Life and achievements
Early life
Mircea Eliade was born on March 13, 1907, in Bucharest, Romania, to a middle-class family of the intelligentsia. His father, Gheorghe Eliade, was a military officer, while his mother, Jeana Vasilescu, encouraged him in his early learning. Thus, Eliade’s childhood interest in the natural world, folklore, and religion paved way for his later focus on comparative religion. His childhood memories of nature and moments of illumination gave him a concept of the holy and religious experience, which became important in his later academic career.
In his childhood, Eliade was fond of reading. His literary and philosophical preferences were quite diverse. He included Romanian folklore landmarks of European authors such as Honoré de Balzac and Giovanni Papini. This intellectual curiosity also led him to scientific explorations as Eliade did entomological studies and wrote scientific essays during his early years. His interest in the natural world and myths was always closely connected, and he was sure that the key to understanding the world was hidden in myths and symbols.
Eliade’s schooling was at the Spiru Haret National College in Bucharest, where he was an intelligent but rather eccentric pupil. Before graduating, Eliade became interested in philosophy and religious studies, which he continued studying at the University of Bucharest. His interest in Indian philosophy made him study several languages, including Sanskrit, which allowed him Eastern spirituality. In these years, he attended the lectures of the philosopher Nae Ionescu, who had rather radical views on mysticism and metaphysics, which would later lead Eliade to religious studies.
Eliade’s academic life changed in 1928 when he was awarded a scholarship to study in India, where he studied yoga, Hinduism, and Sanskrit philosophy. This experience helped him grasp the archetypal structures of religious myths, which he further investigated in his most important books. He also had the material for his first autobiographical novel, Maitreyi, published in 1933, based on his relationship with Maitreyi Devi, the daughter of his Indian teacher. The book made Eliade a celebrated writer and, at the same time, put him at the centre of public attention as the story was based on actual events.
After returning to Romania, Eliade finished his PhD with a yoga thesis and started developing his academic career. He wrote extensively on religious philosophy, and some topics he created throughout his career included the sacred, profane, and symbolic functions of spiritual myths. By the time Eliade was in his early thirties, he was already one of Romania’s most influential thinkers and writers, integrating philosophical reflections into his literary projects.
Legacy
It is, therefore, essential to look at the contributions that Mircea Eliade made in religious studies as he influenced the study of religion for many years, even after his death. His ideas on myth, symbolism, and the sacred became seminal in the development of the field, especially his theory of hierophany, which is the appearance of the holy in the mundane. According to Eliade, religious experience was based on the human being’s ability to relate to archetypal symbols and myths that he believed were present in all societies.
His ideas opened up new ways of thinking for scholars to study religion not as a system of beliefs or dogmas but as a lived experience of people. Among the most essential concepts that Eliade contributed is the theory of the eternal return, which states that religious rites and myths are the recollection of the sacred and participation in it. Religious people also have time cyclical, which enables them to get back to the past, the mythical age, through rites and rituals.
This concept also affected the study of religion, comparative mythology, and cultural anthropology. Eliade’s approach to studying religion was to integrate it with other fields of study to compare different religions and find the basic framework of religion. Eliade’s work also encompassed the sphere of literature and philosophy, in which he investigated the relationship between myth and story. His novels include The Forbidden Forest (1955) and Youth Without Youth (1976), and the themes he explored in his academic work are also explored in his books.
In his fiction, Eliade tried to convey the message about the possibility of the myth and the sacred symbols to change the world and people’s perception of it. Nevertheless, Eliade’s work has not been controversial, mainly because a member of the Romanian far-right organization, the Iron Guard, in the 1930s. His political views have been the subject of much controversy, with people asking if he was a supporter of a fascist government.
He is negating the notion of the universality of his work. Nevertheless, Eliade dissociated himself from the Iron Guard and political radicalism in his later years, and this is still a subject of controversy regarding his legacy. However, it is also important to note that many scholars claim that his work on religion and myth cannot be fully understood in the context of these political affiliations, as his theories have influenced several disciplines.
After the Second World War, Eliade’s academic impact spread worldwide and further developed when he joined the University of Chicago as a professor. There, he played a role in founding the History of Religions School and guided many students who would carry on his research in comparative religion. His masterpiece, History: A History of Religious Ideas, was issued in several volumes and is considered a classic for those who study religion as it provides an overview of the development of religion from the earliest of times to the present.
In the same way, scholars received Eliade’s approach to religion from various disciplines, including psychology, anthropology, and philosophy. His capacity to integrate the concepts of myth, symbol, and religious experience into a systematic framework has made his work significant even in the current society’s discourse on spirituality, culture, and being. His investigation of the sacred as an existential concept remains relevant to scholars interested in how people live in a world where they must balance the divine and the mundane.
Milestone moments
Apr 30, 1936
Release of the book titled “The Myth of the Eternal Return”.
Mircea Eliade’s The Myth of the Eternal Return appeared in 1936 and became one of the most influential works that contributed to the establishment of Eliade as a scholar of religion.
According to the book's author, religious rituals are not just commemorative but participatory, allowing believers to re-experience and re-engage in the mythic events that define sacred time.
Through these rituals, religious persons could move outside the average time and space to get into the divine time and space.
This work is the prologue to most of Eliade's further works.
It presented some basic ideas, such as religious experience and the longing for its origin.
Its Myth of the Eternal Return was instrumental in creating Eliade’s image as a scholar who could effectively straddle philosophy, anthropology, and religious studies.
It was not limited to academic research; it shaped the further development of the study of myth and ritual by the subsequent generations of scholars and philosophers.
Jul 30, 1938
Arrest and Imprisonment
Eliade’s political inclinations were questioned when the Romanian government arrested him for his activities with the Iron Guard, a far-right nationalist group. Eliade was detained on July 14, 1938, during a general repression of the Iron Guard by King Carol II’s authoritarian government. He was put in jail for several months, and when released, he did not sign a statement of disassociation from the Iron Guard.
The arrest was a significant event in Eliade’s life and academic career and cast a long shadow over his work.
Despite the fact that he later separated himself from political movements, this period is still a subject of debate.
However, Eliade did not stop working during his time in prison; he used the time to enhance his thinking on religion and myth, which were central to his writing.
Oct 17, 1945
Exile in France
After the end of the Second World War and the coming of the communists in Romania, Eliade decided to stay in exile and moved to France. This decision also signified the start of Eliade’s intellectual exile since he would not return to Romania for the rest of his life.
At Paris, Eliade enrolled at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, where he associated with other scholars, including Dumézil and Corbin, who shaped his thinking on religion and myth.
In France, Eliade still wrote critical scholarly works in the form of essays on shamanism and the history of religions.
His acquaintances in Paris were many Romanian emigrants, among them the philosopher Emil Cioran, with whom he was friends.
Eliade’s work during this period contributed to the development of comparative religion, and his versatility and interest in multiple disciplines made him famous worldwide.
Apr 17, 1957
A position as a professor at the University of Chicago.
Eliade left France in 1957 and moved to the United States of America, where he joined the University of Chicago as a professor and became instrumental in formulating the History of Religions department.
This shift to the United States marked the beginning of a new phase in his life and work, making him one of the most important religious thinkers of the twentieth century.
Thus, at Chicago, Eliade taught and supervised a group of students who would disseminate his views and develop a particular approach within religious studies.
During his years at the University of Chicago, he published some of his most important works, including The Sacred and the Profane (1959), which deals with the opposition between the sacred and the Profane in human experience.
His stay there also saw the production of the Encyclopedia of Religion, a project that would define the field of religious studies for the next generation.
His approach to religion, which focused on myth, ritual, and symbol, laid the foundation for modern religious studies.