Re: Vlad Tepes (was: Re: Religion and society)

[Brent Kellmer <kellmer@u.washington.edu>]

Unto the denizens of the Merry Rose and especially Richard du Guesclin, 
fair greetings from Rodrigo Ramirez de Valencia!

Istvan is right about "drakul" referring to the Order of the Dragon.  It 
was a very small group of men devoted to defending Hungary and Eastern 
Europe against the onslaught of the Ottoman Turks.  If I remember right, 
there were only a very few members, and so it should be not at all 
surprising that Vlad Tepes was known as drakula, or "son of the Dragon."

I'm even less fluent in Magyar than Tibor (at least he has six words...), 
but I'm inclined to view the connection of "drakul" to devil as purely 
a folk etymology, possibly based on the connection in Christianity 
between the mythical dragon and the Devil (tm), but more likely based on 
the reputation of Vlad Tepes among later generations.  My training on the 
matter is, like Tibor, based on translated works and is just as 
non-definitive, but that's the indication that I've gotten.

BTW, the reputation of Vlad Tepes, like King John of England, is largely 
based on later opinion, rather than the attitudes of the time.  While he 
certainly did have a fondness for stakes and was, shall we say, a little 
wanton in his use of punishment, he was not without some justification 
(at least in his own eyes).  He was a great "hero" of the defence against 
the Turks and his massacre of the boyars was justifiable (in his view) 
because they were traitors -- to him as their lord, and therefore to the 
kingdom and more importantly, to the faith.  It wouldn't be totally 
unreasonable to compare his suppression of the boyars to the suppression 
of the Jacques during their rebellion in France in the mid-14th century 
or the German peasants in their rebellion in the early 16th.  His methods 
were merely more mass productive -- sort of a Henry Ford does the 
Inquisition.

--Rodrigo