CATTANEO, LAZZARO. — One of the first missionaries to China, born at Sarzana in 1560, died in China on 19 January 1640. He entered the novitiate of the Society of Jesus in Rome on 27 February 1581. He pursued his studies largely in Portugal and, after ordination, sailed from Lisbon for Goa in 1588. He was superior of the mission on the coast of the Fishery in 1589, arrived at Macao in 1593, and entered China the following year. After learning sufficient Chinese at Chatoceou with Fr. Matteo Ricci, he accompanied him on his first journey to Peking (1598). He then worked at Nanking and for several years at Macao, where calumnies against him occasioned serious disturbances (1606). He was later the first apostle of Shanghai (1608–10, at the invitation of the famous doctor Paolo Siù) and of Hangthecou (1611). During the persecution that followed, he took refuge in Macao, then founded a new mission at Kiating in Kiangsu. He spent his old age at Hangthecou from 1622 until his death. He composed in Chinese several treatises (on the knowledge of God, contrition for sins, etc.) and assisted Fr. Ricci in various linguistic works, among them the compilation of a dictionary in which the five ordinary tones of Chinese are distinguished by accents.
CATTANEO, LAZZARO
BIBL.: L. Pfister, Notices biographiques et bibliographiques sur les Jésuites de l'ancienne mission de Chine, I, Shanghai 1932, pp. 12 and 51–56; P. d'Elia, Fonti Ricciane, I, Rome 1942, pp. 332–34.