ABSTRACT
Reigning briefly over a small principality hard-pressed between the Ottomans and the Hungarians, Neagoe Basarab (1481/82–1521) had the foresight to prepare a handbook on Christian statecraft for the benefit of his son and heir-apparent: the Învâṭâturilee lui Neagoe Basarab cǎtre fiul sǎu Theodosie (Instructions of Neagoe Basarab for his son, Theodosie). Neagoe’s Instructions continued a tradition exemplified a century earlier by the Praecepta educationis regiae of Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus (1350–1425; Patrologia Graeca [PG] 156:309–81). “It is a work imitating the Byzantine literature of exhortation, in which the moral, the philosophical and the practical are blended. The precepts are subordinated to the ideas of absolute monarchy, but subjected to the Christian faith” (Niculescu and Dimitrescu 1970: XXXII) for the benefit of the Christian prince. Because of its cultural context, the Instructions has been seen as evidence of the influence of Byzantine Hesychasm beyond monasteries and hermitages, after the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453. While we will return in conclusion to the question of whether Neagoe was a “Hesychast-prince,” his Instructions demonstrates unmistakable familiarity with classical monastic literature. Although these references, allusions, and quotations give it a distinctly Byzantine flavor, the Instructions should also be recognized as a fascinating specimen of early modern European political culture alongside contemporary works like Machiavelli’s The Prince (written in 1513, unpublished until 1532) and Erasmus’s The Education of a Christian Prince (1516).
