He was the titular boyar of Herăști, known in his day as Fierești and Fierăști, where he built a palace that stands as a late example of Renaissance architecture, and earned him a regional fame.

His favorite forms of expression were the essay and the rhyming preface, but he also perfected a Slavonic answer to the blason, which remained influential for two centuries and was, by some accounts, the first known poem by a Romanian.

Despite its claim to have originated in Roman Dacia[2] and its alleged links to the Fogoras nobility,[3] the Năsturel clan was first attested as belonging to boyardom in the late 15th century.

A period document by "Vlad Vodă", brother of Radu the Great, confirms that, by 1501, the Năsturels were long established as the owners of Herăști (traditionally in Ilfov County,[4] now in Giurgiu) and other Wallachian villages.

[4] A 19th-century author, Dimitrie Papazoglu, also argued that the family had a deep connection to the village, and later capital city, of Bucharest, suggesting that they were the builders of an ancient church in Dobroteasa mahala.

According to Gane, she and Udriște were the most educated of Radu's children, being taught to read and write in Church Slavonic and Koine Greek, and being introduced to art and history.

[14] Their father also displayed an interest in Renaissance literature; he had confiscated or bought a copy of Thomas à Kempis' The Imitation of Christ, in the Latin, while fighting a war in Moldavia.

[22] According to historian George Potra, he was the official translator for Prince Radu Iliaș when, in early 1632, Bucharest was visited by Paul Strassburg, diplomat of the Swedish Empire.

[17] His correspondence attests links with intellectuals of various faiths: the Orthodox Gavrilo Rajić, Macarios Zaim, Peter Mogila, and Meletios Sirigos; and the Catholic Rafael Levaković, with whom he discussed the Nicene Creed.

[37] An "editor by excellence of prefaces to books", but one who "never signed his works", Năsturel is identified as the author of the foreword to Matei Basarab's standard legal code, Pravila de la Govora.

[40] Cândea argued against other authors who described Năsturel as an actual humanist, noting that he was a mere precursor to the belated surfacing of a Wallachian humanism later that century.

[41] This critique was also embraced by literary historian Eugen Negrici, who argues that the Logothete was only a humanist in the sense that he had an intellectual life, which, though "extremely rare in that era", never implied complex scholarship.

"[42] Cultural historian Răzvan Theodorescu also discusses Năsturel as one of the Catholic-leaning boyars at Matei Basarab's court, placing him in relation with Paisios Ligarides, who wanted to bridge the Great Schism.

[54] Historian and culture critic Nicolae Iorga also argued that, given a context in which very few could read Slavonic, translating The Imitation of Christ into that language was "pointless", an exercise in "pretentious erudition".

[55] All of Năsturel's Slavonic poetry, including "epigrams on Greek names" or those he dedicated to Elena,[38] has lexical obscurities and intricate wordplay, leading various specialists to conclude that his was a local manifestation of Baroque literature.

[60] Scholar Maria Stanciu Istrate, who studied these versions, argues that they suggest an adaptation of Latin rhetoric to the developing literary language, taking many liberties from the strictures of the Russo-Slavonic copies he was using.

[65] His father and his brother Șerban were no probably no longer alive by the time of his ascendancy; Cazan, who was still active, never joined the Boyar Council, and only held the rank of Bucharest ispravnic.

[8] Throughout most of his career, Năsturel probably resided in the old capital, Târgoviște, leaving on diplomatic missions to the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Habsburg monarchy (1638), then more regularly to the Principality of Transylvania (1648/9, 1652, 1655).

[17] Târgoviște hosted his own lyceum, the Schola Graeca et Latina, staffed by Kievan expatriates; in parallel, Năsturel himself taught at the Slavonic School, which existed in the same city.

[22] According to Theodorescu, it shows Udriște as an innovator in the field of architecture, going beyond the stylistic guidelines endorsed by Matei Basarab, and contrasting the conservative tastes of Moldavian boyars.

[71] It had a "fairly large library", which reportedly contained the works of Plato and Aristotle, as well as Aristophanes, Homer, Diogenes Laërtius, Epicurus, Strabo, Suetonius, and Lucian.

[17] The Herăști building impressed a foreign traveler, Paul of Aleppo, who claimed that no other such home existed in the Danubian Principalities, and nowhere in Europe except the Kingdom of France.

[50] However, when he began searching for a new heir, he omitted Radu Toma and focused on Mihai, orphaned son of the former Prince Nicolae Pătrașcu, then on Istratie Leurdeanu, and finally on Diicul Buicescul.

[79] This period coincided with mounting political troubles, introduced after a war with Moldavia: victorious but wounded, Prince Matei faced a Seimeni rebellion stoked by the pretender Constantin Șerban.

As noted by historian Petronel Zahariuc, during his stay in Iași he may have helped draft the Slavonic writ whereby Gheorghe Ștefan reestablished the Vasilian College; its linguistic intricacies have long presented a challenge for Romanian translators.

[90] The Saxon notary Georg Krauss provides additional details "from reliable sources", namely that the murdered boyars had not approved of Mihnea's plans to align Wallachia with Transylvania in the anti-Ottoman alliance.

[92] A defaced tombstone kept at the National Museum of Romanian History, which shows the figure of a man dressed in 17th-century court attire, was identified by Iorga as belonging to Năsturel.

[104] The Năsturels developed another property, Năsturelu in Teleorman County, which housed a model farm and lands providing for the upkeep of Sfânta Vineri Herasca.

[108] In the Kingdom of Romania, other figures continued to claim descent from the scholar, including another general, Petre Vasiliu-Năsturel, who republished Udriște's Barlaam and Josaphat in Ioan Bianu's collection of early Romanian literature (1904).

[113] Of the landmarks associated with Udriște Năsturel, Sfânta Vineri Herasca did not survive the communist period: heavily damaged in the March 1977 earthquake, it was restored, but then swiftly demolished as part of the Ceaușima campaign.