Emilian Cioran (born 30 October 1884 in the village of Răşinari - died 17 December 1957 in Sibiu), the father of the brothers Emil and Aurel Cioran, was the founder of the Aurel & Emil Cioran Collection. The parents of Emilian Cioran – Şerban Cioran and Stanca Dancăşi – were members of the local Romanian elite. The Cioran family gave up shepherding and became merchants at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Șerban Cioran was the mayor of the village of Răşinari in the period 1888–1897. Being a wealthy merchant and local politician, Șerban Cioran invested in the education of his children. After Emilian Cioran had graduated from the local confessional school in 1895, he attended the Hungarian State High School in Sibiu from 1895 to 1903. Like many children of the local Romanian elite in Transylvania during the nineteenth century, Emilian Cioran chose to pursue an ecclesiastical career. In the period 1903–1906, he attended the courses of the Orthodox Theological Institute in Sibiu.
According to the internal rules of the Orthodox Church in Transylvania, he was elected priest in 1906 in his native village, one of the most important Orthodox parishes in the southern part of Transylvania. After serving for nineteen years in Răşinari, he was promoted to higher positions in the Orthodox Church. In 1924, he became the protopresbyter of the city of Sibiu and later, in 1938 he was appointed counsellor of the archdiocese of Sibiu by the Orthodox Archbishop of Sibiu Nicolae Bălan; he held this position until his retirement in 1947. Emilian Cioran was active also in the political and cultural fields. In December 1918, he took part in the Romanian National Assembly in Alba Iulia as a representative of the village of Răşinari. From 1926 to 1930, he also taught religion at the Domniţa Ileana High School in Sibiu. In 1930, he was elected a member of the central committee of the ASTRA Cultural Association, which had become the main Romanian cultural institution in Transylvania in the time of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In the period 1911–1957, he collected various personal documents, letters, and books, which illustrate his activity as a clergyman and a member of several cultural associations such as ASTRA and the Gojdu Foundation.