Sofronie of Cioara () is a Romanian Orthodox saint. He was an Eastern Orthodox monk who advocated for the freedom of worship of the Romanian population in Transylvania.
Early life
Sofronie was born in the first half of the 18th century in the Romanian village of Cioara, now Săliștea, Transylvania, which was at the time part of the Austrian Habsburg Empire. His Christian given name was Stan and his family name was Popa (or Popovici, according to other sources). His family name suggests that one of his ancestors was a priest, as in Romanian popă means priest. Sofronie also became an Orthodox priest and he remained in Cioara until the death of his wife, when he went to a monastery in Wallachia (possibly the Cozia Monastery) and became a monk.
After becoming a monk, Sofronie returned to Cioara and built a small wooden Orthodox monastery in the forest close to the village. He devoted his life to monasticism until 1757, when he started to lead the violent uprising of the Romanian Orthodox population in Transylvania against the Habsburg policy of encouraging all Romanians to join the Greek-Catholic Church.
Religion in Habsburg Transylvania
The Habsburg Empire was a conglomerate of different states and people. In this conglomerate, the Roman Catholic religion served to strengthen the other forces of cohesion, dynastic, absolutism, bureaucratic, or military, and provided a political instrument for domination and unification. In addition to various measures designed to protect Catholicism, which at the time was very weak in Transylvania (predominantly Romanian Orthodox), the Habsburgs tried to strengthen it in other ways. The fact that the Romanian people, due to their Orthodox religion, were only tolerated in Transylvania presented an excellent opportunity, and the Habsburgs believed that by winning over the Romanians they would strengthen their position in the region.
In 1701, Emperor Leopold I suggested Transylvania's Orthodox Church to be one with the Roman Catholic Church. Therefore, Transylvanians were encouraged to become Catholics and adhere to the newly created Greek-Catholic Church by retaining their Orthodox ritual, but accepting the four doctrinal points established by the Council of Florence between 1431 and 1445: the Pope as the supreme head of the church; the existence of Purgatory; the Filioque clause; and the use of unleavened bread in Holy Communion. The clergy first had to be won over with the material advantages of the union, which would mean equality with the Catholic priesthood, including their income and their privileges. However, many of the Orthodox priests did not join the Union and, as Seton-Watson wrote in his book, "despite all handicaps, the devotion of the common people to the ancient faith was truly touching and the latent demand for an Orthodox bishop and freedom of religion slowly became more vocal and was roused by the Uniate example".
Sofronie's movement (1759–1761) Sofronie, as a Transylvanian Orthodox monk, preached against the union with the Catholics and against the increasing pressure put on the Orthodox communities to join this union. In the spring of 1757, the Austrian authorities from the nearby village of Vințu de Jos destroyed Sofronie's small monastery in an attempt to eliminate the violent threat of Orthodox fanaticism in Transylvania. The authorities also started to arrest all the members of the Orthodox clergy preaching against the union. In order to escape the arrest, Sofronie fled Cioara,leaving the local Orthodox community of the region without a head.
After some evidence of popular discontent of the Transylvanian Orthodox, Empress Maria Theresa issued in 1759 her first Edict of Toleration, which seemed far too modest in scale to the people concerned, and only served to increase disturbances.
On 6 October 1759, Sofronie addressed the Romanian Orthodox community from Brad, in Hunedoara County, informing the people that the Empress' Edict of Toleration allowed the Romanian population in Transylvania to choose freely between the Orthodox and the Greek-Catholic Church. The authorities in Vienna became worried and imperial troops hunted down the preacher. He was arrested by the authorities and jailed in Bobâlna, a village in Hunedoara County. On 13 February 1760, Sofronie was forcibly released, after the revolt of some 600 Romanian peasants led by Ioan, the Orthodox priest from Cioara.