Alexandru Codin Mironescu – a Martyr of the Nation

I met Codin Mironescu in 1966 in the church “Schitul Maicilor”, near the monastery of Antim. He used to recite the Creed during the celebration of Sundays and feasts. I learnt from the faithful that he was part of a group of Orthodox Christians called “The Burning Bush”, arrested and sentenced in 1958, and pardoned in 1964, along with 20 other believers and his son Serban, aged 16.

After the anointing, as I left the church, I addressed Mr. Codin Mironescu directly to express my gratitude, as a fellow believer, for his attempt to oppose the communism that handcuffed us, to liberation through Orthodoxy…

In order to remove any shadow of suspicion, I told him that I was from Bukovina, a refugee in Bucharest, and that I worked at the Faculty of Law, as a lecturer in the Department of International Law… The name of my confessor, Benedict Ghiuș, suddenly made him happy and we began to talk openly, without a shadow of suspicion, which was the order of the day…

I learned from my unknown interlocutor that he had obtained a doctorate in science in Paris, that he had worked in higher education, that he was a friend of Sandu Tudor, of Father Benedict, of Vasile Voiculescu (who belonged to the “Burning Bush” group), who had also been sentenced in 1958…

I told him that I was now an unskilled worker in a “Work and Art” cooperative and that, thanks to a friend, the general director of the “Pharmaceutical Offices of the Ministry of Health”, I had the opportunity to be appointed legal adviser to the Pharmaceutical Office in Bucharest. I left Codin Mironescu convinced that the Good Lord had given me a follower of Christ to serve as an example…

In fact, from the Sunday on which we met at Schitul Maicilor, where Fr. Avramescu was the pastor, in addition to the weekly meetings in the Schit, I sometimes met Codin in the Holy Metropolitanate to participate in the reading of the prayers of repentance of St. Andrei Criteanu, in which Mrs. Maria Mironescu, mother of Ileana and Șerban, also participated.

I was often surprised by a phone call from Codin, inviting me to a meeting, for example with Stefan Todirașcu, a colleague from the Faculty of Law. And I would go to Calea Plevnei, near the Opera, and he and his wife would offer us selected wines to taste, visits accompanied by edifying conversations, Todirașcu having taken great care, with the modest means he had, to make known the religious poems, which were quite extraordinary and uplifting, written by Codin Mironescu. I would return home with a gift: a bottle of fine wine…

Codin would often visit me at my office in Sărindar Street, the headquarters of the “Central Pharmaceutical Office in Bucharest”, and we would go out together to nearby Cișmigiul. I remember when he brought me the book “La peste” by Albert Camus, a book that my son Viorel – a French student – had been looking for for a long time… Another time he came to tell me about an article by Eugen Ionescu in Paris, of which he had a copy and which he gave me for Viorel.

During these impromptu walks, Codin told me about the creation of the “Burning Bush” sect in the 1950s and about the arrests made as a result of “investigations by the Criminal Directorate” of the Ministry of the Internal Affairs, which issued “arrest warrants” for political criminals… Thus, in the summer of 1958, 20 people were arrested for “conspiracy against the social order”, and the M.I.A. – Communist Security – carried out the order by surprise, late at night, taking the arrested to prison after ransacking the homes of the victims and assembling the “criminal bodies”, mentioning “that it was done without any complaint, that no illegal procedure was used”… In this way, all the members of the “Burning Bush” were arrested, forming the “group” of the same name… In all, there were about 20 people: intellectuals, priests, theologians, who met regularly to try to save sacred values from the furious attacks of militant atheism.

The poet Vasile Voiculescu, who was also arrested with the “Burning Bush” group led by Codin Mironescu and Alexandru Teodorescu (Sandu Tudor), is said to have made statements to the security investigators: “Alexandru Mironescu typed and distributed his poems, which, according to interpretation, have a hostile and disapproving character towards the atheist-communist regime… In fact, Codin told me, all of Voiculescu’s poems: The New Architect, The Black Paw, The Beggar and others were read in his house…”.

At the end of May 1967, Ionel Avramescu, the son of the priest of the “Schitul Maicilor”, visited me in my office and I could not tell him what Codin Mironescu had told me, namely that the priest Avramescu was guilty of adultery and had fallen into a grave and unforgivable sin…

Since that sad news, my foot has never set foot in that church…

One day we were walking together in nearby Cișmigiu and, as usual, he took me by the arm and told me the story of our walk.

He briefly told me how his trial had taken place before the military tribunal, composed of a panel of five soldiers, the so-called “tribunal”, which had to judge the crime of “conspiracy against the social order”, of which the “Burning Bush” group was guilty, and in particular Codin Mironescu and Sandu Tudor, the leaders and organisers of the group.

After the usual procedure of the full court, the president of the court gave the right to speak to Codin.

He addressed the soldiers in front of him with something like these words: “I have come to be judged by you – 5 baptised Romanians – and to share our holy faith in the One Who, alone among our fellows, dared to utter the words about himself: I am the way, the life and the truth. You, and the political system based on lies, transformed in the soul by the darkness of atheism and materialism, dare to condemn us, baptized, for “sedition against the security of the State”, a group of righteous believers, baptized with the same baptism in our Lord Jesus Christ as yourselves, making yourselves partakers of the diabolical doctrine, of hatred towards your brethren in the baptism of Christ which you have earned. How can you, who have left the way of Christ, the life in Christ and the truth of Christ, judge a worthy follower of the holy apostles like Father Professor Dumitru Stăniloaie, the Christian poet Vasile Voiculescu, the Brothers in Christ Sandu Tudor and even my son Șerban, still in high school, and others? Now you have received the illegal order to condemn us to hard years in prison!

We pray for you like Saint Archdeacon Stephen: ‘Lord, do not count this sin against them’!”

Alexandru Codin Mironescu, martyr of the nation, was sentenced to 20 years of hard labour!

(Octavian Ștefănescu – Alexandru Mironescu. Centenary of his birth 1903-2003, edited by Ileanea Mironescu, Enciclopedica Publishing House, Bucharest, 2003, pp. 145-148)