Chapter 59

The “Chronicle” of Zacharias of Zographou

By Atanas Angelov and Anton Stoichev

INTRODUCTION

Zacharias’s “Chronicle” as a Historical Document

Despite its famously frustrating incompleteness, the Zacharias “Chronicle,” with the embedded “Tale of Stefan the Wanderer,” is an important source of confirmation of Christian pilgrimage routes in the fifteenth-century Balkans, as well as information about the fate of the body of Vlad III “Tepes” of Wallachia, long believed to have been buried at the monastery on Lake Snagov (in present-day Romania). It also provides us with a rare account of Wallachian neomartyrs (although we cannot know for certain the national origins of the monks from Snagov, with the exception of Stefan, the subject of the “Chronicle”). Only seven other neomartyrs of Wallachian origin are recorded, and none of these is known to have been martyred in Bulgaria.

The untitled “Chronicle,” as it has come to be called, was written in Slavonic in 1479 or 1480 by a monk named Zacharias at the Bulgarian monastery on Mount Athos, Zographou. Zographou, “the monastery of the painter,” originally founded in the tenth century and acquired by the Bulgarian church in the 1220s, is located near the center of the Athonite peninsula. As with the Serbian monastery Hilandar, and the Russian Panteleimon, the population of Zographou was not limited to its sponsoring nationality; this and the lack of any other information about Zacharias make it impossible to determine his origins: he could have been Bulgarian, Serbian, Russian, or perhaps Greek, although the fact that he wrote in Slavonic argues for a Slavic origin. The “Chronicle” tells us only that he was born sometime in the fifteenth century and that his skills were held in esteem by Zographou’s abbot, since the abbot chose him to hear the confession of Stefan the Wanderer in person and record it for an important bureaucratic and perhaps theological purpose.

The travel routes mentioned by Stefan in his tale correspond to several well-known pilgrimage routes. Constantinople was the ultimate destination for Wallachian pilgrims, as it was for all of the eastern Christian world. Wallachia, and particularly the monastery of Snagov, was also a pilgrimage site, and it was not unknown for the route of a pilgrim to touch both Snagov and Athos at its extremes. That the monks passed through Haskovo on their way to the Bachkovo region indicates that they probably took a land route from Constantinople, traveling through Edirne (present-day Turkey) into southeastern Bulgaria; the usual ports on the Black Sea coast would have put them too far north for a stop in Haskovo.

The appearance of traditional pilgrimage destinations in Zacharias’s “Chronicle” raises the question of whether Stefan’s tale is a pilgrimage document. However, the two purported reasons for Stefan’s wanderings-exile from the fallen city of Constantinople after 1453 and the transport of relics and search for a “treasure” in Bulgaria after 1476-make this at least a variation on the classic pilgrim’s chronicle. Furthermore, only Stefan’s departure from Constantinople as a young monk seems to have been motivated primarily by the desire to seek out holy sites abroad.

A second topic on which the “Chronicle” sheds light is the final days of Vlad III of Wallachia (1428?-76), popularly known as Vlad Tepes-the Impaler-or Dracula. Although several historians who were his contemporaries give descriptions of his campaigns against the Ottomans and his struggles to capture and retain the Wallachian throne, none address in detail the matter of his death and burial. Vlad III made generous contributions to the monastery at Snagov, as Stefan’s tale asserts, rebuilding its church. It is likely that he also requested burial there, in keeping with the tradition of founders of and major donors to foundations throughout the Orthodox world.

The “Chronicle” has Stefan asserting that Vlad visited the monastery in 1476, the last year of his life, perhaps a few months before his death. In 1476, Vlad III’s throne was under tremendous pressure from the Ottoman sultan Mehmed II, with whom Vlad had been at war intermittently since around 1460. At the same time, his hold on the Wallachian throne was threatened by a contingent of his boyars that was prepared to side with Mehmed should he stage a new invasion of Wallachia.

If Zacharias’s “Chronicle” is accurate, Vlad III paid a visit to Snagov that is otherwise unrecorded and must have been extremely dangerous to him personally. The “Chronicle” reports Vlad’s bringing treasure to the monastery; that he did so at great personal risk indicates the importance to him of his tie with Snagov. He must have been well aware of the constant threats to his life, both from the Ottomans and from his primary Wallachian rival during that period, Basarab Laiota, who held the Wallachian throne briefly after Vlad’s death. Since little political gain could come from his visiting Snagov, it seems reasonable to speculate that Snagov was important to Vlad III for spiritual or personal reasons, perhaps because he planned to make it his last resting place. In any case, Zacharias’s “Chronicle” confirms that he gave Snagov particular attention near the end of his life.

The circumstances of Vlad III’s death are very unclear, and have been further clouded by conflicting folk legends and shoddy scholarship. In late December 1476 or early January 1477, he was ambushed, probably by part of the Turkish army in Wallachia, and killed in the skirmish that followed. Some traditions have held that he was actually killed by his own men, who mistook him for a Turkish officer when he climbed a hill to get a better view of an ongoing battle. A variant of this legend asserts that some of his men had been looking for a chance to assassinate him, in punishment for his infamous cruelty. Most sources that discuss his death agree that Vlad’s corpse was decapitated and his head taken to Sultan Mehmed in Constantinople as proof that a great enemy had fallen.

In either case, according to Stefan’s tale, some of Vlad III’s men must still have been loyal to him, since they risked bringing his corpse to Snagov. The headless corpse was long believed to have been buried in the Snagov church, in front of the altar.

If the tale of Stefan the Wanderer is to be trusted, Vlad III’s corpse was secretly transported from Snagov to Constantinople, and from there to a monastery called Sveti Georgi, in Bulgaria. The purpose of this deportation, and what the “treasure” was that the monks were seeking first in Constantinople and then in Bulgaria, is unclear. Stefan’s tale asserts that the treasure would “hasten the salvation of the soul of this prince,” which indicates that the abbot must have thought this theologically necessary. Possibly they sought some holy Constantinopolitan relic spared by both the Latin and Ottoman conquests. He might also not have wanted to take on the responsibility for destroying the corpse at Snagov, or mutilating it in accordance with beliefs about vampire prevention, or to take the risk that this might be carried out by local villagers. This would have been a natural reluctance, given Vlad’s status and the fact that members of the Orthodox clergy were discouraged from participating in corpse mutilation.

Unfortunately, no likely burial site for Vlad III’s remains has ever been found in Bulgaria, and even the location of the foundation called Sveti Georgi, like that of the Bulgarian monastery Paroria, is unknown; it was probably abandoned or destroyed during the Ottoman era, and the “Chronicle” is the only document that sheds light on even a general location. The “Chronicle” claims that they traveled only a short distance-“not much farther”-from the monastery at Bachkovo, located about thirty-five kilometers south of Asenovgrad on the Chepelarska River. Clearly, Sveti Georgi was situated somewhere in south central Bulgaria. This area, which includes much of the Rhodope Mountains, was among the last Bulgarian regions to be conquered by the Ottomans; some particularly rugged terrain in the area was never brought under full Ottoman domination. If Sveti Georgi was located in the mountains, this might have accounted in part for its selection as a relatively safe resting place for the remains of Vlad III.