ABSTRACT
In response to its critics and the growing religious competition it faced after 1989, the Romanian Orthodox Church has drifted to more radical expressions aimed to underline its fundamental role in the nation’s past. As part of this post-socialist strategy, the canonization of the nine martyrs who had opposed Catholicism in eighteenth-century Transylvania typifies the increasingly sacralized vision of history. The profound reshaping their biographies went through to suit the intended narrative and became of evident in the cult these newcomers to the national pantheon have been the object of. A parallel reading reveals how the Transylvanian martyrs have been made to fit into excessively nationalistic patterns since the 1990s. This is the result of rivalry with other groups, but also a consequence of internal strife.
