CARDIEL, JOSÉ. – Missionary in Paraguay and geographer, b. at La Guardia (in La Rioja, Spain) on 13 March 1704, d. at Faenza on 6 December 1782. He followed (1720) his brothers Tommaso and Pietro Antonio into the Society of Jesus. In 1729 he landed at Buenos Aires, already a priest; two years later he was assigned to the famous Guaraní reductions. There he led a very full and somewhat troubled life. In 1734–35, he served as chaplain to the Guaraní auxiliary troops against the revolt of the “comuneros”; he took part in various attempts to establish new foundations. He subsequently made two voyages of exploration along the coasts south of Buenos Aires, the first by sea (1745) with Fr. José Quiroga, the second overland (1748), though without being able to go much beyond Bahía Blanca (the journals of these voyages were published: the first by Pedro de Angelis, in Colección de obras y documentos relativos a la Historia... del Río de la Plata, I, Buenos Aires 1836; the second by F. Outes and G. Furlong, there 1933). Fr. C. suffered greatly when, as a consequence of the ill-fated boundary treaty of 1750 between Spain and Portugal, the troops of these nations expelled the Indians, who did not wish to abandon the reductions. In 1767–68 he was affected by the banishment decreed by Charles III, which expelled all the Jesuits from the Spanish dominions; deported to Italy, he settled in Faenza, where he devoted himself to the history and geography of Paraguay until his death.
A man of action more than of the pen, C. nevertheless wrote various treatises, especially in defense of the missionaries against the calumnies of Ibáñez and others. The principal one, Declaración de la verdad, was published by Fr. P. Hernández (Buenos Aires 1900); minor writings are printed in an appendix to the translation of the Storia del Paraguay by P.F.S. Charlevois, by Fr. Muriel (ed. by Fr. Hernández, Madrid 1916 and 1918), and in vol. II of the Organización social de las Doctrinas guaraníes by the same Hernández (Barcelona 1913). More important is Fr. C.’s cartographic work; it has been almost entirely analyzed and reproduced in G. Furlong Cardiff, Cartografía jesuítica del Río de la Plata (2 vols., Buenos Aires 1936).