CARDIM, ANTONIO FRANCISCO. - Portuguese missionary, b. at Viana do Alemtejo in 1595 or 1596, d. at Macao on 20 Apr. 1659. He entered the Society of Jesus at Evora on 24 Feb. 1611, and in 1618 set out for the Orient. After completing his studies at Goa, he went to Macao to enter Japan, but finding the way closed, he worked as a missionary in the Chinese province of Kwantung (1623-25), then in Siam. Recalled to Macao, he held the office of novice master and, for four years, rector of the college. In 1638, he was sent to Rome as procurator of the Japanese province, and returned to Goa in 1649. Captured by the Dutch while on his way to Macao and held prisoner for three years, he died in that city.
During his stay in Europe he published various hagiographical pamphlets: *Relazione della gloriosa morte di quattro ambasciatori portoghesi della città di Macao con altri cinquantasette christiani... decapitati tutti per la fede a Nan-gasqui* (Rome 1643; in Portuguese and French: 1643; in Latin and Flemish: 1644); *Fasciculus e Iaponiae floribus suo adhuc mandentibus sanguine* (Rome 1646; in Portuguese: 1650); *Catalogus regularium qui in Iaponiae Regno... in odium fidei violenta morte sublatis sunt* (Rome 1646) and others. Important is his *Relatione della provincia del Giappone* (Rome 1645; various Italian and French editions), which describes the state of Christianity not only in Japan but also in Tonkin, Siam, Cambodia, and the island of Hainan; it includes a map of Japan, often reproduced. The labors and struggles of the Jesuit missionaries in the same countries (and also in Annam) are recounted at greater length in another work by C., published only in 1894 at Lisbon by Luciano Cordeiro: *Batalhas da Companhia de Jesus na sua gloriosa provincia do Japão*.