Repose 1993

Fr. Dumitru Stăniloae died in Bucharest on 5 October 1993, at the age of eighty-nine, four years after the fall of the communist regime that had imprisoned him. This file records his death and burial and the immediate sense of loss in the Romanian and wider Orthodox world.

Tradition: Romanian Orthodox

The End of a Long Life

Fr. Dumitru Stăniloae reposed in Bucharest on 5 October 1993 (Louth, Modern Orthodox Thinkers: From the Philokalia to the Present, SPCK, 2015, ch. 6, dating his death to 1993; Miller, The Gift of the World: An Introduction to the Theology of Dumitru Staniloae, T&T Clark, 2000, on his death). He was eighty-nine years old, having been born in 1903 (see Vlădeni and Early Life). [Disputed: the day of his death is most commonly given as 5 October 1993; some accounts differ by a day. The guide gives 5 October 1993 as the date reported in the principal accounts, and notes that the year (1993) and the age (eighty-nine) are not in dispute (see Louth, Modern Orthodox Thinkers, 2015).]

His death came at a poignant moment. He had lived to see the end of the communist regime in the revolution of December 1989 — to see the Church he had served through the years of persecution emerge into freedom, the monasteries reopen, and his own work honored at last in a free Romania (see Rehabilitation and Recognition). He had been active nearly to the end, still writing and receiving visitors, a living link between the pre-war world of his formation and the post-communist Church (Miller, The Gift of the World, 2000, on the last years). By a further coincidence of dates, 1993 was also the year of the repose of two other great twentieth-century Orthodox figures whose lives touched the same currents of renewal — a reminder of how much of a whole generation was passing.

Burial

Stăniloae was buried near Bucharest; the accounts associate his burial with the monastic cemetery at Cernica, the great monastery near the capital that had long been a center of Romanian monastic life (Miller, The Gift of the World, 2000, on his burial; Louth, Modern Orthodox Thinkers, 2015, ch. 6). [Disputed: the place of his burial is reported in the biographical literature as the Cernica Monastery near Bucharest; readers should verify the exact resting place against a primary Romanian source, as the details of his interment are given briefly and with some variation in the English-language accounts.]

The Sense of Loss

His death was felt as the passing of the greatest Romanian theologian of the century and one of the greatest Orthodox theologians of any nation in the modern age (Ware, foreword to Stăniloae, The Experience of God, vol. 1, Holy Cross Orthodox Press, on his stature; Louth, Modern Orthodox Thinkers, 2015, ch. 6). Tributes recognized in him a rare combination: a scholar of the first rank who was also a man of prayer and a confessor who had suffered for the faith; a theologian whose learning never became detached from the life of the Church (Miller, The Gift of the World, 2000, on the assessment of his life at his death). The completion of the English translation of his Dogmatics as The Experience of God, which began the year after his death and continued for two decades, ensured that his influence would grow rather than fade in the years after his repose (see The Experience of God and Influence on Contemporary Theology).

The subsequent reception of Stăniloae — including the reverence in which he is held in Romania and the open question of whether he might one day be formally glorified — is treated in the following section; this guide is careful to distinguish that reverence, which is real, from a canonization that has not taken place (see The Question of Canonization).

See Also

• Rehabilitation and Recognition — the honors of his last years, before his death
• Vlădeni and Early Life — the 1903 birth that bounds his eighty-nine years
• The Question of Canonization — the reverence since his death, and the open question of glorification
• Influence on Contemporary Theology — his growing influence after 1993

References

• Louth, Andrew. Modern Orthodox Thinkers: From the Philokalia to the Present. London: SPCK, 2015. (Ch. 6: Stăniloae’s death in 1993; the burial near Bucharest; his stature at his death; his living through the 1989 revolution to the freedom of the Church.)
• Miller, Charles. The Gift of the World: An Introduction to the Theology of Dumitru Staniloae. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000. (His death and burial; the last years; the assessment of his life.)
• Ware, Kallistos. Foreword to Stăniloae, The Experience of God, vol. 1. Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1994. (His stature as one of the foremost Orthodox theologians of the age.)