With an almost entirely religious purpose, that of defending the Church from the Hussite heretics, and against the backdrop of several wars for possession of Bosnia, with the help of a large part of the Hungarian nobility, led by the Garai and Celje families, Sigismund I of Luxembourg and his second wife, Queen Barbara von Cilli, created on 12 (perhaps 13) December 1408, most likely at Viglas Castle, the Order of the Upside-Down Dragon. However, the date of the Order’s foundation is still a matter of debate. Some historians credit the date to 1 December 1387, others to 1418. The Order of the Dragon adopted as its emblem the agonising dragon overturned on itself with a cross in the centre. This was intended to signify the victory of Catholic orthodoxy over heresy and evil and the defeat of infidels and heretics that would soon follow. Its members wore the emblem around their necks as a pendant and wore a long scarlet tunic and a green cloak (symbolising the dragon’s skin and its bloody belly) fastened with a buckle over their armour. The authentic insignia of the Order are now on display at the Ehemals Staatiche Museum in Berlin and the Bayeriches Nationalmuseum in Munich.
The German name for this order was ‘Drachenordens’ and in Latin ‘Societatis draconistrarum or draconistarum’.
Its deeds, written in Latin, call it a society (societas), whose members bear the signum draconis, but do not give it any official name. Contemporary documents, however, refer to the order by a variety of similar though unofficial names, such as Gesellschaft mit dem Drachen, Divisa seu Societas Draconica, Societas Draconica seu Draconistarum and Fraternitas Draconum or Draconis. The Order was, to a certain extent, modelled on the previous Hungarian monarchical order, the Order of St. George.
The Order of the Dragon, which some confuse with a simple decoration, was indeed an institution, just like the other orders of knighthood that arose in medieval times. The creation of the order was an example within a broader fashion of founding knightly orders during the 14th and early 15th centuries, not infrequently devoted to organising ‘crusades’, especially after the disaster of the Battle of Nicopolis (1396). Sigismund’s order was particularly inspired by the Order of St. George of 1318 (Societas militae Sancti Georgii), founded by King Charles I of Hungary in 1318, the grandfather of Sigismund’s first wife, Maria.
Another influential model may have been the Sicilian Order of the Ship, founded in 1381.
The order spread rapidly in Eastern Europe, especially in Bohemia, Hungary, Poland and the Danubian Principalities (present-day Romania). It later spread to Germany, Austria, Italy and Spain. Kings, barons, priests and kingdom leaders gathered under the sign of the Dragon under the Cross and proclaimed their loyalty to King Sigismund and his Queen. However, it must be borne in mind that Sigismund’s entire commitment to the Church was mainly aimed at his desire to be crowned Emperor, which he did on 31 May 1433 by Pope Eugene IV, who ratified the statute of the ‘Dragons’ on this occasion.
The statute of the Order, which was enlarged by Bishop Eberhard of Nagyvárad, chancellor at Sigismund’s court, survives only in a copy made in 1707, which was published in an edition of the Codex Diplomaticus Hungariae di Ecclesiastico ac civilis in 1841, and has remained almost unknown. An analysis of this important document shows that the purpose of the order was to defend the cross, symbolised by the ancient dragons (Draconis tortuosi), through the help of St. George, to defend the Hungarian monarchy from foreign and domestic enemies and the Catholic Church from heretics and pagans, especially those converts to the doctrine of the heretic Jan Hus (Hussites) and those from the Ottoman Empire. Today, the known materials are archived within the University of Budapest.
From the left:
Pippo Spano e Stefan Lazarec
The members of the order are referred to in the statutes as barons (barones, occasionally associates), which is why even in 1431 (the year the statutes of the brotherhood were confirmed) the title of knight was not among the requirements for admission to the order. They were mostly allies and political supporters of Sigismund, who were initially largely confined to the political factions of Stefan Lazarević, Nicholas II Garai and Hermann II of Celje, including magnates such as Stibor of Stiboricz, Pippo Spano, John Tamási the Ban of Severin, Alfonso V of Aragon, the Venetian Ambassador Pantaleone Balbo, Henry V of England and King Christopher III of Denmark. Of great importance for the restoration of the order and its historical continuity is Jacob Lackfi (Lackovic) Voivoda of Transylvania and Banat with his residence in the town of Rachita (Romania). The initial group of recruits for Sigismund’s Order numbered 21 men, which grew to about 24 in 1418.
For the first 24 Knights of the First Circle, the Dragon is depicted under the symbol of the Cross of Fire, while for the other Knights, the Dragon is represented without the Cross inscribed in Latin. Sigismund chose St. George, St. Michael the Archangel and St. Margaret of Antioch as his patron saints. According to the Golden Legend in the flesh of a dragon they were swallowed but, by the grace of God, were spat out unharmed. The Order’s dragon is represented with its tail wrapped around its neck, symbolising the power of the sacrifice of one’s life. Although the reason for the choice of the image of the Dragon, which in traditional Christian heraldry is associated with the evil power defeated by St. George, in the Heraldry of the Order of the Dragon, it symbolically represents the soul of a knight who gives his life to save another soul, giving an image of himself of impressive strength and determination. On the back of the Dragon, on a white band, symbolising the blood shed in self-sacrifice, a red cross is drawn, reminiscent of the crossed white flag symbolising Christ’s victory over death after the Resurrection; above the dragon is another golden cross. After 1418, the Order received the motto: “O quam Misericors est Deus Justus et paciens”.
Sigismund had himself buried with the emblem of the ‘Dragon at the Neck’ in 1437. Sigismund’s death was a blow to the Order. The Order of the Dragon was forgotten in the following years, during which time Hungary was largely conquered by the Turks. However, after the fall of Constantinople in 1453, it continued to play an important role in Hungary itself, Croatia, Serbia, Romania and Albania until 1688.
However, until the 17th century, the circular dragon, strangled by its tail, was depicted on the coat-of-arms of many noble families of the Hungarian and Romanian kingdoms who were the descendants of some of the knights who were members of the Order of the Dragon during the reign of Sigismund. The prince of Wallachia Vlad II Dracul, the father of Vlad the Impaler, took his name from the Order of the Dragon, Dracul (the Dragon) precisely because of his membership in the order, which proves that the Order of the Dragon enjoyed great prestige throughout the first half of the 15th century.
