MICU, SAMUEL. — Romanian historian, Catholic (Uniate) priest, and one of the “Three Luciferi,” founders of the Latinist “school” in Transylvania, b. 1745, d. 1806. He studied at Blaj and Vienna. He served as director of studies at the St Barbara Institute in Vienna and as censor of Romanian books at the Buda press.
With SINCANI he wrote in 1780 *Elementa linguae daco-Romanae*, in which he demonstrates the Latin origin of Romanian, corrupted by time and by the introduction of Slavonic in the Church; he proposes the removal of Slavonic words and the replacement of the Slavonic alphabet with the Latin.
In his *Istoria, lucurile şi întâmplările Românilor* (4 vols.), beginning with the fall of Troy, he proceeds through the founding of Rome and the colonization of Dacia, ending with the history of the Romans and the Latin origin of their Christianity. He also supervised the printing of the Blaj Romanian Bible (1795) and collaborated on the Romanian–Hungarian–German lexicon (Buda 1825). He left moving autobiographical memoirs.