Clandestine rituals
Item set
Title
Clandestine rituals
Description
Persecuted religious groups were often forced to conduct their religious rituals out of the public eye. Having no legal status and being closely watched by the authorities, these communities often established permanent or temporary places of worship in hidden or underground spaces or in private houses, where they could conduct their religious services in the safety afforded by secrecy. Some groups held their meetings and rituals in open spaces (typically in isolated locations such as woods or caves), often under the disguise of various secular activities as excursions, hiking trips or family holidays. In the generally anti-religious environment of communist regimes, even members of legally recognised churches opted sometimes to hold their ritual activities in the domestic sphere for fear of various kinds of social sanction or retribution.
Cases of secret rituals recorded by the secret police are present in the archival record from across the region including Ukraine, Romania, Moldova and Hungary. There are examples of secretly held practices of Orthodox or Roman Catholic dissent groups as well as from the so-called sects of Protestant and Evangelical origin. Archival evidence of these rituals take various forms including confiscated images, surveillance photos, photographs and films of re-enacted rituals, descriptions in informant reports, secret police summary reports and intercepted private correspondence.
Cases of secret rituals recorded by the secret police are present in the archival record from across the region including Ukraine, Romania, Moldova and Hungary. There are examples of secretly held practices of Orthodox or Roman Catholic dissent groups as well as from the so-called sects of Protestant and Evangelical origin. Archival evidence of these rituals take various forms including confiscated images, surveillance photos, photographs and films of re-enacted rituals, descriptions in informant reports, secret police summary reports and intercepted private correspondence.
Creator
Agnes Hesz
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
Agnes Hesz, "Clandestine rituals"
http://hiddengalleries.eu/digitalarchive/s/en/item-set/352
http://hiddengalleries.eu/digitalarchive/s/en/item-set/352
Date Created
2019
Items
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Images of clandestine Greek Catholic services in Transylvania
The four images illustrate the religious life of a Greek Catholic community in 1970s Transylvania as recorded by the community in photographs and how it is described by the Securitate on the basis of their surveillance and investigation of the community. These materials represent a rare instance where it has been possible to relate secret police descriptions to photographic materials that can still be found in the community. The first three images come from the private collection of Mihai and Ana Rus and form part of a group of photos related to their regular attendance at religious services -
Secret police photographs of Ioannite community Ukraine
The photographs come from a 1959 KGB criminal case against three members of an Ioannite community in Cherkasy region, Ukraine. The images were designed as a photo album pasted into the secret police file. They portray father Mitrofan, the priest of the community in his house, which had been turned into a clandestine chapel. The first photo collage shows father Mitrofan dressed in Orthodox vestments against a background of icons, performing a religious service and talking to women, seemingly his followers. The second photo collage records the ritual washing of feet, also performed in father Mit -
Images of Old Calendarist underground church in Bucharest
The 4 images are taken from a secret police personal file and were used as evidence of an Old Calendarist underground monastery in Bucharest. The community was led by the Old Calendarist bishop Evloghie Oța. According to the communist state legal framework, the Old Calendarist Orthodox Church was an illegal entity. These pictures documented a sweep operation of the secret police that ended in the destruction of the underground church and the arrest of the bishop. We cannot date the pictures precisely because the community kept rebuilding the underground chapel and the secret police destroyed -
Confiscated photographs from a clandestine religious community Budapest
These images were confiscated from an underground Pentecostal community in Budapest-Pesterzsébet in 1972. The first image depicts a baptism where pastor József Németh is baptising a young girl. The second image is a group-picture of pastor József Németh and another five congregants in white who had just been baptised. They are standing with presumably other congregants and family members. The third image depicts pastor József Németh preaching to his congregation in their hidden house church. Prior to confiscation, the photos belonged to pastor József Németh. The photos were taken by a mem -
Letter about a secret Roman Catholic home christening Budapest
This word-for-word transcript of a typewritten personal letter tells about a secret home christening held in Budapest in December 1954. Amongst other deeply personal matters, the author, the child’s grandmother, briefly reports about the baptism. From this we learn that the child was baptised by a Piarist monk in the presence of the extended family, altogether 22 people. For the occasion the child’s grandfather erected a makeshift altar. As the letter-writer notes, he "made a beautiful altar. He made it so exceptionally nice that everybody was weeping with emotion. My entire home looked like a