The Memory Remains: Radu the Great and the Charters of Govora Monastery

Abstract

In this paper we analyse the charters of Govora Monastery, not only from the perspective of their contents, but also with an accent on the chancellery form of the documents. At the end of the 15th and during the 16th centuries the monasteries were not only a network of religious and economic centres, but also hubs of political power. Govora Monastery makes no exception and, after a flourishing period during the reins of Vlad the Monk and especially Radu the Great, it remained emblematic, for their descendants, as a foundation of the Drăculesti dynasty. These charters demonstrate that Govora’s prestige of princely foundation is used as a field of legitimacy discourse by the princes who ruled Wallachia in the 16th century (Neagoe Basarab, Radu from Afumati, Mircea the Shepherd, to mention just a few of them), keeping alive the memory of Radu the Great, and are also interesting because they preserve, like in a time capsule, fragments of the political struggles from the beginning of the 16th century, thus becoming true treasures of the social memory. The novelty of this type of research, even if it takes a lot of patience to do and is often challenging, is that the information discovered or infered from charters confirm, invalidate or explain historical events about which we have scarce knowledge from other sources. We are sure that the future studying of the chancellary documents will continue to unveil fscinating historical facts.