Andrei Mocioni

Origins and early life

The Mocionis were probably descended from Petru Mucină, an Aromanian (or "Macedo-Romanian") priest from Aspropotamos in Thessaly or Moscopole, who declared loyalty to the Habsburg monarchy and served in the Great Turkish War. He and one of his brothers were killed in action somewhere in the Banat. Archpriest Constantin Mocioni, or "Constantinus Motsonyi", who may have been Mucină's son, settled among the Greek Orthodox (Greek, Romanian, and Aromanian) community of Pest in the 1740s. Family documents suggest that he was originally from Moscopole, and that he died at 110 years of age; under his watch, the family established lucrative businesses and began purchasing estates in Hungary and the Banat. His two sons Andrei and Mihai were raised into the nobility by King-Emperor Joseph II: the former in February 1783, the latter in June 1798, after distinguished service in the War of the First Coalition. The Mocionis were thus one of some 200 Aromanian families to receive titles, and became integrated with the 12,500 Romanian noble families attested in Hungary by 1800 (from a total 340,000).

Andrei the elder was killed in mysterious circumstances before he could receive his diploma, but this was granted to his wife. The more senior branch established by them became known as Mocioni de Foen, or fényi Mocsonyi, in reference to its core estate of Foeni (Fény). This was by contrast with Mihai's descendants, the armalist Mocionis, who did not hold a titular estate—although they built a manor at Marosberkes (now Birchiș, Romania), they were mostly based in Pest, where they founded the Kefala Library. Andrei the second was a grandson of the original Andrei, born to lawyer Ioan Mocioni de Foen (1780–1854) and his wife Iuliana Panaiot (1787–1858). On his mother's side, Andrei had Albanian roots. He had an elder brother, Petru, born in 1808, and two junior ones: Anton and Gheorghe (born 1816 and 1823, respectively). Other siblings included brothers George and Lucian (the latter of whom died young) and sister Ecaterina. Ioan and Iuliana together had as many as 11 other children. Andrei was simultaneously the uncle and cousin of writer Alexandru Mocioni, born from a consanguine marriage between Ecaterina and her uncle Mihai Mocioni.

Andrei the younger was a native of Pest, but grew up mostly in Foeni where, according to scholar Păun Otiman, he received "a profoundly Christian Orthodox education, inspired by Macedo-Romanian traditions and culture". Originally, the Mocionis only spoke Aromanian and Hungarian. Nevertheless, the family encouraged intercultural contacts, with Ioan speaking as many as eleven languages. According to the Banatian Serb journalist Mihailo Polit-Desančić, the local Mocionis, including Andrei, also made a point of learning Serbian, and "sort of carried themselves like Serbs". Seen by his contemporaries as a man of outstanding culture and upbringing, Andrei had "perfect" command of Aromanian, Romanian, Hungarian, Serbian, as well as Latin, French, and German. Like his father, he took a law degree in 1828 or 1832, from the Royal University of Pest. He then worked in the local administration of Banat. In 1836, he was the second-ranked notary of Torontál County, being appointed first pretor in 1843. Ethnologist Elena Rodica Colta dates the Mocionis' definitive self-identification as Romanians to this period, noting that they believed the entire Aromanian ethnos to be a branch of the Romanian community. During his time in Pest, Andrei began frequenting the literary salon organized by Atanasiu Grabovski de Apadia in Terézváros, meeting with exponents of Aromanian and Romanian causes.

While participating in Torontál's congregatio generalis, Andrei Mocioni sat with the "conservative-progressive" side of the Romanian caucus, taking his distance from the revolutionary liberals. Thanks in part to his contribution, Torontál remained a safe seat for the conservative club of István Széchenyi, committed to "moderate progress" for the country at large, with "national conservation" for the Romanians. In 1847, he managed to obtain a seat in the Diet of Hungary, for his brother Petru, canvassing votes from conservative Hungarians, Serbs, Bulgarians, Armenians and Swabians.