Ippolito Desideri
Encyclopedia
Ippolito Desideri was an Italian Jesuit missionary
in Tibet
and the first European
to have successfully studied and understood Tibetan language
and culture.
, Tuscany
. He was educated from childhood on in the Jesuit school in Pistoia, and in 1700 was selected to attend the Collegio Romano (Roman College) in Rome. From 1706 to 1710 he taught literature at the Jesuit colleges in Orvieto
and Arezzo
, and later at the Collegio Romano itself.
, in 1712, and he was assigned to reopen the Tibetan mission, which was under the jurisdiction of the Jesuit Province of Goa
. Desideri left Rome on 27 September 1712, and embarked for the East in Lisbon on a Portuguese vessel, arriving in Goa one year later. From Goa he traveled to Surat
, Ahmedabad
, Rajasthan
and Delhi
, arriving in Agra
(the seat of the Jesuit mission in Northern India) on 15 September 1714. From there he returned to Delhi, where he met his superior and travel companion, the Portuguese Jesuit Manoel Freyre. Together they traveled from Delhi to Srinagar
in Kashmir
(where they were delayed for six months, and Desideri suffered a nearly fatal intestinal illness), and from Kashmir to Leh, capital of Ladakh, arriving there at the end of June, 1715. According to Desideri, they were well-received by the king of Ladakh and his court, and he wished to remain there to found a mission, but he was forced to obey his Superior, Freyre, who insisted that they travel to Central Tibet and Lhasa.
They thus undertook a perilous seven months winter journey across the Tibetan plateau; ill-prepared and inexperienced, their very survival was likely due to the help they received from Casal, the Mongol governor (and widow of the previous governor of Western Tibet), who was leaving her post and returning to Lhasa. They journeyed with her armed caravan, and finally arrived in Lhasa on 18 March 1716. After a few weeks Freyre returned to India, via Kathmandu and Patna
, leaving Desideri in charge of the mission. He was the only European missionary in Tibet, at that time.
: Lha bzang) Khan, who gave him permission to rent a house in Lhasa and to practice and teach Christianity. After reading Desideri's first work in Tibetan, on the basics of Catholic doctrine, Lajang Khan advised him to improve his Tibetan and learn the Tibetan Buddhist religious and philosophical literature. After some months of intensive study he entered the Sera monastic university
, one of the three great seats of learning of the politically involved Gelukpa. There he studied and debated with Tibetan monks and scholars, and was permitted to have a Christian chapel in his rooms. He learned the language (unknown to Europeans before) and became a voracious student of the culture.
At the end of 1717 he was forced to leave Lhasa due to the unrest caused by the invasion of the Dzungar Mongols
. He retired to the Capuchin hospice in Dakpo province, in South Central Tibet, although he did return to Lhasa for considerable periods during the period 1719-1720. Between 1718 and 1721 he composed five works in literary Tibetan, in which he taught Christian doctrines and attempted to refute the Buddhist concepts of rebirth (which he referred to as "metempsychosis
") and 'Emptiness' (Wylie: stong pa nyid; Sanskrit: śunyatā). In these books Desideri utilized the Tibetan Buddhist techniques of scholastic argumentation, and accepted parts of Buddhism that he did not see as contradictory to Catholic teaching, especially Buddhist moral philosophy.
, a Jesuit who had died a martyr in South-India. He took along his very extensive notes on Tibet, its culture and religion, and began work on his Relation, which in its latest manuscript was called "Historical Notices of Tibet" (Notizie Istoriche del Tibet) while still homeward bound on a French vessal. He landed in France in August, 1727, and after a stay in that country, where he met with important cardinals and aristocrats and had an audience with King Louis XV
, he arrived in Rome in January 1728. He took up residence in the Jesuit professed house
, and his time was fully occupied in the legal proceedings at the Propaganda Fide between himself, representing the Jesuit order, and Fr. Felice di Montecchio, who fiercely prosecuted the Capuchin case; Desideri wrote three Defenses of the Jesuit position. On 29 November 1732, the Propaganda issued its final terse order on the matter, confirming the exclusive right of the Capuchins to the Tibet mission, and forbidding any further discussion on the subject. Desideri had been working during this time on revising the Relation and was preparing it for publication, which was forbidden by the Propaganda order.
Manuscripts of this monumental work, comprising the first accurate account of Tibetan geography, government, agriculture, customs, and Tibetan Buddhist philosophy and belief, were buried in the Jesuit archives and a private collection, and did not come to light until the late 19th century; the Relation finally appeared in a complete edition by Luciano Petech which was published in the 1950s. An abridged English translation was published in 1937, and a complete translation in 2010.
Missionary
A missionary is a member of a religious group sent into an area to do evangelism or ministries of service, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care and economic development. The word "mission" originates from 1598 when the Jesuits sent members abroad, derived from the Latin...
in Tibet
Tibet
Tibet is a plateau region in Asia, north-east of the Himalayas. It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people as well as some other ethnic groups such as Monpas, Qiang, and Lhobas, and is now also inhabited by considerable numbers of Han and Hui people...
and the first European
European ethnic groups
The ethnic groups in Europe are the various ethnic groups that reside in the nations of Europe. European ethnology is the field of anthropology focusing on Europe....
to have successfully studied and understood Tibetan language
Tibetan language
The Tibetan languages are a cluster of mutually-unintelligible Tibeto-Burman languages spoken primarily by Tibetan peoples who live across a wide area of eastern Central Asia bordering the Indian subcontinent, including the Tibetan Plateau and the northern Indian subcontinent in Baltistan, Ladakh,...
and culture.
Biography
Desideri was born in 1684 to a fairly prosperous family in PistoiaPistoia
Pistoia is a city and comune in the Tuscany region of Italy, the capital of a province of the same name, located about 30 km west and north of Florence and is crossed by the Ombrone Pistoiese, a tributary of the River Arno.-History:...
, Tuscany
Tuscany
Tuscany is a region in Italy. It has an area of about 23,000 square kilometres and a population of about 3.75 million inhabitants. The regional capital is Florence ....
. He was educated from childhood on in the Jesuit school in Pistoia, and in 1700 was selected to attend the Collegio Romano (Roman College) in Rome. From 1706 to 1710 he taught literature at the Jesuit colleges in Orvieto
Orvieto
Orvieto is a city and comune in Province of Terni, southwestern Umbria, Italy situated on the flat summit of a large butte of volcanic tuff...
and Arezzo
Arezzo
Arezzo is a city and comune in Central Italy, capital of the province of the same name, located in Tuscany. Arezzo is about 80 km southeast of Florence, at an elevation of 296 m above sea level. In 2011 the population was about 100,000....
, and later at the Collegio Romano itself.
Journey to Tibet
His application for the Indies mission was accepted by the Father-General of the Society of Jesus, Michelangelo TamburiniMichelangelo Tamburini
Michelangelo Tamburini , was an Italian Jesuit, who was elected fourteenth Superior General of the Society of Jesus from January 31, 1706 to February 28, 1730....
, in 1712, and he was assigned to reopen the Tibetan mission, which was under the jurisdiction of the Jesuit Province of Goa
Goa
Goa , a former Portuguese colony, is India's smallest state by area and the fourth smallest by population. Located in South West India in the region known as the Konkan, it is bounded by the state of Maharashtra to the north, and by Karnataka to the east and south, while the Arabian Sea forms its...
. Desideri left Rome on 27 September 1712, and embarked for the East in Lisbon on a Portuguese vessel, arriving in Goa one year later. From Goa he traveled to Surat
Surat
Surat , also known as Suryapur, is the commercial capital city of the Indian state of Gujarat. Surat is India's Eighth most populous city and Ninth-most populous urban agglomeration. It is also administrative capital of Surat district and one of the fastest growing cities in India. The city proper...
, Ahmedabad
Ahmedabad
Ahmedabad also known as Karnavati is the largest city in Gujarat, India. It is the former capital of Gujarat and is also the judicial capital of Gujarat as the Gujarat High Court has its seat in Ahmedabad...
, Rajasthan
Rajasthan
Rājasthān the land of Rajasthanis, , is the largest state of the Republic of India by area. It is located in the northwest of India. It encompasses most of the area of the large, inhospitable Great Indian Desert , which has an edge paralleling the Sutlej-Indus river valley along its border with...
and Delhi
Delhi
Delhi , officially National Capital Territory of Delhi , is the largest metropolis by area and the second-largest by population in India, next to Mumbai. It is the eighth largest metropolis in the world by population with 16,753,265 inhabitants in the Territory at the 2011 Census...
, arriving in Agra
Agra
Agra a.k.a. Akbarabad is a city on the banks of the river Yamuna in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, India, west of state capital, Lucknow and south from national capital New Delhi. With a population of 1,686,976 , it is one of the most populous cities in Uttar Pradesh and the 19th most...
(the seat of the Jesuit mission in Northern India) on 15 September 1714. From there he returned to Delhi, where he met his superior and travel companion, the Portuguese Jesuit Manoel Freyre. Together they traveled from Delhi to Srinagar
Srinagar
Srinagar is the summer seasonal capital of Jammu and Kashmir. It is situated in Kashmir Valley and lies on the banks of the Jhelum River, a tributary of the Indus. It is one of the largest cities in India not to have a Hindu majority. The city is famous for its gardens, lakes and houseboats...
in Kashmir
Kashmir
Kashmir is the northwestern region of the Indian subcontinent. Until the mid-19th century, the term Kashmir geographically denoted only the valley between the Great Himalayas and the Pir Panjal mountain range...
(where they were delayed for six months, and Desideri suffered a nearly fatal intestinal illness), and from Kashmir to Leh, capital of Ladakh, arriving there at the end of June, 1715. According to Desideri, they were well-received by the king of Ladakh and his court, and he wished to remain there to found a mission, but he was forced to obey his Superior, Freyre, who insisted that they travel to Central Tibet and Lhasa.
They thus undertook a perilous seven months winter journey across the Tibetan plateau; ill-prepared and inexperienced, their very survival was likely due to the help they received from Casal, the Mongol governor (and widow of the previous governor of Western Tibet), who was leaving her post and returning to Lhasa. They journeyed with her armed caravan, and finally arrived in Lhasa on 18 March 1716. After a few weeks Freyre returned to India, via Kathmandu and Patna
Patna
Paṭnā , is the capital of the Indian state of Bihar and the second largest city in Eastern India . Patna is one of the oldest continuously inhabited places in the world...
, leaving Desideri in charge of the mission. He was the only European missionary in Tibet, at that time.
Settling down in Lhasa
Soon after arriving in Lhasa Desideri was received in audience by the Mongol ruler of Tibet, Lajang (WylieWylie transliteration
The Wylie transliteration scheme is a method for transliterating Tibetan script using only the letters available on a typical English language typewriter. It bears the name of Turrell V. Wylie, who described the scheme in an article, A Standard System of Tibetan Transcription, published in 1959...
: Lha bzang) Khan, who gave him permission to rent a house in Lhasa and to practice and teach Christianity. After reading Desideri's first work in Tibetan, on the basics of Catholic doctrine, Lajang Khan advised him to improve his Tibetan and learn the Tibetan Buddhist religious and philosophical literature. After some months of intensive study he entered the Sera monastic university
Sera Monastery
Sera Monastery is one of the 'great three' Gelukpa university monasteries of Tibet, located north of Lhasa. The other two are Ganden Monastery and Drepung Monastery. The origin of the name 'Sera' is attributed to a fact that the site where the monastery was built was surrounded by wild roses in...
, one of the three great seats of learning of the politically involved Gelukpa. There he studied and debated with Tibetan monks and scholars, and was permitted to have a Christian chapel in his rooms. He learned the language (unknown to Europeans before) and became a voracious student of the culture.
At the end of 1717 he was forced to leave Lhasa due to the unrest caused by the invasion of the Dzungar Mongols
Mongols
Mongols ) are a Central-East Asian ethnic group that lives mainly in the countries of Mongolia, China, and Russia. In China, ethnic Mongols can be found mainly in the central north region of China such as Inner Mongolia...
. He retired to the Capuchin hospice in Dakpo province, in South Central Tibet, although he did return to Lhasa for considerable periods during the period 1719-1720. Between 1718 and 1721 he composed five works in literary Tibetan, in which he taught Christian doctrines and attempted to refute the Buddhist concepts of rebirth (which he referred to as "metempsychosis
Metempsychosis
Metempsychosis is a philosophical term in the Greek language referring to transmigration of the soul, especially its reincarnation after death. It is a doctrine popular among a number of Eastern religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Druzism wherein an individual incarnates from one...
") and 'Emptiness' (Wylie: stong pa nyid; Sanskrit: śunyatā). In these books Desideri utilized the Tibetan Buddhist techniques of scholastic argumentation, and accepted parts of Buddhism that he did not see as contradictory to Catholic teaching, especially Buddhist moral philosophy.
Conflict with the Capuchins
Italian missionaries of the Capuchin Order had been granted the Tibetan mission in 1703 by the Propaganda Fide, the branch of the Church administration that controlled Catholic missionary activity worldwide. Three Capuchins arrived in Lhasa in October, 1716, and promptly presented documents to Desideri that they claimed confirmed their exclusive right to the Tibetan mission by the Propaganda. Desideri contested the charge of disobedience to the Propaganda Fide, and both sides complained to Rome. In the meantime Desideri helped his Capuchin co-religionists in acclimating to Tibet. While the Capuchins had no quarrel with Desideri personally, they feared that other Jesuits would follow and displace them from Tibet and Nepal, and they petitioned for his expulsion from the country. In January, 1721, Desideri received the order to leave Tibet and return to India. After a long stay in Kuti, at the Tibetan-Nepali border, he returned to Agra in 1722.Later years
At Agra Desideri was appointed head pastor of the Catholic community in the Mughal capital of Delhi. He organized education and services for the community, and had a new church built to replace the former dilapidated edifice. In 1725 he went to the French Jesuit Malabar mission in Pondicherry, located in the present Indian state of Tamil Nadu, and set to work learning the Tamil language and carrying on the mission there. In 1727 he was sent to Rome to promote the cause of the beatification of John de BritoJohn de Brito
Saint John de Brito was a Portuguese Jesuit missionary and martyr, often called "the Portuguese St...
, a Jesuit who had died a martyr in South-India. He took along his very extensive notes on Tibet, its culture and religion, and began work on his Relation, which in its latest manuscript was called "Historical Notices of Tibet" (Notizie Istoriche del Tibet) while still homeward bound on a French vessal. He landed in France in August, 1727, and after a stay in that country, where he met with important cardinals and aristocrats and had an audience with King Louis XV
Louis XV of France
Louis XV was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and of Navarre from 1 September 1715 until his death. He succeeded his great-grandfather at the age of five, his first cousin Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, served as Regent of the kingdom until Louis's majority in 1723...
, he arrived in Rome in January 1728. He took up residence in the Jesuit professed house
Professed house
In the Society of Jesus, a professed house was a residence where - in a spirit of radical poverty - no member had a stable income. The Jesuit priests who lived there, all of whom have professed the fourth vow, undertake their spiritual and pastoral ministry completely for free. With no revenues,...
, and his time was fully occupied in the legal proceedings at the Propaganda Fide between himself, representing the Jesuit order, and Fr. Felice di Montecchio, who fiercely prosecuted the Capuchin case; Desideri wrote three Defenses of the Jesuit position. On 29 November 1732, the Propaganda issued its final terse order on the matter, confirming the exclusive right of the Capuchins to the Tibet mission, and forbidding any further discussion on the subject. Desideri had been working during this time on revising the Relation and was preparing it for publication, which was forbidden by the Propaganda order.
Manuscripts of this monumental work, comprising the first accurate account of Tibetan geography, government, agriculture, customs, and Tibetan Buddhist philosophy and belief, were buried in the Jesuit archives and a private collection, and did not come to light until the late 19th century; the Relation finally appeared in a complete edition by Luciano Petech which was published in the 1950s. An abridged English translation was published in 1937, and a complete translation in 2010.
Main works
- Ippolito Desideri: An Account of Tibet. The Travels of Ippolito Desideri of Pistoia, S.J., 1712-1727. Edited by Filippo de Filippi. London: George Routledge & Sons, Ltd. 1937 (The Broadway Travellers)
- Opere Tibetane di Ippolito Desideri S.J. Edited by Giuseppe Toscano (4 vol., 1981–1989)
- Historical Notices of Tibet and Recollections of My Journeys, and the Mission Founded There (Relation), and other works, edited by Luciano Petch (1954–1957)
- "Mission to Tibet: The Extraordinary Eighteenth-Century Account of Father Ippolito Desideri S.J." Trans. by Michael Sweet, Ed. by Leonard Zwilling (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2010)
See also
- António de AndradeAntónio de AndradeFather António de Andrade was a Jesuit priest and explorer from Portugal. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1596. From 1600 until his death in 1634 he was engaged in missionary activity in India...
- Francisco de Azevedo
- Estêvão CacellaEstêvão CacellaEstêvão Cacella was a Portuguese Jesuit missionary.-Life:Cacella was born in Aviz in 1585, joined the Jesuits at the age of nineteen, and sailed for India in 1614 where he worked for some years in Kerala...
- Johann GrueberJohann GrueberJohann Grueber was an Austrian Jesuit missionary and astronomer in China, and noted explorer.-Life:...
- Bento de GoesBento de GoesBento de Góis , was a Portuguese Jesuit Brother, Missionary and explorer...