Romanian Activists from Transylvania in the Period of Austro-Hungarian Dualism

Author(s): Emanuel George Oprea / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2018

After the war with France (1859) and Prussia (1866) the Habsburg Empire was in a deep social and political crisis, very close to its dissolution, mainly due to the internal national movements in the name of new ideas and principles of Democracy and National Emancipation as they were first mentioned in the decade of French Revolution (1789-1799). In consequence, the Habsburgs have made serious efforts to maintain the unity and cohesion of the multinational state and from 1860 to 1867 enlarged rights including autonomy and self-government in many regions of the Empire were accorded. The Romanian intellectuals and elite from Transylvania have intensified their actions for the social, political and economic emancipation of Romanian ethnics with a general defined purpose to obtain equal rights with Hungarian and Austrian citizens in the spirit of the ideas of democracy and the national principles. The end of the bipolar world in 1990 had brought in actuality the national and ethnical issues. The insufficient and superficial approach of these questions, based on the particular examples of Romanians from Transylvania, leads to deep fundamental state crisis and therefore they represent a serious challenge nowadays and their investigations are relevant and of interest.

Creștinismul – lumină și bucurie într-o lume debusolată și tristă

Author(s): Marius Florescu / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 24/2018

The 10th General Assembly of the World Council of Churches (WCC) took place in Busan, Republic of Korea, during the late October and early November 2013. More than 5.000 delegates from around 300 member Churches and 100 countries, examined the tasks facing the World Council of Churches, their relationships in the world, their potential and their dreams, and they came to speak more and more of the „pilgrimage of justice and peace” in describing this journey on which the God of life is leading the Christians. In the following study, we try to capture how the theme Christianity - light and joy in a confused and grieved world is reflected in the official report, published by WCC Publications into the year 2014.

Analiză Estetică Și Teologică la Icoana Bizantină a Nașterii Mântuitorului Iisus Hristos

Author(s): Ioannis G. Skiadaresis / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 01+04/2017

Însemnătatea și adâncimea ce caracterizează evenimentul Nașterii Domnului, sărbătoare pe care am celebrat-o de puțină vreme, amenință să permanentizeze o tendință obișnuită de abordare idilică și romantică a acesteia. Această abordare idilică și romantică nu constituie, însă, o tendință nevinovată, ci o deviere de la tradiția noastră ortodoxă, înspre care tinde, de multe ori cu bună știință, omul timpurilor noastre. În loc de a apela la leacurile cele dătătoare de viață, în intenția sa de a se elibera din tirania morții, omul modern preferă analgezicele simple sau chiar narcoticele, totul pentru a reuși să se detașeze, fie și pentru scurt timp, de traiul decăzut și plin de păcate în care se complace zi de zi.

Despre virtuţile Ortodoxiei

Author(s): Tudor Petcu / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 03/2017

Interview with Domenico Oliveri, an Italian converted to Orthodoxy

Povestirea II, 17 a Sfântului Anastasie Sinaitul — model de mistagogie ecleziologică ortodoxă

Author(s): Ioan Bădiliță / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 09+12/2016

This study aims to highlight the hagiographical dimension of theology, starting from the premise that Lives of the Saints represent a substantial source for the theological discourse, being an organic part of Tradition, which is nothing else but the uninterrupted pulse of the Spirit in the Church and its members. In other words, the lives of the saints are a true mystical transfusion of God's evangelical truths in the spiritual arteries of man, an existential assumption of Scripture and Tradition by grace, liturgical experience and asceticism. In Story II, 17, St. Anastasius the Sinaite gives us a model of an Orthodox ecclesiological mystagogy. Instead of developing a systematic theology, the Anastasian stories show us, prisoners of the textbooks and their tendencies of excessive conceptualization, that theology must be understood as a song of glory of creation.

PASTORALĂ LA NAȘTEREA DOMNULUI 2018

Author(s): Ioan Selejan / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 10-12/2018

PASTORALĂ LA NAȘTEREA DOMNULUI 2018

Author(s): Timotei Seviciu / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 10-12/2018

PASTORALĂ LA NAȘTEREA DOMNULUI 2018

Author(s): Lucian Mic / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 10-12/2018

EVOLUȚIA MĂRTURISIRILOR DE CREDINȚĂ ÎN BISERICA PRIMARĂ

Author(s): Rusalin Isac / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 10-12/2018

From the beginning in the Christian Church, short definitions of Christian faith were circulated, leaving or having the pattern of the Trinitarian and Christological confessions of the New Testament. These simple testimonies have evolved, knowing an amplification in the early Church, from short testimonies of Christian martyrs, and the formulas of faith against heresies, to the baptism of symbols spoken by who are baptized. Thus, we can speak of a dogmatic development of the Creed, which had to correspond to the missionary, liturgical and catechetical needs of the Church.

„CA ȘI CUM AI FI MURIT DEJA”: EXERCIȚIUL MORȚII ÎN TRADIȚIA ASCETICĂ TIMPURIE

Author(s): Daniel Lemeni / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 10-12/2018

This paper explores Christian asceticism and spiritual exercises in early ascetic tradition, with particular emphasis on death in the spirituality of the desert. More exactly, the main aim of the article is to highlight the role of the death in the development of Christian asceticism.

PROTOPOPUL ACADEMICIAN GEORGE POPOVICI, LUPTĂTOR PENTRU ÎNFĂPTUIREA MARII UNIRI

Author(s): Ionel Popescu / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 10-12/2018

In the times of a great tribulation for our country and our people, God has ordained worthy, courageous, honest, sacrificing men for the freedom of those oppressed and permanently preoccupied with the cultural enlightenment of our ancestors. Among these advocates of the ancestral glance and watchers who are attentive to the preservation and perpetuation of our moral, national and ecclesial values are also the dean George Popovici of Lugoj, a remarkable personality of the Banat Church, whose labors in the pastoral, scientific, cultural and patriotic realm were providential to the Orthodox Romanians living in this corner of the country.

REFLECTAREA ISTORIOGRAFICĂ A UNITĂȚII NAȚIONALE PROMOVATĂ ȘI SUSȚINUTĂ DE PERSONALITĂȚI ALE ARADULUI

Author(s): Teofan Mada / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 10-12/2018

The social and political life of Arad in the first two decades of the twentieth century was a subject approached by both historians and politicians effectively involved in their contemporary events. An important historical event, of our modern history, the Great Union of 1 December 1918, could never have been overlooked. Of course, this major ideal was the result of decades of economic affirmation, cultural involvement, Christian conscience, and sustained political perseverance. The memorial works of the interwar period are a clear source of documentation and elaboration, even if they sometimes have a note of subjectivism, some authors having the tendency to put themselves in the midst of all the events described, more than it would have been, by overriding their merits and subduing those of some contemporaries.

REVISTA EPARHIALĂ „BISERICA ȘI ȘCOALA” ÎN ANUL MARII UNIRI

Author(s): Iustin Popovici / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 10-12/2018

The present study treats the ecclesiastical journal of Arad Dioceses in the year of Great Union form 1 December 1918, and also the following period. It also try to sketch the most important problems of romaine society in the beginning of the XX century.

CONTRIBUȚIA IERARHULUI ȘI PREOȚILOR ARĂDENI LA ACTUL UNIRII TRANSILVANIEI CU ROMANIA

Author(s): Teodor Vid / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 10-12/2018

As in the other parts of the Romanian land, it is the same in the eparchy of Arad, where the clergy and the true believers of the Orthodox church have been with the people, listened to the people’s needs and aspirations, contributing to the fight for freedom and national unity, creating a place of honour for the Romanian people among the peoples of the world. Just like any important event in the history of our nation, the Union of all Romanians is also marked by the Church, through its outstanding representatives.

GENERALUL TEODOR CAVALER DE SERACIN-UN PRECURSOR AL MARII UNIRI DIN 1918 ÎN CADRUL GRANIȚEI BĂNĂTENE

Author(s): Petru-Cristian Ciric / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 10-12/2018

Celebrating the Centenary of the Great Union on December 1, 1918, it is appropriate to evoke, even on a few occasions, the facts and persons from these lands, who have contributed in one area or another to the fulfillment of this millenary Romanian ideal. From this historical synthesis we hold that the consciousness of national identity and unity has settled in the history of the Romanian people as a well-defined constant for whose accomplishment they fought and sacrificed their most sovereign sons. Regardless of which domain they have activated, and whatever functions they have fulfilled, the conscience of debt has been harmoniously aligned with the ideal of national unity.Such a pattern written with gold letters in the history of the Banat’ border remains as a historical testimony, along with many others, and that of General Theodor Knight of Seracin.

ACCENTE TEOLOGICE

Author(s): Daniil Stoienescu / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 10-12/2018

The moment is our gift. Life is made up of a lot of time packs, full of eternity moments. Every moment should be received, lived, filled with sense and meaning, and lit by prayer. The Hesychast Orthodox Prayer fills to the fullest extent, warms, ignites and flames the golden Cup gem of every moment in our earthly and Christian life. Each moment has its infinite value, that is why a man, a Christian, a clergyman or a monk is bound to connect, bind and hang every moment of his life by faith, hope and love, humility, repentance and weeping, of God’s eternity, for eventually God’s eternity will call to judgment and judge the moments of our life, separating them as the shepherd breaks up the lambs from the goats.

FONTES HISTORIAE DACO-ROMANAE, VOL IV. MARGINALIA

Author(s): Vasile Muntean / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 10-12/2018

Like the previous books, the present one, the fourth from Fontes Historiae Daco-Romanae, published in the Romanian Academy Publishing House in 1982 (ed. H. Mihăescu et alii) is very useful to the historians because of the numerous information it contains, authentic sources for the History of the Romanians. This is the reason why this work has recently been introduced on the internet. Just in case this work will be republished in a usual format, the present study refers to the Greek texts excerpted and the Romanian version and corrects some translation inaccuracies, including the main printing errors. Evidently, the rectifications made do not diminish the intrinsic value of this comprehensive anthology.

Semantra and Bells in Byzantium

Author(s): Bojan Miljković / Language(s): English Issue: 55/2018

According to written sources, semantra were used to summon the faithful to prayer throughout the history of Byzantium, during more than one millennium. Semantra were first made exclusively of wood, while as of the mid-11th century some monasteries used three types of semantra – a small and big semantron made of wood, and the third, bronze semantron. Up until the Fourth Crusade, lay churches in Constantinople, including Hagia Sophia, as well as cathedral temples in the interior, maintained the ancient tradition of using wooden semantra only. The first reliable example of the use of bells originates from the mid-12th century. At a least hundred years earlier, they were brought to the Empire’s territory by traders from the Apennine peninsula for their places of worship. The erection of a high belfry in front of the Constantinople Great Church at the time of the Latin Empire had the decisive influence on the acceptance of bells after 1261, first in the liturgical practice of the capital, and then in the entire territory of the restored Empire under the Palaiologoi dynasty. The new practice did not uproot the older one – semantra continued to be used.

The Orthodox Church and the totalitarian regime in the post-war Crimea: a survival strategy of archbishops Joasaph (Zhurmanov) and Luka (Voyno-Yasenetsky)

Author(s): Ivan Petrov / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2017

The Crimean peninsula has always been not only a territory of acute controversy between the states but also a bone of contention for different church jurisdictions and denominations. This fact was proved by the historical events of the previous century. At different times the following groups were standing against each other in the Crimea: Renovationists and Sergians, Non-Commemorationists, Ukrainian Autocephalists and even members of the Romanian Orthodox Church. However, the representatives of civil administration played the leading part in these controversies, as they had authority to allow or forbid religious activities on the peninsula. Apparently, each political actor had its favourites in the religious community, who were used to transmit to people the political stance of the Soviet authorities.

Service of Archimandrite Tavrion (Batozsky) in Spaso-Preobrazhensky Monastery near Jelgava as an Example of Resistance to Totalitarian Regime

Author(s): Jana Kalnina / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2017

We are approaching the 40th anniversary since Archimandrite Tavrion (Batozsky) has taken rest in the Lord. He was a spiritual leader of Spaso- Preobrazhensky Monastery near Jelgava. Fr. Tavrion was one of the most prominent figures in the Russian Orthodox Church, one of the most remarkable Russian preachers of the 2nd half of the 20th century. He spent more than 25 years in the Stalin’s concentration camps and exile.