Historical Context
The persecution Moses Macinic resisted arose from a Habsburg policy begun under Emperor Leopold I in 1701, which pressured the Romanian Orthodox population of Transylvania to join the Greek-Catholic Church. The authorities offered the clergy material advantages, including income equal to that of Catholic priests, yet many of the common people remained attached to their ancestral faith and resisted union despite these inducements.
Moses Macinic was one of a group of Transylvanian confessors who suffered for this resistance. He is commemorated on October 21 alongside Bessarion (Visarion) Sarai, a Serbian-born hesychast; Sophronius, Confessor of Ciorara; the layman Oprea Miclaus (Oprea of Saliste); and the bishop John of Galesh. The wider movement of these confessors helped secure recognition of the legal existence of the Orthodox Church in Transylvania and the appointment of Bishop Dionisie Novacovic, the first Orthodox bishop there since 1701.
Ministry and Resistance
After his ordination around 1746, Moses Macinic worked against the Uniate movement among the Romanians of Transylvania. He was identified by Bishop Manuil Mihail Olsavszky as an opponent of union with Rome and arrested. According to the OCA synaxarion he was jailed in Sibiu for seventeen months and released on the condition that he cease to function as a priest, after which he lived as an ordinary peasant.
He was associated with petitions detailing the sufferings of the Orthodox in Transylvania. By the Romanian account he signed a memorandum dated December 10, 1750 addressed to the Serbian Metropolitan Pavel Nenadovici. In 1752 he traveled to Vienna together with the lay leader Oprea Miclaus to present the grievances of the Orthodox Christians to the imperial authorities, including a petition to Empress Maria Theresa concerning the rights of the Orthodox Church. The bishop John of Galesh contributed to the petition carried to the Vienna court.
Imprisonment and Death
Following the 1752 mission to Vienna, Moses Macinic and Oprea Miclaus were imprisoned by the Habsburg authorities in the Kufstein fortress in the Kaiser Mountains of Tyrol. The rulers denied knowledge of the petitioners despite repeated requests for their release. By the Romanian tradition he remained imprisoned at Kufstein for roughly thirty-two years until his death around 1784.
The same fortress was the place of imprisonment and death for several of the Transylvanian confessors. Bessarion Sarai was likewise reported to have died in the Kufstein dungeon. When the wife of Oprea petitioned Emperor Joseph II on July 24, 1784, after thirty-two years, the prison directorate had no record of him; Moses Macinic is presumed to have died at Kufstein around the same time.
Glorification
Moses Macinic was glorified as a martyr by the Orthodox Church of Romania in 1992, the same year in which his companion John of Galesh was canonized. Among the other Transylvanian confessors, Bessarion Sarai was glorified by the Holy Synod of the Romanian Orthodox Church on February 28, 1950, and Sophronius of Ciorara was glorified in 1955 at Alba Iulia.
He is venerated as a hieromartyr and confessor, his feast being kept on October 21 among the Confessors of Transylvania.
