History of Modern Cremation in Romania

"Cremation, as a means of managing the post-mortem body, was reintroduced to Europe at the end of the eighteenth century, but would not become common practice until the second half of the nineteenth century. This was a major development, with multifaceted implications which generated heated debate. Initially, armed with a variety of arguments (hygienic, economic, aesthetic, and philosophical arguments citing freedom of conscience and will) the advocates of modern cremation - who tended to come from the social and cultural elite - sought to impose their new model. This brought them into conflict with the traditional structures and patterns of burial. and thus with the Church, which had originally ended the practice of cremation"--Bk. jkt.

Marius Rotar (born in 1974) is a Researcher at 1 Decembrie 1918 University of Alba Iulia, Romania, and holds a PhD in History. His PhD thesis was dedicated to death and dying in nineteenth century Transylvania, and is the first PhD thesis within Romanian historiography to be focused on such a topic. He is Chairman of Amurg, the Romanian Cremation Association, and initiated the international conference, Dying and Death in 18th-21st Century Europe.