Global InformationIacob Heraclid information
| Iacob Heraclid (Despot Vodă) | |
|---|---|
 Heraclid's portrait as Pater Patriae, on 1563 coinage | |
| Prince (King) of Moldavia | |
| Reign | November 18, 1561 – November 4, 1563 |
| Predecessor | Alexandru Lăpușneanu |
| Successor | Ștefan Tomșa |
| Born | Jacob Basilicos 1527 Birkirkara, Malta, Kingdom of Sicily |
| Died | November 5, 1563 (aged 35–36) Areni field, Suceava, Moldavia |
| Spouse | Gilette d'André (to 1554) |
| Issue | Adoptive son (died ca. 1553) Cyprian Bazylik (adopted) Natural son or daughter (died 1563) |
| Father | John Heraclides Basilicò |
| Religion | Catholic (to ca. 1556) Lutheran (1556–1557?) Calvinist (1557–1561?) Unitarian (1561–1563?) No affiliation (1563) |
| Signature |  |
Iacob Heraclid (or Eraclid; Greek: Ἰάκωβος Ἡρακλείδης; 1527 – November 5, 1563), born Basilicò and also known as Iacobus Heraclides, Heraclid Despotul, or Despot Vodă ("The Voivode Despot"), was a Greek Maltese soldier, adventurer and intellectual, who reigned as Prince of Moldavia from November 1561 to November 1563. He is remembered as a pioneer of the Protestant faith in Eastern Europe, a champion of Renaissance humanism, and a founder of academic life in Moldavia. Active within the Greek diaspora in several countries, he was a student of Hermodorus Lestarchus, and worked as a scribe alongside his cousin, Iakobos Diassorinos. Heraclid forged his genealogy several times, claiming to be a member of the Branković dynasty; he was more reliably related to the Byzantine nobility in Rhodes, and claimed the titular lordship of Samos. In the late 1540s and early '50s, he studied medicine at the University of Montpellier, and married a local. A duelist and alleged infanticide, Heraclid fled over the border with the Holy Roman Empire before he could be executed for murder. He was slowly won over by the Reformation, serving the Protestant princes of the Upper Saxon Circle.
During his travels in the Habsburg Netherlands, Heraclid was admitted to the court of Emperor Charles V, serving under him in the Last Italian War. He was made a Count Palatine and became a recognized authority on military matters, authoring several books in Neo-Latin. Returning to civilian life, he focused his attention on missionary activity, and networked with the leading Lutherans in Wittenberg, though he began sympathizing more with Calvinism. With recommendations from Philip Melanchthon, he traveled through Northern Europe and had a spell teaching mathematics at the University of Rostock. He eventually reached Poland and Lithuania by way of Prussia, focusing on a project to unite the local Evangelical and Calvinist Churches. His own Calvinism wavered at the court of Mikołaj "the Red" Radziwiłł: Heraclid turned to Radical Reformation, and adopted a Unitarian position, without abjuring publicly.
Networking between the Habsburg monarchy and Polish nobility, "Despot" was able to credibly claim the throne of Moldavia. Involved in an unsuccessful plot to assassinate the titular Prince, Alexandru Lăpușneanu, he returned with a mercenary army, winning at Verbia and taking Suceava. Upon gaining control of the country, he issued an edict of toleration, which favored the brief ascendancy of Moldavian Protestants. Heraclid never explicitly stated his own affiliation, appeasing the dominant Moldavian Orthodox Church and performing the duties of an Orthodox monarch. He also formulated a political program which announced Romanian nationalism, promising to conquer Wallachia and Transylvania; he saw himself as a vassal of the Holy Roman Empire, and made several attempts to capture parts of the Eastern Hungarian Kingdom in conjunction with the Habsburgs. Proclaiming himself a "King" or "Palatine" rather than Prince, he invested efforts in a dynastic union with Wallachia, which he then briefly invaded. Despot's long-term goal was to obtain independence from the Ottoman Empire following a European-led "crusade".
Several religious controversies contributed to social unrest in Moldavia. Despot's prohibition of divorce, his lapses into Protestant iconoclasm and his fiscal policies all served to alienate the public; this conflict was aggravated by his plan to marry a Calvinist, which opened the prospect of a Protestant dynasty. Weakened by Despot's disputes with Olbracht Łaski and the Zaporozhian Cossacks, the regime was brought down by the pretender Ștefan Tomșa. After a months-long siege in Suceava, Despot surrendered and was immediately killed, probably by Tomșa's own hand. His Reformation project only survived through the small learning center he had set up at Cotnari, being dismantled in the 1580s; his family was decimated and scattered, though one adoptive son, Cyprian Bazylik, achieved fame in his own right. Despot's reign was cursed by the early Moldavian historians, but his overall contribution to Moldavia's Westernization, particularly cultural, is viewed by later scholars as meritorious. He reemerged as a favorite subject in modern Romanian literature, inspiring an 1879 drama by Vasile Alecsandri, and also appears in Maltese literature.