Nikolai Spathari

thumb|Travels through Siberia to the Chinese Borders, published in St. Petersburg in 1882.

Nikolai Spathari (; 1636–1708), also known as Nicolae Milescu and Nicolae Milescu Spătaru (, first name also Neculai, signing in Latin as Nicolaus Spadarius Moldavo-Laco, ), or Spătarul Milescu-Cârnu (trans.: "Chancellor Milescu the Snub-nosed"), was a Moldavian-born writer, diplomat and traveler, who lived and worked in the Tsardom of Russia. He spoke nine languages: Romanian, Russian, Latin, both Attic and Modern Greek, French, German, Turkish and Swedish. One of his grandsons was the Spătar (Chancellor) Yuri Stefanovich, who came to Russia in 1711 with Dimitrie Cantemir.

Early life

Spathari was born into a Greek family. His prosonym Moldavo-Lacone (Moldavan-Laconian) emphasizes his origins. The name Milescu was adopted by his parents when they settled in Milești. Prof. L. Turdeanu-Cartojan discovered at Oxford his autobiography, written in Greek (Λαζάρου, Lazarou).

A boyar born in Vaslui, Milescu studied at the Patriarchate College of Istanbul and, after returning to Iași, was appointed Chancellor for the Moldavian Prince Gheorghe Ștefan. In 1660–1664, he acted as representative of his country with its Ottoman overlord, and then as envoy to Berlin and Stockholm. He followed Gheorghe Ștefan in his exile to Stockholm and Szczecin (1664–1667) and visited Louis XIV's France in an attempt to get the king to assist him in creating an anti-Ottoman alliance.

Exile

Milescu had ambitions of his own, and conspired against Prince Ștefăniță Lupu. As punishment, Ștefăniță ordered Milescu's nose to be cut off (the reason for Milescu's moniker). According to the unlikely account of chronicler Ion Neculce: "After [being mutilated], Nicolae the Snub-nosed fled to the German Land and found himself a doctor there, who repeatedly drew blood out of his cheeks and sculptured his nose, and thus day by day the blood coagulated, leading to his healing".

Milescu again left for Istanbul, where he received a letter from the Russian Tsar Aleksey I, who appointed him chief translator and diplomat at the Foreign Ministry in 1671. Milescu arrived in Russia together with Patriarch Dositheos II of Jerusalem. In 1674, he is shown as leading negotiations with both Wallachia and Moldavia, trying to rally them in the Russian-led anti-Ottoman projects. In 1695, Milescu took part in Peter the Great's Azov campaigns.

One of Milescu's tasks was to reinforce the legitimacy of the Romanov dynasty. To this end, he asserted that the Tsar was a successor to both the Roman and Byzantine emperors. In Vasiliologion ("Book of Rulers", 1674), he wrote that tsarist rule was derived from God, whose representative on earth was the Tsar. The work included short biographies of famous rulers, culminating with Michael Romanov and Aleksey, but also including Ivan the Terrible, Dmitry Donskoy, Alexander Nevsky, Byzantine emperors Constantine and Theodosius, and Augustus and Julius Caesar from Rome. Significantly, he included the feeble-minded Feodor Ivanovich, whose reign was considerably less illustrious, but who had to be mentioned in order to demonstrate dynastic continuity.

thumb|A bust of Nicolae Milescu in the [[Alley of Classics, Chișinău|Alley of Classics of Chișinău]]

In China

In 1675, he was named ambassador of the Russian Empire to Beijing, the capital of Qing China, returning in 1678. At the head of a 150-strong expedition that had a military component (meant to fend off possible attacks by a hostile indigenous population), Milescu had as his main tasks the settlement of several border incidents between Russia and China, the establishment of permanent trade relations with China, and the survey of the newly incorporated Russian lands along the Amur River. The previous Muscovite embassy to China, led by Fyodor Baykov in 1656-56, had failed to achieve these objectives.

The embassy behave more as a geographical expedition, as well as a military reconnaissance mission, ethnographic research trip, and diplomatic encounter. It lasted more than two years, in which around 200 men crossed Russia and China.

Unlike previous Russians who had gone through Mongolia, Milescu chose to travel through Siberia as far as Nerchinsk, directly north of Peking. Upon reaching Yeniseysk, Milescu sent one of his men, Ignatiy Milovanov, to the Chinese court in order to inform the Kangxi Emperor about the purpose of their embassy. Milovanov was the first European known to have crossed the Amur (Heilong) River, reaching Beijing by the shortest route possible. Milescu followed the same route to the Chinese border, and established his camp on the Nen River in Heilongjiang, waiting for news from Milovanov. The latter returned to the camp on 18 February and, taking Milescu's report to the Tsar with him, proceeded to Moscow. Milescu, on the other hand, crossed into Beijing via Hebei in the middle of May, after being held up for two months at Kalgan (modern Zhangjiakou). Here he was able to communicate in Latin with the Jesuit Ferdinand Verbiest. His diplomacy proved unsuccessful, and he returned to Siberia by the same route in Spring 1677.

Achievements

thumb|Nicolae Milescu Spătaru on a 1998 stamp of Moldova

Milescu is the author of one of the first Russian works on arithmetic, "Arithmologion", which was written in 1672, based on his own Greek original. The manuscript was preserved in the Chudov Monastery, till it was discovered by church historian Nikolay Kedrov.

In his road journal, later published under the title Travels through Siberia to the Chinese borders, Milescu correctly described the middle course of the Ob, Irtysh, and Angara rivers. He assumed the Ob to have its source in Lake Teletskoye in the Altai Mountains. He was also the first person to describe Lake Baikal and all the rivers feeding the lake, and the first to point out Baikal's unfathomable depth. His works became popular with Russian elites, being found in their collections for the next century. one in Chișinău named "Strada Nicolae Milescu Spătaru", one in Constanța named "Strada Nicolae Milescu", etc. Also there are scientific and education institutions named in Milescu's honor, among them a lyceum in Chișinău, Liceul Teoretic "Nicolae Milescu Spătarul", and the Association of Scientists of Moldova "N. Spătaru Milescu". Several busts of Milescu are across Romanian and Moldovan cities. The public library in Vaslui, his birthplace, bears his name. Also in Moldova several stamps with Milescu on them were issued. In 2011, the National Bank of Romania issued a silver coin dedicated to the 375th anniversary of Nicolae Milescu's birth.

Notes

References

Michael A. Pesenson and Jennifer B. Spock, "Historical Writing in Russia and Ukraine", in The Oxford History of Historical Writing: Volume 3: 1400-1800, ed. José Rabasa, Andrew Feldherr, Daniel Woolf, Masayuki Sato, Grant Hardy. Oxford University Press, 2012,