CARDIM, ANTONIO FRANCISCO. – Portuguese missionary, born in Viana do Alemtejo in 1595 or 1596, died in Macao on 20 April 1659. He entered the Society of Jesus at Évora on 24 February 1611 and departed for the East in 1618. After completing his studies at Goa, he went to Macao to proceed to Japan; but, finding the route closed, he worked as a missionary in the Chinese province of Kwantung (1623–25), and thereafter in Siam. Recalled to Macao, he was appointed master of novices and, for four years, rector of the college. In 1638 he was sent to Rome as procurator of the Japanese province, and then returned to Goa in 1649. Captured by the Dutch while travelling 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 Nangasqui (Rome 1643; in Portuguese and French: 1643, in Latin and Flemish: 1644); Fasciculus e Iaponiae floribus suo adhuc madentibus sanguine (Rome 1646; in Portuguese: 1650); Catalogus regularium qui in Iaponiae Regno...
in odium fidei violenta morte sublati sunt (Rome 1646), and others. Of importance 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 on the island of Hainan; appended to it is a map of Japan, frequently reproduced. The work and struggles of the Jesuit missionaries in these same countries (and also in Annam) are recounted at greater length in another writing by C., published only in 1894 in Lisbon by Luciano Cordeiro: Batalhas da Companhia de Jesus na sua gloriosa provincia do Japão