Icoana ca intermediar al miracolului şi expresie a identităţii confesionale. Studiu de caz: Beatissima Virgo Claudiopolitana
Icon as intermediary of miracle and expression of confessional identity. Case study: Miraculosa Beatissimae Virginis Maria Claudiopolitana

Summary/Abstract: Although icon – as cult object – is a specific reality for eastern Christianity, the miraculous image dominates the whole Christian world, and its systematically promotion is a characteristic of Occidental Christianity, of Catholicism in fact, which, by the Trento Council, although delimitated very clearly and restrictively reference to artistic representations, it still made full use of them in the recuperation of the lost status in front of Protestantism. This way of (re)conversion was followed mainly in historical Hungary, as the Habsburg armies recuperated territories occupied by the Turks, and the miraculous icon of the Theotokos from Cluj harmonizes admirably with the re-Catholicization phenomenon, next to images from Mariapócs, Tyrnavia and Győr – to remember only those more often circulated by the propaganda, especially the Jesuit one. Icon from Cluj worth paying special attention not only due to this instrumentalisation, but especially because of its Romanian and orthodox antecedents and duplication it suffered after acknowledging authenticity of miracle of shedding tears occurred in Nicula at the end of the 17th century. Due to this duplication, the worshipping of the icon developed in parallel to Romanians (Greek-Catholics and the Orthodox as well) and Catholics (Hungarians especially, but also Germans). It is very interesting initial perception of the environment in which the miracle happened and the manner by which it will developed, noticeable in relation with other similar phenomena occurred throughout the 18th century. If in 1699 was considered or hoped at least for union of Romanians with the Church of Rome, these proved useful also for providing the object from which was expected and obtained an important number of conversions to Catholicism amongst the Hungarians. Subsequently, the Divinity was refused the right of making miracles in the churches of “schismatics”, evidence that not only rationalism intervened in judging weeping of icons. Also by the installing itself of the icon in Cluj, the icon became a symbol of Catholicism, mainly of the Hungarian one, getting to believe that the tears of the Virgin were shed so that the Hungarians to return to real faith, being forgotten that the miracle occurred in a church of Romanians, and that it would have been normally to regard them too. We assist, thus, throughout the whole 18th century and the first decades of the following one to development of two trends of the Marianic cult concerning this relic: one very extensively propagated through the media, in which the Virgin, as Patrona Hungariae, assumes the similitude with the icon from Cluj, the other one is hardly noticeable documentary, yet tenacious in its traditional forms of expression, which will assure a much longer survival. I don’t believe we can speak of a competition between them, because, in the official speech, they ignored reciprocally.

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