MICU, INOCENȚIU. - Bishop of the (united) Romanians of Transylvania, b. at Sad in 1692, d. in 1768; he studied with the Jesuits of Trnava and at Mukachevo. Elected bishop in 1728, consecrated in 1730 and installed in 1732, in 1737 he moved the episcopal residence from Făgăraș to Blaj (Blasendorf), where he began the construction of a monastery and of the buildings needed for the new see.
Since the promises made on the occasion of the union of the Romanians with the Catholic Church regarding their political emancipation had not been fulfilled, and also under the influence of the strenuous propaganda of a fanatical Serbian monk, Bessarion, many of the united villages were beginning to abandon Catholicism, M. fought relentlessly in the Transylvanian diet and at the court of Vienna for the recognition of the Romanians as a nation within the State, for the repeal of the laws contrary to his people and for the full application of the diploma of Leopold I, granted on the occasion of the union of 1700. But being too isolated, he fell victim to the intrigues and unjust accusations of the nobles, Calvinists and Protestants, and in 1744 he had to go to Vienna to justify himself. As he received a bad welcome there, he went to Rome, but after 7 years of fruitless insistence, tired and embittered, he dictated his resignation in 1751 and lived the rest of his life in Rome on a pension of 1200 florins a year. He was buried in the church of the Madonna del Pascolo.
Bibliography
Petre Vălimăreanu