MICU, SAMUELE. - Romanian historian, Catholic (United) priest, and one of the “3 Lucifers,” founders of the Latinist “school” in Transylvania, b. in 1745, d. in 1806. He studied at Blaj and Vienna. He was director of studies at the Institute of St. Barbara in Vienna and censor of Romanian books at the printing house in Buda.
He wrote (together with Șincai) in 1780 Elementa linguae daco-Romanae, in which he demonstrates the Latin origin of Romanian, corrupted by time and by the introduction of Slavonic into the Church; he proposes the removal of Slavonic words and the replacement of the Slavonic alphabet with the Latin one.
In his Istoria, lucrurile și întâmplările Românilor (4 vols.), he begins with the fall of Troy, continues with the foundation of Rome and the colonization of Dacia, and ends with the history of the Romanians and the Latin origin of their Christianity. M. also oversaw the printing of the Romanian Bible of Blaj (1795) and collaborated on the Romanian-Latin-Hungarian-German lexicon (Buda 1825). He left moving autobiographical memoirs.