Abstract EN:

The origin of the Seventh-day Adventist Movement in Romania goes back beyond the failed calculations of the Millerites, who were American millenarians in the 19th century. This Movement has its roots in the Old Continent, and goes back to the Renaissance. The intellectual revival promoted by the reading of the Bible, prepared the 16th century Reformation, followed by the Radical Reformation and by the Counter-Reformation. All these movements of religious awakening inevitably produced a break within Western Christianity, opening the way to violence and to religious confrontations, culminating in the bloody Wars of religion. These multiple tensions gave birth to the Sabbatarian Movement in Transylvania. Deprived of any official recognition as a religio recepta and refusing to live in illegality, some of its leaders went into exile, and the Sabbatarian faith took root in England. Its slow metamorphosis into the Seventh-day Baptist Movement and its transfer to the American continent prepared, three centuries later, an unexpected meeting with a group that had survived the Millerite Movement. This transplant was a success : the Seventh-day Adventist Movement followed and with the time it returned to Romania. This study deals with this Movement in Romania during the monarchy and during the Communist dictatorship, and supplies the political, social and cultural framework and references necessary to an understanding of its history.