CARDIEL, JOSÉ. - Missionary in Paraguay and geographer, b. at La Guardia (in Rioja, Spain) on 13 March 1704, d. at Faenza on 6 Dec. 1782. In 1720 he followed 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 rather turbulent life. In 1734-35 he was chaplain of the Guaraní auxiliary troops against the revolt of the "comuneros"; he took part in various attempts at new foundations. He then made two voyages of exploration of the coasts south of Buenos Aires, the first by sea (1745) with Fr. José Quiroga, the second by land (1748), but without being able to go much beyond
Blanca Bay (the diaries of these voyages have been 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, ibid. 1933). Fr. C. had much to suffer 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 want to abandon the reductions. In 1767-68 he was caught by the decree of Charles III, which expelled all the Jesuits from the Spanish dominions; deported to Italy, he settled at Faenza, where he occupied himself with the history and geography of Paraguay until his death.
A man of action rather 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 the appendix to the translation of P.F.S. Charlevois's Storia del Paraguay for Fr. Muriel (ed. by Fr. Hernández, Madrid 1916 and 1918) and in vol. II of the same Hernández's Organización social de las Doctrinas guaraníes (Barcelona 1913). More important is Fr. C.'s cartographic work; it is almost entirely analyzed and reproduced in G. Furlong Cardiff, Cartografía jesuítica del Río de la Plata (2 vols., Buenos Aires 1936).
Bibliography2 works
Edmondo Lamalle