ROLDÁN, GIOVANNI TADDO DI SANT'ELISEO. — Discalced Carmelite, missionary, and bishop, b. at Calahorra (Spain) on 17 Aug. 1574. He professed in the reformed Carmelite Order at Valladolid in 1597, and in 1600 went to Rome. In 1604, together with other confrères, he was sent by Clement VIII as legate to the new king of Persia, šāh Abbas I.
Having arrived in Iṣfahān in 1607, he worked there for 20 uninterrupted years as a missionary, prior, and superior of all the Carmelite missions in Persia and India. A perfect master of the Persian, Armenian, and Arabic languages, he was esteemed by the scholars and grandees of Persia and by the šāh 'Abbās I and 'Abbās II, and was able to effect many conversions among the Chaldeans and Armenians. In 1610, sent as ambassador by the king of Persia to the king of Poland and to the Pope, he was imprisoned at Astrakān (Russia), and returned to Iṣfahān without completing 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 Congreg. of Propaganda appointed him the first bishop of the new see of Iṣfahān. He was the first Discalced Carmelite to be raised to the episcopate. While returning to Persia by way of Spain, he d. at Lérida on 5 Sept. 1633. In addition to 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.
His most widely disseminated work was the Fasciculus temporum (1470), a brief universal chronicle, which went through approximately 50 editions (more than 100,000 copies) up to 1525, as well as translations into German, French, Flemish, and other languages. The volume De laude veteris Saxoniae nunc Westphaliae dictæ (1474) was still being reprinted at Cologne in 1865. He wrote biblical commentaries (unpublished), as well as treatises on the social questions of his time: De regimine rusticorum (1472); De origine nobilitatis; Tractatus de contractibus (on loans at interest). A devotional treatise on the Mass (Libellus de venerabili Sacramento et valore Missorum) and the Paradisus conscientiae were very popular. He published several ascetical-mystical works for the reform of the regular and secular clergy: De forma visitationum monasticarum; Formula vivendi canonitorum sive vicariorum saeculorum; Quaestiones 12 pro presbyteris et studentibus, in which he cites 35 notable authorities (including Petrarch) and recommends the study of 96 patristic and medieval authors. In the Paradisus conscientiae R. presents the degrees of charity according to the nine choirs of angels.