Piromalli, Paolo

Piromalli, Paolo an Italian missionary, was born in 1591 or 1592 at Siderno (Ulterior Calabria). Having embraced the rule of St. Dominic, he devoted himself to preaching, and was in 1628 called to Rome to teach philosophy in the monastery of La Minerva. Appointed in 1631 director of the missions of Major Armenia, he succeeded in gaining for the Catholic faith a number of schismatics and Eutychians, among the latter the patriarchs Cyriac and Moyse III. In 1637 he traveled through Georgia, and was twice sent to pacify in Poloilia the uneasiness caused by the disputes of the Armenians. In 1642 he went to Persia, remaining there ten years, and then preached the Gospel in several parts of India. In 1654 he passed over to Africa, with a view of converting infidels, but was captured by Algerian pirates, who kept him prisoner for fourteen months. Appointed archbishop of Naschivan (1655), he governed that Armenian Church to the close of 1664, when he was transferred to the episcopal see of Bisignano, in the kingdom of Naples. He died July 13, 1667, at Bisignano. He left Theanthropologia (Vienna, 1656. 8vo): — Apologia de duplici natura Christi (ibid. 1656, 8vo); and sixteen works never printed, among which we may mention a Vocabulary and a Grammar of the Armenian language. — Hoefer, Nouv. Biog. Géneralé, 40, 308.