Mark

MORE THAN A BIOGRAPHY: STARINA NOVAK, SERBIAN HERO AND ROMANIAN GENERAL
A Wreath of Heroism and Legends
He had to live hundreds of years in order to perform all the heroic deed ascribed to him. He had several surnames and genealogies, was a general and a hayduk, performed miracles in Romania and Romanija, died several times before he was born, tortured and celebrated, praised in poems and untold. He was a light in long winters and nights of slavery, warmed the hearts and strings of the enslaved. St. Sava, Miloš Obilić and Marko Kraljević are the only Serbs with more toponyms under their name. Starina Novak was always able to ”appear and flee”, until our present days. It seems that he will outlive us as well

By: Petar Milatović

One of the eye witnesses was brutally realistic in his description of the event. So was the event he was present at. The description follows:
”On that very day, around 10 a.m., Baba Novak, the most glorious soldier of Mihai the Brave, and his priest were brought to the market in chains. They first ripped their skin off. Then, both of them skinned, they tied them to beams, facing down towards the fire, and burned them. They splashed them with water from time to time, so that they would suffer longer. This went on for an hour and a half. Then Basta, who watched all that from a window of a building next door, ordered them to stop pouring water, to relieve them from suffering. They died soon afterwards. After such a horrific death, their corpses were taken out of the city and impaled, next to the tailors’ tower. It is simply unbelievable how fast ravens picked the meat from their bones.”
It was February 5, 1601, in the city of Cluj, present Romania. Baba Novak, general of the Romanian army, entered folk poems as Starina (Old) Novak. At the time he moved to epic poetry, he was eighty-two, although some claim that he was ten years younger.
Three hundred seventy-five years later, on February 5, 1976, at the same city square where, according to some testimonies, he was tied to a rosewood pole and burned, a bronze statue of Baba (Starina) Novak was raised, created by Fulicea, respectable Romanian sculptor. In the meantime, he also found his place in the Romanian history book for the eighth grade of elementary school, as well as for senior high school students.
Serbian and Romanian folk epic poetry, as well as Bulgarian and Macedonian, would be much poorer without his name and feats.
Who was actually Starina (Baba) Novak?

WITH MIHAI THE BRAVE

According to preserved records, and confirmed in many researches, Baba Novak was of Serbian origin, from Poreč near Smederevo. He converted to Turkish faith as a young man, even became a soubashi, and then, after a disagreement, he went rogue and intercepted Turkish caravans in Stara Planina. When the Turks got sick of Novak’s behavior, they lured him into a trap, threw him into a dungeon and plucked all his teeth out. That is when, as the chronicles state, he was called Baba (Starina) Novak.
After successfully escaping the Ottomans, without teeth and already at old age, he joined the uprising of Serbs in Banat. It was in the spring of 1594, when people believed that, with the help of Austria, something could be done against the Turks, then undisputed masters of the Balkans and beyond.
In the part of the Danube between Smederevo and Kladovo, the rebels were led by Mihai Viteazul, soon afterwards called Mihai the Brave. Baba Novak immediately joined him and The Brave appointed him captain of the hayduks, who mainly served as advance parties of Romanian troops. They fought many battles together, and won most of them. After the uniting of Walachia, Transylvania and Moldova and first founding of Romania, Mihai the Brave appointed Baba Novak general.
According to Jovica Orlović, history professor from Donji Milanovac, who dedicated most of his professional development to Starina (Baba) Novak, our man in the Romanian army had several thousand soldiers under his command, gathered from almost all Balkan regions, and addressed each of them in their mother tongue during battles. Since, besides Serbian, Starina Novak also spoke Romanian (Walachian), Turkish, Hungarian, Greek and Albanian. Many battles, which official history ascribed to Mihai the Brave, as the supreme strategist, were actually won by Novak, thus his being appointed first general is no surprise.

A FINE FOR OBSERVERS

Documents state that after burning Baba (Starina) Novak in Cluj on February 5, the newly established Romanian state came to an end. At the time of death of his most important general, Mihai the Brave was negotiating with the Austrian emperor in Vienna and Prague, believing that he would succeed in getting military support from him to continue fighting against the Turks.
Upon his return, Mihai learned about the death of Baba Novak in the Transylvanian city of Cluj and ordered raising a flag in the place of his most painful death. Furthermore, the citizens of Cluj, silent observers of Baba Novak’s sufferings, had to pay a fine of 100.000 forints. Mihai the Brave was assassinated soon afterwards, also upon the order of Đorđe Basta (the same one who witnessed the execution of Starina Novak), who wanted to rule Walachia, Transylvania and Moldavia alone…
This is, in short, only a frame for the picture of historical traces of the life and deeds of Starina Novak. Then a folk poet discovered the echo of this story and landed Novak into collective memory, making him a hayduk for centuries, in regions which are not easy to conquer even today. Thus he, as many other epic heroes, became a rack for certain subjects and motifs. Or, as Ivo Andrić noticed while writing about Rade Neimar (the Architect), who ”had to live hundreds of years to construct all the beautiful and permanent buildings in Serbian lands”. Starina Novak indeed had a long life and long career as a hayduk.

THREE NOVAKS AND MANY ECHOES

Those who search for exemplars of this important man of Serbian epics determined that the first one who wrote about historical Novak the hayduk was Konstantin the Philosopher in The Life of Stefan Lazarević. He stated that he was of noble origin and a great hero, with numerous people on his side. He created much trouble to the Turks, so much that the Turkish sultan asked Despot Stefan to turn him in. The despot responded that, as Konstantin the Philosopher wrote, Starina Novak ”is living in the mountains like a bandit”.
The second Novak, hayduk and old man, lived in the late XVI century. Travelogue writers, who traveled Thrace and Bulgaria, left written traces about him. They mention him as Novak Debelji or Novak Debeljak, who robbed cities and palaces, everything that – as confirmed in history – Baba Novak, the Romanian general, also did. This Novak also became a living legend during his lifetime.
The third Novak the hayduk, also a potential hero of this little story, appeared in the late XVI century. He fought in eastern Serbia, even reached Romanija, interpreted by many as a topographic lapsus: it’s not Romania, but Romanija, as the Romanians call their country. Thus, according to this interpretation, the folk poet moved Starina Novak to a pretty remote region. After all, the diligent collector of folk concepts, Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, used to say that ”a poem is not history; it doesn’t show what has been and how, but what has been invented and set”.

RAINCOAT ON THE ROAD

Vuk himself also wrote about Starina Novak, hayduk and hero of many poems, as follows:
”Novak was born in Smederevo. After an injustice, he fled to Romanija and took Grujica and Radivoje with him. They lived in Romanija until Novak’s old age, but never robbed anyone as bandits, never roamed around. They stayed above the Sarajevo road under a rock most of the time (today called Novak’s Rock). They usually had a raincoat spread on the road, with a large knife or sabre on it, and the passing-by merchants dropped as much as they wanted and could onto the raincoat. When Novak reached very old age, all three of them went to the Adriatic coast, to Risan and Perast, and there, as repents, lived honestly until their death.”
There, Novak arrived to our times as well. Whether he’ll succeed in ”arriving and fleeing” into the future as well, doesn’t depend on him.

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Two Surnames and a Wolf (Vuk)
”Novak is famous among Serbian people just like Kraljević Marko. There are many poems about him. He’s got two surnames: Stari (Old) or Starina Novak and Debelić (Fat) Novak.” (From the writings of Vuk Karadžić)

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Only Merciful God
In poems and history, Starina Novak was ”able to appear and flee and exist in frightful places”. He often, as the folk poet believed, used to hail: ”I fear no one but merciful God!”

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Red Wine in Secret
Literary historians counted 195 poems mentioning Starina Novak, most of them Serbian. Therefore it’s no wonder he jumped out of history straight into myth. According to the number of toponyms named after him in Serbian lands, he is immediately after St. Sava, Miloš Obilić and Marko Kraljević.