"A ruler who would harm his fellow countrymen for his own personal gain has little right to call himself a ruler of anyone but himself."
"A ruler who cannot forgive his enemies is a ruler who will one day have no allies."
Vlad III Tepes, nicknamed "Vlad Sfânt," ("Vlad the Saint") and "Vlad the Forgiver" though he was never formally pronounced a saint by any major denomination. Vlad was known as the most magnanimous of all Romanian kings. Later nationalistic scholarship would build a cult of personality around him and proclaim him "Vlad Dumnezeulea," "Vlad, son of God," cementing his role as a christ-figure in the Romanian Orthodox Church, which for a long time was considered a heretic branch of Eastern Orthodoxy.
The Romanian Church considers Vlad to be akin to the second coming of Christ himself, although the official position of the Church is that Christ merely "directly spoke through him" and thus he was not the actual second coming. It is for this and other reasons that Romania is today the only theocratic state in Europe, not counting Malta and the Holy See
"A ruler who cannot forgive his enemies is a ruler who will one day have no allies."
Vlad III Tepes, nicknamed "Vlad Sfânt," ("Vlad the Saint") and "Vlad the Forgiver" though he was never formally pronounced a saint by any major denomination. Vlad was known as the most magnanimous of all Romanian kings. Later nationalistic scholarship would build a cult of personality around him and proclaim him "Vlad Dumnezeulea," "Vlad, son of God," cementing his role as a christ-figure in the Romanian Orthodox Church, which for a long time was considered a heretic branch of Eastern Orthodoxy.
The Romanian Church considers Vlad to be akin to the second coming of Christ himself, although the official position of the Church is that Christ merely "directly spoke through him" and thus he was not the actual second coming. It is for this and other reasons that Romania is today the only theocratic state in Europe, not counting Malta and the Holy See