Gratia

Gratia belongs to Muntenia, the eastern part of Wallachia between the lower Danube and the Southern Carpathians. The village is attested as early as 1532, and in a document of 1617 Stancu of Gratia appears as a witness among neighbouring boyars. In the wider principality, princely authority and local landholders operated under changing relationships with neighbouring powers. Mircea the Elder resisted Ottoman expansion in the late fourteenth century, while later Wallachian rulers paid tribute under Ottoman suzerainty.