The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion

Mircea Eliade (1907-1986) was a Romanian historian of religion and novelist who studied at the Universities of Bucharest and Calcutta. Recognized as a powerful essayist in his early years, he developed an early interest in religion and was awarded a five-year grant to study Indian philosophy in Calcutta in 1928. This period of study contributed to his doctoral dissertation on yoga, which was influential in the early scientific study of this topic in Europe. After returning to Bucharest, he was a central figure in the Criterion Association for the Arts, Literature, and Philosophy, and entered his most prolific period of writing and research on religion. Following the establishment of a dictatorship in Romania in 1938, Eliade came under critique for his support for the Iron Guard, a Romanian Fascist movement. His association with Fascism remains contested. Eventually, Eliade emigrated to the United States, where he spent the remainder of his academic career in the Department of Religions at the University of Chicago. There he was crucial in founding the “Chicago school” of religion, which dominated much of the theoretical perspectives on religion in the latter half of the 20th century.

Eliade’s contributions to the study of religion are numerous and highly influential.