CARDIEL, José. — Missionary in Paraguay and geographer, b. at La Guardia (in La Rioja, Spain) on 13 March 1704, d. at Faenza on 6 Dec. 1782. He followed his brothers Tommaso and Pietro Antonio into the Society of Jesus in 1720. In 1729 he disembarked 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 served as chaplain to the Guaraní auxiliary troops against the “comuneros” revolt; he took part in several attempts to found new settlements. He then made two exploratory journeys along the coasts south of Buenos Aires, the first by sea (1745) with Fr José Quiroga, the second overland (1748), though without getting much beyond Bahía Blanca (the journals of these expeditions were published: the first by Pedro de Angelis in Colección de obras y documentos relativos a la Historia... del Rio de la Plata, I, Buenos Aires 1836; the second by F. Outes and G. Furlong, ibid. 1933).
Fr C. suffered greatly when, as a result of the unfortunate boundary treaty of 1750 between Spain and Portugal, troops of both nations expelled the Indians who refused to abandon the reductions. In 1767–68 he was caught up in Charles III’s decree expelling all Jesuits from Spanish dominions; deported to Italy, he settled at Faenza, where he devoted himself to the history and geography of Paraguay until his death.
A man of action rather than of the pen, C. nevertheless wrote several treatises, especially in defence of missionaries against calumnies from Italy and elsewhere. The principal one, Declaración de la verdad, was published by Fr P. Hernández (Buenos Aires 1900); minor writings appear in the appendix to the Spanish translation of P. F. S. Charlevoix’s Histoire du Paraguay by Fr Muriel (ed. by Fr Hernández, Madrid 1916 and 1918) and in vol. II of Organización social de las Doctrinas guaraníes by the same Hernández (Barcelona 1913). More important is C.’s cartographic work; almost all of it is analysed and reproduced in G. Furlong Cardiff, Cartografía jesuítica del Rio de la Plata (2 vols., Buenos Aires 1936).