Rehabilitating Vlad the Impaler: The Extreme End of Revisionist Church History

https://www.christianpost.com/news/historical-dracula-was-actually-a-committed-christian.html

I've written on more than one occasion about the growth of Right-wing revisionism surrounding the Crusades. When I was growing up the Crusades were universally condemned within Evangelical and Fundamentalist circles. It was but another of the abominable episodes connected to the false Church of Rome.

 

But over the past twenty or thirty years this history has been revised and re-written and there are numerous hack historians like Raymond Ibrahim that have managed to cash in on this by writing ridiculous books and then being given platforms to promote them on Christian radio. Programmes like LPR's Issues Etc. are always happy to give Ibrahim (and those like him) an opportunity to spread his lies – and the heresies upon which they necessarily rest.

Ibrahim is not a Protestant nor an expert on Islam. He is but one of many that has some tenuous connections and exposure to Islamic culture and thus purports to be an expert on it. Within the Orthodox sphere, the battles against Islam are remembered with great fondness and are subject to romanticism. Indeed the long sordid history of internecine violence, wars, and political intrigues that dominate the Byzantine sphere are often lionised. The New Testament has very little influence on their thinking as they are dominated by tradition – and an ethno-political understanding of Christianity.

If Evangelical audiences probed this a little more, they might understand that Ibrahim is not the most reliable source when it comes to such questions and how these events should be interpreted.

Blindly, many Protestants have taken up these false narratives and by means of revisionism have recast not only the Crusades, but now (through the likes of Ibrahim) the sadistic and abhorrent conduct of a monster like the Vlad Țepeș, the Impaler.

The Inquisition is about the only thing left that still gives some pause, and there are hints of its rehabilitation in the works as well. After all, McCarthy's red baiting and his investigations were tantamount to an inquisition – just one that did not involve being burned at the stake. We just witnessed another iteration of this kind of inquisitorial approach with the recent attempt by the GOP to take down two Ivy League presidents and the head of MIT.

McCarthyism is still celebrated. I constantly hear Christians defending this shameful and farcical period of American history and as many within the Christian Right are abandoning the Classical Liberalism they once championed and turning to authoritarianism, we shouldn't be surprised. It's a means for a shameless and vocal political minority to wield power.

Ibrahim's is an insidious and false read of history. It is promoted by those trapped in a Faustian bargain – they functionally worship Satan (by means of his nation-beast proxies) in order to attain power – taking the offer that Christ rejected. As such, the end justifies the means and so if a sadistic mass murderer held on to 'Christian territory' (itself a false assumption) then his brutality is justified.

Dracul can signify dragon or devil and Vlad the Impaler was the son of Vlad II 'Dracul' (or the Dragon) and hence he was sometimes known as Dracul-a. The association was not sinister in the way it is perceived today due to Stoker's novel and its influence on pop culture. The Order of the Dragon was an order of knights created in 1408 to stop the Ottomans and defend Europe. Sigismund the Holy Roman Emperor who founded it would go on to burn Jan Hus a few years later at Constance. Vlad II picked up the 'dragon' appellation because he was a member of the order.

As Western Europe was in the flower of Renaissance, the Orthodox world was on the cusp of its Dark Ages. Byzantium was in a state of collapse and southeastern Europe was the front line in the battle to stop the Turkish advance – but they failed. The Turks overran the Balkans and most of Hungary and were not driven back until the end of the seventeenth century. Even then, the Balkans were not finally liberated until the early twentieth century. There is a great deal of bitterness because as the Orthodox world emerged with the help of the Third Rome (Moscow), they found that as they suffered for centuries and paid a terrible price – the West had left them behind and had become wealthy and powerful.

For Romanians, Vlad Țepeș or Vlad the Impaler is a kind of patriotic figure, a hero in their wars against the Turks. In late medieval Eastern Europe, in a world lacking security and fluid borders only strongmen could hold things together. This was after all the same period of the Condottieri in Italy – warlords and Mafiosi who in some cases became nobles and formal rulers.

The same is still true in many parts of the world.

The man who provides security is a hero even if his means of doing so results in rivers of blood and piles of corpses. So it was with the Impaler, Vlad Țepeș.

He used terror to cow not just the invading Turks but his own subjects. The brutal method of impalement was his chosen means of execution and even allowing for the possibility of exaggeration on the part of his enemies, by all accounts the man was a depraved sadist. Ibrahim thinks that a Turk-slayer is automatically a Christian hero – which merely reveals the bankruptcy of Ibrahim's Christian profession. But he was not merely the killer of Turks. He murdered thousands upon thousands of his own people and seemed to have a special hatred for the Transylvanian Saxons, the Germans who had settled the region in previous centuries. He was a monster, pure and simple in the mold of Stalin and other such mass murderers.

It's interesting how Right-wing thinkers decry relativism when it is used against them but will quickly embrace it when it suits their purposes. The argument that he was a man of his times functioning under an accepted moral code is bogus. There were Christians in the fifteenth century that condemned such conduct. The 'everyone was doing it' argument is not a Christian one and it's clear there are errors in how Ibrahim is framing the events and he repeatedly relies on speculation and assumption – as seen in his attempt to blame Vlad's propensity for impalement on the Turks.

Vlad the Impaler knew nothing of Christ and neither does Ibrahim. The fact that he's given a platform is a sure sign of judgment as all discernment has gone.

When Nicolae Ceaușescu departed Bucharest in December 1989, the people said 'The dragon has fled'. Dracul or the devil has fled.

Indeed, the dragon is now once again in the Church. In Ibrahim's case (or one might say if he had his way) it would literally be the case.