"Niccolò Longobardo came to China in 1597. While preaching in Shaozhou, Guangdong, he was repeatedly slandered by opponents of the faith: in 1603 there was a plot to kill him, and in 1606 he was falsely accused of adultery before the magistrate — on hearing of it he went at once to the court to demand a hearing, and was publicly declared innocent. He went on to serve in China for fifty-eight years, through the Nanjing persecution and, in old age, an arrest in Jinan. On his deathbed in 1654 he asked to have the account of Jesus' Passion read to him, and afterwards cried out in tears: "To leave this world having heard of Jesus' suffering and death — this is my great good fortune!""
— Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Christianity
Source: "Longobardo, Niccolò" (by Chen Qingwei, drawing on Louis Pfister's Notices biographiques et bibliographiques)
Persecution, hardship, God, heart, faith, truth
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