A little background: I was moving my books last week into my new parish, Church of the Incarnation, Quakertown, PA, when I found on top of one box a bio of Vlad the Impaler by a Boston College professor and a Romanian aristocrat, a descendent of Vlad's. I pulled it out and started reading it again (thinking that a book entitled "Dracula" shouldn't probably sit over at the church). At the beginning of this week, I thought I might preach this sermon and then later in the week, I realized that there was a new Dracula movie coming out, so then I knew I needed to preach this sermon. As I read this bio this week, I thought, wow, wouldn't it be great if somebody did a movie about Vlad's life! not know that a movie was coming out.
I first became interested in St. Stephen of Moldavia when I picked up an interesting icon of him at a Romanian Orthodox monastery in Detroit some years ago. I have been a big fan of him ever since.
PAG+
“I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you
that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called.”
Today’s sermon will be
a comparing and contrasting of two princes, two men of the 15th century.
While not renaissance men per se, they were not without renaissance qualities,
qualities of leadership such that Machiavelli and Cesare Borgia might respect
them. Both were baptized in the True Faith and both sinned. Both were patriots
and freedom fighters. They both spoke the same language and they were even
related by blood. Indeed, they were cousins. They helped each other out,
actually getting each other out of tight spots on occasion. Both of their
fathers were assassinated. In this they were like brothers. Yet one was
declared a saint in 1992 and the other became in common folklore and popular
culture, even to this day, perhaps the most recognized personification of evil.
The saint is Stephen the Great of Moldavia. The sinner is Vlad Tepesh of Wallachia,
a.k.a Vlad the Impaler, a.k.a. Dracula.
These two princeps,
princes, of Romania were patriots loyal to their homeland, defending their
country against political pressures and invasions: from the south, Greeks and
Bulgarians, sometimes allied and subjugated by the Turks; to the north, the
Polish kingdom – stronghold of Roman Catholicism; to the east, the Ottoman
Empire, lusting for blood after their victory over and conquest of
Constantinople; and to the west, the Hungarian empire: defenders of Roman
Catholicism and strongly connected with other German princedoms. The land of
Romania, an ancient land of Roman settlers and gypsies, had its own identity.
They were unlike the lands of the German tribes and the Magyars, the Huns, the
Slovaks, the Poles or the Bulgarians. When those tribes along the Steppes of
Russia had overrun the Roman empire, this Roman colony of Romania, stayed safe
in the Carpathian mountains. These lovely peaks and forests were their refuge,
invasion after invasion.
The Romanian people, like the Greeks and Russians, were and
are loyal to the Eastern Orthodox Faith. But many German Saxons settled there,
loyal to German Roman Catholicism. The Orthodox Church needed help from the
West against the Muslims and so had bandaged up their relationship with the
Pope of Rome, at least the politicians had and the politicking bishops had –
politicians and politicking bishops we shall always have with us, it seems. But
the local people and the monks, they were suspicious of this peace between Rome
and Constantinople. They knew that it was the concoction of politicians, to try
to save their precious Eastern Christendom from the Turks, but the cockeyed concoction
of politicians nonetheless. So for these two princes, the ecclesiastical-political
scene was complex as well.
Again, these two had a lot in common. Both had illegitimate
children. Both killed in battle. Both impaled people. Both fought Hungary and
each other. Both switched sides and allies. Both built churches and
monasteries. Both fought for the Church. Interestingly enough, because of the
advice of his spiritual father, St. Daniel the Hermit of Voronet, St. Stephen
built a monastery every time he won a victory. He seemed to believe that those
killed in the battles would need monks to pray for their souls. He built such
churches 44 times! And he seems to have only lost two battles! Maybe the Joint
Chiefs should send President Obama a memo! Nevertheless, there were
differences. Let us look at them.
Vlad, like his father, was Roman Catholic and was inducted
into the Order of the Dragon, a semi-secret fraternal society, something like
the Knights Hospitaler or the Teutonic Order of Knights or the now illegal and
very controversial Knights Temple. In fact, Dracula means “little Dragon”
because his father was “Dracul,” the big dragon. It was a military and
religious order which seemed dedicated to fighting against John Hus’ disciples,
who were leading the first Protestant war against the Hungarian kingdom, and
against the Turks. Vlad later became Romanian Orthodox when he was called to
rule Wallachia. He then switched back to Roman Catholicism, because it was
advantageous to his protector and captor, the king of Hungary, into whose
family Vlad eventually married.
Stephen, on the other hand, remained loyal to the Orthodox
Faith his whole life, but defended all of Christendom. He seemed to understand,
on a certain level, that “There is one body, and one spirit, even as ye are
called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God
and Father of all.” When Pope Sixtus IV called for yet another crusade, St.
Stephen was to follow the lead of the Bishop of Rome. declaring “We are ready
to resume the struggle for the defense of Christendom with all the power and
heart which Almighty God [has] chosen to invest in us.” And then, at that time,
Stephen requested that his cousin, Vlad, who had been a political prisoner of
Hungary, be allowed to return to Wallachia to lead up the crusade from there,
especially against Vlad’s owner brother, Radu the Handsome, who was moving to
rule Wallachia as the Sultan’s puppet ruler.
At the end of his life, Vlad, who had often changed his
loyalty in favor of the Roman Church, was to be denounced as a sick and
tyrannical prince by that very Church, despite his heroic and almost miraculous
defeat of the Sultan. While, on the other hand, St. Stephen, remaining loyal to
the Orthodox Faith his whole life, was to be named by the Pope, an “Athlete of
Christ” and “Defender of the Faith.” The only one, besides an Albanian freedom
fighter, to be so named in the fifteenth century – irony indeed.
Unfortunately, shortly after his bittersweet return to
power as the point man of a counter-offensive against Radu the Handsome, like
some sick, tragic, celebrity death, Vlad the Impaler, a national hero, was
found by some monks decapitated in a swamp near the island monastery where he
was probably buried. Even Vlad’s burial site is a matter for speculation, to
the glee of Vampire enthusiasts. The differences continue: Vlad the Impaler
only ruled six years between exiles. He was, indeed, a tragic individual. A
political prisoner as a child of the Sultan, against whom he later won some
stunning victories, he watched his younger brother, Radu the Handsome, undergo
molestation and abuse. He became estranged from his brother, who eventually
became a competitor for the princedom of Wallachia.
Stephen, on the other hand, was one of the longest ruling
in Romanian history, and that was no easy task. Romanian princes ruled, in many
respects, at the pleasure of the landed gentry, the local nobles, known as
boyars. This is often why Vlad failed in ruling, because he lost the confidence
or was too harsh with his boyars. Stephen too, was occasionally harsh with his
nobles, but remained in power, popularly. Both were freedom fighters of a holy
land against an unholy invader, like the mighty Maccabees of old in Israel.
Yet
one can say more truly of St. Stephen, like the valiant Simon Maccabee: “As for
the land of Judea, that was quiet all the days of Simon; for he sought the good
of his nation in such wise, as that evermore his authority and honour pleased
them. . . . Then did they till their ground in peace, and the earth gave her
increase, and the trees of the field their fruit. The ancient men sat all in
the streets, communing together of good things, and the young men put on
glorious and warlike apparel. He provided victuals for the cities, and set in
them all manner of munition, so that his honourable name was renowned unto the
end of the world. He made peace in the land, and Israel rejoiced with great
joy: for every man sat under his vine and his fig tree, and there was none to
fray them: neither was there any left in the land to fight against them: yea,
the kings themselves were overthrown in those days. Moreover he strengthened
all those of his people that were brought low: the law he searched out; and
every contemner of the law and wicked person he took away. He beautified the
sanctuary and multiplied the vessels of the temple” (1 Maccabees 13). If St.
Stephen did not accomplish all these things, to be like the Maccabees was his
goal instead of Machiavelli’s idea of the Prince. Interestingly enough, St.
Stephen is said to have abdicated, allowing his son to rule in his stead. He
appears to have taken on monastic vows after all was said and done.
Now
for a moment of theology: We are not talking about St. Stephen having done
more, and, therefore, being saved while Vlad went to hell. We don’t know that.
Both were sinners. Both were sanctified in the life of the Church. For all we
know, both Vlad and Stephen are saved and at rest. A unique form of Romanian
mass intentions offers the Eucharist, praying, “For the commemoration and
forgiveness of sins of all them that since the world began have fallen asleep
in the True Faith, the blessed founders of this holy House, rightly believing
Kings, Patriarchs, Pontiffs and Priests”. For something like 44 houses of
prayer, St. Stephen is commemorated as both a rightly-believing King and as the
founder of that holy house of prayer. For Vlad too, especially at the places he
built, improved or endowed, the sacred blood of Christ is pleaded to wash and
cover his sins and iniquities, especially his blood-guiltiness.
To
be named a saint is to be made an example of by Holy Mother Church. Vlad might
have been an example of patriotism and statecraft. But he was not an example of
what we see in our Epistle lesson today. While remaining much of his life a
prisoner, he was not a prisoner of the Lord. He did not walk worthy of the
vocation wherewith he was called, with all lowliness and meekness, with
long-suffering, forbearing others in love. We should not be unkind to Vlad; it
is hard to be a good politician, and even harder to be a Christian one. But we
should glorify God for the wonderful grace and virtue declared in all of God’s
saints who have been the choice vessels of his grace and the lights of the
world in their several generations, and especially for the holy and
rightly-believing prince St. Stephen the Great of Moldavia; and we should pray
for the soul of Vlad of Wallachia, that, despite all the popular folklore to
the contrary, he might be gathered with his fathers and rest in peace.
Let us pray.
O God, by whose royal
favor St. Stephen of Moldavia was permitted to reign over a portion of thy
earthly kingdom, grant to all Christian rulers and magistrates singleness of
heart, that they may punish wickedness and vice, and to us, thy servants, grace
to rule our hearts according to thy commandments; that the kingdom of heaven
may be made a manifest reality on earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
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