RHODES, ALEXANDRE. - Jesuit, missionary, b. at Avignon on 15 March 1591, d. at Isfahan (Persia) on 5 Nov. 1660.
Having entered the Order in 1612 in order to go on mission, he set out in 1619 for India, working until 1623 at Goa and in the Moluccas, where with Fr. C. Ferreira he administered more than 2000 baptisms. In 1623 he landed at Macao in China in order to pass on to Japan; but finding entry prevented by the persecution, he turned to Cochinchina. The profound knowledge of the Annamese language that he acquired there caused him to be assigned in 1627 to the mission of Tonkin, in which, through three years of assiduous labor, he succeeded in converting 5000 pagans. Banished in 1630, he taught theology at Macao while working among the pagan and newly Christian Chinese, baptizing more than 1000 of them. In 1640 he wished once again to force the borders of Cochinchina; banished from it three times, three times he returned until he was taken, condemned to death and then exiled. He then passed into Europe, where he pleaded the cause of sending apostolic vicars into central Asia, and speaking at the College of Clermont in Paris to young priests of the "Société des bons amis," directed by Fr. Bagot, he gave impetus to the founding of the Paris Seminary for Foreign Missions, which later gave the Church so many heroic missionaries and martyrs (cf. J. A. Otto, op. cit. in bibl., pp. 72-73). In 1655 he set out again for the mission of Persia, where through his knowledge of the language and his own labor and that of his companions he won the esteem of Shah 'Abbas the Great, who gave permission to erect at Isfahan a church and a house for the missionaries. R. would also have wished to pass into Georgia and Tartary, in order to scatter there various points of support for a further penetration throughout the whole East. At Isfahan R. was venerated as a saint, and his funeral, with the presence of the Shah and the court, was a triumph.
R.'s principal merit, besides having founded the Church of Tonkin, was to have been the recognized pioneer of the modern missionary hierarchy; and this success is due to his prudent adaptation to native uses and customs, to his winning of the educated classes to Christianity, to the founding of schools for catechists, according to a kind of religious society, which became the seed of the native clergy.
He wrote: Relazioni dei felici successi della fede... nel regno di Tunchino, Rome 1650; in Latin: Tunchinensis historiae libri duo, Lyons 1652; Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum-latinum, ibid. 1651. Also: 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.
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