Ruga unui prelat către Papă: despre o căsătorie angevino-nemanidă de la mijlocul secolului al XIV-lea
A Prelate’s Plea to the Pope: On an Angevine-Nemanid Marriage from the Mid-1300s

Summary/Abstract: An illuminated manuscript from the well‑known Bolognese school, preserved in Vienna, contains on its first folio the coeval (partial) copy of a letter sent by an unnamed prelate to an unnamed pope. The prelate requested that the pontiff should approve the marriage between Stephen Urosh V, the son of Emperor Stephen Urosh IV Dushan and a relative of King Louis I of Anjou, because this was for the greater good and for the protection of the Angevine monarch in Buda. Subject to more or less debatable editions and interpretations since the 1990s (with the exception of Sima Ćirković’s belated analysis in 2007), the letter and the manuscript itself remain a most valuable source of information. Their survey and a critical edition of the epistle leads to the dating of the matrimonial project to late 1352/ early 1353, at the beginning of the pontificate of Innocent VI. As already indicated by Ćirković, the bride, and Louis’ relative, was Ancha, the daughter of Alexander of Wallachia and Lady Clara.

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