There can be something wonderful about
the stuff one finds on the internet. Just over six hundred years ago the Order
of the Dragon was founded. It has been the source of umpteen stories, novels
and screenplays for six centuries.
The Order of the Dragon (Latin: Societas
Draconistrarum, lit. "Society of the Dragonists") was a monarchical
chivalric order for selected nobility, founded in 1408 by Sigismund,
King of
Hungary (r. 1387-1437) and later Holy Roman Emperor (r.
1433-1437). It was fashioned after the military orders of the Crusades, requiring its
initiates to defend the cross
and fight the enemies of Christianity,
in particular the Ottoman Turks. |
| Sigismund |
On the 12th
December 1408, following the Battle of Dobor against the Christian
heretics called Bogomils
in which he slaughtered two hundred Bosnian noblemen, many of whom had fought
the Turks; Sigismund and his queen, Barbara of Celje, founded
the league known today as the Order of the Dragon. Its statutes, written in Latin, call it a society (societas)
whose members carry the signum draconis (see below), but assign no name
to it. Contemporary records, however, refer to it by a variety of similar if
unofficial names, such as Gesellschaft mit dem Trakchen, Divisa seu
Societate Draconica, Societate Draconica seu Draconistrarum and Fraternitas
Draconum. It was to some extent modelled after the earlier Hungarian
monarchical order, the Order of St.
George (Societas militae Sancti Georgii), founded by King Carol Robert
of Anjou in 1318. It likewise adopted St. George as its patron saint, whose legendary
defeat of a dragon was used as a symbol for the military and
religious ethos of the order.
 |
| Vlad Dracul |
One of the members of the
Order of the Dragon was Vlad II (c. 1393 – December 1447), known as Vlad
Dracul (English: Vlad the Dragon). He was a voivode (English: duke) of
Wallachia. He reigned from
1436 to 1442, and again from 1443 to 1447. He was the father of Mircea II, Vlad
Călugărul (English: Vlad the Monk), Vlad III
Dracula, who became posthumously known by the epithet Ţepeş
(English: the Impaler), and Radu III the Beautiful.
Vlad II received the surname Dracul
in 1431, after being inducted into the Order of the Dragon,
founded in 1408 by the King Sigismund of
Hungary (the later Holy Roman Emperor), as
part of a design to gain political favor from the Catholic Church and to aid in
protecting Wallachia against the Ottoman Empire.
Vlad II Dracul was a member of the House of
Drăculeşti lineage, and son of Mircea cel
Bătrân, and was known to have murdered members of the rival princely
House of
Dăneşti, a not-so-distant relation to his own father's House of Basarab, and
gained power in Wallachia, upon returning from exile in Transylvania in 1436
The line of the Drăculeşti began with Vlad II Dracul, one of the
sons of one of the most important rulers of the Basarab dynasty, Mircea cel
Bătrân. The name Drăculeşti is derived from the membership of Vlad II Dracul, "the
Dragon," in the Order of the
Dragon (founded 1408). One of the sons of Vlad II was Vlad III
Drăculea, known also simply as "Dracula", i.e. "[son]
of Dracul".
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