He published various collections of decisions from the Sacred Roman Rota: *S. Rotae Romanae decisiones selectae ab a. 1618 usque ad a. 1626*; *Decisiones novissimae ab a. 1626 usque ad a. 1630* (2nd ed., Rome 1642); *Decisiones diversorum auditorum ab a. 1631 usque ad a. 1634* (ibid. 1640); and he continued the collection begun by Prospero Farinaccio from vol. VII to vol. XVIII (decisions from the year 1618 to the year 1666): *S. Rotae Romanae decisiones recentiores*, etc. (ibid. 1645, Venice 1716). He obtained from Pope Urban VIII the exclusive privilege to publish the Rotal decisions for a period of twenty years and for all places (letter of 23 July 1641). He also wrote: *Resolutiones practicabiles circa testamenta* (Rome 1654); *De validitate legali controversiae forenses* (ibid. 1664). Not to be confused with the homonymous Rotal auditor of Canino (Viterbo), d. 1/8 May 1512.
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He entered the Society in 1586 and in 1602 set out for India, where he was ordained priest in 1605 and worked in the kingdom of Bisnagar. He remained in India until 1638, devoting himself tirelessly to teaching, catechesis, preaching, and important missions, accomplishing immense good. Nor did he neglect his unflagging scientific activity; several letters to Fr. Clavius and Gremberger, professors at the Roman College, a brief description of the entire world, and a description of the kingdom of Bisnagar attest to his expertise in cosmography and cartography, while his interest in Galilean discoveries, evident from the same letters, shows him to have been a skilled cultivator of the mathematical sciences, and the *Catena evangelica*, in seven large volumes, a work executed with expertise.
But one work in particular, composed in 1641, illustrates both the theologian and the apostolic man: *Metodo della dottrina che i Padri della Compagnia di Giesù insegnano ai neofiti nelle missioni della Cina con la risposta alle obiezioni di alcuni moderni che la impugnano*. In 1638, in fact, he had gone to China as visitor of the Japanese province and vice-provincial of the Chinese mission, and thanks to his immediate application to the study of Chinese and Japanese languages and books, he soon became capable of disputing with the bonzes. With the *Metodo della dottrina* he intended to justify the conduct of his missionaries in China, clearly setting out the practice followed in evangelization to refute the objections of religious of other Orders and some among the Jesuits themselves (v. dei). The work, written in Portuguese, was not printed until many years after the author’s death, translated into Italian by another missionary, Fr. G. F. Marini (Lyons 1665). In 1680 it was placed on the Index, where it remains. In 1643, having embarked with his companions, all disguised as Chinese, for Japan, they landed on 12 August on the island of Satuma; but discovered by the spies of the persecutors, they were seized, taken to Nagasaki, and after harsh imprisonment condemned, it seems, to the punishment of the pit.
To R. his Jansenist and Enlightenment adversaries attributed the work: *Difesa del giudizio formato dalla Santa Sede Apostolica* (Turin 1760?), concerning the rites and ceremonies of the Chinese, containing iconoclastic judgments against the use of the crucifix in churches and on altars. The calumny collapses of itself, since by the date of Clement XI’s decree on the Chinese rites (1704), to which the work refers, and even more by the date of its promulgation in Peking by Cardinal Tournon (1707), R. had already passed from this life. The true author is instead a doctor of the Sorbonne (cf. anon., *La verità difesa col disvelarsi nella sincera esposizione dei fatti*, Florence 1761).