CICERI, ALESSANDRO. - Jesuit missionary, b. at Como on 27 May 1639; he entered the novitiate in 1655 and left for India in 1674. He was visitor of the Provinces of Goa and Malabar (1682–85). He then went to China and was sent thence to Rome as procurator (1688–92). On 25 Jan. 1693 he was appointed bishop of Nanchino, and, having received news of it only in 1695, he was consecrated at Macao in 1696. His appointment came in the midst of the painful struggles between the Congregation of Propaganda and the Portuguese Patronage over jurisdiction in China. C. was not, as is erroneously repeated, the first bishop of Pechino. He died in his episcopal city in Dec. 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, Sciangai 1932, pp. 391–92; A. Van den Wyngsert, Le Patronat portugais et mon. Bernardin della Chiesa, in Archivum franciscanum historicum, 35 (1942), pp. 17–24. Edmondo Lamalle