DOAMNA CLARA ȘI PAPA INOCENȚIU AL VI-LEA ÎN VARA ANULUI 1360: ÎNAINTE ȘI DUPĂ APARIȚIA MITROPOLIEI UNGROVLAHIEI
LADY CLARA AND POPE INNOCENT VI IN THE SUMMER OF 1360: BEFORE AND AFTER THE EMERGENCE OF THE METROPOLITANATE OF UNGROVLACHIA

Summary/Abstract: Lady Clara of Wallachia († post April 1370), the wife of Alexander weida and the noverca of Wladislav I of Wallachia, remains one of the most controversial figures in the medieval history of the Romanians, irrespective of gender. Two coeval sources shed new light on her identity and role. On 13 August 1360, Pope Innocent VI addressed her as Clare de Vngaria, Wayuodisse Wlacie. At roughly the same time (in the byzantine year 6868; i.e., 1 September 1359 – 31 August 1360), Clara’s daughter, Anna, tsarina of Bulgarian Vidin, called herself ҃т[оо]роднаа (‘born from holy kindred’/‘born in holiness’). Because there were no saints neither among the Assenids (the dynasty of her husband, and first-degree cousin on her father’s side, John Stratsmir), nor among the Basarabs (the dynasty, in the making, of her father Alexander), Anna had, on her mother sides, royal Hungarian blood (Arpadian or Angevine) and de Vngaria stood, in Clara’s case, for ‘from the royal House of Hungary’. These genealogical features put into perspective the genesis of the Metropolitanate of Ungrovlachia (May 1359) that occurred during intense crusader and Church union talks between the Papacy in Avignon and Byzantium (Emperor John V Palaeologous and Ecumenical Patriarch Callistus I), with Hungary and Wallachia, two reluctant allies, “in the middle”. At about the same time (after June 1359 – prior to August 1360), King Louis I of Anjou, presumably Clara’s brother, also had to entrust the disputed Banate of Severin to voivode Alexander of Wallachia (either Clara’s first and only husband or her second one), most likely in exchange for Wallachian’s non-intervention in Louis’ conflict with the Wallachian rebels in Moldavia.

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