MILESCU, NICOLAE. - Born in 1625, died in 1712, a learned Moldavian boyar, he studied in Constantinople at the Greek “great school,” under Venetian and Paduan influence. He was secretary to several princes of Moldavia and Wallachia, spatharios (military commander), and their ambassador to Constantinople, Berlin, Stockholm, and Paris. He spent the last part of his life in the service of the tsars and, as their ambassador, also made a journey to China (1675-78). M. pursued considerable literary activity.
He translated the Bible into Romanian, apparently in 1664; this translation (now lost) served as the basis for the Bible known as that of Serban Cantacuzino—the first complete Romanian Bible—printed in Bucharest in 1688. From Stockholm, at the request of the ambassador of Louis XIV, M. sent to Paris a treatise on the real presence of the Body and Blood of Our Lord in the Eucharist, in which he expressed the agreement of the “orthodox” Church with the Catholic Church in its struggle against Protestantism; this treatise is reproduced in the Perpétuité de la foy de l'Eglise catholique sur l'Eucharistie, by A. Arnauld et Nicole de Port Royal (Paris, 1669). M. also wrote theological and historical works for the Russians, but what brought his name worldwide fame was the geographical and historical account of his journey to China, a work translated into many languages.