Andrade, Antonio de
ANDRADE, ANTONIO DE
Portuguese missionary; b. Oleiros, Portugal, 1580; d. Goa, India, March 19, 1634. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1596, went to India in 1600, and became rector of the colleges at Goa, and in 1621 superior of the Mogul mission at Agra. Lured by reports of Christian communities to the north, he became the first European to cross the Himalayas into Tibet in 1624, and in 1625, with six other Jesuits, five Portuguese and one French, he established
a mission at Tsaparang, on the Sutlej River. The accounts of his two trips were quickly translated into several European languages. In 1629 he returned to Goa as provincial superior. The Tsaparang mission was destroyed in 1631 during a revolt inspired by hostile lamas; the Christian community had numbered about 400. Andrade was preparing to return to Tibet when he died, probably from poison.
Bibliography: c. wessels, Early Jesuit Travelers in Central Asia (The Hague 1924) 43–91. Archivum historicum Societatis Jesu, Index generalis (1953) 299.
[m. b. martin]