CRIMINALI, ANTONIO. – Protomartyr of the Society of Jesus, born at Sissa, near Parma, on 7 February 1520, he was received into the Order by St Ignatius himself in April 1542 and sent by him to Portugal. Ordained a priest at Coimbra on 6 January 1544, he embarked for India with Fr Niccolò Lancellotti, arriving at Goa in September of the same year. St Francis Xavier assigned him to the missions of Cape Comorin on the Fishery Coast. Surprised by an invasion of the Badagi, C. was killed, probably around the middle of May 1549.
BIBL.: E. Massara, Del p. A. C., parmigiano, protomartire della Compagnia di Gesù, Parma 1899; G. Schurhammer, Leben und Briefe A. C.'s., des Erstlingsmärtyrers der Gesellschaft Jesu, in Archivum histor. S. I., 5 (1936), pp. 231–67.