MASTER (MESTERUL)
MANOLE
- an article by Alastair McBeath
(U.K., vice-president of the International Meteor Organization)
and Andrei Dorian Gheorghe
first published in
(U.K.) FLS NEWS
(The newsletter of the Folklore Society),
No. 42, February 2004 -
(Andrei Dorian Gheorghe’s Note:
"Master Manole" is a Romanian fundamental myth-ballad,
which signifies sacrifice for creation.
Thus, the hero was forced to sacrifice his wife Ana in order to finish
the most beautiful Romanian Christian Orthodox monastery.)
We have a few additional notes to add to Jacqueline Simpson’s
fascinating item on the Romanian legend of Manole the Master-Builder,
and the tale relating to the construction of his final masterpiece,
the Arges Monastery in Wallachia (FLS NEWS 41, 2003, 16).
In Vasile Alecsandri’s retelling of the tale, Manole’s doomed attempt
to escape by flying from the Monastery's roof, which resulted in his death,
created a spring of salt-water at the spot where he crashed:
A spring
Of trickling water,
Of salting water,
Wetted by tears.
(here from Alexandri’s book “Popular Poems of the Romanians”,
Bucharest, 1866; translated by us from the Romanian).
This might imply the original water-source concept was of a
(salty/bitter) mineral spring, its creation typical of the many other
legendary death-or impact-generated springs elsewhere.
While the surviving Arges Monastery was built c.1513-17 for King
Neagoe Basarab (ruled c.1512-21; his Romanian title voievod and
domnitor
is more accurately translated as “king” than “prince” or “ruler” in English,
though the equivalence is not exact), Alecsandri’s ballad sets an
unnamed “Black King” as the Monastery’s patron.
Other Romanian beliefs refer to an earlier cathedral built on the
Monastery’s site in the late 14th century by Radu I (c.1377-83).
Radu was nicknamed Negru-voda, the Black Voievod,
so it may be he who became associated with the Manole story.
Radu the Black was father to Mircea the Old (c.1386-1418), whose son was
Vlad the Dragon or Devil (Vlad Dracul, c.1431-46), in turn father of the
Germanically-infamous Vlad Tepes, Vlad the Impaler, “Son of the Dragon”
(Draculea, c.1456-62), all sometime kings of Wallachia.
A further alternative Black King is the legendary founder of Wallachia,
who was said to have come from over the Carpathians from Transylvania
to drive off the Tartar invaders towards the end of the 13th century, and who
preceded the first named early 14th century Wallachian king, Basarab I.
Quite why these kings became “black” is unknown.
The Black Death swept across Europe from 1346 into the 1350s,
laying waste to the countryside, which might suggest
similarly destructive activities by the kings so nicknamed.
It is slightly odd that Edward the Black Prince (1330-1376), eldest son of the
English Edward III, dates to a similar period to Radu I at least, although
Edward’s epithet seems to be first recorded to only in the 16th century
(according to the 1970 revision of Brewer’s “Dictionary of Phrase and Fable”).
Thus, the origin of his title is unclear too.
The Arges Monastery is rightly acclaimed as Wallachia’s most beautiful.
However, another superbly impressive monastery at Dealu, near Targoviste,
is popularly believed to be an earlier example of the craftsmanship
of Manole and his team.
This follows from the spirit of the ballad, and Manole’s fateful boast
to the Black King on completing the Arges Monastery.
We can at anytime build
Another commemorative monastery
Much more beautiful
And much more luminous.
(from Alecsandri’s poem, our translation).
One last thought.
The modern constellation Cassiopeia was known among the Romanians
as The Monastery, or God’s Seat (in Ion Ottescu’s
"Romanian Peasants’ Beliefs in Stars and Sky", 1907).
There does not appear to be a connection with the Manole legend
in any Romanian astronomical beliefs we have traced so far, regrettably.