ROLDÁN, GIOVANNI TADDO DI SANT'ELISEO. - Discalced Carmelite, missionary and bishop, b. at Calahorra (Spain) on 17 Aug. 1574. He professed in the reformed Carmel at Valladolid in 1597, and in 1600 moved to Rome. In 1604, together with other confreres, he was sent by Clement VIII as legate to the new king of Persia, šāh Abbas I.

Having reached Iṣfahān in 1607, he labored there for 20 continuous years, as missionary, prior, and superior of all the Carmelite missions of Persia and India. A perfect master of the Persian, Armenian and Arabic languages, he was esteemed by the learned men and the great of Persia and by the šāh 'Abbās I and 'Abbās II, and was able to bring about many conversions among the Chaldeans and the Armenians. In 1610, sent as ambassador by the king of Persia to the king of Poland and to the Pope, he was imprisoned at Astrakhān (Russia), and returned to Iṣfahān without concluding the embassy. In 1629 he came to Rome to negotiate the union of the Armenians of Persia with the Roman Church, and in 1632 the Congregation of Propaganda appointed him first bishop of the new see of Iṣfahān. He was the first discalced Carmelite raised to the episcopate. While returning to Persia by way of Spain, he died at Lérida on 5 Sept. 1633. Besides several reports on the missions entrusted to him, he composed a Kalendarium scientificum Persicum in Latin and Persian (ms. Arch. gen. O.C.D., Rome), a Persian version of the Psalms (ms. 3776, Bodleian, Oxford) and other short works or versions in Persian.

Bibliography5 works

BIBL.: Filippo della Trinità, Decor Carmeli, III, Lyon 1665, pp. 100-105; Florencio del Niño Jesús, Biblioteca Carm. Teres. de Missiones, III, Pamplona 1930, passim: Ambrogio di S. Teresa, Hierarchia Carmelitana, I, Rome 1932, pp. 9-15; id., Bio-biblior. Miss. O. C. D., ibid. 1941, nn. 56, 98, 115, 154-58, 163; id., Nomenclator mission. O. C. D., ibid. 1944, pp. 220-31; anon., A chronicle of Carmelites in Persia, II, London 1930, pp. 92-34.

Valentino di Maria

@incollection{ec10_roldan_giovanni_taddo_di_sant, author = {Valentino di Maria}, title = {Roldán, giovanni taddo di sant'eliseo}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {X}, pages = {1093--1094}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1953}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/roldan-giovanni-taddo-di-sant-eliseo} }

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Roldán, Giovanni Taddo di Sant'Eliseo

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