On 15 January 2016, the patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Church addressed the members of the Romanian Academy. The occasion was National Culture Day; the theme that year was national identity. Patriarch Daniel , an honorary member of the Academy, highlighted the Christian Orthodox contribution to the Romanian national identity as one of the two chief components of a synthesis, the other being the Latin origin of the Romanian language with its presumed ethnic and cultural legacy. The speaker reminded his audience that this identity has emerged as a synthesis between East and West, between an Orthodox view of spiritual mystery and Latin intellectual clarity, as the theologian Dumitru StÇniloae has put it, an idea quoted approvingly in the speech (http://âpatriarhia.âro/âziua-culturii-nationale-la-academia-romana-8558.âhtml; StÇniloae 2014, pp. 112â114). By way of summing up, this pithy allocution quoted Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinopleâs admiration for the fact that the Romanian people has preserved its Orthodox faith and Latin-based language.
The nature of the speech and the occasion are significant for the present enquiry. The head of the Orthodox Church, the largest religious institution in Romania, addresses the members of the principal learned body in the land and reinforces his conclusion by resorting to the authority of the oldest Christian institution, the Patriarchate of Constantinople. Within this institutional framework, the address invokes complex notionsâidentity, culture, nationâwithout necessarily attempting to convince the audience through prolonged arguments, confident that a shared cultural memory would bring together religious and secular views on the subject.
Before the collapse of the communist regime in Romania in December 1989, the closest the previous patriarch came to addressing a public institution was to send an official telegram to Nicolae CeauÈescu, the leader of the Communist Party, congratulating him on being re-elected as First Secretary at the 14th Congress of the Party. Prior to the political reversal of 1989, the patriarch refrained from enlightening the Party Leader on the place of Orthodoxy within the identity of the Romanian people; after the political reversal, however, the higher clergy could freely expound on the matter. Lack of censorship, a visible place in public life and increased resources ensured that, after the collapse of the communist dictatorship, the Orthodox Church could assert itself anew, both institutionally and intellectually. This revival stimulated a return to a view of national identity based on the Latin legacy and Orthodox Christianity, resurrecting ideas articulated before the communist takeover in the late 1940s.
Such ideas are to be found in works on the concept of Romanian national identity published throughout the twentieth century, which are referenced in the footnotes of the patriarchâs address (included in the published text); clearly, the prelateâs survey indicates the relevance of an intellectual historical approach. Most of these writers are lay scholars willing to admit the importance of Christian Orthodoxyâor at least a spiritual dimension derived thereofâto the national identity. Moreover, by tracing the ideas of these sociologists, historians, philosophers and literary critics, which were relevant to the occasion, it appears that the patriarch is willing to consider the concepts of identity and culture in an interdisciplinary context that stretches beyond the theological framework. Thus, the post-1989 revival of the institution as well as its resumption of a strand of thought featuring identity and Orthodoxy have occasioned a series of arguments and counter-arguments in need of exploration. The dynamics of these currents, cross-currents and, indeed, undercurrents of opinion lend themselves to an approach derived from intellectual history. This is the kind of enquiry undertaken in the present work.
Preliminary Clarifications
Two decades after the collapse of communism, scholars have pointed out that the âintellectual history of post-socialismâ has dealt mainly with the âtransnational level,â leading to a âdiscrepancyâ and risking âmisunderstandingâ between scholars examining international and local contexts (KopeÄek and WciĆlik 2010, pp. 14â15). The present investigation contributes to remedying this state of affairs, as one of its main aims is to examine how an institution such as the Romanian Orthodox Church , given free rein after the collapse of Communism, has developed and employed a discourse of national identity. Such a discourse points to ways in which a religious institution may adapt to the accelerated type of modernity unleashed in former Eastern European dictatorships. Hence, the study also considers a secular counter-discourse regarding the Churchâs specific claims about national identity, which offers a complementary perspective. The concept of identity appears in combinations where other concepts such as culture or nation are also present. As various partiesâclergymen, historians, philosophers, public intellectuals, journalists, politiciansâreflect on such conceptual constellations, they seek suitable notions to serve as evidence to justify particular interests or reinforce particular views. The focus is on the selective use of past arguments, current concepts and tropes in the fluid post-communist Romanian context, which, taken together, amount to an intellectual landscape in need of scrutiny.
More specifically, the analysis in this book considers three claims: what the authors say that they know about Romanian cultural identity; what they claim that it actually is; and the course of action that ought to be pursued in consequence. This approach alludes to the three general fields of philosophyâepistemology, ontology and ethicsâwithout necessarily turning the work into a philosophical treatise. The categorization, however, provides a supplementary tool that brings order, when needed, to a multitude of opinions that appear either awkwardly disparate or superficially similar. In so far as the Orthodox Church insists on presenting itself as a component and force within the Romanian cultural and national identity, the same kind of scrutiny applies to the institution: what does the Church claim that the world should know about it, what does the Church claim that it is and, still as part of its self-narrative, how does the Church reflect on its present and past actions, including those during the Communist dictatorship?
A range of public utterances by the Church provides one category of sources. These are sermons and pastorals by representative clerical figures, speeches and keynote addresses delivered by clerical spokesmen on lay occasions (e.g., the talk given by the patriarch at the Romanian Academy on Culture Day), published or broadcast interviews with the higher clergy, and editorials and other opinion pieces in religious periodicals. The idea is to look at the Churchâs discourse as it is articulated in the public sphere for a general audience rather than specialized disquisitions for internal use. A second category of sources includes ideas and arguments formulated by writers and scholars. Occasionally, some of these secular arguments are part of a dialogue with one another or with the clergy, but even when they are not, they establish the presence of concepts that add to contemporary intellectual life.
References to the background of the notions employed by both religious and secular authors require both brief historical surveys as well as definitions. Some of these notions are contested, while on others there is a relative consensus. Without attempting strict definitions, this enquiry supplies conceptual clarifications as and when needed while scrutinizing the sources. Therefore, more extended discussions of these concepts occur below in specific contexts. Where relevant, the analysis treats the source material in terms of institutional identity and institutional memory, aspects that are considered here as part of collective memory.
A further way to treat the material is by observing the place of key concepts in the arguments. One example is the use of Orthodoxy. The position that the clergy grant to this concept as part of a concluding remark or as part of a premise, or by alternating its use according to need, may offer an insight into the thrust of the Churchâs argument.
An additional consideration has to do with the varied background of the authors, particularly secular authors, which makes it relevant to take into account the field of knowledge within which they develop their argument. For instance, one historian employs the notion of cultural identity in an epistemological sense, as a way of straining towards self-knowledge (Zub 2004, pp. 19â20, 23â24), while a theologian, placing the notion in an Orthodox framework, grants it an ontological value (StÇniloae in Vestitorul Ortodoxiei August 1992). This manner of examining the material shows the extent to which these are contested concepts whose fluidity allows their usage for ad-hoc purposes.
It should be emphasized that an undertaking in contemporary (but not only) intellectual history relies on arguments articulated in the public domain. The dynamics of intellectual exchanges, the circulation of ideas and, above all, the use of concepts can only occur when these are known to a sufficiently large audience. Unpublished archival material or ideas communicated in interviews to one scholar may well be valuable for other studies, but not here.
One qualification on the handling of sources: my analysis is not concerned with what Romanian national identity really is, if such certainty can or need be established. Rather the discussion seeks to discover how religious and lay thinkers use the idea of cultural identity. The enquiry attempts to make sense of the dynamics of such action by pursuing the deployment of the ideas in arguments on identity, some of which contain evidence that may well be questioned. This work is not the place to verify the factual accuracy of the various claims such as date of the arrival of Christianity in the area later known as Romania, the age of the Romanian Orthodox Church as an institution (there are frequent references to the 2000-year-old tradition of the Romanian Orthodox Church) or the assertion that the Latin legacy embedded in the Romanian langue entails intellectual lucidity.
This manner of treating the material rests on a number of general assumptions to do with the study of contemporary intellectual history. The name of this field may sound disconcerting; however, for at least one prominent intellectual historian, combining contemporary history and intellectual history poses little difficulty (MĂŒller 2011, p. 576). MĂŒller takes his cue from the German Hans Rothfelsâwriting after an earlier decisive turning point, post-1945 Germanyâwho considered that contemporary history arises when there is a need for understanding political and social upheavals, a kind of âcrisis history.â Based on this, MĂŒller enters a âplea for a contemporary intellectual history that seeks novel ways of understanding the twentieth-century and the newest history since 1989 by combining tools from the workshops in Cambridge and Bielefeld (that is, the home of Begriffsgeschichte )â (MĂŒller 2011, p. 576; see also p. 586). For Cambridge and Bielefeld read Quentin Skinner and Reinhart Koselleck, both noted intellectual historians. In so far as contemporary intellectual history amounts to âcrisis history,â as Rothfels and MĂŒller suggest, and in so far as this kind of history entails coming to terms with the past, a scrutiny of the views of the post-communist Romanian Orthodox Church on identity would qualify as a relevant case. The...