Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
Denominations

Romanian Orthodox Church

Christianity

Citation Formats

General Reference

APA Style

BibTeX

Origin Christianization of the Latin-speaking population of Roman Dacia

The national church of Romania and the only major Eastern Orthodox church whose liturgical and everyday language is a Romance language descended from Latin. It traces Christianization to the Roman-era population of Dacia, was recognized as autocephalous by the Ecumenical Patriarchate in 1885 after Romanian independence, and was raised to a Patriarchate in 1925.

Facts
Attributions
Church Family
Eastern Orthodox 1
Eastern Orthodox, autocephalous
History
Separation or Divergence
Ecumenical Patriarchate recognition of Romanian autocephaly following political independence 1
Date of Separation
1885 to 1925 1
Practice
Liturgical Language
The vernacular 1
Giving
Standing Giving Expectation
The Romanian Orthodox Church sets no tithe or fixed percentage on its members. Its own governing Statute, approved by the Holy Synod in 2007, Article 189, names parish operating and building costs as covered from "the voluntary contributions of the faithful" alongside the parish's own income-generating activities and state, local and institutional budget contributions (Article 191 names further state and Patriarchate subsidies available for pastoral, cultural and social work), and Article 190 states clergy salaries likewise run through a mix of the cult unit's own budget and state or local contributions rather than resting on member giving alone. The voluntary character is not merely informal: Article 187(6) explicitly forbids conditioning the officiating of a funeral rite on payment of any fee set by a priest or Parish Council, and the Church's own spokesperson has stated publicly that "in the Romanian Orthodox Church there is no concept of mandatory tax or contribution," some parishes' annual contributions being voluntary rather than imposed, with priests who impose them subject to church discipline. This is a codified voluntary character built into the Church's own Statute, distinct from the informal drift toward fee-like treby pricing already recorded for the Russian Orthodox Church on this axis. 8
How the Expectation Is Enforced
Customary Norm 8
Rule Established or Last Changed
2007-11-28 8
Origins
Origin Period
Christianization of the Latin-speaking population of Roman Dacia 2
Place of Origin
Roman Dacia, present day Romania 2
Founder
No single founder. Traces Christianization to the Roman-era population of Dacia. 2
States the Christianization its own record names; no individual evangelist is named for this church.
Origin of the Name
Its liturgy and everyday speech are Romanian, a Romance language, unique among Orthodox national churches 1
Belief
Defining Doctrinal Position
Chalcedonian: two natures in the one person of Christ (Chalcedon, 451) 2
Defining Doctrinal PositionSourced to the subject's own account
Rejects the Filioque: the Spirit proceeds from the Father 3
Finances
Institutional Wealth or Finances
The Romanian Orthodox Church's wealth is estimated at more than three billion euros, based on landholdings of over 40,000 hectares of arable land and about 40,000 hectares of forest, shareholdings in more than fifteen companies, and annual revenues estimated at about 90 million euros drawn from state subventions, restituted communist era property, donations and sales of religious goods. 7
A business press estimate, not an audited Church figure; no independently audited consolidated account was found.
Basis of the Wealth Figure
Journalistic or Scholarly Estimate 7
Financial Disclosure Regime
The Romanian Orthodox Church does not publish one consolidated public financial statement; its revenue mixes direct state subventions, restitution of communist era confiscated property, donations and commercial income, with individual dioceses and monasteries managing their own separate holdings. 7
Organisation
Governance
Self-governing churches under patriarchs, deciding in synod 1
Governed by the Patriarch of Romania and the Holy Synod since 1925
Ordination
Restricted to men 4
Ordination
Married clergy permitted 4
Its own record names it the national Eastern Orthodox church of Romania.
Relation to the State
No Establishment 5
Romania recognises no established church; its 2006 law on religious freedom and denominations state funds the clergy of eighteen recognised denominations, including the Romanian Orthodox Church, on a formula proportional to membership, so the church's status as the country's largest and best funded denomination is a matter of numbers rather than constitutional establishment.
Status
Status Today
Living tradition, practised today 6
The dominant religious institution in Romania, rebuilt rapidly since the 1989 revolution
Trajectory
Membership Over TimeSourced to the subject's own account
By the 2021 census's partial results, Romanian Orthodox identification had fallen to 73.4 percent of the population, a decline of roughly 2.3 million Orthodox identifying inhabitants over the decade. 9
Membership Over TimeSourced to the subject's own account
Romania's 2011 national census recorded 16,307,004 people, 81.04 percent of the population, as Romanian Orthodox, an actual census count of self-declared religious affiliation. 9
Membership Figure As OfSourced to the subject's own account
2011-01-01 9
Membership Figure As OfSourced to the subject's own account
2021-01-01 9
Basis of the Membership FigureSourced to the subject's own account
National Census 9
Learn More
A Latin Church in an Orthodox World

Romanian Orthodoxy occupies an unusual place among the Eastern Orthodox churches: it is the only major Orthodox church whose liturgical and everyday language is a Romance language descended from Latin rather than Greek or Church Slavonic. Christianity reached the Latin-speaking population of Roman Dacia in the centuries following the Roman conquest, and despite the Roman legions' third century withdrawal from the province, a Latin-derived population and language persisted through subsequent centuries of migration and rule by Goths, Huns, Avars, Slavs and others, carrying Christian practice forward within a linguistic identity that remained distinctly Latin even as the surrounding Orthodox world spoke Greek and Slavonic.

By the medieval period this Christian population was organized into the principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, whose rulers built and endowed monasteries that became centers of Romanian religious and cultural life and, from the Ottoman conquest of the region in the following centuries, some of the few institutions permitted meaningful autonomy under Ottoman suzerainty. Church Slavonic served as the church's formal liturgical language for a long period despite the vernacular being Romanian, a gap gradually closed as Romanian replaced Slavonic in worship from the seventeenth century onward, well before Romanian political unification.

Autocephaly and the Twentieth Century

The union of Wallachia and Moldavia in 1859 and full Romanian independence, recognized internationally in 1878, created a modern state seeking, as other newly independent Orthodox nations had, a church answerable to its own authorities rather than to Constantinople. The Ecumenical Patriarchate recognized Romanian autocephaly in 1885, and the church's status was raised further in 1925, when Patriarch Miron Cristea became the first head of a newly established Romanian Patriarchate, reflecting the country's expanded post First World War borders and the union of Orthodox populations from Transylvania and other formerly Austro-Hungarian territories into a single Romanian church.

Communist rule after 1947 subjected the church to close state supervision, infiltration by the secret police and, in a step distinct from most other Soviet bloc states, a working accommodation in which the church hierarchy largely avoided the open confrontation that marked, for instance, Ukrainian Greek Catholic suppression, a compromise still debated within Romania as either pragmatic survival or excessive collaboration.

Since the 1989 revolution the church has rebuilt rapidly, becoming again the country's dominant religious institution and completing the immense People's Salvation Cathedral in Bucharest, consecrated in 2018 as one of the largest Orthodox church buildings in the world.

Patriarch Miron Cristea's New Calendar and the Monks Who Would Not Keep It

Patriarch Miron Cristea introduced the Revised Julian calendar into the Romanian Orthodox Church in 1924, moving its fixed feasts, Christmas among them, thirteen days earlier to match the reform the Constantinople congress had proposed the year before. As in Greece, the change met organised resistance almost at once. A parallel Old Calendar movement took shape around Hieromonk Glicherie, abbot of the Pokrov Skete in Moldavia, who refused the new dates and continued to serve the old calendar with the monks and laypeople who followed him.

What distinguishes the Romanian schism from its neighbours is how long and how harshly the state pursued it. Under the interwar kingdom and then under Communist rule, Old Calendarist clergy and monastics were repeatedly arrested and confined, some of them sent to monasteries specifically to be corrected rather than to prison in the ordinary sense, a policy the historian Andreea Kaltenbrunner has documented in detail from the surviving state and church archives. The movement never disappeared. It regularised in the years after the Communist government fell, and the Old Calendar Orthodox Church of Romania stands today as an organised body still keeping the calendar Patriarch Cristea's synod set aside in 1924, still outside communion with the church that adopted the reform.

The Romanian case shows what the calendar question could cost when a state, not only a synod, decided to enforce it.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

This source names Romanian Orthodox Church directly: "the important historical role of the Romanian Orthodox Church."

Belongs to Tradition

Branch Of

One of the national Eastern Orthodox churches.

Source The Orthodox ChurchTimothy Ware (Kallistos Ware)

Rejected Here

Papal primacy and infallibility, Doctrines

Rome's honour as a see is not in question here. What is rejected is universal jurisdiction over the whole church and the personal infallibility defined in 1870. Primacy among the Orthodox churches is held to be a primacy of honour, not of power.

Source The Orthodox ChurchTimothy Ware (Kallistos Ware)
The Filioque, Doctrines

The creed is recited here in its original form, that the Spirit proceeds from the Father. The Latin addition of and the Son is rejected both as an unauthorised alteration of a conciliar text and as bad theology, and it remains the principal doctrinal difference with Rome.

Source The Nicene-Constantinopolitan CreedFirst Council of Constantinoplethe holders' own account

Held Differently

Purgatory, Doctrines

This church prays for the dead and holds that the prayers help them, but it does not teach a distinct place of satisfactory punishment or the calculus of temporal penalty that the Western doctrine carries.

Source The Orthodox ChurchTimothy Ware (Kallistos Ware)
Byzantine Chant, Sacred Sound

Psaltic chant adapted to the Romanian language in the nineteenth century by Macarie the Hieromonk and by Anton Pann, so the modes are Byzantine and the melodies were rewritten to fit Romanian words.

Original sin, Doctrines

What is rejected is the Augustinian transmission of guilt, not the teaching that humanity begins damaged. This church speaks of ancestral sin: what passes from Adam is mortality and a nature inclined to sin, not personal culpability for another's act.

The Real Presence in the Eucharist, Doctrines

The gifts are held to be truly the body and blood of Christ. The change is confessed without committing the church to the scholastic account of substance and accident that the Latin term transubstantiation carries.

Source The Orthodox ChurchTimothy Ware (Kallistos Ware)

Holds Element

Mount Athos, Sacred Sites

Romanian monks live on the mountain in sketes that are dependencies of the ruling monasteries rather than houses of their own, so the presence is real and its standing is different.

Held as the head of the Romanian church.

Source The Orthodox ChurchTimothy Ware (Kallistos Ware)

The Romanian church attended and signed, and has since worked to have the council decisions received in its own synod.

Source Official Documents of the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church, Crete 2016Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church

Objects and Practices of This Tradition

Included in the wider Eastern Orthodox Old Testament canon beyond the Trent-era Roman Catholic deuterocanon, affirmed at the Synod of Jerusalem, 1672.

Source The Confession of Dositheus (Synod of Jerusalem, 1672)Synod of Jerusalemthe holders' own account

Included in the wider Eastern Orthodox Old Testament canon beyond the Trent-era Roman Catholic deuterocanon, affirmed at the Synod of Jerusalem, 1672.

Source The Confession of Dositheus (Synod of Jerusalem, 1672)Synod of Jerusalemthe holders' own account
Source The Confession of Dositheus (Synod of Jerusalem, 1672)Synod of Jerusalemthe holders' own account
Source The Confession of Dositheus (Synod of Jerusalem, 1672)Synod of Jerusalemthe holders' own account

Kept in the Romanian Orthodox Church, the one Orthodox church of the Byzantine tradition whose language is Romance. Almsgiving is bound closely to the fasting seasons, what is not spent on food being given away.

Kept in the Romanian Orthodox Church, the one Orthodox church of the Byzantine tradition whose language is Romance. Holy Unction is one of the seven mysteries and is administered to the living faithful in general, most publicly on Holy Wednesday, and not to the dying alone.

Theology proceeds by denial as well as by affirmation, and the denials operate on the affirmations rather than cancelling them. The order is inherited from the Cappadocians and from Pseudo-Dionysius.

The episcopate is held to run in unbroken succession from the apostles, and it is the bishop rather than the see that carries it. This is the ground on which this church recognises its own orders and those of the other Orthodox churches.

Source The Orthodox ChurchTimothy Ware (Kallistos Ware)
Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Baptism, Rituals

Kept in the Romanian Orthodox Church, the one Orthodox church of the Byzantine tradition whose language is Romance. Baptism is by threefold immersion, and is followed immediately by chrismation and communion in the same service.

Kept in the Romanian Orthodox Church, the one Orthodox church of the Byzantine tradition whose language is Romance. Baptism, chrismation and first communion are given together in one rite, so the baptismal life begins in infancy and is not deferred to an age of discretion.

Kept in the Romanian Orthodox Church, the one Orthodox church of the Byzantine tradition whose language is Romance.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Source The Confession of Dositheus (Synod of Jerusalem, 1672)Synod of Jerusalemthe holders' own account
Source The Confession of Dositheus (Synod of Jerusalem, 1672)Synod of Jerusalemthe holders' own account
Source The Confession of Dositheus (Synod of Jerusalem, 1672)Synod of Jerusalemthe holders' own account
Source The Confession of Dositheus (Synod of Jerusalem, 1672)Synod of Jerusalemthe holders' own account

Kept in the Romanian Orthodox Church, the one Orthodox church of the Byzantine tradition whose language is Romance.

Kept in the Romanian Orthodox Church, the one Orthodox church of the Byzantine tradition whose language is Romance. Orthodoxy ordains married men to the priesthood but requires that bishops be monks, so celibacy shapes the episcopate rather than the parish; Mount Athos remains the tradition's monastic centre.

Kept on December 25 under the revised calendar, while Pascha stays on the older reckoning.

Kept in the Romanian Orthodox Church, the one Orthodox church of the Byzantine tradition whose language is Romance. The churching of a mother and the presentation of a child on the fortieth day is kept as a living rite here, not as a survival.

Compline, Practices

Kept in the Romanian Orthodox Church, the one Orthodox church of the Byzantine tradition whose language is Romance.

Confession, Practices

Kept in the Romanian Orthodox Church, the one Orthodox church of the Byzantine tradition whose language is Romance. The Orthodox confess standing beside the priest before an icon rather than through a grille, the priest understood as a witness rather than a judge, and confession is ordinarily expected before receiving communion.

Confirmation, Rituals

Kept in the Romanian Orthodox Church, the one Orthodox church of the Byzantine tradition whose language is Romance. Chrismation is given with baptism, in infancy, by a presbyter using chrism consecrated by a bishop. The rite completes initiation here rather than following it years later.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

Kept in the Romanian Orthodox Church, the one Orthodox church of the Byzantine tradition whose language is Romance.

Kept in the Romanian Orthodox Church, the one Orthodox church of the Byzantine tradition whose language is Romance.

Exorcism, Practices

Kept in the Romanian Orthodox Church, the one Orthodox church of the Byzantine tradition whose language is Romance. Prayers of exorcism are read over every candidate as a fixed part of the baptismal service, before the renunciation and the anointing.

Fasting, Practices

Kept in the Romanian Orthodox Church, the one Orthodox church of the Byzantine tradition whose language is Romance. Orthodox fasting means abstinence rather than hunger: no meat, dairy, eggs, fish with backbones, wine or oil on the strictest days, kept through Great Lent and three further fasting seasons and on most Wednesdays and Fridays, which is roughly half the year.

Kept in the Romanian Orthodox Church, the one Orthodox church of the Byzantine tradition whose language is Romance. The washing of feet is performed on Holy Thursday by a bishop, the Niptir, in the cathedral and in the great monasteries.

Funeral Rites, Rituals

Kept in the Romanian Orthodox Church, the one Orthodox church of the Byzantine tradition whose language is Romance. The funeral service, the Panikhida and the memorial services on the third, ninth and fortieth days form one continuous set of offices for the dead.

Gloria Patri, Prayers

Kept in the Romanian Orthodox Church, the one Orthodox church of the Byzantine tradition whose language is Romance.

Kept in the Romanian Orthodox Church, the one Orthodox church of the Byzantine tradition whose language is Romance. The Jesus Prayer belongs to Orthodoxy, defended by Gregory Palamas against the charge that its practitioners claimed to see God's essence; monks and increasingly laypeople repeat it alone on a knotted woollen cord, and teachers warn against the breathing technique without direction.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Holy Orders, Rituals

Kept in the Romanian Orthodox Church, the one Orthodox church of the Byzantine tradition whose language is Romance. A married man may be ordained deacon or presbyter, though not bishop, and a man may not marry after ordination. This is the settled difference from Latin practice.

Received in the Chalcedonian form: one person known in two natures, without confusion, change, division or separation. Receiving Chalcedon is what places this church in the Eastern Orthodox communion rather than the Oriental Orthodox one.

Source The Definition of Faith of the Council of ChalcedonCouncil of Chalcedonthe holders' own account

Kept in the Romanian Orthodox Church, the one Orthodox church of the Byzantine tradition whose language is Romance.

Incarnation, Doctrines

Held in the terms the Council of Chalcedon set in 451, which this church receives as the fourth of the ecumenical councils.

Source The Definition of Faith of the Council of ChalcedonCouncil of Chalcedonthe holders' own account

Kept in the Romanian Orthodox Church, the one Orthodox church of the Byzantine tradition whose language is Romance. Infants are baptised, chrismated and communicated in one rite, so initiation is complete before the child can speak.

Intinction, Practices

Kept in the Romanian Orthodox Church, the one Orthodox church of the Byzantine tradition whose language is Romance. Communion is given in both kinds together, the consecrated bread having been placed in the chalice and administered to each communicant from a spoon. The result is the same as intinction and the manner is not, and the practice here is ancient rather than adopted for convenience.

Jesus Prayer, Prayers

Kept in the Romanian Orthodox Church, the one Orthodox church of the Byzantine tradition whose language is Romance.

Source The Confession of Dositheus (Synod of Jerusalem, 1672)Synod of Jerusalemthe holders' own account

Kept in the Romanian Orthodox Church, the one Orthodox church of the Byzantine tradition whose language is Romance.

Kept in the Romanian Orthodox Church, the one Orthodox church of the Byzantine tradition whose language is Romance.

Kept in the Romanian Orthodox Church, the one Orthodox church of the Byzantine tradition whose language is Romance. The marriage service is the Crowning, and the priest is the minister of the sacrament rather than a witness to a contract the couple make, which is the opposite of the Roman analysis.

Matins, Practices

Kept in the Romanian Orthodox Church, the one Orthodox church of the Byzantine tradition whose language is Romance.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

Kept in the Romanian Orthodox Church, the one Orthodox church of the Byzantine tradition whose language is Romance. Tonsure is the rite of monastic profession itself, performed in degrees, and is not a preliminary to it.

Monastic Vows, Rituals

Kept in the Romanian Orthodox Church, the one Orthodox church of the Byzantine tradition whose language is Romance. Monastic profession is made in degrees, the rassophore, the stavrophore and the great schema, rather than as a single set of three vows.

Source The Confession of Dositheus (Synod of Jerusalem, 1672)Synod of Jerusalemthe holders' own account

Kept in the Romanian Orthodox Church, the one Orthodox church of the Byzantine tradition whose language is Romance. The Ninth Hour is prayed daily from the Horologion and precedes Vespers, so that the liturgical day turns on it.

Nunc Dimittis, Prayers

Kept in the Romanian Orthodox Church, the one Orthodox church of the Byzantine tradition whose language is Romance.

Kept in the Romanian Orthodox Church, the one Orthodox church of the Byzantine tradition whose language is Romance. Sunday is kept as the day of the Resurrection and the day of the Divine Liturgy, and Saturday retains a liturgical character of its own that the West largely lost.

Kept in the Romanian Orthodox Church, the one Orthodox church of the Byzantine tradition whose language is Romance.

Kept in the Romanian Orthodox Church, the one Orthodox church of the Byzantine tradition whose language is Romance. The Byzantine rite as kept across the Eastern Orthodox churches.

Kept in the Romanian Orthodox Church, the one Orthodox church of the Byzantine tradition whose language is Romance.

Panikhida, Rituals

Kept in the Romanian Orthodox Church, the one Orthodox church of the Byzantine tradition whose language is Romance. Kept across the Eastern Orthodox churches.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Pilgrimage, Practices

Kept in the Romanian Orthodox Church, the one Orthodox church of the Byzantine tradition whose language is Romance. Pilgrimage to Mount Athos, to Jerusalem and to the shrines of local saints is a settled devotion of this church.

Prayer, Practices

Kept in the Romanian Orthodox Church, the one Orthodox church of the Byzantine tradition whose language is Romance. Prayer here is weighted toward the fixed cycle of the services and toward the short repeated prayer of the heart rather than toward extempore petition.

Included in the wider Eastern Orthodox Old Testament canon beyond the Trent-era Roman Catholic deuterocanon, affirmed at the Synod of Jerusalem, 1672.

Source The Confession of Dositheus (Synod of Jerusalem, 1672)Synod of Jerusalemthe holders' own account

Kept in the Romanian Orthodox Church, the one Orthodox church of the Byzantine tradition whose language is Romance.

This church is autocephalous and governs itself. It accords the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople a primacy of honour as first among equals, which is not a jurisdiction over it.

Source The Orthodox ChurchTimothy Ware (Kallistos Ware)
Prime, Practices

Kept in the Romanian Orthodox Church, the one Orthodox church of the Byzantine tradition whose language is Romance. The First Hour is prayed daily from the Horologion, appended to Matins, and was never suppressed here as Prime was in the Roman rite.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

Included in the wider Eastern Orthodox Old Testament canon beyond the Trent-era Roman Catholic deuterocanon, affirmed at the Synod of Jerusalem, 1672.

Source The Confession of Dositheus (Synod of Jerusalem, 1672)Synod of Jerusalemthe holders' own account
Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Source The Confession of Dositheus (Synod of Jerusalem, 1672)Synod of Jerusalemthe holders' own account

Kept in the Romanian Orthodox Church, the one Orthodox church of the Byzantine tradition whose language is Romance. The Orthodox perform the same rites but have never treated seven as a fixed count, calling them mysteries; chrismation follows infant baptism at once and communion is given to infants from then on, where the West defers both.

Sext, Practices

Kept in the Romanian Orthodox Church, the one Orthodox church of the Byzantine tradition whose language is Romance. The Sixth Hour is prayed daily from the Horologion and is joined to the Third in ordinary parish use.

Sin is described in medical rather than forensic terms: Christ the physician, the church a hospital, the passions the disease, and confession a treatment rather than a sentence.

Kept in the Romanian Orthodox Church, the one Orthodox church of the Byzantine tradition whose language is Romance.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Terce, Practices

Kept in the Romanian Orthodox Church, the one Orthodox church of the Byzantine tradition whose language is Romance. The Third Hour is prayed daily from the Horologion and carries the commemoration of the descent of the Holy Spirit.

The Anaphora, Rituals

Kept in the Romanian Orthodox Church, the one Orthodox church of the Byzantine tradition whose language is Romance. The anaphoras of St John Chrysostom and St Basil the Great are used according to a fixed calendar, the longer Basil on ten days of the year.

The Epiclesis, Rituals

Kept in the Romanian Orthodox Church, the one Orthodox church of the Byzantine tradition whose language is Romance. The epiclesis follows the institution narrative and is held to be the moment of consecration, which is the central Eastern difference from Western eucharistic theology.

The Fraction, Rituals

Kept in the Romanian Orthodox Church, the one Orthodox church of the Byzantine tradition whose language is Romance. The Lamb is broken into four particles marked IC XC NI KA, one placed in the chalice, one for the clergy and two for the communion of the people.

Kept in the Romanian Orthodox Church, the one Orthodox church of the Byzantine tradition whose language is Romance.

Kept in the Romanian Orthodox Church, the one Orthodox church of the Byzantine tradition whose language is Romance. The Orthodox call it the Divine Liturgy, most often that of John Chrysostom, sung throughout behind an icon screen, with leavened bread and communion given in both kinds from a spoon after preparation by fasting and confession.

The liturgical books name the Theotokos ever-virgin at every service, which is where the doctrine is carried here rather than in a dogmatic definition of its own.

Source Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic ChurchIsabel Florence Hapgood (compiler and translator)

Kept in the Romanian Orthodox Church, the one Orthodox church of the Byzantine tradition whose language is Romance. The institution narrative is recited within the anaphora, but the consecration is not located in it.

Theosis, Doctrines

Salvation is framed as participation in the divine life rather than as a debt discharged. The Palamite distinction between God's unknowable essence and his uncreated energies is what lets union with God be affirmed without the creature being absorbed into the divine essence.

Theotokos, Doctrines

Affirmed at Ephesus in 431 and repeated in the Chalcedonian Definition. The title is a statement about Christ before it is a statement about Mary: she is God-bearer because the one she bore is God.

Source The Definition of Faith of the Council of ChalcedonCouncil of Chalcedonthe holders' own account
Trinity, Doctrines

Confessed in the words of the creed of Nicaea and Constantinople as this church recites it, without the later Western addition to the article on the Spirit.

Source The Nicene-Constantinopolitan CreedFirst Council of Constantinoplethe holders' own account

Kept in the Romanian Orthodox Church, the one Orthodox church of the Byzantine tradition whose language is Romance. Orthodoxy defended images at the seventh council and keeps them central: an icon is kissed on entering, censed, carried in procession, laid on a stand for the feast of the day, and kept in a corner of the home. It is written to a received pattern rather than invented, and generally u

Kept in the Romanian Orthodox Church, the one Orthodox church of the Byzantine tradition whose language is Romance. The Orthodox honour Mary as Theotokos, God-bearer, and glorify saints by decision of a synod rather than through a Roman-style process; they reject the Immaculate Conception as answering a doctrine of original sin they do not hold, while keeping the Dormition.

Vespers, Practices

Kept in the Romanian Orthodox Church, the one Orthodox church of the Byzantine tradition whose language is Romance.

Viaticum, Rituals

Kept in the Romanian Orthodox Church, the one Orthodox church of the Byzantine tradition whose language is Romance. The Byzantine churches reserve the Lamb through the year for it.

Source The Confession of Dositheus (Synod of Jerusalem, 1672)Synod of Jerusalemthe holders' own account
Source The Confession of Dositheus (Synod of Jerusalem, 1672)Synod of Jerusalemthe holders' own account

Originates in Language

Romanian services were sung in Church Slavonic for centuries, on the pattern the Bulgarian and Serbian churches carried north. Romanian displaced it from the seventeenth century, which left this the only major Eastern Orthodox church whose liturgical language is a Romance one.

Source The Orthodox ChurchTimothy Ware (Kallistos Ware)
Sources
1. The Orthodox Church
Timothy Ware (Kallistos Ware), Penguin Books, 1993View the Source
2. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised edition
F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.), Oxford University Press, 2005View the Source
3. The Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed
First Council of Constantinople, 381The Nicene Creed text
Quote, The Nicene Creed text
We believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible.
the holders' own accountView the Source
4. Official Documents of the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church, Crete 2016
Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church, 2016News Bulletin Number 1
Quote, News Bulletin Number 1
The Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church commenced on the Sunday of Pentecost, 19 June 2016, with the Pan-Orthodox concelebration of all the Primates of the participating Orthodox Churches.
View the Source
5. International Religious Freedom Report
United States Department of State, Office of International Religious Freedom, US Department of State, 2023View the Source
6. Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)
Encyclopaedia Britannica editors, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 2024View the Source
7. The Wealth of the Romanian Orthodox Church Exceeds EUR3 Billion (Money.ro)
8. Statutul pentru Organizarea si Functionarea Bisericii Ortodoxe Romane
Romanian Orthodox Church (Patriarhia Romana / Romanian Patriarchate), 2007View the Source
9. Religion in Romania
Wikimedia FoundationView the Source
The Definition of Faith of the Council of Chalcedon
Council of Chalcedon, 451Session IV, Definition of Faith
Quote, Session IV, Definition of Faith
Following the holy Fathers we teach with one voice that the Son of God and our Lord Jesus Christ is to be confessed as one and the same Person, that he is perfect in Godhead and perfect in manhood, very God and very man.
the holders' own accountView the Source
Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes
John Meyendorff, Fordham University Press, 1979On ancestral sin, deification and the apophatic methodView the Source
Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic Church
Isabel Florence Hapgood (compiler and translator), Houghton Mifflin, 1906The litanies, which name the Theotokos ever-virginView the Source
Comments (0)
No comments yet. Be the first to share a thought.
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.

View At A Past Year

Choose a year to see this entry's facts and connections as the atlas records them at that moment: what it held then, what it held instead, and what it had not yet adopted. Choose Present for the current record.