GESTURI ȘI MANIFESTĂRI ALE SENSIBILITĂȚII RELIGIOASE ÎN TIMPUL MARELUI RĂZBOI. ROMÂNII ŞI „CEILALŢI”
SIGNS AND MANIFESTATIONS OF RELIGIOUS SENSITIVITY DURING THE GREAT WAR. THE ROMANIANS AND „THE OTHERS”

Summary/Abstract: The last decades consecrated a specialized literature highly focused upon the idea of laicization of states and of individuals. The general idea which can be extracted based on a clarifying analysis is that modernity came with the most convincing arguments; particularly that Nation offers to societies the answer to most of their expectation and the accomplishment of most of their dreams. Gradually, western societies, in full process of modernization, leave religion in second place, showing, more and more, attention to the prosperity and the ideals promised by the acolytes of the concept of nation. If in France the Revolution abused this process, in other states, the Church stood by the laic state, often intersecting it in its attempt to give up the idea of eternal bliss by promising the conditions of an immediate bliss, which was to come with terrestrial living. But, the way it has always happened in troubled times, when individual existence is put to great attempts – the analysis we propose here upon the Great War – the resort to God and blind faith in God seems to be the most common solution. This is verified in the case of the Romanian society, little influenced by the new religions made up by the western civilization, which offers impressive images capturing the religious feelings of the Romanians before the horrors offered by the conflict. Fully anchored in the tradition of the Church and the conservatism of the rural world, the Romanian soldier finds itself in a limit situation. War shock is something beyond human endurance and had been felt by all the ones who fought. Did the routine of death and the horrors of war cause a rupture in the mental and spiritual equilibrium of such deeply challenged people? The analysis of the testimonials and images form that period shall lead us in the intimacy of living faith and often desperate manifestations towards Divine help.

• Details
• Contents