BERTOLDI, CARLO MICHELE

CARLO MICHELE BERTOLDI. — Missionary, born in Valperga (Piedmont), on 20 Oct. 1660; entered the Society of Jesus on 9 July 1681, and sailed for India in 1697. In 1702 he was assigned to the Madura mission, where for 35 years he had charge of the pangu (quasi-parish) of Aour, near Trichinopoly, dying there on 10 March 1740.

He appears to have been the pioneer, in Madura, of collective spiritual retreats, which he greatly developed (a report of his on the subject, dated 1719, is printed by J. Bertrand, La Mission du Maduré, IV, Paris 1854, pp. 262-70; reproduced by Besse, together with another, in La pratique des Exercices). A work by B. in Tamil, Gana muayrathi (1727), an exposition of the first week of St Ignatius’s Exercises, was printed at Pondichéry in 1843.

BIBL.: Sommervogel, I, col. 1392; VIII, col. 1827; Streit, Bibl., VI, p. 64; A. Jean, Le Maduré, l'ancienne et la nouvelle mission, Lille 1894, pp. 362-65; L. Besse, La pratique des Exercices de st Ignace dans l'ancienne Mission du Maduré (Coll. de la Biblioth. des Exercices, 25). Enghien 1910, pp. 2-18, 23-31; id., La Mission du Maduré. Historique de ses paroisses, Trichinopoly 1914, pp. 95-107 and passim; Edmondo Lamalle.