CICERI, ALESSANDRO. — Jesuit missionary, born in Como on 27 May 1639, entered the novitiate in 1655, and departed for India in 1674. He served as visitor of the Provinces of Goa and Malabar (1682–85). He then went to China and was sent from there as procurator to Rome (1688–92). On 25 January 1693, he was appointed Bishop of Nanjing, and, having received the news only in 1695, he was consecrated at Macao in 1696. His appointment occurred amid the painful disputes between the Congregation of Propaganda and the Portuguese Patronage over jurisdiction in China. CICERI was not, as is erroneously repeated, the first Bishop of Beijing. He died in his episcopal see in December 1704.
BIBL.: Sommervogel, II, cols. 1174–75; IX, col. 44; Streit, Bibl., V, p. 964 (both partly erroneous); L. Pfister, Notices biographiques... de l'ancienne mission de Chine, I, Shanghai 1923, pp. 391–92; A. Van den Wyngaert, Le Patronat portugais et mon. Bernardin della Chiesa, in Archivum franciscanum historicum, 35 (1942), pp. 17–24. Edmondo Lamalle