Angelis (or Angeli Degli), Girolamo
Angelis (or Angeli Degli), Girolamo a Jesuit born at Castro Giovanni, in Sicily, in 1567, died Dec. 4, 1623. He entered the order of the Jesuits in 1585, and prepared himself for the Eastern missions. He embarked in 1596, and, after a long navigation, was cast upon the coast of Brazil, where he was seized by pirates and brought to England. Having from thence returned to Portugal, he was, in 1602, sent to Japan, in which country he labored as a missionary until the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1614. With the permission of his superiors, Angelis put on a Japanese dress, and remained on the island of Niphon for nine more years. He is said to have been the first European who visited the neighboring islands. In Jeddo he is said to have converted ten thousand natives to Christianity. Ultimately he was arrested, imprisoned, and burned alive, with ninety of his converts, after a stay in Japan of twenty-two years. A work on Jeddo (Relazione del regno di Yezo), which was published at Rome in 1625, is attributed to him. — Hoefer, Biog. Generale, 2, 646.
