Patriarch Elie Miron Cristea (1868–1939)
Patriarch Elie Miron Cristea (1868–1939)

Summary/Abstract: Born in Topliþa, Harghita County, Dr. Elie Miron Cristea (1868–1939) is one of the artisans of the Great Union, also with an important activity during the interwar period. He is considered to be a model of the Romanian aristocratic spirit, whose origin lies in the dignity and nobility of the Transylvanian Romanian peasant. In 1890 he graduated from the Andreian Theological and Pedagogical Seminary in Sibiu. A year later he obtained a state grant from the Transylvania Society, which offered him the opportunity to continue his studies at the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy of the Hungarian Royal University in Budapest where, in 1895, he received his PhD in Philology. Between 1895 and 1902 he served as bishopric secretary at the Archbishopric of Sibiu, being appointed, for three years, editor-in-chief of the Romanian Telegraph magazine, and respectively president of the ASTRA (Transylvanian Association for Romanian Literature and Romanian People’s Culture), 4th Division, Sibiu, until 1910. Between 1902 and 1909 he was appointed counselor at the Orthodox Archbishopric of Transylvania in Sibiu, where he dealt with various administrative activities, including drawing up the plan for the interior painting of the new cathedral in Sibiu. On 8 May 1910 he was elected Bishop of Caransebeº; then he emerged as a great fighter for the unity of the Romanian people, both as a cleric and as a member of the Transylvanian Romanian delegation who presented the Unification Document in Bucharest. On the last day of 1919 he was elected Archbishop of Wallachia, with the title of Metropolitan-Primate of the Orthodox Church of Romania, and then, in 1925, he became the first Patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Church (Patriarch of All Romania). In times of political crisis, he was a member of the Regency Council (1927–1930) and then President of the Council of Ministers, in a national unity government.

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