Day, Bucharest, 1971, p. 292.
- 9
István Vásáry, Cumans and Tatars, Cambridge University Press, 2005, p. 150.
- 10
The Battle of Posada, see: secole.ro.
- 11
Tudor Sălăgean, ‘The Year 1330 – The Posada Massacre’, in: www.historia.ro/exclusivweb/general (25 August 2010).
- 12
The Battle of Posada, see: http://enciclopediaromaniei.ro/wiki.
- 13
Ionel-Claudiu Dumitrescu, ‘Medieval History: The Location of the Battle of Posada’, in Argeș County Museum. Argesis, Studies and Papers: History Series, vol. XXI, 2012, www.muzeul-judetean-arges.ro.
- 14
http://www.youthvoice.ro/cultura.
- 15a15b
https://octavianpaul.wordpress.com/2011/12/22/batalia-de-la-posada-9-12-noiembrie-1330.
- 16
http://www.dantanasa.ro/9-noiembrie-1330-the-start-of-the-battle-of-Posada-Basarab’s-victory-against-the-Hungarian-army-led-by-Charles-Robert-of-Anjou-2/.
- 17
Basarab I. The Battle of Posada, see: www.istorielocala.ro, Home, Valcea (27 June 2012).
- 18
Ibid.
- 19
Archimandrite Veniamin Micle, ‘Bolnița Bistriței’. A Hesychast Monastery – 14th century, Holy Monastery of Bistrița, 2012, p. 272.