RHODES, ALEXANDRE. — Jesuit, missionary, born in Avignon on 15 March 1591, died at Isfahán (Persia) on 5 November 1660.
He entered the Order in 1612 in order to go on mission, and in 1619 departed for India, working until 1623 in Goa and in the Moluccan Islands, where, together with Fr. C. Ferreira, he administered more than 2,000 Baptisms. In 1623 he landed at Macao in China in order to proceed to Japan; but, finding entry prevented by the persecution, he turned to Cochinchina. The profound knowledge of the Annamite language that he acquired there led to his being assigned in 1627 to the mission of Tonkin, in which, through three years of assiduous work, he succeeded in converting 5,000 pagans. Expelled in 1630, he taught theology at Macao while continuing to work among the pagan and newly Christian Chinese, baptizing more than 1,000 of them. In 1640 he again attempted to cross the borders of Cochinchina; expelled from there three times, he returned three times, until he was captured, condemned to death, and then exiled. He then went to Europe, where he advocated the dispatch of apostolic vicars to Central Asia, and, speaking at the Collège de Clermont in Paris to young priests of the «Société des bons amis», directed by Fr. Bagot, he gave impetus to the foundation of the Paris Seminary for the Foreign Missions, which subsequently gave the Church so many heroic missionaries and martyrs (cf. J. A. Otto, op. cit. in bibl., pp. 72-73). In 1655 he departed once more for the mission of Persia, where, through his knowledge of the language and the work of himself and his companions, he gained the esteem of Shāh 'Abbās the Great, who granted permission to erect a church and a house for the missionaries at Isfahán. R. would also have liked to proceed to Georgia and Tartary, in order to establish there various points of support for a further penetration throughout the East. At Isfahán R. was venerated as a saint, and his funeral, attended by the Shāh and the court, was a triumph.
R.’s principal merit, besides having founded the Church of Tonkin, was that of having been the acknowledged pioneer of the modern missionary hierarchy; and this success was due to his prudent adaptation to indigenous usages and customs, to his winning the educated classes over to Christianity, and to the foundation of schools for catechists, according to a kind of religious society that became the seed of the indigenous clergy.
He wrote: Relazioni dei felici successi della fede... nel regno di Tunchino, Rome 1650; in Latin: Tunchinensis historiae libri duo, Lyon 1652; Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum-latinum, there 1651. In addition: Relazione della morte di Andrea Catechista, primo dei cristiani nel regno di Cocincina ucciso per la fede, Rome 1652; Diverses voyages et mission du p. A. de R. en la Chine et autres royaumes de l'Orient, avec son retour en Europe par la Perse et l'Arménie, Paris 1653.