Cosmic Christianity in Mircea Eliade's Hermeneutics on “Mioriţa”: The Possibility of a Cognitive Perspective on the “Sacred” in the Traditional Romanian Culture

“Cosmic Christianity” refers, according to Mircea Eliade, to a new religious development, which characterises South-Eastern Europe, where the Christological mystery is projected over the entire nature, with emphasis on the liturgical dimension of human existence in the world.In this paper I will demonstrate that Eliade's analysis of the ballad can be also exploited from a cognitive approach, in an attempt to emphasise the fact that transfiguring death into an event of cosmic proportions and structure, as well as the mystic sympathy between man and nature, highlighted in Mioriţa, reveal new significances of the “sacred”. The manner in which Eliade exploits the text of the ballad from the view of ethno-psychology and sociology can be integrated into a cognitive perspective, according to which ethnic, psychological and mental mechanisms largely determine religious beliefs and practices specific to a geographic area, such as South-Eastern Europe.The cognitive approach projected on Mioriţa can be considered a type of critical discourse on one of the founding myths that represents a cultural and spiritual model in the Romanian space and history.