In 1844 he decreed the emancipation of the Gypsies, which until then had been treated as slaves and owned by the Church or by private landowners; they had been bought and sold in the open market.

Mihail also attempted the secularization of monastic establishments, which was carried out by Prince Alexandru Ioan Cuza in 1864, and the utilization of their endowments for national purposes.

Mihail quelled the attempted Moldavian Revolution of 1848 without bloodshed by arresting all the few conspirators and expelling them from the country.

When his and Vogoride's 16-year-old son was killed in Paris there in 1863, he erected a Greek Orthodox church on Michaelsberg to serve as his crypt.

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