ABSTRACT
In a life that spanned almost the entire twentieth century, Petre Tutea experienced the formation of the modern Romanian State, both World Wars, the traumatic decades of the Communist 'experiment', and the 'Stolen Revolution'. This chapter attempts an analytical examination of Tutea's life and work as a whole, and seeks to establish his significance both to Romania and to the wider world of faith and intellectual development in 'post-Communist' society. It suggest that his witness as a confessor of the Christian faith – in the traditional sense of 'confessor' as one who testifies to Christ through a martyrdom of sacrificial living – can contribute to ecumenical dialogue and reconciliation. Tutea's works have, implicitly and often explicitly, a polemical character engendered by the political circumstances of his life. He is one of those thinkers whose oeuvre is to be read not only in his writings, but also in the unwritten suffering and oppression which he, with so many, courageously endured.
