title: Stephen the Great

text: Stephen eventually defeated a large Ottoman army in the Battle of Vaslui in 1475. He was referred to as "Athleta Christi" ("Champion of Christ") by Pope Sixtus IV, even though Moldavia's hopes for military support went unfulfilled. The following year, Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II routed Stephen in the Battle of Valea Albă, but the lack of provisions and the outbreak of a plague forced him to withdraw from Moldavia. Taking advantage of a truce with Matthias Corvinus, the Ottomans captured Chilia, their Crimean Tatar allies Cetatea Albă (now Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi in Ukraine) in 1484. Although Corvinus granted two Transylvanian estates to Stephen, the Moldavian prince paid homage to Casimir, who promised to support him to regain Chilia and Cetatea Albă. Stephen's efforts to capture the two ports ended in failure. From 1486, he again paid a yearly tribute to the Ottomans. During the following years, dozens of stone churches and monasteries were built in Moldavia, which contributed to the development of a specific Moldavian architecture.


title: Stephen the Great

text: Casimir IV's successor, John I Albert, wanted to grant Moldavia to his younger brother, Sigismund, but Stephen's diplomacy prevented him from invading Moldavia for years. John Albert attacked Moldavia in 1497, but Stephen and his Hungarian and Ottoman allies routed the Polish army in the Battle of the Cosmin Forest. Stephen again tried to recapture Chilia and Cetatea Albă, but had to acknowledge the loss of the two ports to the Ottomans in 1503. During his last years, his son and co-ruler Bogdan III played an active role in government. Stephen's long rule represented a period of stability in the history of Moldavia. From the 16th century onwards both his subjects and foreigners remembered him as a great ruler. Modern Romanians regard him as one of their greatest national heroes, although he also endures as a cult figure in Moldovenism. After the Romanian Orthodox Church canonized him in 1992, he is venerated as "Stephen the Great and Holy" ("Ștefan cel Mare și Sfânt").


title: Stephen the Great

text: Stephen was the son of Bogdan, who was a son of Alexander the Good, Prince of Moldavia. Stephen's mother, Maria Oltea, was most probably related to the princes of Wallachia, according to historian Radu Florescu. The date of Stephen's birth is unknown, though historians estimate that he was born between 1433 and 1440. One church diptych records that he had five siblings: brothers Ioachim, Ioan, Christea; and sisters Sorea and Maria. Some of Stephen's biographers hypothesize that Cârstea Arbore, father of the statesman Luca Arbore, was the prince's fourth brother, or that Cârstea was the same as Ioachim. These links with the high-ranking Moldavian boyars are known to have been preserved through matrimonial connections: Maria, who died in 1485, was the wife of Șendrea, gatekeeper of Suceava; Stephen's other brother-in-law, Isaia, also held high office at his court.


title: Stephen the Great

text: The death of Alexander the Good in 1432 gave rise to a succession crisis that lasted more than two decades. Stephen's father seized the throne in 1449 after defeating one of his relatives with the support of John Hunyadi, Regent-Governor of Hungary. Stephen was styled "voivode" in his father's charters, showing that he had been made his father's heir and co-ruler. Bogdan acknowledged the suzerainty of Hunyadi in 1450. Stephen fled to Hungary after Peter III Aaron (who was also Alexander the Good's son) murdered Bogdan in October 1451.


title: Stephen the Great

text: Vlad Țepeș (who had lived in Moldavia during Bogdan II's reign) invaded Wallachia and seized the throne with the support of Hunyadi in 1456. Stephen either accompanied Vlad to Wallachia during the military campaign or joined him after Vlad became the ruler of Wallachia. According to reports from the 1480s, Stephen spent part of that interval in Brăila, where he fathered an illegitimate son, Mircea. With the assistance of Vlad, Stephen stormed into Moldavia at the head of an army 6,000 strong in the spring of 1457. According to Moldavian chronicles, "men from the Lower Country" (the southern region of Moldavia) joined him. The 17th-century Grigore Ureche wrote: "Stephen routed Peter Aaron at Doljești on 12 April, but Peter Aaron left Moldavia for Poland only after Stephen inflicted a second defeat on him at Orbic."


title: Stephen the Great

text: One widely accepted theory, based on Ureche, states that an assembly of boyars and Orthodox clergymen acclaimed Stephen the ruler of Moldavia at Direptate, a meadow near Suceava. According to scholar Constantin Rezachievici, this elective custom has no precedent before the 17th century, and appears superfluous in Stephen's case; he argues that it was a legend fabricated by Ureche. While this election remains uncertain, various historians agree that Teoctist I, Metropolitan of Moldavia, anointed Stephen prince. To emphasize the sacred nature of his rule, Stephen styled himself "By the Grace of God, ... Stephen voivode, lord (or "hospodar") of the Moldavian lands" on 13 September 1457. His use of Christian devices for legitimization overlapped with a troubled context for Moldavian Orthodoxy: the attempted Catholic–Orthodox union had divided the Byzantine Rite churches into supporters and dissidents; likewise, the Fall of Constantinople had encouraged local bishops to consider themselves independent of the Patriarchy. There is a long-standing dispute about whether Teoctist was a dissenter, belonging to one of the several emancipated Orthodox jurisdictions, or a loyalist of Patriarch Isidore. Historian Dan Ioan Mureșan argues that the evidence is for the latter option, because Moldavia appears on the list of Patriarchate jurisdictions, and because Stephen, though he tested the Patriarch by sometimes using imperial titles such as "tsar" by 1473, was never threatened with excommunication.


title: Stephen the Great

text: As one of his earliest actions as prince, Stephen attacked Poland to prevent Casimir IV from supporting Peter Aaron in 1458. This first military campaign "established his credentials as a military commander of stature", according to historian Jonathan Eagles. However, he wanted to avoid prolonged conflict with Poland, because the recapture of Chilia was his principal aim. Chilia was an important port on the Danube that Peter III of Moldavia had surrendered to Hungary in 1448. He signed a treaty with Poland on the river Dniester on 4 April 1459. He acknowledged the suzerainty of Casimir IV and promised to support Poland against Tatar marauders. Casimir in turn pledged to protect Stephen against his enemies and to forbid Peter Aaron from returning to Moldavia. Peter Aaron subsequently left Poland for Hungary and settled in Székely Land, Transylvania.


title: Stephen the Great

text: Stephen invaded Székely Land multiple times in 1461. Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary, decided to support Peter Aaron, giving him shelter in his capital at Buda. In 1462, Stephen underscored his wish for good relations with the Ottoman Empire, expelling from Moldavia the Franciscans, who were agitating for a united church and a crusade. Stephen continued to pay the yearly tribute to the Ottoman Empire initiated by his predecessor. He also made a new agreement with Poland in Suceava on 2 March 1462, promising to personally swear fealty to Casimir IV if the king required it. This treaty declared that Casimir was the sole suzerain of Moldavia, prohibiting Stephen from alienating Moldavian territories without his authorization. It also obliged Stephen to recapture the Moldavian territories that had been lost, obviously in reference to Chilia.


title: Stephen the Great

text: Written sources evidence that the relationship between Stephen and Vlad Țepeș became tense in early 1462. On 2 April 1462, the Genoese governor of Caffa (now Feodosia in Crimea) informed Casimir IV of Poland that Stephen had attacked Wallachia while Vlad Țepeș was waging war against the Ottomans. The Ottoman Sultan, Mehmed II, later invaded Wallachia in June 1462. Mehmed's secretary, Tursun Beg, recorded that Vlad Țepeș had to station 7,000 soldiers near the Wallachian-Moldavian frontier during the sultan's invasion to "protect his country against his Moldavian enemies". Both Tursun and Laonikos Chalkokondyles note that Stephen's troops were loyal to Mehmed, and directly involved in the invasion. Taking advantage of the presence of the Ottoman fleet at the Danube Delta, Stephen also laid siege to Chilia in late June. According to Domenico Balbi, the Venetian envoy in Istanbul, Stephen and the Ottomans besieged the fortress for eight days, but they could not capture it, because the "Hungarian garrison and Țepeș's 7,000 men" defeated them, killing "many Turks". Stephen was seriously wounded during the siege, suffering an injury on his left calf, or his left foot, that would never heal his entire life.


title: Stephen the Great

text: Stephen again laid siege to Chilia on 24 January 1465. The Moldavian army bombarded the fortress for two days, forcing the garrison to surrender on 25 or 26 January. The sultan's vassal, Radu the Handsome, Voivode of Wallachia, had also laid claim to Chilia, thus the capture of the port gave rise to conflicts not only with Hungary, but also with Wallachia and the Ottoman Empire. In 1465 or earlier, Stephen peacefully regained the fortress of Hotin (now Khotyn in Ukraine) on the Dniester from the Poles. To commemorate the capture of Chilia, Stephen ordered the construction of the Church of the Assumption of the Mother of God in a glade on the Putna River in 1466. It became the central monument of Putna Monastery, extended by Stephen in 1467, when he donated the village of Vicov, and finally consecrated in September 1470.


title: Stephen the Great

text: At Matthias Corvinus' instance, the Diet of Hungary abolished all previous exemptions relating to the tax known as the "chamber's profit". The leaders of the Three Nations of Transylvania who regarded the reform as an infringement of their privileges declared on 18 August 1467 that they were ready to fight to defend their liberties. Stephen promised support to them, but they yielded to Corvinus without resistance after the king marched to Transylvania. Corvinus invaded Moldavia and captured Baia, Bacău, Roman and Târgu Neamț. Stephen assembled his army and launched a crushing defeat on the invaders in the Battle of Baia on 15 December. This episode was presented in contemporary Hungarian chronicles as a defeat of Stephen's armies. However, Corvinus, who received wounds in the battle, could only escape from the battlefield with the help of Moldavian boyars who had joined him. A group of boyars rose up against Stephen in the Lower Country, but he had 20 boyars and 40 other landowners captured and executed before the end of the year.


title: Stephen the Great

text: Stephen again swore loyalty to Casimir IV in the presence of the Polish envoy in Suceava on 28 July 1468. He conducted raids against Transylvania between 1468 and 1471. When Casimir came to Lviv in February 1469 to personally receive his homage, Stephen did not go to meet him. In the same year or in early 1470, Tatars invaded Moldavia, but Stephen routed them in the Battle of Lipnic near the Dniester. To strengthen the defence system along the river, Stephen decided to erect new fortresses at Old Orhei and Soroca around the same time. A Wallachian army laid siege to Chilia, but it could not force the Moldavian garrison to surrender.


title: Stephen the Great

text: Matthias Corvinus sent peace proposals to Stephen. His envoys sought Casimir IV's advice on Corvinus' proposals at the Sejm (or general assembly) of Poland at Piotrków Trybunalski in late 1469. Stephen invaded Wallachia and destroyed Brăila and Târgul de Floci (the two most important Wallachian centres of commerce on the Danube) in February 1470. Peter Aaron hired Székely troops and broke into Moldavia in December 1470, but his attack was probably anticipated by Stephen. The voivode defeated his rival near Târgu Neamț. Peter Aaron fell captive in the battlefield. He and his Moldavian supporters, among them Stephen's "vornic" and brother-in-law, Isaia, and the chancellor Alexa, were executed on the orders of Stephen. Radu the Fair also invaded Moldavia, but Stephen defeated him at Soci on 7 March 1471. Reportedly, he killed all but two of the Wallachian noblemen he captured in battle.


title: Stephen the Great

text: The relationship between Casimir IV and Matthias Corvinus became tense in early 1471. After Stephen failed to support Poland, Casimir IV dispatched an embassy to Moldavia, insisting that Stephen should comply with his obligations. Stephen met the Polish envoys in Vaslui on 13 July, reminding them of the hostile acts Polish noblemen committed along the border and demanded the extradition of the Moldavian boyars who had fled to Poland. In parallel, he sent his own envoys to Hungary to start negotiations with Corvinus. He granted commercial privileges to Saxon merchants from the Transylvanian town of Corona (now Brașov) on 3 January 1472.


title: Stephen the Great

text: The Ottomans put pressure on Stephen to abandon Chilia and Cetatea Albă (now Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi in Ukraine) in the early 1470s. Instead of obeying their demands, Stephen declined to send the yearly tribute to the Sublime Porte in 1473. From 1472, he had friendly contacts with Uzun Hasan, sultan of Aq Qoyunlu, plotting an anti-Ottoman coordination. Taking advantage of Mehmed's war against Uzun in Anatolia, Stephen invaded Wallachia to replace Radu the Fair, an Ottoman-installed Muslim convert and vassal, with his protégé, Basarab III Laiotă. He routed the Wallachian army at Râmnicu Sărat in a battle that lasted for three days from 18 to 20 November 1473. Four days later, the Moldavian army captured Bucharest and Stephen placed Basarab on the throne. However, Radu regained Wallachia with Ottoman support before the end of the year. Basarab again expelled Radu from Wallachia in 1475, but the Ottomans once more assisted him to return. The Wallachians took revenge by plundering some parts of Moldavia. To restore Basarab, Stephen launched a new campaign to Wallachia in October, forcing Radu to flee from the principality.


title: Stephen the Great

text: Mehmed II ordered Hadım Suleiman Pasha, Beylerbey (or governor) of Rumelia, to invade Moldavia – an Ottoman army of about 120,000 strong broke into Moldavia in late 1475. Wallachian troops also joined the Ottomans, while Stephen received support from Poland and Hungary. Outnumbered three to one by the invaders, Stephen was forced to retreat. He joined battle with Hadım Suleiman Pasha at Podul Înalt (or the High Bridge) near Vaslui on 10 January 1475. Before the battle, he had sent his buglers to hide behind the enemy fronts. When they suddenly sounded their horns, they caused such a panic among the invaders that they fled from the battlefield. Over the next three days, hundreds of Ottoman soldiers were massacred and the survivors retreated from Moldavia.


title: Stephen the Great

text: Stephen's victory in the Battle of Vaslui was "arguably one of the biggest European victories over the Ottomans", according to historian Alexander Mikaberidze. Mara Branković, Mehmed II's stepmother, stated the Ottomans "had never suffered a greater defeat". Stephen sent letters to the European rulers to seek their support against the Ottomans, reminding them that Moldavia was "the Gateway of Christianity" and "the bastion of Hungary and Poland and the guardian of these kingdoms". Pope Sixtus IV praised him as "Verus christiane fidei athleta" ("The true defender of the Christian faith"). However, neither the Pope, nor any other European power, sent material support to Moldavia. Stephen was also approaching Mehmed with peace offers. According to disputed reports by the chronicler Jan Długosz, he was also playing down the invasion as the deed of "some fugitives and brigands" whom the Sultan would want to punish.


title: Stephen the Great

text: Meanwhile, Stephen's brother-in-law, Alexander, seized the Principality of Theodoro in the Crimea at the head of a Moldavian army. Stephen also decided to expel his former protégé, Basarab Laiotă, from Wallachia, because Basarab had supported the Ottomans during their invasion of Moldavia. He made an alliance with Matthias Corvinus in July, persuading him to release Basarab's rival, Vlad Țepeș, who had been imprisoned in Hungary in 1462. Stephen and Vlad made an agreement to put an end to the conflicts between Moldavia and Wallachia, but Corvinus did not support them to invade Wallachia. The Ottomans occupied the Principality of Theodoro and the Genoese colonies in the Crimea before the end of 1475. Stephen ordered the execution of the Ottoman prisoners in Moldavia to take vengeance for the massacre of Alexander of Theodoro and his Moldavian retainers. Thereafter the Venetians, who had waged war against the Ottomans since 1463, regarded Stephen as their principal ally. With their support, Stephen's envoys tried to persuade the Holy See to finance Stephen's war directly, instead of sending the funds to Matthias Corvinus. The Signoria of Venice emphasized, "No one should fail to understand the extent to which Stephen could influence the evolution of events, one way or another", referring to his pre-eminent role in the anti-Ottoman alliance.


title: Stephen the Great

text: Mehmed II personally commanded a new invasion against Moldavia in the summer of 1476. This force included 12,000 Wallachians under Laiotă, and a retinue of Moldavians under a certain Alexandru, who claimed to be Stephen's brother. The Crimean Tatars were the first to break into Moldavia at the Sultan's order, but Stephen routed them. He also persuaded the Tatars of the Great Horde to break into the Crimea, forcing the Crimean Tatars to withdraw from Moldavia. The Sultan invaded Moldavia in late June 1476.


title: Stephen the Great

text: Himself supported by troops sent by Corvinus, Stephen adopted a scorched earth policy, but could not avoid a pitched battle. He suffered a defeat in the Battle of Valea Albă at Războieni on 26 July and had to seek refuge in Poland, but the Ottomans could not capture the fortress of Suceava, and similarly failed before Neamț. The lack of sufficient provisions and an outbreak of cholera in the Ottoman camp forced Mehmed to leave Moldavia, enabling the voivode to return from Poland. Folk tradition claims that Stephen had also been pledged a new army with the free peasantry of Putna County, grouped around the seven sons of a local lady, Tudora "Baba" Vrâncioaia. This contingent reportedly attacked the Ottomans' flank at Odobești. Another account, repeated by Ureche, is that Maria Oltea forced her son back into battle, pushing him to either return victorious or die.


title: Stephen the Great

text: The Byzantine historian George Sphrantzes concluded that Mehmed II "had suffered more defeats than victories" during the invasion of Moldavia. From summer 1475, during an interlude in the rivalry between Poland and Hungary, Stephen swore his allegiance to the latter. With Hungarian support, Stephen and Vlad Țepeș invaded Wallachia, forcing Basarab Laiotă to flee in November 1476. Stephen returned to Moldavia, leaving Moldavian troops behind for Vlad's protection. The Ottomans invaded Wallachia to restore Basarab Laiotă. Țepeș and his Moldavian retainers were massacred before 10 January 1477. Stephen again broke into Wallachia and replaced Basarab Laiotă with Basarab IV the Younger.


title: Stephen the Great

text: Stephen sent his envoys to Rome and Venice to persuade the Christian powers to continue the war against the Ottomans. He and Venice also wanted to involve the Great Horde in the anti-Ottoman coalition, but the Poles were unwilling to allow the Tatars to cross their territories. To strengthen his international position, Stephen signed a new treaty with Poland on 22 January 1479, promising to personally swear fealty to Casimir IV in Colomea (now Kolomyia in Ukraine) if the king specifically demanded it. Venice and the Ottoman Empire made peace in the same month; Hungary and Poland in April. After Basarab the Younger paid homage to the sultan, Stephen had to seek reconciliation with the Ottomans. In May 1480, he promised to renew the annual tribute that he had stopped paying in 1473. Taking advantage of the peace, Stephen made preparations to a new confrontation with the Ottoman Empire. He again invaded Wallachia and replaced Basarab the Younger with one Mircea, possibly Stephen's own son, but Basarab regained Wallachia with Ottoman support. The Wallachians and their Ottoman allies broke into Moldavia in the spring of 1481.


title: Stephen the Great

text: Mehmed II died in 1481. The conflict between his two sons, Bayezid II and Cem, enabled Stephen to break into Wallachia and the Ottoman Empire in June. He routed Basarab the Younger at Râmnicu Vâlcea and placed Vlad Țepeș's half-brother, Vlad Călugărul, on the throne. After Basarab the Younger returned with Ottoman support, Stephen made a last attempt to secure his influence in Wallachia. He again led his army to Wallachia and defeated Basarab the Younger, who died in the battle. Although Vlad the Monk was restored, he was soon forced to accept the Sultan's suzerainty. Anticipating a new Ottoman attack, Stephen fortified his frontier with Wallachia and entered an alliance with Ivan III of Russia, Grand Prince of Moscow.


title: Stephen the Great

text: Matthias Corvinus signed a five-year truce with Bayezid II in October 1483. The truce applied to all Moldavia, with the exception of the ports. Bayezid invaded Moldavia and captured Chilia on 14 or 15 July 1484. His vassal, Meñli I Giray, also broke into Moldavia and seized Cetatea Albă on 3 August. The capture of the two ports secured the Ottomans' control of the Black Sea. Bayezid left Moldavia only after Stephen personally came to pay homage to him. Although this prostration was largely without effect on Moldavian independence, the loss of Chilia and Cetatea Albă put an end to the Moldavian control of important trading routes.


title: Stephen the Great

text: Corvinus was unwilling to break his own truce with Bayezid, having tacit Ottoman backing for his own war in the west. However, he granted his vassal a territorial gift in Transylvania, comprising the domains of Ciceu and Cetatea de Baltă. According to various interpretations, this exchange occurred in or after 1484, and was meant to compensate Stephen for the loss of his ports. Medievalist Marius Diaconescu dates the lease of Cetatea to 1482, when Corvinus agreed to give Stephen a place of refuge, should Moldavia fall to the Ottomans, while Ciceu only became Stephen's castle in 1489. Both citadels were on land confiscated after conflicts between the Three Nations and Corvinus. Ciceu had been a fief of the Losonczi family, under litigation, while Cetatea had been a special domain of the Voivode of Transylvania, whose last titular owner before Stephen was John Pongrác of Dengeleg.


title: Stephen the Great

text: By then, war between the Poles and the Ottomans was in preparation, with clashes between the two sides occurring in 1484. Scholar Șerban Papacostea notes that Casimir IV had always remained neutral during Stephen's conflicts with the Ottomans, but the Ottoman control of the mouths of the Dnieper and the Danube threatened Poland. The king, Papacostea argues, also wanted to strengthen his suzerainty over Moldavia, which helped him decide to intervene in the conflict on Stephen's behalf. Casimir formed or joined with an anti-Ottoman league, which, in 1485, had also gathered reluctant support from the Teutonic Knights. Historians provide different readings of the issue: according to Robert Nisbet Bain, Casimir's intervention also drove the Ottomans out of Moldavia; Veniamin Ciobanu however argues that the Polish involvement remained non-military, purely diplomatic.


title: Stephen the Great

text: Casimir then marched on Colomea with 20,000 troops. To secure his support, Stephen also went to Colomea and swore fealty to him on 12 September 1485. The ceremony took place in a tent, but its curtains were drawn aside at the moment when Stephen was on his knees before Casimir. Three days after Stephen's oath of fealty, Casimir IV pledged that he would not acknowledge the capture of Chilia and Cetatea Albă by the Ottomans without Stephen's consent. During Stephen's visit in Poland, the Ottomans broke into Moldavia and sacked Suceava. They also tried to place a pretender, Peter Hronoda, on the throne.


title: Stephen the Great

text: Stephen returned from Poland and defeated the invaders with Polish assistance at Cătlăbuga Lake in November. He again confronted the Ottomans at Șcheia in March 1486, but could not recapture Chilia and Cetatea Albă. He narrowly escaped with his life, reportedly after being helped by the Aprod Purice, whom tradition identifies as patriarch of the Movilești family. Historian Vasile Mărculeț agrees with Ottoman sources in noting that Șcheia was not a military victory for Moldavia, but overall a relative success for his enemy, Skender Pasha. Moldavians reported winning the day only because they narrowly avoided disaster; and because Hronoda, recognized a voivode by dissenting boyars, was captured and beheaded. In the end, Stephen signed a three-year truce with the Porte, promising to pay the yearly tribute to the Sultan.


title: Stephen the Great

text: Researcher V. J. Parry argues that, because the Poles were continuously harassed by the Great Horde, they were in no position to help Stephen. Eventually, in late 1486, Poland announced plans of actually starting a "crusade" against the Ottomans, to be led by John Albert; Stephen approached the Sejm to negotiate Moldavia's role in the affair. He kept out, with the expedition being rerouted from Lviv, then attacking the Tatars. Poland concluded a peace treaty with the Ottoman Empire in 1489, acknowledging the loss of Chilia and Cetatea Albă, without Stephen's consent. Although the treaty confirmed Moldavia's frontiers, Stephen regarded it as a breach of his 1485 agreement with Casimir IV. Instead of accepting the treaty, he acknowledged the suzerainty of Matthias Corvinus. However, Corvinus died unexpectedly on 6 April 1490. Four candidates laid claim to Hungary, including Maximilian of Habsburg, and Casimir IV's two sons, John Albert and Vladislaus.


title: Stephen the Great

text: Stephen supported Maximilian of Habsburg, who urged the Three Nations of Transylvania to cooperate with Stephen against his opponents. Most Hungarian lords and prelates, however, supported Vladislaus who was crowned king on 21 September, forcing Maximilian to withdraw from Hungary in November. For John Albert (who was his father's heir in Poland) did not abandon his claim, Stephen decided to support Vladislaus in order to prevent a personal union between Hungary and Poland. He broke into Poland and captured Pocuția (now Pokuttya in Ukraine). He believed that he was entitled to this former Moldavian fief, its revenue redirected toward paying the Ottoman tribute. Stephen also supported Vladislaus against the Ottomans who broke into Hungary several times after Corvinus' death. In exchange, Vladislaus confirmed Stephen's claim to Ciceu and Cetatea de Baltă in Transylvania. John Albert, in turn, was forced to acknowledge his brother as the lawful king in late 1491.


title: Stephen the Great

text: Casimir IV died on 7 June 1492. One of his younger sons, Alexander, succeeded him in Lithuania, and John Albert was elected king of Poland in late August. Ivan III of Moscow broke into Lithuania to expand his authority over the principalities along the borderlands. During the following years, Ivan and Stephen coordinated their diplomacy, which enabled Ivan to persuade Alexander to acknowledge the loss of significant territories to Moscow in February 1494.


title: Stephen the Great

text: Ottoman pressure also brought about a rapprochement between Hungary and Poland. Vladislaus met his four brothers, including John Albert and Sigismund, in Lőcse (now Levoča in Slovakia) in April 1494. They planned a crusade against the Ottoman Empire. However, John Albert wanted to strengthen Polish suzerainty over Moldavia and to dethrone Stephen in favour of Sigismund, which gave rise to new tensions between Poland and Hungary. Shortly after the conference, John Albert decided to launch a campaign against the Ottomans to recapture Chilia and Cetatea Albă. Fearing that the subjugation of Moldavia was John Albert's actual purpose, Stephen made several attempts to prevent his campaign. With Ivan III's support, he persuaded Alexander of Lithuania not to associate himself with John Albert. As reported by the "Bychowiec Chronicle", the Lithuanian magnates also condemned the war, and simply refused to cross the Southern Bug.


title: Stephen the Great

text: For its part, the Polish army marched across the Dniester into Moldavia in August 1497. The Sultan sent 500 or 600 Janissaries to Moldavia at Stephen's request, joining the Moldavian forces gathered at Roman. Stephen sent his chancellor, Isaac, to John Albert, requesting the withdrawal of Polish forces from Moldavia, but John Albert had Isaac imprisoned. The Poles then laid siege to Suceava on 24 September. The campaign failed: Teutonic reinforcements never arrived, with Johann von Tiefen dying on the way. Before long, a plague broke out in the Polish camp, while Vladislaus of Hungary sent an army of 12,000 strong to Moldavia, forcing John Albert to lift the siege on 19 October.


title: Stephen the Great

text: The Poles started to march towards Poland, but Stephen ambushed and routed them at a ravine in Bukovina on 25 and 26 October. Several raids into Poland during the following months, including the sacking of Lviv, Yavoriv, and Przemyśl, cemented his victory. These were either ordered and directed by Stephen, or carried out through a combined force of Ottoman–Tatar–Moldavian irregulars commanded by Malkoçoğlu. Stephen made peace with John Albert only after Poland and Hungary concluded a new alliance against the Ottoman Empire, and Moldavia received direct access to Lviv's markets. Meanwhile, the Ottoman campaign ended in disaster, as a heavy winter induced famine; various Polish and Lithuanian reports also suggest that Stephen ordered false flag attacks against his panicking former allies.


title: Stephen the Great

text: From about 1498, power in Moldavia quietly shifted toward a group of boyars and administrators, comprising, among others, Luca Arbore and Ioan Tăutu. Stephen's son and co-ruler, Bogdan, was also taking on princely responsibilities from his father. He conducted the negotiations with Poland about a peace treaty. The treaty, which Stephen ratified at Hârlău in 1499, put an end to Polish suzerainty over Moldavia. Stephen again stopped paying tribute to the Ottomans in 1500, although by then his health had declined. In February 1501, his delegation arrived in Venice, asking for a specialist doctor. As reported by Marin Sanudo, his envoys also discussed the possibility of Moldavia and Hungary joining the Ottoman–Venetian War. The Doge of Venice, Agostino Barbarigo, sent a physician, Matteo Muriano, to Moldavia to treat his counterpart.


title: Stephen the Great

text: Stephen's armies again broke into the Ottoman Empire, but they could not recapture Chilia or Cetatea Albǎ. The Tatars of the Great Horde invaded southern Moldavia, but Stephen defeated them with the support of the Crimean Tatars in 1502. He also sent reinforcements to Hungary to fight against the Ottomans. By then, however, the treaty with Poland was no longer enforced, prompting Stephen to recapture Pocuția in 1502. Although Alexander of Lithuania was by then the new King of Poland, no understanding could be reached between him and Stephen, and the two became enemies. At around that time, Luca Arbore, acting either as Stephen's envoy or on his own, stated a Moldavian claim to Halych and other towns of the Ruthenian Voivodeship. Hungary and the Ottoman Empire concluded a new peace treaty on 22 February 1503, which also included Moldavia. Thereafter Stephen again paid a yearly tribute to the Ottomans.


title: Stephen the Great

text: Stephen survived his doctor, who died in Moldavia in late 1503. Another Moldavian delegation was sent to Venice to ask for a replacement, but also to propose a new alliance against the Ottomans. This was one of his last acts of international diplomacy. When Stephen was dying, various boyars, who opposed Bogdan, rebelled, but they were suppressed. On his deathbed, he had urged Bogdan to continue to pay the tribute to the Sultan. He died on 2 July 1504 and was buried in the Monastery of Putna.


title: Stephen the Great

text: A woman named Mărușca (or Mărica) most probably gave birth to Stephen's first recognized son, Alexandru. Historian Ioan-Aurel Pop describes Mărușca as Stephen's first wife, but other researchers note that the legitimacy of the Stephen–Mărușca marriage is uncertain. According to Jonathan Eagles, Alexandru either died in childhood or survived infancy and became his father's co-ruler. This older Alexandru died in July 1496, not before marrying a daughter of Bartholomew Drágfi, the Transylvanian Voivode. He is probably not the same Alexandru who, in 1486, was sent by Stephen as a voluntary hostage to Istanbul, where he married a Byzantine noblewoman. This Alexandru was still alive by the end of his father's rule and beyond, when he became a pretender to the throne, and ultimately a contested prince. A 1538 letter by Fabio Mignanelli describes the surviving Alexandru, or "Sandrin", as a posthumous son of Stephen, but this is likely an error.


title: Stephen the Great

text: If Stephen fathered two or three sons named Alexandru, the one who was for a while his designated successor was born to Evdochia of Kiev, whom Stephen married in 1463. An Olelkovich, she was closely related both to Ivan III of Moscow and to Casimir IV of Poland and Lithuania. Stephen's charter of grant to the Hilandar Monastery on Mount Athos refers to two children of Stephen and Evdochia, Alexandru and Olena. Olena was the wife of Ivan Molodoy, the eldest son of Ivan III, and mother of the usurped heir Dmitry.


title: Stephen the Great

text: Stephen's second (or third) wife, Maria of Mangup, was of the family of the princes of Theodoro. She was probably also cousins with the Muscovite Grand Princess Sophia Palaiologina and was related to Trebizond's royal couple, Emperor David and Empress Maria. The Stephen–Maria marriage took place in September 1472, but she died in December 1477. During her brief stay in Moldavia, Maria supported the Latin Patriarchate of Constantinople, contributing to the friendly contacts between Stephen and Catholic powers. Stephen's third (or fourth) wife, Maria Voichița, was the daughter of Radu the Fair, Voivode of Wallachia. She was the mother of Stephen's immediate successor, Bogdan, and a daughter named . The latter married to Fedor Wiśniowiecki. Stephen is known to have fathered two other sons who died in childhood, at a time when he was married to Maria Voichița: Bogdan died in 1479, and Peter (Petrașco) in 1480. Scholars are divided as to whether their mother was Evdochia, Maria of Mangup, or a very young Maria Voichița. Bogdan was also known as "Vlad"—a regal name rarely used in Moldavia, but common for Wallachian princes. The choice was either "an underlining of the Moldo–Wallachian unity which Prince Stephen had sought to achieve", or, more precisely but less certainly, a proof that Stephen wished to make Bogdan-Vlad his co-ruler over Wallachia. Archivist Aurelian Sacerdoțeanu believes that Bogdan-Vlad also had a twin, Iliaș.


title: Stephen the Great

text: In 1480, Stephen finally recognized his first-born, Mircea, born from his 1450s affair with Călțuna of Brăila, and groomed him to take the throne in Wallachia. According to Sacerdoțeanu, recognition came only after the death of Mircea's legal father, who may have been one of the boyars spared at Soci. Stephen also fathered another illegitimate son, Petru Rareș, who became prince of Moldavia in 1527. The church regards his mother, Maria Rareș, as Stephen's fourth wife, although she is known to have been married to a burgher. Stephen V "Locust", who held the Moldavian throne in 1538–1540, also presented himself as Stephen's illegitimate son. According to Sacerdoțeanu, his claim is credible. A local tradition in Putna County (today's Vrancea) attributes to Stephen other extra-conjugal affairs, with many peasants reporting that they consider themselves "of his blood" or "of his marrow".


title: Stephen the Great

text: Stephen reigned for more than 47 years, which was "in itself an outstanding achievement in the context of the political and territorial fragility of the Romanian principalities". His diplomacy evidenced that he was one of the "most astute politicians" of Europe in the 15th century. This skill enabled him to play off the Ottoman Empire, Poland and Hungary against each other. According to historian Keith Hitchins, Stephen "paid tribute to the Ottomans, but only when it was advantageous...; he did homage to King Casimir of Poland as his suzerain when that seemed wise ...; and he resorted to arms when other means failed."


title: Stephen the Great

text: Stephen suppressed the rebellious boyars and strengthened central government, often applying cruel punishments, including impalement. He consolidated the practice of slavery, including the notion that different laws applied to slaves, reportedly capturing as many as 17,000 Roma during his invasion of Wallachia, but also selectively freeing and assimilating Tatar slaves. He supposedly used both communities as "slaves of the court", treasuring their specialized skills; nevertheless, one folk legend additionally claims that Stephen practiced human sacrifice against Roma slaves, to alleviate the floods at Sulița. According to Marcin Bielski, during the 1498 expedition to Poland, the voivode participated in, or at least tolerated, the capture of as many as 100,000 people. At least some of these were colonized in Moldavia, where, according to various reports of the period, they founded "Ruthenian" undefended towns. According to historian Mircea Ciubotaru, these may include Cernauca (now Chornivka in Ukraine), Dobrovăț, Lipnic, Ruși-Ciutea, and a cluster of villages outside Hârlău.


title: Stephen the Great

text: Stephen also welcomed freemen as settlers, establishing some of the first Armenian colonies in Moldavia, including one at Suceava, while also settling Italians, some of whom were escapees from the Ottoman slave trade, in that city. Early on, he renewed the commercial privileges of Transylvanian Saxons who traded in Moldavia, but subsequently introduced some protectionist barriers. His own court was staffed with foreign experts, among them Matteo Muriano and the Italian banker Dorino Cattaneo. However, as a "crusader" in the 1470s, Stephen encouraged the religious persecution and extortion of Gregorian Armenians, Jews, and Hussites, some of whom became supporters of the Ottoman Empire.


title: Stephen the Great

text: In addition to his colonization policies, Stephen restored Crown lands that had been lost during the civil war that followed Alexander the Good's rule, either through buying or confiscating them. On the other hand, he granted much landed property to the Church and to the lesser noblemen who were the main supporters of the central government. His itinerant lifestyle enabled him to personally hold court in the whole of Moldavia, which contributed to the development of his authority.


title: Stephen the Great

text: When talking with Muriano in 1502, Stephen mentioned that he had fought 36 battles, only losing two of them. When the enemy forces mostly outnumbered his army, Stephen had to adopt the tactics of "asymmetric warfare". He practised guerilla warfare against invaders, avoiding challenging them to open battle before they were weakened due to the lack of supplies or sickness. During his invasions, however, he moved quickly and forced his enemies to do battle. To strengthen the defence of his country, he restored the fortresses built during Alexander the Good's rule at Hotin, Chilia, Cetatea Albă, Suceava and Târgu Neamț. He also erected a number of castles, including the new fortresses at Roman and Tighina. The "pârcălabi" (or commanders) of the fortresses were invested with administrative and judicial powers and became important pillars of royal administration, their work controlled by a new central office, the "armaș" (first attested in 1489). The "pârcălabi" included members of the princely family, such as Duma, who was Stephen's cousin; before his execution, Isaia, the voivode's brother-in-law, had supervised Chilia and Neamț Citadel.


title: Stephen the Great

text: Stephen hired mercenaries to man his forts, which diminished the military role of the boyars' retinues within the Moldavian military forces. He also set up a personal guard 3,000 strong and, at least for a while, an Armenian-only unit. To strengthen the defence of Moldavia, he obliged the peasantry to bear arms. Moldavian chronicles recorded that if "he found a peasant lacking arrows, bow or sword, or coming to the army without spurs for the horse, he mercilessly put that man to death." The military reforms increased Moldavia's military potential, enabling Stephen to muster an army of more than 40,000 strong.


title: Stephen the Great

text: The years following Stephen's wars against the Ottoman Empire have been described as the era of "cultural policies" and "great architectural upsurge". More than a dozen stone churches were erected at Stephen's initiative after 1487. The wealthiest boyars followed him, and Stephen also supported the development of monastic communities. For instance, the Voroneț Monastery was built in 1488 and the monastery at Tazlău in 1496 to 1497.


title: Stephen the Great

text: The style of the new churches evidences that a "genuine school of local architects" developed during Stephen's reign. They borrowed components of Byzantine and Gothic architecture and mixed it with elements of local tradition. Painted walls and towers with a base forming a star were the most featuring elements of Stephen's churches. The prince also financed the building of churches in Transylvania and Wallachia, which contributed to the spread of Moldavian architecture beyond the boundaries of the principality. Stephen commissioned votive paintings and carved tomb stones for many of his ancestors' and other relatives' graves. The tomb room of the Putna Monastery was built to be the royal necropolis of Stephen's family. Stephen's own tombstone was decorated with acanthus leaves (a motif adopted from Byzantine art) which became the featuring decorative element of Moldavian art during the following century.


title: Stephen the Great

text: Stephen also contributed to the development of historiography and Church Slavonic literature in Moldavia. He ordered the collection of the annals of the principality and initiated the completion of at least three Slavonic chronicles, noted in particular for doing away with the conventions of Byzantine literature, and for introducing new storytelling canons. Some portions of these historiographic texts were corrected, and perhaps even dictated, by Stephen himself. The "Chronicle of Bistrița", which was allegedly the oldest chronicle, narrated the history of Moldavia from 1359 to 1506. The two versions of the "Chronicle of Putna" covered the period from 1359 to 1526, but it also wrote of the history of the Putna Monastery. They were accompanied by a large number of lay and religious texts (including the Gospels, in several versions by Teodor Mărișescul; as well as commentary on the Nomocanon and Slavonic translations from John Climacus). Some were richly decorated with miniatures, such as portraits of Stephen (in the Humor Monastery "Gospel", 1473) and his courtier Ioan Tăutu ("Psalter" of Mukachevo, 1498). The "Moldavian style", developed at Neamț Monastery by the disciples of Gavriil Uric, became influential outside Moldavia, creating a fashion among Russian illustrators and calligraphers.


title: Stephen the Great

text: Stephen received the sobriquet "Great" shortly after his death. Sigismund I of Poland and Lithuania referred to him as "that great Stephen" in 1534. The Polish historian Martin Kromer mentioned him as the "great prince of the Moldavians." According to Maciej Stryjkowski, by 1580 the Wallachians and Moldavians alike sang ballads honoring Stephen, whose portrait was displayed at the court of Bucharest; his raids in Wallachia were generally overlooked in such testimonials. Despite being honored for his skill, he was still primarily known under sobriquets indicating his standing and age: in 16th-century Moldavia and Wallachia, he was casually known as "Ștefan cel Vechi" and "Ștefan cel Bătrân" ("Stephen the Ancient" or "the Old"). Oral history also maintained Stephen's Byzantine self-references, often calling him an "emperor" or a ""crai" (king) of the Moldavians".


title: Stephen the Great

text: In the mid-17th-century, Grigore Ureche described Stephen as "a benefactor and a leader" when writing of his funeral. A boyar by birth, Ureche also mentioned Stephen's despotic cruelty, bad temper, and diminutive stature — possibly because, according to scholar Lucian Boia, he resented authoritarian princes. In tandem, local folklore came to regard Stephen as a protector of peasantry against noblemen and foreign invaders. For centuries, free peasants claimed that they inherited their landed property from their ancestors to whom it had been granted by Stephen for their bravery in the battles.


title: Stephen the Great

text: Such precedents also made Stephen a cult figure in Romanian nationalism, which sought the union of Moldavia with Wallachia, and in rival Moldovenism. Early in the 19th century, the Moldavian regionalist Gheorghe Asachi made Stephen the topic of historical fiction, popular prints, and heraldic reconstructions. Asachi, and later Teodor Balș, also campaigned for the erection of a Stephen the Great statue, which was supposed to represent resistance against Wallachian encroachment. The Moldavian separatist Nicolae Istrati wrote several theatrical works which contributed to the Stephen cult. Other Moldavians, shunning separatism, paid their own homage to the medieval hero. In the 1840s, Alecu Russo inaugurated the effort to collect and republish folklore about Stephen, which he believed was the "source of truth" about Romanian history. One of the first epic poems to deal with the voivode was "The Aprod Purice", by Constantin Negruzzi, which fictionalizes the battle of Șcheia. In the Bessarabia Governorate, which had been carved out of Moldavia by the Russian Empire, the peasantry and intellectual class both appealed to Stephen as a symbol of resistance. His "golden century" was a reference for Alexandru Hâjdeu and Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu. The latter dedicated him a large number of works, from poems written in his native Russian to Romanian-language historical novels in which Stephen is a leading protagonist.


title: Stephen the Great

text: By then, the cult of Stephen's "patriotic virtues" had been introduced to Wallachia by Ienăchiță Văcărescu and Gheorghe Lazăr. Wallachian scholar Nicolae Bălcescu was the first Romanian historian to describe Stephen as a national hero; his rule, Bălcescu argued, was an important step towards the unification of the lands inhabited by Romanians. During that period, Stephen became explicitly mentioned in the Romantic poetry of Andrei Mureșanu, in particular as the "mighty shadow" described in Romania's future national anthem. In 1850s Wallachia, Dimitrie Bolintineanu produced a lukewarm ballad depicting Stephen fleeing for battle, and his mother Oltea ordering him back. It became a hugely popular after being set to music. His later works also contribute to the nationalist cult, or fictionalize his erotic life. The nationalist investment in Stephen was by then resisted by other writers, in particular George Panu, Ioan Bogdan, and other "Junimea" members, who favored a critique of Romantic nationalism. In Panu's works, Stephen appears as merely a "Polish vassal"; the one-time "Junimist" A. D. Xenopol also chided the voivode for his loss of Chilia and his supposed betrayal of Wallachia.


title: Stephen the Great

text: Anniversaries of the most important events of Stephen's life have been officially celebrated since the 1870s, including in 1871 the defiant show of solidarity at Putna. This doubled as a protest against Austria-Hungary, which had annexed Bukovina; it was organized by Teodor V. Ștefanelli and was notably attended by poet Mihai Eminescu. Nationalist interpretations still prevailed, particularly after 1881, when Eminescu dedicated his poem "Doina" (written in the style of traditional Romanian song) to Stephen, calling upon him to leave his grave to again lead his people. His statue was ultimately raised in Iași in 1883.


title: Stephen the Great

text: On the 400th anniversary of the voivode's death in 1904, ceremonies included the completion of a stone monument in Bârsești, by locals who claimed descent from Vrâncioaia. Also then, Nicolae Iorga published Stephen's biography. Against Xenopol's verdict, Iorga emphasized that Stephen's victories were to be attributed to the "true unity of the whole people" during his reign. Many more works of literature appeared in the Kingdom of Romania and other Romanian-inhabited regions, helping to consolidate Stephen's cultural legacy. One such contribution was the 1909 play "Apus de soare", by Barbu Ștefănescu Delavrancea, including advice attributed, in the public's mind, to historical Stephen:


title: Stephen the Great

text: Depicting Stephen as a dying sage, it was followed by two other Delavrancea plays, which insisted on the prince's pragmatic cruelty and the effects this had on his succession. By then, Stephen as a statesman had also become a point of reference and a benchmark for the long and stabilizing rule of Carol I, King of Romania. Over the following three decades, Stephen's deeds became the inspiration for literary works by Iorga, Mihai Codreanu, and especially Mihail Sadoveanu. In the 1930s, the Iron Guard embraced Stephen the Great's cult for its own purposes, with special emphasis on his contribution as a Christian monarch.


title: Stephen the Great

text: The reading of Stephen as a pan-Romanian nationalist peaked during the late stages of Communist Romania. Initially, the regime looked down on Stephen's treatment of the peasantry, and only emphasized his connections with the East Slavs or his clampdown against boyardom. This stance was overturned by national communism. Initially, censorship toned down or removed references to his legacy in Soviet Bessarabia or Pokuttya; in the 1980s, however, official historians claimed that Stephen was literally a "lord of all Romanians". Iorga's book has been republished several times, including on the 500th anniversary of Stephen's death. On the same anniversary, Stephen was presented as a symbol of "national identity, independence and inter-ethnic harmony" in the Republic of Moldova, where he also endures as the symbol of "Moldavian particularism" or "Moldovan patriotism". Thus, Stephen was invoked by both the Popular Front of Moldova, which favored Romanian identity, and the Moldovenist Party of Communists. The latter describes Stephen as "the founder of Moldavian statehood", claiming direct continuity from his principality to the present-day state.


title: Stephen the Great

text: As Eagles notes, "Stephen is an ever-present icon" in both Romania and Moldova: "statues of his image abound; politicians cite him as an exemplar; schools and a university bear his name; villages and the main thoroughfares of towns and cities are named after him; there is a Ștefan cel Mare metro station in central Bucharest; and his crowned head has adorned "every" banknote in the post-Soviet Moldovan republic". According to a 1999 opinion poll, more than 13% of the participants regarded Stephen the Great as the most important personality who had "influenced the destiny of the Romanians for the better". Seven years later, during a programme called the "100 Greatest Romanians" on Romanian Television, he was voted "the greatest Romanian of all time".


title: Stephen the Great

text: In Athonite legends, Romanian stories, and Moldavian chronicles alike, Stephen's victories against the Ottomans and Hungarians were already regarded as God-inspired, or as placed under the direct patronage of various saints (George, Demetrius, Procopius, or Mercurius). Worship of Stephen himself was first recorded in the 1570s, but, according to Ureche, he had been regarded as a saint soon after his funeral: "not on account of his soul ... for he was a man with sins ... but on account of the great deeds he accomplished". The positive nuances of Ureche's report were also repeated by Miron Costin.


title: Stephen the Great

text: The abbot of Putna Monastery, Artimon Bortnic, initiated the investigation of the tomb room of the monastery in 1851, referring to important shrines in Russia and Moldavia. In 1857 (a year after Stephen's tomb was opened), the priest and journalist Iraclie Porumbescu already wrote of the "holy bones of Putna". In at least some legends attested by 1903, the voivode is depicted as an immortal sleeping hero, or, alternatively, as the ruler of heaven. However, Stephen the Great was ignored when the Romanian Orthodox Church canonized the first Romanian saints in the 1950s.


title: Stephen the Great

text: Teoctist, Patriarch of All Romania, canonized Stephen along with 12 other saints at Saint Spyridon the New Church in Bucharest on 21 June 1992. On this occasion, the patriarch emphasized that Stephen had been a defender of Christianity and protector of his people. He also underlined that Stephen had built churches during his reign. Stephen's feast day is 2 July (the day of his death) in the calendar of the Romanian Orthodox Church. On his first feast after his canonization, a new ceremony was held to celebrate Stephen the Great and Saint in Putna. 15,000 people (including the President of Romania at the time, Ion Iliescu, and two ministers) attended the event. Patriarch Teoctist noted that "God has brought us together under the same skies, just as Stephen rallied us under the same flag in the past."


title: Stephen the Great

text: Stephen's rule consolidated the usage of the coat of arms of Moldavia, featuring the aurochs head (first attested in 1387), sometimes as a helmet atop his personal arms. He revived the elaborate design introduced under Alexander the Good, which also featured a rose, crescent, sun and star (often, but not always, five-pointed); its tinctures remain unknown. This arrangement was not familiar to heraldists in Western Europe. By the 1530s, they represented Moldavia with attributed arms featuring Maures; these arms, though originally used for Wallachia, possibly echoed Stephen's victories over the Ottomans.


title: Stephen the Great

text: The personal arms and heraldic flags used by Stephen have been the topic of additional scrutiny and debate. Stephen is known to have used a "party per cross" shield with one striped quarter, but the colors are uncertain: one prevailing interpretation is that the dominant tinctures were or and vert, although they may also have been gules and argent. These may derive from the colors used by the House of Basarab (which were possibly used by Stephen's in-law Radu the Handsome), from the coat of arms of Hungary, or from a purely Moldavian tradition. The division and the striped pattern are possibly Hungarian; they survived in some of Stephen's seals even during his dispute with the Hungarian crown. He also continued to use the "fleur-de-lis", an Angevin symbol, but altered it into a "double-headed lily", then renounced it altogether. Similarly, he used the Cross of Lorraine, pattée, possibly in reference to the Pahonia. Following his 1489 dispute with Poland, that charge was altered into a double cross fleury.


title: Stephen the Great

text: Stephen's heraldic symbols progressively merged with those attributed to the House of Mușat, and were intensively used by all princes who claimed full or partial descent from Alexander the Good—including Peter the Lame, a Wallachian pretender to Moldavia's throne. The Putna tombstones of Stephen's two sons who died during his lifetime, Bogdan and Peter, already display the aurochs within the "Mușat coat-of-arms".


title: Stephen the Great

text: A Moldavian banner also survives in hand-colored versions illustrating Johannes de Thurocz's "Chronica Hungarorum", with varying tinctures. These were first identified as Stephen's flags by Constantin Karadja, and described by later authors as a version of the or-an-vert scheme in the coat of arms. Other clues suggest that the field was a solid one of or, charged with an aurochs of or, but also that the preferred "single Moldavian" color was gules. Gules is also the color of Stephen's alleged war flag, defaced with an icon of Saint George and the Dragon and donated by the prince himself to Zograf monastery. However, scholar Petre Ș. Năsturel cautions that this may not be a heraldic object of any kind, but rather a votive offering. The "war flag", he notes, is to small to carry in battle, and does not match with images in either Thurocz or Marcin Bielski, nor with the description in Alexander Guagnini.


title: Goal celebration

text: In sports, a goal celebration is the practice of celebrating the scoring of a goal. The celebration is normally performed by the goalscorer, and may involve their teammates, the manager or coaching staff or the supporters of the team. Whilst referring to the celebration of a goal in general, the term can also be applied to specific actions, such as a player removing their shirt or performing a somersault. Celebrations are generally more substantial in lower-scoring sports, such as association football and ice hockey, where a score has greater significance.


title: Goal celebration

text: Many goal celebrations have been immortalised, such as in a statue (Thierry Henry and Bobby Orr), advertisements (Ronaldo), postage stamps (Pelé), magazine covers, or in video games: Cristiano Ronaldo, Gareth Bale, Lionel Messi among many others are featured in the "FIFA" series.


title: Goal celebration

text: A "goal song" or "goal celebration music" is a short piece of music that is played in sports like football or ice hockey after a goal is scored. A goal horn sometimes sounds before the song is played, especially in the National Hockey League (NHL).


title: Goal celebration

text: One such song is Bellini's "Samba de Janeiro", which is played after each Bolton Wanderers goal when they play at home and was used as the goal song in UEFA Euro 2008. Van Halen's "Jump" is played every time A.C. Milan scores a goal at the San Siro. "Song 2" by Blur is played at some German and Austrian clubs. In North America, "Rock and Roll (Part Two)" by the Glitter Band is commonly played. Donbass Arena, the home ground of Ukrainian football club Shakhtar Donetsk, has a tradition of playing music each time home players score goals, with a track corresponding to the nationality of a scorer. For example, "Sabre Dance" by the Armenian Aram Khachaturian was played whenever his compatriot Henrikh Mkhitaryan scored. When FC Bayern Munich score a goal in the Allianz Arena, the Can-can plays.


title: Goal celebration

text: In ice hockey, the use of goal songs is very common. Prior to 2012, a goal by the NHL's Montreal Canadiens, on home ice, was followed by U2's "Vertigo". The New York Rangers play the song "Slapshot", which was written by Ray Castoldi, the music director at Madison Square Garden. The Chicago Blackhawks and Nottingham Panthers play "Chelsea Dagger" by The Fratellis after every home goal.


title: Goal celebration

text: In recent seasons, FIFA have attempted to crack down on some of the more enthusiastic celebrations. If a player incites the crowd and/or takes their shirt off or puts the ball under their shirt to indicate a pregnancy after scoring a goal, they are likely to get booked by the referee. This can cause huge controversy if the player has already been booked, since they would then be sent off. However, some players get around this rule by pulling the hem of their shirts over the head, without taking the shirt off entirely, but this is not always overturned by the referees. Some players have received fines for dropping their shorts after scoring.


title: Goal celebration

text: Jumping into the crowd is also a bookable offence ("deliberately leaving the field of play without the referee's permission", as identified in Law 12).


title: Goal celebration

text: Players might be also fined for revealing T-shirts which contain some kind of message directed to the spectators. Notable examples include Robbie Fowler being fined for showing a T-shirt that was designed to show support for the Liverpool dockers' strike, incorporating the Calvin Klein "CK" into the word doCKer; and Thierry Henry, who was fined by UEFA after he removed his Arsenal shirt to reveal a T-shirt reading "For the new-born Kyd", which was directed to his friend, Texas lead singer Sharleen Spiteri, who had just given birth. In 1999, Robbie Fowler was also fined £60,000 by his club and the Premier League for having celebrated his penalty goal against Everton by getting down on all fours and miming the snorting of cocaine off of the white touchline. Although it was seen as Fowler's response to being accused of drug abuse in the tabloid press, then-manager Gérard Houllier famously claimed that he was merely imitating "a cow eating grass".


title: Goal celebration

text: In January 1998, Rangers midfielder Paul Gascoigne courted serious controversy during a goal celebration where he mimed playing a flute (symbolic of the flute-playing of Loyalist Orange Order marchers) during a game against Celtic at Celtic Park. The gesture infuriated Celtic fans who had been taunting him and Gascoigne was fined £20,000 by Rangers after the incident. He also received a death threat from an Irish Republican Army (IRA) member following the incident.


title: Goal celebration

text: Boca Juniors striker Carlos Tevez was sent off for imitating a chicken when celebrating a goal against arch-rivals River Plate during the 2004 Copa Libertadores, clearly mocking the opposition crowd, with River called 'Gallinas' ('chickens') by other fans for choking late on.


title: Goal celebration

text: Paolo Di Canio made his mark in 2005, when during his period at Lazio, he made a fascist salute to the right-wing fans. He was fined and suspended as a result.


title: Goal celebration

text: Ipswich Town player David Norris received a fine after using a handcuff gesture to celebrate scoring against Blackpool in November 2008, dedicating the goal to ex-teammate Luke McCormick, who was jailed for death by dangerous driving.


title: Goal celebration

text: Everton midfielder Tim Cahill received a similar fine for a similar gesture in a match on 2 March 2008.


title: Goal celebration

text: A similar incident took place in Chelsea against Middlesbrough, when Chelsea's Salomon Kalou scored a brace and thereafter crossed hands with Ivorian teammate Didier Drogba. It was later revealed, however, that he claimed to have wanted to try out a new celebration and was not supporting an Ivorian convictionist.


title: Goal celebration

text: In a 2009 Premier League match between Manchester City and Arsenal, Manchester City striker Emmanuel Adebayor received a yellow card for running the length of the pitch to celebrate his goal in front of the Arsenal fans. This was seen as controversial because Adebayor signed for Manchester City that summer from Arsenal.


title: Goal celebration

text: In March 2013, AEK Athens midfielder Giorgos Katidis made a Nazi salute towards the crowd after scoring the winning goal against Veria. Though he later said he did not realise the meaning of the gesture, Katidis was fined €50,000, banned from playing for AEK for the remainder of the season, and given a lifetime ban from representing Greece at the international level.


title: Goal celebration

text: West Bromwich Albion striker Nicolas Anelka was banned for five games and fined for celebrating a goal scored in December 2013 with a quenelle. While there was controversy with the gesture being linked to anti-Semitism, Anelka was cleared of being anti-Semitic or endorsing anti-Semitism.


title: Goal celebration

text: At the 2018 World Cup in Russia, Xherdan Shaqiri and fellow Swiss goalscorer Granit Xhaka, who is also of Kosovar descent, celebrated their goals by making an eagle gesture, a symbol of ethnic Albanians, towards Serbian fans. FIFA fined Xhaka and Shaqiri 10,000 Swiss francs "for unsporting behaviour contrary to the principles of fair-play".


title: Goal celebration

text: Refusing to celebrate a goal or undertaking muted goal celebrations is not unknown and not uncommon in football. In the case of the former, it is often seen when a player scores against a former club, especially one where the player began his career and/or had his greatest period of success, or where he first made his name. Non-celebration against former clubs does seem to be a fairly recent trend, however. There are several recorded examples of players celebrating against their old club prior to the 2000s, when this practice started to become regarded as disrespectful. Conversely, not celebrating a goal for your current side could be considered somewhat strange. Goalkeepers who score goals via a long kick that is perhaps taken by the wind or evades the opposition goalkeeper upon bouncing on the pitch may not celebrate, as a mark of respect to the opposition goalkeeper.


title: Goal celebration

text: Muted celebration usually occurs when scoring a consolation goal in a match that is otherwise already lost; celebration may be omitted entirely if there is not enough time left on the clock and the losing team wants the match to continue as soon as possible. It also occurs when a large number of goals have been scored by one team in a match, and the result has been put beyond doubt; for later goals, celebrations might be reduced or non-existent. Several (though not all) of Southampton midfielder Matthew Le Tissier's goal celebrations were notably understated despite the fact that he scored a number of spectacular or technically difficult goals during his career; an example of this being his lack of celebration after scoring a goal from 30 yards against Blackburn Rovers in 1994–95 season which was later voted Goal of The Season. Le Tissier has since stated that he did not celebrate out of respect for his former teammate and friend Tim Flowers, who was the Blackburn goalkeeper that he beat.


title: Goal celebration

text: In ice hockey, it is seen as good etiquette not to celebrate a goal made on an empty net where the goaltender has been pulled, due to the vulnerability of the opposing team and the lack of challenge.


title: Goal celebration

text: While unusual and somewhat ironic, a variety of football players have injured themselves during celebration: examples include Paulo Diogo (who severed a finger after it got caught in a fence), Thierry Henry, Zlatan Ibrahimović, Fabián Espíndola, (who celebrated a goal that was later disallowed due to offside) and Michy Batshuayi. An Indian footballer, Peter Biaksangzuala, died from a spine injury in 2014 following a failed somersault celebration.


title: Goal celebration

text: Nicolai Muller once injured himself while celebrating scoring a goal against FC Augsburg when he spun around repeatedly in a "helicopter" style which had until that point, been his trademark celebration. Medical examination confirmed that the striker had ruptured the ACL in his right knee. He was out of action for 10 months, and after his team were relegated he left the club.


title: Goal celebration

text: Managers (and coaching staff) have been known for their exuberant goal celebrations. Some notable celebrations include;


title: Genius loci

text: In classical Roman religion, a genius loci (plural "genii locorum") was the protective spirit of a place. It was often depicted in religious iconography as a figure holding attributes such as a cornucopia, patera (libation bowl) or snake. Many Roman altars found throughout the Western Roman Empire were dedicated to a particular "genius loci". The Roman imperial cults of the Emperor and the imperial house developed in part in connections with the sacrifices made by neighborhood associations "(vici)" to the local "genius". These 265 local districts had their cult organised around the "Lares Compitales" (guardian spirits or "lares" of the crossroads), which the emperor Augustus transformed into "Lares Augusti" along with the "Genius Augusti". The emperor's "genius" is then regarded as the "genius loci" of the Roman Empire as a whole.


title: Genius loci

text: Roman examples of these "genii" can be found, for example, at the church of St. Giles, Tockenham, Wiltshire where the genius loci is depicted as a relief in the wall of a Norman church built of Roman material. This shows "a youthful and curly-haired Roman Genius worked in high relief, holding a cornucopia in his left hand and a "patera" in his right", which previously has been "erroneously identified as Asclepius".


title: Genius loci

text: The numinous spirits of places in Asia are still honored today in city pillar shrines, outdoor spirit houses and indoor household and business shrines.


title: Genius loci

text: In contemporary usage, "genius loci" usually refers to a location's distinctive atmosphere, or a "spirit of the place", rather than necessarily a guardian spirit. An example of contemporary usage might be along the lines of "Light reveals the genius loci of a place."


title: Genius loci

text: Alexander Pope made the "genius loci" an important principle in garden and landscape design with the following lines from "Epistle IV, to Richard Boyle, Earl of Burlington":


title: Genius loci

text: Pope's verse laid the foundation for one of the most widely agreed principles of landscape architecture. This is the principle that landscape designs should "always" be adapted to the context in which they are located.


title: Genius loci

text: A priori, archetype, and "genius loci" are the primary principals of Neo-Rationalism or New Rationalism. Pioneered by the Italian architect Aldo Rossi, Neo-Rationalism developed in the light of a re-evaluation of the work of Giuseppe Terragni, and gained momentum through the work of Giorgio Grassi. Characterized by elemental vernacular forms and an adaptation to the existing environment, the Neo-Rationalist style has adherents beyond architecture in the greater world of art.


title: Genius loci

text: In the context of modern architectural theory, "genius loci" has profound implications for place-making, falling within the philosophical branch of phenomenology. This field of architectural discourse is explored most notably by the theorist Christian Norberg-Schulz in his book, "Genius Loci: Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture".


title: Genius loci

text: Tom Bombadil in "The Lord of the Rings" has been described by Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey as the "genius loci" of the Old Forest, a wooded land bordering the Shire.


title: Genius loci

text: In the "Dungeons and Dragons" 3.0 edition book the Epic Level Handbook, the genius loci is a malign, powerful ooze that mimics the landscape and has no intelligence of its own. It can magically enslave a visitor, whose mind affects the genius loci's behaviour. It is spontaneously generated when a place is undisturbed for a long time.


title: Genius loci

text: In "The Dresden Files", a genius loci is an elemental spirit of a place. The island of Demonreach has its own genius loci, also named Demonreach, which is omniscient with regards to its own island. Wizards can form a spiritual connection with a genius loci and the place it represents.


title: Genius loci

text: The Rivers of London series of novels by Ben Aaronovitch feature many beings described as "genii locorum", primarily those of the River Thames and its tributaries.


title: Walden Pond

text: Walden Pond is a pond in Concord, Massachusetts, in the United States. A famous example of a kettle hole, it was formed by retreating glaciers 10,000–12,000 years ago. The pond is protected as part of Walden Pond State Reservation, a state park and recreation site managed by the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation. The reservation was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1962 for its association with the writer Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), whose two years living in a cabin on its shore provided the foundation for his famous 1854 work, "Walden; or, Life in the Woods". The National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 ensured federal support for the preservation of the pond.


title: Walden Pond

text: The Walden Pond Reservation is located south of Massachusetts Route 2 and (mostly) west of Massachusetts Route 126 in Concord and Lincoln, Massachusetts. The Fitchburg Line of the MBTA Commuter Rail passes west of the pond; however, the nearest station is in Concord center, 1.4 miles northwest of the reservation.


title: Walden Pond

text: The reservation is in size, and its principal feature is Walden Pond, a body of water. A short way north of the pond the site of Thoreau's cabin is marked by a series of granite posts. Portions of the pond's shore are beach, while other parts descend steeply to the water from trails that ring the pond. There are three buildings at the main beach area at the southeastern shore of the pond. The reservation's parking area is located across Route 126, and a ramped footpath descends from that roadway to the pond.


title: Walden Pond

text: The writer, transcendentalist, and philosopher Henry David Thoreau lived on the northern shore of the pond for two years from the summer of 1845. Thoreau was inspired by former enslaved woman Zilpah White, who lived in a one-room house on the common land that bordered Walden Road and made a living spinning flax into linen fibers. White's ability to provide for herself at a time when few if any other Concord women lived alone was a great accomplishment.


title: Walden Pond

text: Thoreau's account of his experience at the pond was recorded in "Walden; or, Life in the Woods", and made the pond famous. The land at that end was owned by Thoreau's friend and mentor, Ralph Waldo Emerson, who let Thoreau use it for his experiment. Thoreau is credited with encouraging a respect for nature at an environmentally degraded site. The Concord Museum contains the bed, chair, and desk from Thoreau's cabin.


title: Walden Pond

text: During the winter of his abode at Walden Pond's shore, for sixteen days a large group of men decamped from the train to cut ice from Walden Pond. In his journal, Thoreau philosophized upon the wintry sight of the ice harvesters: "The sweltering inhabitants of Charleston and New Orleans, of Madras and Bombay and Calcutta, drink at my well The pure Walden water is mingled with the sacred water of the Ganges". It was well known at the time that ice shipped from Boston went to many ports, including India.


title: Walden Pond

text: An amusement park with swings, concession stands and an event hall, located at the western end of the pond, burned down in 1902 and was never rebuilt.


title: Walden Pond

text: Descendants of Emerson and other families deeded the land around the pond to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 1922. In 1961, the Middlesex County Commissioners, then managing the land, proposed leveling a significant portion of the preserve for a parking lot and other "improvements." An acre of woodland had been leveled for access to the public beach when the Commissioners were sued to stop the destruction of the existing environment. Judge David A Rose, sitting in the Massachusetts Superior Court, ruled that Walden's deed donating the property to the Commonwealth required preservation of the land and barred further development. The decision received national recognition, and Judge Rose received hundreds of letters from school children across the country thanking him for saving the land. Walden Pond became part of the state parks system in 1975. It is also among the national landmarks preserved by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966.


title: Walden Pond

text: In 1977, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts installed a porous pavement parking area at Walden Pond as a special technology transfer demonstration project, following methodology generated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 1972. The porous pavement still functions decades later, despite experiencing more freeze-thaw cycling than most other parts of the world.


title: Walden Pond

text: Recording artist Don Henley initiated The Walden Woods Project in 1990 to prevent the area around Walden Pond from being developed. Through a joint effort of The Trust for Public Land, the Walden Woods Project, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, more than 85 acres of land were permanently protected, including Bear Garden Hill, where Thoreau took moonlit walks. In 1995, The Trust for Public Land also assisted in the acquisition of a historic home, which would become the research center and library for the Thoreau Institute.


title: Walden Pond

text: While living in Walden Woods for two years beginning in 1845, Henry David Thoreau contemplated Walden Pond's features. In "The Ponds" section of "Walden", published in 1854, Thoreau extols the water's physical properties. He details its unparalleled water quality; its clarity, color, and temperature; its unique animal life (aquatic, bird, and mammal); its rock formations and bed; and especially, its mirror-like surface properties.


title: Walden Pond

text: Thoreau contemplates the source of the pristine water body in the woods. He observes that it had no visible inlet or outlet, and considers the possibility of an unidentified spring at the bottom. Noting the kettle landform's ramparts and resilient shore, he concludes that a unique, natural geologic event formed the site, while recognizing local myths:


title: Walden Pond

text: Some have been puzzled to tell how the shore became so regularly paved. My townsmen have all heard the tradition -- the oldest people tell me that they heard it in their youth -- that anciently the Indians were holding a pow-wow upon a hill here, which rose as high into the heavens as the pond now sinks deep into the earth, and they used much profanity, as the story goes, though this vice is one of which the Indians were never guilty, and while they were thus engaged the hill shook and suddenly sank, and only one old squaw, named Walden, escaped, and from her the pond was named. It has been conjectured that when the hill shook these stones rolled down its side and became the present shore. It is very certain, at any rate, that once there was no pond here, and now there is one; and this Indian fable does not in any respect conflict with the account of that ancient settler whom I have mentioned, who remembers so well when he first came here with his divining-rod, saw a thin vapor rising from the sward, and the hazel pointed steadily downward, and he concluded to dig a well here. As for the stones, many still think that they are hardly to be accounted for by the action of the waves on these hills; but I observe that the surrounding hills are remarkably full of the same kind of stones, so that they have been obliged to pile them up in walls on both sides of the railroad cut nearest the pond; and, moreover, there are most stones where the shore is most abrupt; so that, unfortunately, it is no longer a mystery to me. I detect the paver. If the name was not derived from that of some English locality -- Saffron Walden, for instance -- one might suppose that it was called originally "Walled-in" Pond.


title: Walden Pond

text: Also in "The Ponds," Thoreau describes incorporeal experiences around the water, both experiences related to him by others and his own. Thoreau, who was well read and a transcendentalist, and therefore presumably intimately familiar with Romanticism, relates the stories in a way that could be argued to interpret or reveal the pond as the locale of the Grail Legend in the Americas. In the following passage, Walden Pond's vanishing treasure chest echoes the protagonist's fleeting encounter with the grail in Wolfram von Eschenbach's German romance "Parzival", and the pond's canoe is reminiscent of the boat in "A Fairy Tale". (Goethe, who was a Classicist, not a Romanticist, positively viewed "Parzival".) Thoreau wrote:


title: Walden Pond

text: In addition to being a popular swimming destination in the summer, Walden Pond State Reservation provides opportunities for boating, hiking, picnicking, and fishing. There is a replica of Thoreau's cabin available for viewing. The reservation is open year-round for day use, but does not allow camping overnight.


title: Walden Pond

text: In 2015, Massachusetts state conservation officials warned swimmers to stay out of Walden Pond, "after a routine test there revealed a high level of potentially dangerous bacteria." These bacteria included enterococcus, "a pathogen that in severe cases can cause digestive ailments including vomiting and diarrhea." Swimming was allowed in subsequent years.


title: Walden Pond

text: Walden Pond inspired the naming of the American film company Walden Media and is a frequent subject of professional and amateur photographers.


title: Walden Pond

text: Walden Pond appears in the video game "Fallout 4" where Thoreau's cabin is preserved. The pond also serves as the backdrop for the game 'Walden, a game' where players assume the role of author Henry David Thoreau during his time living at the pond in the 1840s. The game was in development for more than ten years and is currently available on Mac, PC, and PS4.


title: Red cabbage

text: The red cabbage (purple-leaved varieties of "Brassica oleracea" Capitata Group) is a kind of cabbage, also known as Blaukraut after preparation. Its leaves are colored dark red/purple. However, the plant changes its color according to the pH value of the soil, due to a pigment belonging to anthocyanins. In acidic soils, the leaves grow more reddish, in neutral soils they will grow more purple, while an alkaline soil will produce rather greenish-yellow coloured cabbages. This explains the fact that the same plant is known by different colours in various regions. It can be found in all Europe, throughout the Americas, in China and especially in Africa.


title: Red cabbage

text: The juice of red cabbage can be used as a home-made pH indicator, turning red in acid and green/yellow in basic solutions. On cooking, red cabbage will normally turn blue; it is necessary to add vinegar or acidic fruit to the pot to retain the cabbage's red color.


title: Red cabbage

text: Red cabbage needs well fertilized soil and sufficient humidity to grow. It is a seasonal plant which is seeded in spring and harvested in late autumn. Red cabbage is a better keeper than its "white" relatives and does not need to be converted to sauerkraut to last the winter.


title: Red cabbage

text: Red cabbage is often used raw for salads and coleslaw. This vegetable can be eaten cooked. It is the traditional accompanying side dish paired with many German meals, notably meat dishes like Sauerbraten or Döner. At Christmas it can be spiced, braised and served as an accompaniment to seasonal roast goose or turkey. Often apples are added to give it sweet-sour taste.


title: Red cabbage

text: It is recommended to start red cabbage seeds indoors 4 weeks before the last frost. Sow in containers that allow for movement of water through the bottom of a cell. Popular seedling starting containers are peat pots, egg cartons, plug trays or milk cartons. Once the seedlings grow to about tall, and have developed their first leaves, they can be hardened off and moved outside for transplanting. Red cabbage prefers climates that remain moist and cool for most of its vegetative growth stage, so they can be placed in the ground shortly after the last frost, while the spring is still cool. The cabbage plants can be spaced about from one another. They will need watering often but are otherwise low maintenance plants.


title: Red cabbage

text: Red cabbage contains an anthocyanin-based dye that can be used as a pH indicator. It is red, pink, or magenta in acids, (pH < 7), purple in neutral solutions (pH ≈7), and ranges from blue to green to yellow in alkaline solutions (pH > 7).


title: Red cabbage

text: Cooked red cabbage is 91% water, 7% carbohydrates, 1% protein, and contains negligible fat (table). It has a high content of vitamin C and vitamin K, containing 44% and 72%, respectively, of the Daily Value (DV) per 100-gram amount, and is a moderate source of vitamin B6 (17% DV) (table).


title: Ibrahim Sangaré (Ivorian footballer)

text: Ibrahim Sangaré (born 2 December 1997) is an Ivorian professional footballer who plays as a defensive midfielder for PSV and the Ivory Coast national team.


title: Ibrahim Sangaré (Ivorian footballer)

text: After starting his youth career with Ivorian clubs Tout Puissant Koumassi and AS Denguélé, Sangaré debuted for Toulouse in a 0–0 tie with Angers on 22 October 2016.


title: Ibrahim Sangaré (Ivorian footballer)

text: On 3 December 2021, Sangaré was named the Eredivisie player of the month for November 2021. He was also included in the team of the month for October 2021 and December 2021 respectively.


title: Ibrahim Sangaré (Ivorian footballer)

text: On 7 August 2022, amid interest from several top European clubs, PSV announced that Sangaré had extended his contract with the club until 2027. On 16 August 2022, Sangaré scored in a 2–2 draw away to Rangers in the first leg of their UEFA Champions League play-off round match.


title: Ibrahim Sangaré (Ivorian footballer)

text: Sangaré represented Ivory Coast U20 at the 2015 Toulon Tournament, and the Ivory Coast U23s in 2 friendlies.


title: Carmen Sandiego (video game series)

text: Carmen Sandiego is a series of American educational mystery video games that spawned an edutainment franchise of the same name. The game released in 1985, "Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?", started off both the video game series and the franchise as a whole, which has continued up to the present day. Each game of the series has a particular theme and subject, where the player must use their knowledge to find Carmen Sandiego or any of her innumerable henchmen. This series was originally owned by Broderbund, but is now owned by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Since its initial release the series has won over 125 awards and accolades.


title: Carmen Sandiego (video game series)

text: In 1983, the founders of Broderbund Software, Gary and Doug Carlston, publicly discussed a plan to make edutainment one of their company's three focus areas. The character of Carmen Sandiego was developed by David Siefkin, who drafted the first script of the game for Broderbund beside the Strawberry Canyon swimming pool of the University of California at Berkeley in 1984. Siefkin combined the character's first and last names from the Brazilian singer and actress Carmen Miranda and the city of San Diego, California. Carmen Sandiego was just one of several villains in the original script. She was chosen for the title role by the early project manager Katherine Bird because her name suggested mystery and exoticism, as well as humor. Siefkin departed the project shortly after writing the first script to become a Foreign Service Officer for the U.S. State Department, and served as a press and cultural attaché in several of the countries featured in the game.


title: Carmen Sandiego (video game series)

text: The first game in the series released in 1985, "Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?", was designed and written by Gene Portwood and Lauren Elliott, and programmed by Dane Bigham. It established an original formula that was followed very faithfully in all "Carmen Sandiego" games. This formula involves a series of missions in which the computer player tracks and apprehends each of Carmen Sandiego's underlings. Each case begins with the player being alerted that a spectacular theft has been committed. Immediately transported to the scene of the crime, the player must find clues to infer the suspect's next destination and to create an arrest warrant describing the guilty party's attributes. The culprit travels through a series of different locations around the world in an attempt to shake off any pursuers, so the player will have to continue tracking the thief for some time. The game continues in this manner until the player catches up with the culprit, at which point the thief is arrested, and if the warrant is correct, the player puts the thief in ACME prison. As more and more thieves are arrested, the player rises up through ACME's ranks, and the later cases assigned to the player will become more difficult. On the final case, the perpetrator is revealed to be Carmen Sandiego herself, and the game ends when the player successfully captures her and is later inducted into the ACME Hall of Fame.


title: Carmen Sandiego (video game series)

text: With the release of "Word Detective", "Math Detective", and "Great Chase Through Time", Broderbund began to abandon the original formula in 1997. "Word Detective" and "Math Detective" involves the player infiltrating V.I.L.E. hideouts around the world and therefore maintain the globe-hopping element of previous games. However, "Great Chase Through Time" completely abandoned the series' original formula and has the player spending each mission in one time period, where the goal is to create makeshift solutions to any historical problems that the theft has caused and find the thief whom Carmen Sandiego has dropped off. The final mission of the game involves the player to track down Carmen Sandiego similar to the traditional formula, although the player does not construct a warrant.


title: Carmen Sandiego (video game series)

text: The games created by Broderbund featured silly humor with a distinctive style of word play with extensive use of puns, rhymes, and alliteration. This style of word play was also present, in varying degrees, in all three "Carmen Sandiego" television shows.


title: Carmen Sandiego (video game series)

text: Gag names ("Hardley Worthit", "Rob M. Blind", "Ruth Less", "Joy Ryder", "M. T. Pockets", etc.) were quite frequently used in the games, often to the point where Carmen herself seemed to be the only person without such a name. Clues about the suspect's next destination often used extended puns (example: "I pumped her for information, but her unrefined answer only suggested a crude plan to visit oil wells near Ahvaz.") or rhyming couplets. Even as the games began to abandon their original formula, this word play was still retained. For example, a news report on massive blackouts from "Carmen Sandiego Math Detective" quotes an official as saying, "We're taking a dim view of the situation."


title: Carmen Sandiego (video game series)

text: Although Carmen's V.I.L.E. gang members were often portrayed as cartoonish buffoons, they seemed to be capable of "stealing" landmarks, cities, national parks, notable cultural exports (such as "stealing all the sushi from Japan") and the like. Her thieves have also been known to steal geographic features and even nonexistent map features such as the Mason–Dixon line. Some thefts were even "non sequiturs" based on word play, such as "robbing the banks of the Nile," or plays on the word "steal" such as "stealing the show."


title: Carmen Sandiego (video game series)

text: The original version was released in 1985. The goal of this game is to track Carmen's villains around the world and arrest them and later ultimately arrest Carmen herself. In order to make an arrest the user had to have a warrant for the correct villain. The player began the game by visiting the city and country where the crime took place, and then obtaining hints from the bystanders on where the thief went next, leading them on a chase around the world to find the thief before they "get away." In the process, the player collected clues about the villain’s identity to determine who the culprit is. When the player reached their final destination, the player presented the accurate warrant to arrest the villain.


title: Carmen Sandiego (video game series)

text: The deluxe version was released in 1992 and featured additional animation and a reworked interface. Sarah Nade was added to this version of Carmen Sandiego Software. CD-ROM versions for DOS and Macintosh were released in 1993, and a Windows version was released in 1994. The Windows version was later re-released as "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? Classic Edition".


title: Carmen Sandiego (video game series)

text: The reboot version was released in 1996 with a new gameplay interface and animated characters. This version features QuickTime videos of Lynne Thigpen reprising her role as "The Chief" from the eponymous PBS game show, a role she would also play in the "U.S.A." and "Time" reboot games released during that same period.


title: Carmen Sandiego (video game series)

text: This title was released in 1986. Similar to "World", the goal of this game is to track Carmen's villains around the United States, and arrest them and later ultimately arrest Carmen herself. In order to make an arrest, the user must have a warrant and, obviously, it has to be the correct warrant. The user gets information from the bystanders on where the thief went next and what the thief looks like. When the user reaches his/her final destination where the villain is going to pass off the loot to Carmen, he/she has to arrest them.


title: Carmen Sandiego (video game series)

text: "Where in Europe Is Carmen Sandiego?" is one of the many games in the Carmen Sandiego series. It focuses on the European history and geography. The gameplay is very similar to that of "Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?", meaning that the player is sent to a location, has to find clues to lead them to the next location, and builds up a warrant along the way. This was the first of the games to have a database built into the crime computer, where players could narrow down their next stop by entering information such as flag colors, currency used, and languages mentioned. Production of the game was discontinued in 1990 due to the fall of the Eastern Bloc and drastic border and government changes that resulted.


title: Carmen Sandiego (video game series)

text: The original version was released in 1989. The goal of this game is to track Carmen's villains through history and arrest them and later ultimately capture Carmen herself.


title: Carmen Sandiego (video game series)

text: The reboot version was released in 1997 and later renamed "Carmen Sandiego's Great Chase Through Time". This version was heavily influenced by and features villains from the short-lived PBS game show.


title: Carmen Sandiego (video game series)

text: This game is widely considered the most informational game of the entire series. Though it may contain some minute differences from the main series, it remains true to it. This game's aim is to capture Carmen's gang of thieves, one by one until all of her henchmen have been caught. This is done by searching for clues, trailing them, identifying them and finally, bringing them in for trial. After all of the henchmen have been caught, the player must then go after Carmen herself. One of the main differences is that the player can receive in-game help.


title: Carmen Sandiego (video game series)

text: The intention of this game is to teach astronomy. The player flies in a rocket ship throughout the solar system, interrogating various alien lifeforms in order to solve the theft of an important part of the solar system (e.g. Saturn's rings). There was only a limited amount of fuel available for travel. So if the player did not ask the right questions on the right planets, or followed the wrong clues, the criminal(s) would get away, leaving the player to start anew with another crime. This version is somewhat similar to "Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?". Kneemoi was introduced in this installment.


title: Carmen Sandiego (video game series)

text: This title was released in 1995 and features characters from the "Earth" animated series. It uses a simplified version of the standard gameplay designed for younger players.


title: Carmen Sandiego (video game series)

text: This title was released in 1997. This game is intended to teach language arts for kids age 9-12. The game features Chase Devineaux.


title: Carmen Sandiego (video game series)

text: In the game Carmen Sandiego has invented a machine called the Babble-On Machine, and the user, playing the role of Agent 13, has to thwart her plans and free all the other agents that have been captured by Carmen.


title: Carmen Sandiego (video game series)

text: This title was released in 1998. This game is intended to teach Math for kids age 9-12. The game features Chase Devineaux.


title: Carmen Sandiego (video game series)

text: In the game, Carmen Sandiego has invented a machine called the Quantum Crystallizer, and the user, playing the role of Agent 9, has to thwart her plans and restore 12 landmarks that Carmen has shrunk with the machine.


title: Carmen Sandiego (video game series)

text: This game teaches multiple subjects for kids ages 9–12. It was also the first title in the "Carmen Sandiego" series to be released by The Learning Company (formerly SoftKey). The game features Chase Devineaux.


title: Carmen Sandiego (video game series)

text: In the game, Carmen Sandiego has invented KnowBots to steal knowledge and the player(s) have to try and thwart her plans. This game is set up much like the Carmen Sandiego game shows on PBS and is the only multiplayer game of the series.


title: Carmen Sandiego (video game series)

text: Carmen Sandiego appears in the ending scene of "The ClueFinders: Mystery Mansion Arcade". She serves as the central antagonist of this title. Carmen was voiced by Christine Crawford, who also voiced her in Treasures of Knowledge.


title: Carmen Sandiego (video game series)

text: This game, released in 2004, is the first in the series to give the player complete control of a character in a 3-dimensional world. The avatar, Cole, must maneuver through stages including a museum in New York City, the beaches of New Zealand, and Machu Picchu. The player fights against Carmen's robots and spirits to prevent her from stealing an enchanted diamond, the repository of all the knowledge of the nations.