Tudorists
Item set
Title
Tudorists
Description
The Tudorists are a religious group that appeared in the early 1920s in Romania and formed around the figure of Tudor (Teodor) Popescu (1887- 1963), a former Orthodox priest. The initial name of the community was the Scriptural Christians, but they soon became known as the Tudorists, after the founder of the movement. The group was outlawed for much of the interwar period but in 1939 the Tudorists was forced to merge with the legally recognized Evangelical Christians, as the state considered that they shared doctrinal similarities. The Tudorists continued to have a distinct identity inside this larger group and are nowadays known as a second branch of the Evangelical Christians. The Tudorists rejected icons and many aspects of Orthodox tradition and for this reason they were seen as a threat to both the Romanian Orthodox Church and the Romanian state, which in the interwar and wartime periods sought to build a unitary nation state through the promotion of the Orthodox faith and its association with the ethnic Romanian majority. Dumitru Cornilescu, an important member of the Tudorist community and one of Tudor Popescu's closest friends, translated the Bible into the modern Romanian language, between 1920 and 1924. This translation of the Bible is still largely used by various Neo-protestant communities in Romania.
Creator
Iuliana Cindrea
Publisher
This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme No . 677355
Bibliographic Citation
Iuliana Cindrea, "Tudorists"
Date Created
2019
Items
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Confiscated handwritten songbook belonging to a Tudorist believer
These images show a handwritten songbook that was confiscated from a Tudorist believer during a luggage inspection in 1975 whilst he was doing his military service. The first image shows the inside cover of the songbook, containing a short verse that reads: “And then, the whole eternity will be your prize, Because you were patient and kept yourself pure, For Him, and many hardships you have endured, But you kept yourself white and pure.” We also catch a glimpse of the first verses of a religious song. The following two images show other religious songs that he had handwritten. Because the son -
Confiscated Tudorist songbook Bucharest
This songbook is located in a police file from 1938 and it appears to have been confiscated from two Tudorist believers, both of whom were women, who were distributing brochures, calendars and other religious literature to various people on the street. The images uploaded are the front cover and the contents page of a 30 pages long book. The first image depicts the cover of the book which has the name “Tudor Popescu”, the founder of the religious group and its title, Christian Songs (Cântări creștinești). The number “47” refers to the total number of songs that are contained in the songbook