MICU, INOCENTIU. - Bishop of the (united) Romanians of Transylvania, b. at Sad in 1692, d. in 1768; he studied with the Jesuits at Tirnavia and at Munkač. Elected bishop in 1728, consecrated in 1730 and installed in 1732, in 1737 he transferred the episcopal residence from Făgăraș to Blaj (Blasendorf), where he began the construction of a monastery and of the buildings required for the new see.
Since the promises made at the time of the union of the Romanians with the Catholic Church concerning their political emancipation had not been fulfilled, and also under the influence of the strenuous propaganda of a fanatical Serbian monk, Bessarione, many of the united villages were beginning to abandon Catholicism, M. fought fiercely in the Transylvanian Diet and at the court of Vienna for the recognition of the Romanians as a nation within the State, for the abrogation of laws hostile to his people, and for the full implementation of the diploma of Leopold I, issued 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 had to go to Vienna to justify himself. Since he received a poor reception there, he went to Rome; but after seven years of fruitless insistence, weary and embittered, he tendered his resignation in 1751 and spent the rest of his life in Rome on a pension of 1,200 florins a year. He was buried in the church of the Madonna del Pascolo.