Aron Pumnul – Ortodoxul
Aron Pumnul – The Orthodox

Summary/Abstract: It is known that Aron Pumnul - linguist, historian, literary critic, theologian, teacher of Mihai Eminescu - was born into a Greek Catholic family in the village of Cuciulata in Transylvania, and after completing his theology studies in 1846 at the Catholic Institute “St. Barbara” in Vienna, he was ordained a Greek Catholic priest. In publications in Romania, especially in Transylvania, the Greek Catholicism of Professor Aron Pumnul was strongly emphasized. The author presents an unpublished document, found in the State Archive of the Chernivtsi Region (Ukraine), from which it appears that in 1849 A. Pumnul switched to the Orthodox confession following his baptism, which was recorded in the register of the newborn of the Church of St. Nicolai in Chernivtsi. In support of this idea, other unpublished documents are presented, such as the record of the professor's marriage to Ecaterina Teodorino, the birth of his son John or the death of the scholar, documents in which his Orthodox confession is confirmed. After the passing of the Greek Catholic A. Pumnul to Orthodoxy, his activity as a militant for the social and national rights of the Romanians takes on a new scope: even from the first months he stands out as editor of the Romanian section of the newspaper “Bucovina”, promotes national culture, researches Romanian history, language and literature, educates a young generation of Romanian intellectuals, writes and prints the famous “Lepturariu...”, is the beloved teacher of the poet Mihai Eminescu. Having arrived in Orthodox Bukovina, the great scholar understood that only by becoming Orthodox could he be of real use to the Romanians here. For him, above all, it was the service of the nation and its culture, regardless of political boundaries and religious differences that had arisen in the course of history.

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