CEREMONIALUL ÎNCORONĂRII DE LA ALBA IULIA DIN PERSPECTIVA TRADIŢIEI BIZANTINE
THE CORONATION CEREMONY AT ALBA-IULIA FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE BYZANTINE TRADITION

Summary/Abstract: The coronation ceremony of King Ferdinand and Queen Marie at Alba Iulia, on the 15th of October 1922, marked one of the most important episodes in the history of the Romanian monarchy, as the event was intended to represent the culmination of the entire nation’s historical path. The preparation of religious component of the ceremony, which was meant to play the most important role, was entrusted to Metropolitan-Primate Miron Cristea. He thoroughly elaborated a ceremony which, for the first time in the recent history of the Romanian people, would transpose the Byzantine and Romanian traditions into a unitary formula, naturally adapted to the reality of the Romanian contemporary Monarchy. Due to the numerous pressures on the part of the Sovereign, and some political members or other foreign dignitaries, the ceremony suffered substantial and essential modifications, the coronation of King Ferdinand seriously deviating towards the model recorded in 1881, the episode of the quasi-civilian coronation ceremony of King Carol I. What Metropolitan-Primate Miron Cristea, other public figures and the majority of people dreamed of, namely a ceremony that would revive the splendour of coronation of the Byzantine emperors (or even that of the Russian tsars), only remained a project written on paper, his wish failing to be fulfilled even by the future Romanian (Orthodox) sovereigns.

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