Key Points Summary
- The article presents the lives and martyrdom of Ion Moța and Vasile Marin, portraying them as figures of sacrificial witness and ideological conviction within a turbulent historical context.
- Written by Horia Stamatu, the accompanying Akathist hymn frames their deaths in explicitly spiritual and liturgical language, elevating them as examples of suffering, courage, and dedication.
- The Akathist follows the traditional Orthodox poetic structure of praise, using vivid imagery, repeated invocations, and “Rejoice” refrains to emphasize themes of martyrdom, struggle, and eternal reward.
- A central theme is the transformation of death into spiritual victory—presenting sacrifice not as defeat, but as a path to eternal life and divine glory.
- The text blends nationalism, religious symbolism, and apocalyptic imagery, portraying the fallen as defenders of faith, nation, and sacred order amid chaos and conflict.
- It calls readers to reflection, repentance, and spiritual awakening, urging them to honor the example of the fallen through renewed faith and commitment.
- Overall, the piece functions both as a historical reflection and a devotional text, inviting readers to see human struggle through a theological lens of sacrifice, redemption, and hope beyond death.
Contributed by Maxim, who usually translates Akathists available by clicking here. Maxim kindly asks all Orthodox Christians to keep him in their prayers for his repentance.
FIRST, A VERY THOROUGH INTRODUCTION
Our brothers from Orthodox Reflections have written and published some quite politically incorrect articles. They’ve been known to value free speech, the fight against censorship, and to platform even opinions with which they don’t agree (or might not agree). Therefore, I’ve finally dared to write this post with the hope that they (OR staff) will publish it. For the love of Truth, for the love of Christ and for the Love of the Saints and of Christ’s Martyrs. Fighting against misconceptions and against the slander of the confessors of Christ.
Since I don’t want to make this article too lengthy, let me make some things clear from the get go:
- This is not an Akathist in the Traditional Sense. This is kind of a poetical hymn of praise and prayer towards martyrs Ion Moța and Vasile Marin. It has elements of an Akathist, such as multiple lines of “Rejoice” addressed to the two individuals, but otherwise it doesn’t contain any other parts of the structure of an actual Akathist at all. For those who don’t want to read this entire introduction and only want the text, you can skip ahead down at the end of the introduction and directly to the text.
- This is not necessarily an endorsement of a political movement (even though personally I agree with it mostly) and this is not about politics. While some political matters might be brought up in passing, this is done as little as possible, only when and where necessary for context. This work is solely focused on the martyrdom for Christ against the Godless communists of Ion Moța and Vasile Marin.
- This is not a full biography of Ion Moța and Vasile Marin. It was not intended as such. I will only give very basic info about who they are, and then immediately proceed to talk about their martyrdom for Christ.
These things being said, let’s start:
Ion Moța (5 July 1902 – 13 January 1937) was the deputy leader of the Romanian Legionary Movement (Iron Guard), killed in battle during the Spanish Civil War.
He was one of the five founders (among Corneliu Zelea Codreanu and others) of the “Michael Archangel Legion” (the Iron Guard) in 1927.
Son of the nationalist Orthodox priest Ioan Moța, who edited a journal called Libertatea (“Liberty”), Ion I. Moța completed his baccalaureate at Bucharest’s Saint Sava National College, then studied law at the University of Paris (1920–1921), Cluj, and Iași. After being suspended from attending university in Romania, he returned to France. His thesis, finished in 1932 at the University of Grenoble, was entitled “Juridical Security in the Community of Nations”, later published in Romania as “The League of Nations as a Vicious and Dangerous Ideal”.
Codreanu made Moța leader of Frăția de Cruce (“Brotherhood of the Cross”), an organization of peasants and students who would “fight for nationalistic renewal” (founded on 6 May 1924). Upon the founding of the Iron Guard (the Legion of the Archangel Michael) on 24 June 1927, he became deputy Captain to Codreanu.
Later that year, on 18 August 1927, he married Codreanu’s sister, Iridenta. Together they had two children: Mihail and Gabriela.
In late 1936, Moța formed a Legionary unit to fight against the Republican forces in the Spanish Civil War. He and Vasile Marin (another prominent Legionary) were killed on the Madrid Front on the same day of fighting (13 January 1937). Their funerals in Bucharest (13 February 1937) were an immense and orderly procession (see Funerals of Ion Moța and Vasile Marin), attended by the Ministers of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Francisco Franco’s Spain, representatives of fascist Portugal, Japan (at the time in the early Shōwa period), and delegates of the Polish Patriotic Youth.
A monument commemorating their deaths was erected at Majadahonda, on 13 September 1970, with the support of Franco’s government.
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Vasile Marin (January 29, 1904 – January 13, 1937) was a Romanian politician, public servant and lawyer. A member of the National Peasants’ Party until 1932, Vasile Marin later became a prominent member of the Iron Guard. His death, and that of fellow Iron Guard leader Ion Moța, in the Spanish Civil War as volunteers for the Nationalists is credited with contributing to the growth of the Iron Guard.
He finished his law thesis in 1932 at the University of Bucharest.
Marin married, with the approval of Legionary leader Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, Ana-Maria Ropală in February 1933. Ropală was the daughter of a Jewish woman who had converted to Christianity and a Romanian army officer. She was a medical doctor. Her brother, Cătălin, was also a Legionnaire.
In December 1936 Marin, along with Ion Moța, participated in leading a small group of Legionnaires into Spain during the Spanish Civil War to present a ceremonial sword to the survivors of the Siege of the Alcázar and announce the alliance of the Iron Guard with Nationalist Spain; they also decided to enlist.
Both Moța and Marin died on January 13, 1937, during the first day of fighting at Majadahonda on the Madrid front.
Now before moving on to presenting the consensus of Romanian Saints, Spiritual Fathers and Figures regarding the martyrdom of Moța and Marin, I think I first need to bring up the issue of “controversial Saints” from the Church’s own history, as well as some clarifications regarding the Iron Guard.
I know that people are either pressed for time, or way too impatient (as am I) today, so I’ll start with key points everyone needs to read, even if they skip the rest.
First, if people want to condemn these men, simply because of their political affiliation and because of some violent acts done by certain individuals from the movement, while denying their sufferings for Christ and their sanctity – then they also need to remove Saint John of Kronstadt from their calendar of saints. St. John of Kronstadt was an avid supporter of the Black Hundreds political movement, which was a hyper-monarchist, ultra-nationalist organization that incited numerous pogroms against the Jews and caused numerous violent attacks. The Black Hundreds were 10 times more violent than the Iron Guard ever was – so if St. John of Kronstadt supported them, and he can be a saint, then so can members of the Iron Guard. Iron Guard were tortured in communist prisons to make them renounce Christ, but they refused to do so, thus becoming confessors and martyrs.
Second, I will bring to attention a modern confessor that the entire English-speaking world absolutely loves, defends, and calls a saint – Valeriu Gafencu, also known as “The Saint of the Prisons”. He was also a member of the Iron Guard. He never denounced his past, nor the Iron Guard. As his closest and best friend, Ioan Ianolide, notes in his book “Return to Christ” (“Întoarcerea la Hristos”), Valeriu Gafencu died “a convinced/convicted Legionnaire”.
It was, in fact, a Jewish man (ethnically and one-time religiously before later converting to Orthodoxy), the great Father Nicolae Steinhardt who called Valeriu Gafencu “The Saint of the Prisons”. He also testified that out of all the prisoners in the jails, the members of the Iron Guard were the best men and the most Christian of them all. This, of course, attracted the fury of the National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania. “Elie Wiesel” labeled Father Nicolae Steinhardt as an “anti-Semite, pro-Legionary and racist” – “racist” also because of some very harsh remarks that he made about the gypsies.
One of his works called “The Journal of Joy” was translated into English and published by St. Vladimir’s Press. It can be bought here.
Or you can read the book online here and here.
It is exactly this book, The Journal of Joy, which contains the “infamous” passage about the gypsies which so attracted the fury of the Elie Wiesel Institute.
Third, the Romanian Patriarchate already canonized 2 affiliated members of the Iron Guard: Saint Ilarion Felea and Saint Ilie Lăcătușu. Plus one Saint who lauded Corneliu Zelea Codreanu and the Iron Guard – Father Dumitru Stăniloae. Ten months before his earthly demise (19 January 1993), consistent with his views since 1937, Fr. Dumitru Stăniloae stated in the neo-legionary publication Gazeta de Vest:
“The sacrifice of these brave boys [the legionary commanders Moța and Marin, deceased in Spain during the Civil War fighting as volunteers on the side of General Franco’s forces] stands as the gift offered to God by the Romanian nation, endowed by the Creator with a superior spirituality, which can serve as a blueprint for other countries and assist with their progress to a higher moral level. With his kindness, Christ is alive and present in our nation’s Orthodoxy, unlike in the Western world separated from God, which can be noticed in the invalidity of their Holy Sacraments considered to be products of created grace. This is the reason why many Christian denominations have no valid sacraments, therefore engendering all the atheist philosophies of the West, culminating with the onset of communism.”
Saint Ilie Lăcătușu was actually a Legionary Priest and we have a photo of him and his wife doing the Legionary salute:
The relics of Saint Ilie Lăcătușu are incorrupt. You can Google “Holy Relics Ilie Lacatusu” and see them for yourselves.
Now that these points have been made, let me quickly address some things regarding the Iron Guard, before quoting Romanian Spiritual Fathers about the sacrifice of Ion Moța and Vasile Marin.
- The Iron Guard was never condemned by International Trials, unlike Nazism and Fascism. And they never classified the Iron Guard as such.
- The Iron Guard was never funded by the Germans, and they weren’t “secret collaborators”. Even detractors of the Iron Guard now admit this. The only time when the members of the Iron Guard collaborated with the Nazi Regime was after 23 August 1944, when Romania switched sides during the War. They collaborated only to fight against Communism in Romania, and nothing else.
- In true American hypocritical fashion, the American government decries in its annual reports the “dangerous activity of neo-legionary groups in Romania against democracy and its values”. This same American government collaborated with Horia Sima (the Guard’s successor after Codreanu), and other Legionaries, from the 1950s till the beginning of the 1960s to help take down the Romanian Communist regime. This can all be read in the declassified CIA documents. More links below:
https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/SIMA%2C%20HORIA%20%20%20VOL.%202_0083.pdf
https://archive.org/details/cia-raport-despre-horia-sima-12-aprilie-1954
https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP83-00415R003800010013-4.pdf
- Corneliu Codreanu never personally issued any order of assassination. Every political assassination, done by some of his followers, was done without his knowledge. He never endorsed them. Also, whenever one of his followers committed a murder, he immediately went and turned himself in to the police. He accepted a just punishment. The members of the Iron Guard were men of honor. A much more important fact is that, before the Iron Guard retaliated violently, they were persecuted by the State. Illegally I might add. The State was the one who began the violence, not the Iron Guard. While this doesn’t excuse murders committed by members of the Iron Guard, it does put things into perspective. On 10 April 10 1930, bloody clashes broke out in Bucharest between war veterans and the gendarmerie under the Peasant Party government. Students joined the veterans in the demonstration. On this occasion, a group of students led by Dr. Gheorghe Sârbulescu was arrested. Corneliu Codreanu signed on as lead defense attorney in the trial against the arrested students.
On January 11, 1931, Ion Mihalache dissolved the Iron Guard (the political wing of the Legion). In January 1931, Corneliu Codreanu was arrested. On March 26, 1931, the trial of Corneliu Codreanu and the dissolution of the Iron Guard were heard in the Court of Appeals.
In May 1932, the Iron Guard was dissolved for the second time by the Iorga-Argetoianu government. Arrests were made, party headquarters were sealed, and Corneliu Codreanu was prevented from speaking and defending himself in Parliament.
On 10 July 10 1933, over 200 Legionnaires gathered in Vişani to build a levee to stem the flooding of the Buzău River. Acting on orders from Armand Călinescu, the gendarmes put a stop to this noble initiative, mistreating and arresting the Legionnaires.
On 23 November 1933, Virgil Teodorescu, a student and member of the Legionary Movement, was shot and killed by gendarmes in Constanța while putting up posters.
On 28 November 1933, Legionnaire Niţă Constantin was assassinated. 10 December 10 1933: I.G. Duca dissolves the Iron Guard, and police officers ransack the headquarters of the Legionary Movement. Approximately 10,000 Legionnaires were arrested. The Iron Guard had filed candidacies in all counties, but this dissolution prevented it from participating in the general elections scheduled for 20 December 20 1933. In December 1933, Legionary Nicolae Bălănoiu was assassinated by the police on the orders of the Liberals. Numerous Legionaries were arrested and imprisoned at Jilava Prison. Mass arrests took place throughout the country, and continued into the first months of the following year.
On 29 December 1933, the Legionnaire Sterie Ciumetti was assassinated by the Bucharest police on the orders of the Liberal Victor Iamandi.
On 12 January 1934, Legionnaire Gheorghe Negrea was assassinated.
On 2 January 1934, Professor Nae Ionescu was arrested in Sinaia, put on trial, and held in custody until 7 February 1934, when he was released; however, that same evening he was re-arrested and held before the Court-Martial until 15 March 1934.
On 1 January 1935, Corneliu Codreanu signed a circular addressed to Legionnaires across the country, taking stock of the previous year: 18,000 arrests, with 18,000 homes ransacked by barbarians and drenched in innocent blood; 300 sick people in prisons, 16 dead, and 3 buried alive underground.
- 75% of Armed Resistance that fought against the Communist Regime in the Mountains was made up of Legionnaires.
- In 1953, the CIA and the American government parachuted thirteen members of the Iron Guard into Romania’s territory to fight against Communism. Unfortunately those men were captured quickly by the communists and put to death.
You can read about them.
https://romanialibera.ro/sport/atletism/cum-a-recrutat-cia-legionari-romani-233299/
https://adevarul.ro/stiri-locale/timisoara/cum-a-parasutat-aviatia-germana-partizanii-1674596.html
70 Years Since the Execution of the Parachuted Legionaries
The Process of the Legionnaires Parachuted in 1953
Photos from the Panikhida of/for the Parachuted Legionaries Killed in 1953
- We have relics from Legionaries, either canonized or not, which exude Holy Myrrh. This is proof of their Sanctity.
There are videos and photos with those instances all over the Romanian internet. Here are a few for those who want to see:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9G8gQ9v-04M
https://youtu.be/Gfk5P1NWDR0?si=b3cAbC0WTAu6Uf8Z
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGLGJmer6e0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nzd2K3UWJJA
Miracle at Iași – A skull began to exude myrrh on March 19, 2014
A Romanian Orthodox Rapper called Cedry2k was also present at that time, and he was the one who held the box with the relics in his hands as the myrrh started to exude. This blew away his skepticism, as during that time he only just recently came back to the Faith. You can read what he said here: https://www.ziaristionline.ro/2013/04/11/cedry2k-bodyguard-al-unor-sfinte-moaste-de-la-aiud-marturiseste-despre-o-minune-conferinta-azi-la-libraria-sophia/
And finally, one last thing and after which I’ll post quotes of Romanian Spiritual Fathers about the Iron Guard, and about Ion Moța and Vasile Marin. In 2015 the Romanian Parliament promulgated an Anti-Legionary Law. In a surprising move, the Romanian Academy, which is not at all favorable to the Iron Guard, came out with a press release in which they partially protested the new law – stating definitively that the Iron Guard is not “Fascism”.
I will first post the original communiqué in Romanian, after which I’ll post the translated version.
Romanian Academy Press Release in original language:
Romanian Academy Press Release translated into English:
And now finally the quotes of Romanian spiritual father that I promised at the beginning of this article:
“Fascism is preoccupied by the clothing (namely the forms of state organization), National-Socialism by the body (namely the racial eugenics), whereas Legionarism is preoccupied by something much deeper: by the soul (namely by its strengthening through the cultivation of Christian virtues and its preparation with final salvation in mind, salvation dealt with by the Christian Church in the most perfect fashion).” “The ultimate goal is not life. It is resurrection. The resurrection of nations in the name of Jesus Christ the Savior. Creation and culture are only means–not the purpose–of resurrection. Culture is the fruit of talent, which God implanted in our nation and for which we are responsible.”
“I have not engaged in politics and I am not a Legionary, but I speak as a priest: The Legionary Movement will surely triumph, because: (1) it has won over the youth of the country; (2) it has a leader who knows what he wants and is listened to; (3) it has as its foundation truth, faith, and Christian love—and against these we have no power.” — Quoted in the Romanian theological journal Teologia (2008), citing Felea’s wartime personal journal (Opera vieții mele – ziar personal 1937–1944).
ELDER JUSTIN PÂRVU (highly venerated):
The initiators of the Legionary Movement were, first of all, model Christian people; they were models of society. They brought a great contribution to the nation and to the Church in that period. They rebuilt the church and spiritual life of the people, because there had been a certain decline. They maintained a burning flame of prayer, they maintained a living spirit of sacrifice and self-giving, of humanity. Those young people did not pursue political goals, but only to exalt the nation along the line of the Church. It was not a matter of some error, of putting the nation above the Church, but only of bringing the nation into the Church, and to this consolidation contributed the highest minds of our culture and spirituality of that time, which we now bury. They succeeded in giving the peasant a cheaper bread; that was, moreover, their goal. Besides that, they played a very important role in containing communism. For example, in 1920, when the red flag was hoisted in Iaşi above the workshops in Nicolina, alongside Marx’s photograph, Codreanu rose and threw that red rag down from there. Then many young people attached themselves to the Legionary Movement. There were many foreign maneuvers that introduced corruption into our country, especially the Russians and the Jews, who controlled the press, education and commerce. The Legionnaires had nothing against the Jewish people as such. Indeed, there were many Jewish sympathizers of the Movement, and Radu Gyr himself founded the Jewish Theatre. However, they rose up against them when they threatened our Romanian territory. Politics has always been like the paganism with which Christianity fought over the centuries, since its beginnings. As then, as St. Justin the Martyr and Philosopher said, the Christian must renounce pagan immoralities, then learn the Christian law, know the true philosophy of cultivating spiritual qualities and then apply them practically in everyday life. This is what the Legionary Movement did, and their sincere work was crowned by the good God with martyrdom. Of course those who won wrote history and wrote it as they pleased, turning the legionnaires into terrorists, Nazis, anti-Semites. It is known that there was a friendly relationship between Codreanu and the chief rabbi of Romania, who was very impressed by the Captain’s personality, and they engaged in discussions. The Captain was even against Nazism. If it were not for the Legionary Movement we would have had the same fate as the Serbs, as they were decimated by the Germans, with the protection of the papacy included. After all, both the Russians and the Germans were states with a strong atheistic doctrine. Romanian youths, sympathizers or members of the Legionary Movement, were the only ones in Europe who openly rose up against communism. They rose up against the totalitarian abuses and the sins promoted by communist doctrine, with all its injustices and scourges. These young people greatly enraged Freemasonry, the enemies of Christianity, and awakened all of Europe from the drowsiness in which it was. These martyrs are inconvenient even after death. But they will all come before judgment and will see to whom truth and justice belonged. If here on earth they could not be convinced even by our sacrifices, they will be convinced beyond by the decree of God. “Depart from Me, for I do not know you…” These martyrs who were part of the Legionary Movement had nothing in common and no connection with Hitlerism. They are now accused of fascism precisely to discredit the movement, yet all the great men of culture of Romania from that period supported this movement. We are not interested in the political question. These young people were imprisoned especially for their religious convictions which could influence the Christian masses… (Text taken from the book “From the Teachings and Miracles of Father Justin”, Justin Pârvu Foundation)
Codreanu was the one who first saw the calamities to come. He said: “If the Russian armies remain on our soil, Europe will become a Soviet state.” And indeed, Europe is under a single leadership. That is why even canonizations cannot take place. (source: https://atitudini.com/2023/11/corneliu-zelea-codreanu-insemnari-de-la-jilava/)
“We are confident in the victory of the Legionary Movement, because it is ours, of the Legionary youth, and we belong to it.” From a 13 Nov 1936 letter reproduced in a biographical pamphlet: “…eu și tot tineretul legionar suntem alături de Înalt Preasfinția Voastră.” — PDF (Petru Vodă monastery site mirror) reproducing the text; the line explicitly associates himself “and all the legionary youth” in support.
“Today our nation once again takes in hand the sword of the Archangel, the guardian of Christianity, which God extends to it. Today we constitute ourselves once again as a state permeated by faith in God, as an advanced fortress that stands firm and impregnable in the face of pagan chaos. We believe that this is the meaning of today’s revolution in the life of our State, the meaning of transformation into a national-legionary State, under the patronage of Archangel Michael, God’s warrior against the aggressive powers of evil. Other nations also claim Archangel Michael as their patron, but no nation has fulfilled and does not fulfill so perfectly the work of Archangel Michael on the visible plane of history, as our nation.” ( “The Restoration of Romanianism in Its Historical Destiny, “Telegraful Român”, September 22, 1940)
“The sacrifice of these brave boys [the legionary commanders Moța and Marin, deceased in Spain during the Civil War fighting as volunteers on the side of General Franco’s forces] stands as the gift offered to God by the Romanian nation, endowed by the Creator with a superior spirituality, which can serve as a blueprint for other countries and assist with their progress to a higher moral level. With his kindness, Christ is alive and present in our nation’s Orthodoxy, unlike in the Western world separated from God, which can be noticed in the invalidity of their Holy Sacraments considered to be products of created grace. This is the reason why many Christian denominations have no valid sacraments, therefore engendering all the atheist philosophies of the West, culminating with the onset of communism.”
FATHER NICOLAE STEINHARDT:
“I never met Codreanu. But from what I’ve gathered from various sources, he was a man of character, honest and capable. His monstrous murder at the hands of the barbaric mercenaries hired by Carol II—strangled and shot in the back of the head while bound hand and foot with chains, turning him into a martyr—must impress any person with a civic conscience and give them pause to reflect on a single attitude toward life: respect for the dead, so as not to defile his memory with superfluous accusations when he was no longer alive.” (Nicu Steinhardt in the Securitate Files (1959–1989). Document Selection: Clara Cosmineanu and Silviu B. Moldovan, Nemira Publishing House, 2005, p. 395; CNSAS Archives, information collection, file no. 207, volume 5, ff. 100–101, P 191–195)
Nicholas Nagy-Talavera, a Hungarian writer of Jewish descent:
“Suddenly, a murmur went through the crowd. A handsome, slender, tall man, dressed in a white Romanian costume, rode into the courtyard on a white horse. He stopped near me. I could see nothing monstrous or evil in him. Quite the contrary. His childlike, sincere smile radiated over the crowd of poor people, and he seemed to be one with the crowd and yet, mysteriously, far removed from it. Charisma is an inadequate word to define the strange power emanating from this man. Perhaps he simply belonged to the forests, the mountains, the storms on the snow-covered peaks of the Carpathians, or the lakes and winds. And so he stood in the midst of the crowd in silence. His silence was eloquent; it seemed stronger than us, stronger than the prefect’s order forbidding him to speak. An old, withered peasant woman crossed herself and whispered to us: “He is sent by the Archangel Michael.” Then the church’s mournful bell began to toll, and the service—which always preceded the Legionary gatherings—began. The deep impressions formed in a child’s soul are hard to erase. For more than a quarter of a century, I have never forgotten my encounter with Corneliu Zelea Codreanu.” (Nagy-Talavera, Nicholas, A History of Fascism in Hungary and Romania. Ed. (Jewish) Hasefer, Bucharest, 1996; orig. ed. 1971, in English). – source :
David Şafran, Rabbi, Ph.D.:
“As a student, I had heard fantastic things about the Captain from the Legionnaires. I was eager to meet him in person. I even reached out to my former professors at the University of Bucharest—Mircea Vulcănescu and Traian Herseni—so that the Captain would receive me … at the Green House … Beneath his fiery eyes lay a hawk-like gaze. Confidence, ambition, words carefully considered and weighed from the very beginning… Codreanu listened to me attentively. Then, suddenly, it was as if I saw him fall into a trance. In a powerful voice, I heard him proclaim with passion:
– I have seen the holy Archangels Michael and Gabriel. I believe in the Holy Cross. The Church is for me a sublime, eternal symbol. O Lord, forgive my sins! I could see he was suffering…
– What do the Jews believe in, to survive the hard times humanity is going through?!
– We believe in truth. Politics is not truth, justice is an illusion, money is a lie. These are realities… In faith, all nations are equal in rights as well as in duties. For the Lord, there is no people smaller or greater. (So, neither “chosen” nor anti-Semitism.)
There is no connection between faith and anti-Semitism. Faith teaches people about universal brotherhood. I had entered the Green House at 1:20 p.m. (January 11, 1937). We had been talking for over two hours by then. I was determined to stay a little longer so I could leave with a clear mind. It wasn’t a formal discussion; rather, the world’s sorrows had mingled here… His truths and mine were burning, tormenting mind and soul, begging for answers, for arguments, so that we might part as friends. I had come to him with sincerity. I see him rise, extend his hand to me, and say:
– I greatly enjoyed our meeting. I don’t know if we solved any problems, but I learned fragments of the infinite mystery of faith. I did not come to provoke hatred or outbursts. My soul is pure… It is not the superior man we seek to refine, but the man-man. I left. I pondered his last reply at length. I saw in his experience the beginnings of logic. Then came the onslaught. Codreanu was killed on the orders of Carol II in 1937.” (David Şafran, “Karl Marx, Antisemite,” Jerusalem, 1979, chap. The Green House, pp. 106–115.)
“We cannot conceive of the Legionary Movement without God’s will; therefore, it was God’s will even if it arose from certain historical material causes.”
FATHER GHEORGHE CALCIU DUMITREASA:
“Considering how many martyrs they produced, I believe it was from God, but since they were human, they also made mistakes.”
HIS GRACE BISHOP BARTOLOMEU ANANIA:
“I must admit, however, that in the ‘Brotherhood of the Cross’ (Youth Organization of the Iron Guard) at the seminary, there was no politics or anti-Semitism—only education—and that I learned nothing but good things: love for God, for my people, and for my country; integrity; discipline in work; the pursuit of truth; respect for public property; and a spirit of sacrifice.”
IULIU MANIU, politician and member of the Peasant Party:
“I admit that Corneliu Zelea Codreanu was superior to my own thinking. I tried to adopt political means in the service and salvation of the country; he chose a superior path, namely: to first build character by educating the youth, so that through patriotic elevation, they might devote themselves entirely, morally and spiritually. To create first a ruling elite and then a party.” (Statement made at Snagov in the summer of 1943).
Richard Wurmbrandt, a Baptist pastor, of Jewish descent, missionary, and writer, and a former political prisoner:
“Do you know that Codreanu’s ‘Diary’ from Jilava contributed to my conversion to Christianity? The diary contained current events, impressions, memories, but above all a profound Christian reflection, inspired by rereading the four Gospels and the Epistles of St. Paul the Apostle while in prison.” (Testimony of Ioan Ianolide, Return to Christ, Christiana Publishing House, Bucharest, 2006, p. 161).
MONK ATHANASIE ȘTEFĂNESCU, former political prisoner:
“The ultimate goal is not life, but the Resurrection—the Resurrection of the nations in the name of our Savior Jesus Christ. The nation is, therefore, an entity that extends its life beyond the earth. Nations are realities in the world to come as well, not only in this world. This student (Corneliu Zelea Codreanu) guided his generation, taking Christ as his archetype. The struggle was hard and bitter, demanding sacrifices for their faith in God and the Romanian nation; the youth were subjected to a unique experiment in the world, known as the Pitesti experiment, where everyone was broken down, as that was the formula. But before God, it is not the falls that matter, but the rises. Father Calciu was one of them. This student’s generation, dressed in green and bowing before icons, was martyred as only the Christians of the first centuries had been. From their ranks rose those who climbed to the highest heights of heroism and even sainthood. If there were mistakes in the heat of battle, let it not be forgotten that one is the individual with morbid instincts, who kills for the sake of killing, and another is the individual who fights in the name of the city and the country, who has always been declared a hero.”
“Who do the supporters of the capitalist regime fear? The Legionnaires? The people who can no longer return from the grave, or their ideas—which they see as a political threat that exposes the hardships and misery into which they have plunged the entire country? They certainly do not fear the dead, but rather what they themselves have done, and the example they set, which remains in Romania’s uncensored history. For Romanians, European politicians will not remain role models, no matter how hard they try to force us to accept them. The true role models for us Romanians are and will remain Father Iustin Parvu, Arsenie Papacioc, Ioan Ianolide, Valeriu Gafencu, Virgil Maxim, Daniil Sandu Tudor, and all true Romanians, even if we are forbidden by law to mention their names. We have the right to speak of the victims of the Holocaust, but we do not have this right regarding the victims of communism, as of today by law. Where is the democracy promised by our elected officials? Who made this law, and who is behind it? Certainly not a true Romanian, not a person who would grant citizens freedom of expression, but a pack of dictators who want to get their hands on this wretched country and its past. They will certainly not succeed in this. The communists also tried to erase them from history, but they failed. Their holy relics at Aiud, and in other known or unknown prisons, remain a testimony to their virtuous lives before God. These men suffered in prisons for our freedom; they were and remain models of saints and martyrs whom we cannot simply forget on command, as the Europeans wish. We have clear evidence of their holiness. The very way they bore their cross while in prison, their way of life, and their deeds. The relics of Father Ilie Lacatusu, of Father Calciu Dumitreasa, of those in the ossuary at Aiud, and of those yet to be discovered are clear evidence of the holiness of these people.”
See also Father Eftimie’s testimony from 2011 regarding the Legionary Movement: http://astradrom-filiala-bihor.blogspot.ro/2011/02/parintele-neamului-in-fata-unei.html
Ion Mota and Vasile Marin, though from very different spiritual backgrounds, believed in death with equal conviction and sought it with equal fervor.
They, who had dedicated their youth to the Legion—that is, to prisons and persecution—did not hesitate to sacrifice their lives to hasten the salvation of the entire nation.
This death bore fruit. It sealed the meaning of life and of the creation of our generation. The primacy of the spiritual over the primacy of the temporal, in which previous generations believed. And they showed us what remains to be done and what can be done with this fleeting human life: A CHRISTIAN REVOLUTION!
(Buna Vestire, Year II, No. 262, January 14, 1938, p. 4)
NICOLAE IORGA, ROMANIAN HISTORIAN AND ENEMY OF THE IRON GUARD:
Two Brave Boys – article published in the magazine “Lumea nouă,” no. 1, 1937
“When, in recent days, we were tuning out the utterly monotonous news—despite the daily carnage—about what is happening, in the dead of winter, there in wretched Spain, we did not realize that among those who gave their lives fighting for the just cause were these two sons of our country.
Caught up in an enthusiasm that demands to be guided and not stifled, for otherwise the other kind of enthusiasm remains—one against which the State cannot fight sufficiently, especially on its own—and warmed by an idea to which they had devoted themselves entirely, they told themselves that it was preferable, rather than stirring up unrest in Romania itself—which does not always serve them well—to go where there are no speeches or street demonstrations, but where a man stands at every moment in the face of death for what he believes to be holy and great. And they fell.
Who knows what will come of the terrible storm that has swept over the distant Latin land where blood flows from every wound of a noble race. But if we ever see Spain as it was, as it ought to be, we will be able to say, with tender pride, that for this, a few drops of the precious blood of our youth were shed.”
“The spirit of sacrifice is what matters most,” says Mota. “The spirit of sacrifice is the measure of our Christianity,” he adds. “And he doesn’t just say it—he lives it.” (Constantin Noica)
“The Romanian Orthodox Church has a sacred duty to ensure that the heroes of our nation who sacrificed themselves on the altar of the Cross—among whom Ion Moța and Vasile Marin, of course, occupy a prominent place—are commemorated alongside the saints.” (Father Saint Constantin Galeriu)
Finally, before posting the text of the Akathist, I will give voice to Ion Moța and Vasile Marin by quoting their texts where they spoke about going to die for Christ.
THE TESTAMENT OF ION MOȚA:
“This is how I understood my life’s calling. I loved Christ and went happily to my death for Him!”
On the day of his departure for Spain, Ion Mota entrusted Professor Nae Ionescu with several sealed letters addressed to his parents, his wife, his children when they would be grown, and the Captain, with the request that they be delivered only in the event of his death.
Below are the letters—his testament—to his parents and the Captain, which the Legionary Council, deeply moved, has taken the liberty of publishing in this booklet so that each of us may keep them close to our hearts.
Bucharest, November 22, 1936
My beloved and much-tried parents and dear sisters,
God willed it to be so.
The pain is great, immense, I know. And I tremble with worry at the thought that you might have too little strength to bear it. But, my beloved parents, try to see, alongside your pain, all the beauty of our deed: They were firing machine guns at the face of Christ! The Christian foundation of the world was being shaken! Could we have stood by indifferently? Is it not a great spiritual blessing for the life to come to have fallen in defense of Christ? Thus, alongside the pain, you cannot help but feel a great spiritual uplift. May God give you the strength to bear this suffering and to overcome it.
A few practical requests: Do not let “Libertatea” die! My family will be able to live off it…
My dear parents, in your grief, think of what other parents have had to endure, like Moscardo, who was on the phone when his son was shot! And yet he did not despair, but fought and lived on, to fulfill his duty!
This is how I understood the duty of my life. I loved Christ and went happily to my death for Him! Why should you torment yourselves so much, when my soul is saved, in the kingdom of God?
Do not let concern for my family overwhelm you. God will not let her starve. Everything will work out well.
My dear mother, I am deeply worried about the harm you will do to yourself through your long anxieties after learning of my departure for the front, and then about your strength to withstand the blow of my loss.
Dearest mother, with tears in my eyes I tell both you and father my final wish: be strong, control your grief, and live on to care for my children.
Their misfortune will be even greater if everyone loses their strength to endure and breaks under the weight of grief.
At least out of love for Mihail and Gabriela, I repeat my fervent plea over and over: be strong, be courageous. Trust in God’s help to bear this personal material misfortune (for there is no spiritual misfortune).
How at peace I would be, to have this assurance that you will be strong. Therefore, I beg you to hear my call, my plea, moment by moment: do not let yourselves be defeated! It is worse then.
And forgive me, my dear parents, for all the turmoil I have brought into your lives.
I brought it only out of love for God and our Nation, from a pure heart.
I embrace you now with all my soul, and I am certain that you will fulfill my wish to face pain with strength and trust in God’s mercy.
Yours in love,
Ionel
THE POLITICAL TESTAMENT OF VASILE MARIN:
(written in his own words, through a logical arrangement of quoted ideas—omitting quotation marks to make the text flow more smoothly—from the essay: “Crez de generaţie”)
Excerpt from MOŢA AND MARIN. THEIR POLITICAL TESTAMENTS, Cartea Universitară Publishing House, Bucharest, 2006, ISBN (10) 973-731-359-3; ISBN (13) 978-973-731-359-0, with the author’s permission, who has declared this work to be in the public domain.
Motto: The formula for our salvation is the vanguard of the Romanian nation’s elite of soul, mind, and feeling. We believe in the virtues of our people and in their resurrection. (Vasile MARIN)
Romanians – Diligent seekers of light,
Nationalism is a policy of affirmation of the respective nation. It promotes the national spirit over the civic spirit, subordinating all other social purposes to national primacy.
Its purposes must be realized in a national state, which is not at the disposal of its citizens. Rather, it must be a prestigious state, with a historical, cultural, and civilizing mission.
Through national mysticism, a person is forged free from the abject materialism of the age; humanity is liberated from the attachments of the present era, and a school of heroic permanence is established.
Thus, nationalism shapes the man of cardinal virtues: hero, priest, ascetic, man of integrity, soldier. That is why nationalism conceives of society as a great army, with a spiritual hierarchy and appropriate leadership.
The nationalist is a soldier in the service of a faith. His actions are subordinated to the interests of the homeland. He behaves as if he were doing so in a war waged by his nation. The essential element is the spirit of sacrifice.
Our nationalism has a social dimension. It does not divide profiteers into Romanians and non-Romanians. It tolerates neither the former nor the latter. At times, it is even a more feared adversary of the former, who, subjugated by their own interests and betraying the interests of the homeland, commit an act of high treason.
Democracy, represented by its instruments—the parties—cannot endorse the promotion of a nationalist policy without thereby signing its own death warrant. A democracy that has recorded, in its grim record, the falsification of the historical meaning of its nation; that has sustained the existence of a parasitic state—from whose institutions it has fashioned instruments for the subjugation of the nation; that, in order to preserve its positions, did not shy away from committing crime after crime, unleashing unprecedented persecution against nationalist resistance organizations. This democracy that masks its turpitudes with outdated formulas plucked from the pathological museum of the French Revolution.
Most of the leaders serving the international cause have spoken out categorically against a purely nationalist policy.
Every faction claiming to be a party feels compelled to put on a “national” show in the shadow of the trivialized tricolor.
Under the guidance of these leaders, a “nationalist” activity is stirred up and sustained, whose primary characteristic is noise and whose ultimate goal remains diversion. A diversion cultivated with particular care from within and skillfully orchestrated and exploited abroad.
This is the current political picture of Romania: on the one hand, a merciless struggle to subdue and crush nationalist action; on the other hand, under the protection of state authorities, the development and propagation of so-called nationalist currents which, under the banner adorned with the tricolor, conceal the petty interests of certain groups that have abusively monopolized power, marginalized the pursuit of the general interest, and ground the creed of integral Romanianism in the mill of Judeo-Masonry.
From time immemorial, for the great anonymous masses as well as for those who have never delved into the realities of our public life, a “nationalist” policy has been pursued in the Romanian land. There have always been “nationalist” laws, a “nationalist” press, “patriotic” institutions, and, above all, political parties whose names began or ended, almost without exception, with the term “national.”
From the very beginnings of this so-called Romanian state, whose natural existence we have denied [1], the country’s public life has been governed by Caragiale-style nationalism [2]. [1] Since our Constitution was supposed to spring from our organic needs, and the forms embodied in the Constitution were not our own, since our Constitution was copied word for word from the Belgian one—forms that were natural there or in France, but were not natural here, because what is natural for one nation is not necessarily natural for others. Thus, based on a Constitution copied verbatim from the West, whose fundamental articles begin with: “All citizens, regardless of ethnic origin, language, or religion, enjoy…” etc., etc., the current state has been nothing more than a legal expression within the international order and, for that reason, has been unable to promote a Romanian culture. This culture, however little of it exists, was nothing more than the unsystematic and unorganized expression, through state policy, of a nation that, whether in the form of folk art or through the art of figures such as Eminescu, Creangă, or Coşbuc, gave free rein to its own genius. In the current state, we do not identify a Romanian culture.
In Romanian universities, all the subjects taught fall under the influence of foreign cultures; our professors, in most cases, were trained—or rather, warped—there, where they adopted that way of thinking, and Romanian students still go there today to drink only from the springs of foreign cultures.
The Romanian Athenaeum boasts the names of foreign lecturers; the National Theater stages foreign plays, and at the Romanian Opera one hears the melodies of the same Verdi, Gounod, or Wagner, because Romanian classical music is composed by the Jew Stan Golestan, with “Romanian sentiments” but permanently based in Paris.
We won’t even mention the “cultural” work carried out by the Radio Society and various other foundations, because from them the nation can expect anything but work to popularize Romanian creations.
This is the balance sheet, the sad balance sheet. And it is in the nature of things for it to be this way.
With a democratic ideology, essentially materialist, secularized in the most Masonic sense of the word, without a national policy (which, moreover, is so stifled by minorities that it could not even have one—the policy of nationalities within a state that is not the natural expression of their historical and ethnic being can be nothing other than democratic policy. For there is no instrument more powerful for dissolving a state than democracy. Conceived in numerical and quantitative terms, abstracting the ethnic, standardizing the specific on the basis of human universality, democracy is the ideal regime of internationalism. Does no one really notice the joy of minorities whenever, from positions of supposed responsibility, the banner of principles plucked from the pathological museum of the 1789 Revolution is waved? For whom is work done in the name of this sacred democracy? Cui prodest?), the Romanian state has remained in the wake of foreign cultures. And it considered its mission to the nation fulfilled if it provided us with trains, trams, telephones, and eventually even radios or American blockhouses. But these are elements of civilization that we encounter everywhere, in Buenos Aires as well as in Kamchatka. Culture remained somewhere outside, at the door, like an unprotected Cinderella unwanted by anyone. The state—specifically, the state of political clans—had no cultural policy because it had no national policy. The genius of the race, in its sporadic cultural manifestations, continued to manifest itself as before, only within the unofficial strata of the nation. And this explains how our culture is reduced solely to the ancient creations of the folk genius—pottery, poetry, fairy tales, songs, textiles—to the naive chronicles from the time of the voivodes, to the monastic printing press, where the foundations of this limited Romanian culture were laid, from which emerges the truth of Spengler’s assertion that “religiosity is the essence of culture, irreligiosity the essence of civilization,” and later to a few more prominent researchers of national history and to the brilliant literary works of Eminescu or Creangă.
To put it very clearly: if, for culture, the essential characteristic of its being is the specificity of the local genius that conceived it, for civilization the element that identifies it lies precisely in the international nature of its manifestation, since it presupposes the circulation of fungible material values, necessary and usable at any time, in any place, and by anyone. Homer, Dante, and Shakespeare are pinnacles of universal culture to the extent that they remain the most authentic representatives of Greek, Italian, or Anglo-Saxon genius. The elements of comfort in civilization—materialistic in essence—cannot be confined to a specific space. The products of applied science—the newspaper, the cinema, the train, or the airplane—are contemporary and non-specific elements of civilization that can be equally appropriated by highly cultured nations, such as France and Italy, as well as by Abyssinian tribes and the Black republics of America.
In the realm of culture, peoples distinguish themselves through noble emulation, and universal harmony arises precisely from the harmony of their diverse voices; in the realm of civilization, states and nations merge into a gray, uniform mass that bears a striking resemblance to death and dissolution.
For this reason, there will never be peace between nationalism, which advocates culture, and socialism, which preaches civilization. The ideal regime of civilization is socializing democracy; the regime proper to culture is the nation-state. Between the concept of a self-sufficient, culture-creating nation and the concept of a universal herd driven solely by appetites demanding satisfaction, a chasm will remain open forever.
Therefore, nation-state-culture: these are the foundations upon which the Romanian phenomenon must be built.
The Hotarele Camp. Dr. Vasile Marin in front of the command post [2] The nationalism theorized by “Vocea Patriotului Naţionale” (The Voice of the National Patriot), edited by the young Rică Venturiano for the political education of the masses—whose authentic representatives are Nae Ipingescu and Jupân Dumitrache Titircă-Inimă-Rea—and implemented in the economic sphere through Caţavencu’s encyclopedic cooperative society Caţavencu’s “Romanian Economic Dawn” and disseminated across all social strata by the “x…national” party, whose representative in the government is Fănică Tipătescu and whose “elected” representative in the People’s Assembly is…“the honorable, estimable Agamiţă Dandanache, with a family of eighteen members in all the Chambers.”
Only that today, Jupân Dumitrache’s naivety is replaced by bad faith through the ramblings of the young Rică, transformed by the “nationalist” publicist into a dogma of blackmail and influence peddling, and Conu Zaharia Trahanache’s party, a vast association for the exploitation of public wealth and a school of high immorality, subjugating the great interests of the nation to private interests and covering with the tricolor shield of “nationalism” all acts that contradict the natural, authentic, Romanian development of this nation.
Through a calculation that has never failed, the associations for the exploitation of public assets—which are the parties—have understood from the very beginnings of our so-called state life to cloak their activities in a nationalist veneer. Created under the influence of the great currents and reforms of the West, shaken by the social and moral catastrophe that was the great revolution of 1789, Romanian political parties—the result of a fusion between Freemasonry and a democracy alien to our realities—were compelled, under the pressure of currents they could not ignore, to accept transforming themselves into partially “national” organizations. And this was only natural in a country that had known neither feudalism nor bourgeoisie, that had known neither the communism of 1848 nor the pernicious influence of big capital, but which, throughout its entire history—from the chroniclers, through the great scholars and teachers, all the way to Mihai Eminescu—had known a single reality: nationality.
In the name of this nationality—a constant factor in resolving the Romanian equation within the European or global context—everything in this country has been set in motion. Consequently, the parties, too, were compelled to form themselves and to take into account, as we shall see, only superficially, the primacy of the national interest.
Thus, the 1848-era, Masonic, democratic, and universalist party of Ion Brătianu and C.A. Rosetti, the Liberal (Red) Party, was forced by circumstances to transform into a “National-Liberal” party, and likewise, fifty years later, under the dictates of the same reality, the international, Narodnik, Marxist, democratic, and Judaized party of peasantry became the “national-peasant” party.
But confusing the label with the content is not our way.
What does the “nationalism” of the parties represent? A formal attribute: nothing more and nothing less. We will draw the answer to the question we have posed from a series of questions.
Here they are: to what extent have the “national” parties contributed to the creation of a Romanian national state? What is the meaning of national life toward which they have directed the spirit and life of this country? To what extent have they contributed to translating the country’s material, spiritual, and moral potentials into genuine national values?
Apart from his own affairs, those of his family, and those of his close associates, no politician—regardless of party affiliation—gives any thought to the public good. Beyond personal interests, there is nothing left for the interests of the many who thirst for justice.
The political rabble, once in power, settles in to plunder. And for this, they spare nothing: they corrupt the judiciary, debase the military, corrupt the administration, debase the Church, and degrade the school system [3].
[3] A consequence of this degradation is the anonymous, indifferent, and passive student body, unresponsive to any manifestation of national instinct—a gregarious mass concerned exclusively with sustenance, toward which all the sympathy of authorities of every kind, whether academic or administrative, is directed with interest. Composed of a cohort of aspirants to government positions, the nets of all political sirens are cast toward this student body, because with its help a series of precisely defined interests are satisfied: a) mediocre and docile elements are promoted in large numbers for the ranks of today’s unnatural state apparatus; b) when assessed numerically, this officialized student body is transformed into a sort of model incubator from which the ruling parties, in turn, will recruit a developed clientele; c) interpreted exclusively in quantitative terms, this student mass serves as an argument whenever, to confuse the country’s honest public opinion, the formula of the “cultural state” is thrown down from the podium; d) finally, to a large extent, the attention of the Police and the Security Services is directed, discreetly and with financial inducements, toward this same student body, from which they recruit agents and henchmen. Here, in broad strokes, is how the situation stands for a good portion of the student body—that student body which has made university life a stepping stone to a profession, so that later, on the basis of the degrees obtained, they may knock on the doors of the bureaucratic establishment, and once installed in their posts, through the obligatory protection of politics, to fill the country with a host of “decent” and “well-behaved” people, zealous guardians of the current order, whether they be doctors or lawyers, teachers or engineers, and, in time (why not?), Secretaries and Undersecretaries of State, leaders of the institutions upon which the fate of this nation depends. It is to this student body and the people emerging from its ranks that we owe, to the greatest extent, the wretched situation of the country and the State today.
Thanks to these mass-produced graduates from the diploma factory that Romanian universities have been until now, Romanian national consciousness is so weak and the forces opposed to Romanianism so well-developed.
Through this student body, the Romanian state has been placed at the exclusive disposal of the parties, Romanian culture has been reduced to mediocrity and turned into a budget item, Romanian civilization has become an empty phrase, and the Romanian Orthodox Church has been brought to its knees and rendered powerless in the face of the increasingly fierce offensive of the sects.
To this perennial student mass, devoid of national consciousness and contemptuous of sacrifice for the public good, as well as to the leaders who have emerged from its ranks, we owe the 60% illiteracy rate, the cave-like existence of the Romanian peasantry, impoverished and decimated by alcoholism and the whole host of social ills, the anarchy and debauchery of our collective life, the presence of millions of foreigners who drain the national wealth—in short, the existence of a state without strength within and without prestige abroad.
Nor does the lack of a national consciousness among Romanian university professors leave us indifferent. Some professors were promoted on merit, others—the majority—imposed on the faculty for political and marital reasons—often lacking a sense of professional dignity, humble and devoted servants of party banners with prospects of governing, devoid of the deepest sentiment of the modern man: the sense of responsibility for the destiny of his nation.
Concerned about the fate of the Romanian people, we believe that cultural protectionism is imperative for the future of this nation, through the creation of environments conducive to the organic development of the latent qualities that lie dormant in our wonderful people but which, through the harshness of historical fate, have not yet had a chance to manifest themselves.
Nothing and no one remains untouched by the mire of political maneuvering [4].
[4] Our country is overwhelmed by political maneuvering and politicking; it is overcrowded with political figures confined within the enclosures of interest known as parties, whose actions fragment everything national and delay the fulfillment of the historic mission to which this nation has the right to aspire, but the country has been and remains completely devoid of a real, authentic state policy (because a rudimentary national administration does not define the hallmark of governance, and the state is deeply flawed in its structure, dysfunctional in its essential functions, due to the lack of authentic governance, hindered in its realization by a plethora of petty politicians who, in the service of the cliques to which they belonged, championed a variety of “policies,” constantly ignoring the one policy demanded by the enduring interests of the Romanian state). Romanian politicians, on both sides of the mountains, beholden to regional or local clan interests, lacking a historical perspective and a sense of duration, stammering out formulas alien to Romanian realities, parroting the hollow slogans of an anti-national democracy, have made a virtue of spouting the refrain of citizens with equal rights regardless of origin, language, and religion; they have turned the politics of the provisional into dogma and have not reached out to unite in constructive action, except when their hands were bound with golden chains, forged from the cursed coin of the Judeo-Hungarian lord.
The peasantry, deceived one by one by parties that promised them the moon, was reduced to poverty; merchants and city officials became starving; and the intellectuals, tossed back and forth among all the parties like leaves in the wind, ended up living from one day to the next.
Like a plague, evil has engulfed the body of the country; the same wailing rises from everywhere.
At this time, in the rush for votes and coalitions that would give them voiceless and ridiculous majorities, the governments of the democratic parties have, one after another, abdicated their foremost duty: the affirmation, at any cost, of the prestige of the national state.
In the rush for votes and popularity, Romanian officials have been forced to speak to the “minority gentlemen” in their own language, and the State, which is first and foremost an organized force, united by a single current, capitulated to save the interests of those respective parties (the collusion between our democratic parties and the Hungarian-Jewish-Saxon voting bloc in the run-up to the elections is the most obvious proof.)
Instead of helping to curb the economic power of minorities by encouraging and making credit available only to Romanian producers, the democratic state—led by ministers who hold lucrative positions on the boards of directors of foreign companies— on the one hand encourages the national aggressiveness of minorities, placing its representative bodies in a position of clear inferiority, and on the other hand, plays into the hands of those same enterprises, supplying them from the budget with a mass of social consumers, tragically bound by the draconian wage law.
The country, bent under the weight of its cares, awaits the remedy of reform. Yet, driven by day-to-day concerns, citizens exhibit an understandable myopia regarding the general interest. Therefore, the secret of a social doctrine lies in astonishing, through achievable accomplishments, the very society from which it seeks votes. But a nation cannot live for today or tomorrow. It creates a lasting destiny; it is realized in time and space.
“We want justice, bread, peace,
For the Romanian people!”…
Do not be deceived by hopes, no matter how colorful they may seem, and do not lend an ear to well-meaning whispers, wherever they may come from. Do your duty and only your duty. The development of the cardinal virtues in man—this is the purpose and essence of our nationalism.
You have but a single mission: to bring to the stage of national history all those who have embodied struggle, sacrifice, and heroism in the service of the national and Christian cause.
From leaders must vanish the instinct for self-enrichment and the desire to enjoy earthly goods. A state cannot be founded on the ethics of the gluttonous.
Romanians,
Put action before words; demand first the fulfillment of duty and then the reward; and in place of the political slogan of the party that practices “everything for you, nothing for the Country,” adopt the motto “everything for the Country, nothing for you”!
Do not desert! For desertion is the act of integrating yourself into an artificial life in the service of the instinct for social climbing. Do not yearn for the hellish life of material pleasures that torture your imagination, pervert your being, and distance you from fulfilling your duty to your family and your people. This life is not natural; it was crafted for us by strangers to our blood and ideals. It is the spider’s web that the enemies of our nation weave to paralyze you. Know that the reinforced concrete of the palaces rising in the forest is kneaded with all the sweat of your people, and all the offensive luxury circulating on the streets and in places of revelry is achieved through the exploitation of your people’s labor and production. Know also that while in the alienated city center, decadence screams like a demon, on the outskirts, in the slums that shelter the true workers—your brothers who have come from the villages—a whole world is wallowing in utter squalor.
It is not becoming “powerful” that prepares you, but righteousness. You must not fight and work for your own good, but for the good and salvation of your people, in the service of the national cause. This means awakening the Romanian and Christian conscience to its true life.
The formula for our salvation is the vanguard of the Romanian nation’s elite of soul, mind, and feeling. People who have known nothing but the fulfillment of duty and suffering; who have learned, endured, and fought; who have never tasted the sweetness of the public purse and have never served as a tool for anyone; who have followed a single banner: the ideal; who have fed on a single bread: sacrifice; who have served a single master: the nation.
This elite has a faith, serves it with sacrifice, and fulfills it at the risk of life itself.
It has long since burned at the stake of faith in a strong Romania, unified “in thought and feeling,” and in a Romanian state, fully sovereign over its territories, the accursed tablets of international democracy and the deceitful books of self-serving humanitarianism [5].
[5] For, simply put, what is a people? A larger gathering of people who share the same origin, who sometimes profess the same religious beliefs, who settle on a specific territory that they seek out throughout history and which they eventually define, who speak the same language, and who are moved by the same spiritual metaphysics.
The moment it becomes aware of its own strength, the moment it has defined a stance in life in relation to itself and in relation to other peoples, the moment it has come to know itself, this people transforms into a nation.
For a nation to come into being, to make contact with the other nations that surround it, for it to validate its force of existence, its power of expansion, and its power of creation not only internally but also externally, it must transform itself into a state. And then we can trace the normal evolution: from people, to nation, to state—it is the same guiding thread.
Now each of you will think that it might be possible—at least that is what is said, and some claim to feel—that besides the nation there might exist something else, seemingly greater, namely humanity. Socialists call it humanity, as do the utopians with their so-called left-wing ideologies.
Gentlemen, a nation is a reality in its own right, and we can prove it. But what is humanity? What is this humanity?
A nation creates a culture; a nation—as Professor Nae Ionescu said, seeking to define the character of the nation—wages war; a nation creates, in relation to others, a personal way of life.
But humanity? Does it have any constructive purpose? Does humanity possess the same will, the same desires, the same achievements as nations do? Does this humanity—which we must conceive of through an abstract word, something eternal and enduring that we can at some point point to and say, “Behold, a creation of humanity”—actually exist?
Nations, within this generality, this abstraction, can be perfectly viable elements that we all understand and see. We conceive of humanity as a state of a special nature, but nothing concrete emerges from it; we can no longer control it; it cannot be a precise organism.
When, in ideology, we rely on fundamental elements—the nation (in contrast to others who base their conception on an element beyond control, a protean element called humanity)—we ground ourselves in something organized, while others dwell in a vagueness they wish to bring into existence, yet which our moral and physical being rejects.
It is by no means a coincidence that Jews preach internationalism and irreligion everywhere. They are die-hard traditionalists when it comes to their own people and their own synagogue. Yet they are subversive, anti-traditionalists, and fierce champions of atheism and internationalism when the nationalism of other peoples is at stake.
For the glory and salvation of their own people, they find both the means to stir up their own nationalism and those to combat other nationalisms. By the way, among other things, why are the Bank and the Parties so closely intertwined—as the banks have fallen, so has democracy?…
From now on, the man created by the rationalist system of “the end justifies the means” is abolished; the man who believes that for his success in life he needs victims left and right is abolished. No!
In the future leadership of the Romanian National-Christian State, this ethical value will constitute the foundation upon which this state will be built [6].
[6] We believe in the ethical value of strength. To the so-called “state of law,” which allows the self-interested egoism of the individual to run rampant, we oppose the ethical state, built upon the legality of morality, within which only the aspirations and interests of the national community find harmony and justification. We cast aside with contempt the carcass of the demo-liberal state, so that we may proclaim in its place not a state that protects clan interests, but a State imbued with the principle of moral authority, within which the maximum development of the entire nation may be realized.
In our struggle, we will abolish the mockery of the public rabble and the skepticism of the intellectually disabled. Those who seek diversion in public life should retreat to their lairs as soon as possible. Romania needs tragic and synthetic men, the apologists of a single ideology: Action (without, however, for a single moment disregarding the importance of thought: not a denial of intellectuality, but an enhancement of it, in the sense of its virilization. An integration of intellectualism into the Romanian world. Removing the intellectual from the situation of contemplating himself in constant self-admiration; and placing him among the nation’s enduring and creative values. This is our will.).
One can attribute as much value to someone as the height reached by the ideal for which he advocates.
We seek the spiritual reform of man in the spirit of returning our Romanian people to their natural state.
A return to our ancestral virtues, which were stifled and cast aside by a certain way of life that was not our own. Then nationalism takes on an aspect of pure spirituality that lifts it beyond the clay that bears it. We do not start from the Marxist postulate: bread and bread and bread—this way of instilling in a person’s mind something that incites and stirs up hatred. We elevate it—without ignoring bread—we elevate it to the height where a human being ought to stand.
And we are aware that history is not written with a pen dipped in rose-colored ink, and the path to great victory never leads beneath garlanded arches. No! We do not follow the path of opportunism; we do not submit to parties that distribute favors and promotions; we do not join in a chorus of sweet humanitarianism with all those alien to our soul.
We believe in the virtues of our nation and in its resurrection; we are intimidated by nothing, and, with the sacrifice of our lives, we are determined to carry the struggle for our ideals—the ideals of the Nation—to the very end!
MAY GOD HELP US!
BIBLIOGRAPHY
- Vasile MARIN, CREZ DE GENERAŢIE, 4th Edition (Reprint of the 2nd Edition), with an addition: BIOGRAPHY by Mihail Polihroniade, Europa Collection, Munich, 1977
Romanian postage stamps from 1941
Funeral March for Moța and Marin
The 13 Legionaries who went on the Spanish Front together with an Orthodox Priest.
Monument dedicated to Ion Moța and Vasile Marin by the Spanish State at Majadahonda
Memorial Cross dedicated to Ion Moța and Vasile Marin at Petru Vodă Monastery in Romania.
Prince Alexandru (Alecu) Cantacuzino in his book For Christ details the death of Ion Moța and Vasile Marin as an eyewitness.
Elder Justin Pârvu was a member of the Iron Guard. On his 92nd Birthday the Nuns from his Monastery sang to him the Holy Legionary Youth (the official anthem/hymn of the Iron Guard) by the Confessor and Passion-Bearer Radu Gyr.
This provoked quite a scandal, especially in the midst of the “Elie Wiesel” Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania.
You can see the video of Elder Justin and the Nuns singing the Legionary Anthem here on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qs_PzN2yYo
And now finally, the text of the Akathist.
We, the greedy ones of the earth, we, the dogs
without a homeland, let us lift our heads
out of the darkness to be enlightened.
We, the forgetful ones of wonders, we, the mockers
of divine blood
let us pause and marvel.
We, the blasphemers of angels, the slanderers
of righteousness, us emptied cups
let us gather our lost voices
on the shores of the wilderness and sing:
Glory to the fruitful death
Glory to the life-giving death
The poverty of those without a body
For a purer appearance
For a swifter ascension
Glory to Your persecuted sons, Jesus
Glory to Your soldiers
Ion and Vasile
Torn from our sorrowful lives
By an unheard-of call
By the storm of Your love
By their valiant witness.
We, to whom fate has not granted
such a happy death
We, the reeds bent by every wind
We, the dust scattered by passersby
We, the clay kneaded by devils
Let us gather our voices, silenced
by wonder, and let us pray
That we may one day be worthy of our dead’s inheritance
That we may not make them tremble
In the endless silence of heaven
That we may not disturb their sleep
That we may not drive away from them
The legions of the Almighty
That we may never darken
The Cross that guided them,
To you, Ion, angelic embodiment
To you, Vasile, fearless companion
To you, avengers of the desecrated Cross
May the warriors of the nation bow down
May the legionnaires of the nation bow down
Always beholding the dreadful
event of your fate
Always beholding the dreadful
kneeling of death
When the Churches crumbled
When Jesus wandered, tormented
Through the desecrated cities
By the hatred of the rootless
When the spirit of Spain wavered
Sliding toward the waters of death
And Ion, heavenly being
You, you Vasile, lover of death
You stretched out your most reverent bodies
To support the shattered Cross
To shield the flower-like face of Christ.
Children born of the union of heaven and this earth
A flock guided by the golden light of the great star of the East
Guardian of the imperishable seeds
A tree from which the hurricanes
Have torn branches laden with fruit.
Weep and rejoice at the burial
Of your fallen buds;
You will never see them again
But from them will spring forth the spring
Of endless joys.
The lands ravaged by wolves and bandits
Will be green and sunlit once more
The lands battered by blizzards and scorched
Will be caressed by zephyrs once more
Your buds will open, ancient tree
Your seeds will revive, guardian of the race
Like flames beneath the ashes
The Morning Star will shine once more
The sky will no longer be separated from the earth.
The legions of the Archangel and the legions of Satan
Wreaked havoc upon the sorrowful land of Spain
And countless dead filled the burning trenches
You, Ion the Fair of the legion
And you, Vasile, fearless warrior,
Carried by the unseen Archangel
By the unforgettable promise of the Annunciation
You passed over the ears of death
As if in a song heard only by you.
Through the fierce rain of steel
Cast upon the Undying Body of the Lamb
Your arms made their way
Reaping death,
Illuminating the darkness,
Stirring up destruction.
Rejoice, O nation, and mourn the devastating death
Of those who have departed from your trunk
Their victory is stronger than death
Rejoice, O race, who after the last age
With your dear departed before you
You will appear at the judgment
With the legions slain by the enemy
Ready for the glory of eternal rest,
Rejoice, nation bloodied by the fangs of so many beasts
The sorrow of the brave ones’ demise is fleeting
They have opened the gates of eternity for us.
But our poor powers
Found refreshment in the springs of Heaven
And heaven has opened its floodgates
The Holy Paraclete has taken you:
You, Ion, terror of darkness
You, Vasile, son of the dawn
For eternal rest and coolness
For the peace of endless life
For the reward of your wisdom.
Rejoice, mothers of heroes:
The laurels of their death
Will forever exalt you.
Rejoice, living comrades of the heroes:
Your brotherhood is bound by blood for eternity
Rejoice that you have been refreshed
With the blood of foreign knights
From it will grow flowers of light
More precious than the gold plundered
By your pirates.
Who have descended upon you.
Rejoice, dead of the Archangel’s Legion
Rejoice, dead among the ruins of the Apocalypse
Rejoice, you nameless ones of the Foreign Legion
Fearless lions of El Tercio.
Rejoice in their warm companionship
In the world of pale souls
Your voices, silenced for all eternity
Will understand one another in the same language
In the language of heroes, of endless devotion to life and glory.
Rejoice, God’s liberator, Ion
Rejoice, freed from earthly bonds, Vasile
Rejoice, heroes of the Archangel
Rejoice, esteemed ones of the Legion
Rejoice, Ion, Stag of the heavenly forests
Rejoice, Vasile, Eagle of the stars
Rejoice, heroes without death;
From your bodies shall grow
A new land of freedom and happiness.
Your spirits shall breathe life
Into a young and serene Motherland.
Rejoice, Ion, the first Baptism of fire
Rejoice, Vasile, hard as a rock at the borders of life
From your bodies shall grow
The green shoots of the legion
From your spirit shall be shared
The mystery of untainted bravery.
Rejoice, cups of the Romanian soul
Rejoice, hearts given to the angels
Rejoice, crossed swords
For the guarding of the heavenly throne
Rejoice, flames lost forever.
Weep, forests through which their valiant footsteps
Left traces in the search for bears
Weep, hills over which the exiled heroes
Carried their longings and sorrows
Weep, meadows where the flowers
Bowed as they passed.
Weep, ancient church walls
That heard their prayers
That soothed their lamentations
Rejoice, crucified witnesses
At the crossroads of worlds.
Rejoice, blameless souls
Rejoice, drops of heaven
Once lost throughout the world
Your memory will be heavenly dew
At the dawn of an eternal morning
The morning of the nation’s waiting
The morning of the transformation
The morning of the Annunciation.
Rejoice, Fates
Who watched over the birth of heroes
Weep, Fates
Who knew in advance the suffering of the martyrs
Watch over their superhuman lives, Fates,
Weave for them the royal cloth, Fates,
For the final appearance
For the testimony at the end of the world
Be glorified, angels who raised them up
Angels who, across the thresholds of the heavens
Carried the lightness of the righteous souls
Guard their rest, soldiers of heaven
Let there be no sorrow
For the comrades left behind to fight
Let there be no mourning of the birds that no longer sing
No mourning of the wild beasts hidden in the forests.
When the moon chases away the night
From the hills, from the fields, from the stubble
The maidens of the land will search in vain
For the traces of the sleeping heroes
The fairies of the forests and the fairies of the lakes
Will weep in the over-illuminated nights
And on the other shore they will raise palaces
To welcome the happy bride and groom.
For their birth in the bosom of eternal slumber
They will pour over the crypts
Rivers of living water
And the Beautiful Boys will rise again
With swords of fire in their hands
Stronger than life, stronger than death
Younger than youth, older than time
From dawn until night they will fight
Without mercy, without rest
The fairies of the forests, the fairies of the lakes
And they will share from the sky
The legion exhausted by death
Will find on a hill of roses
The banner of the Annunciation fluttering
And on that wonderful morning
The doomed people will receive their redemption.
The legion refreshed by the dew of grace
Will sing of the people’s victory
Will unearth the Cross hidden by thieves in the ground
Will see the Archangel
Rising into the sky
Prince Charming will appear
The birds will begin to sing
The wild animals will once again swarm through the forests
The fairies will no longer mourn
The maidens of the people will no longer wander
On moonlit nights, following in the footsteps of the brave.
We earthly remains, heaps of bones
soulless, slaves to the sins
of death, let us marvel once more
We earth-eating worms
blind, godless moles
Let us lift our heads from the mists
to be enlightened forever.
We, the evildoers, the sinful servants
We, the silent ones of God, let us gather
our voices and sing tirelessly
Glory to the blameless dead
Glory to the first slain by Satan
Glory to the lambs torn apart by wolves
Glory to those left without bodies
Glory to Your persecuted sons, Jesus
Glory to Your soldiers: Ion and Vasile
Torn from our sorrowful lives
For a purer appearance
For a swifter ascension
By an unheard-of call
By the flood of Your love
By their wise folly.
Source: https://miscarea.net/acatistul-mota-marin.htm
