Ippolito Desideri

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The Reverend

Ippolito Desideri

SJ

Ippolito Desideri, SJ (21 December 1684

Standard Tibetan
.

Biography

Desideri was born in 1684 to a fairly prosperous family at

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.

Journey to Tibet

His application for the East Indies mission was accepted by the

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, Fr. Freyre returned to India, via Kathmandu and Patna, leaving Fr. 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

Gelukpa sect. There he both studied and debated with Tibetan Buddhist monks and scholars, and was permitted to offer the Tridentine Mass at a Roman Catholic altar in his rooms. He learned the Classical Tibetan literary language (unknown to Europeans before) and became a voracious student of Tibetan literature, philosophy, and culture
.

At the end of 1717 he was forced to leave Lhasa due to the unrest caused by the

invasion of Tibet by the Dzungar Khanate. 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 the Classical Tibetan literary language, in which he sought to refute the philosophical concepts of rebirth (which he referred to as "metempsychosis") and Nihilism or 'Emptiness' (Wylie: stong pa nyid; Sanskrit: Śūnyatā), which he felt most prevented conversions from Tibetan Buddhism to the Catholic Church in Tibet. In his books Fr. Desideri also adopted and utilized multiple philosophical techniques from Tibetan literature for scholastic argumentation. Fr. Desideri also used multiple quotations from the dharma and vinaya, and even brought the Scholasticism of St. Thomas Aquinas into a debate with the nihilistic Madhyamaka philosophy of Nagarjuna to argue his case for "the superiority of Christian theology."[4]

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

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 defended 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 Capuchin Friars to the Tibet mission, and forbidding any further discussion on the subject.

Fr. Desideri had been working during this time on revising the Relation and was preparing it for publication, which, like his return to Tibet, was also forbidden by a direct Propaganda order. While still hoping for the reversal of the order and the opportunity to return to Tibet, Fr. Ippolito Desideri died unexpectedly at the age of only 48-years, in the Collegio Romano on 13 April, 1733.[5]

Legacy

Manuscripts of his monumental works in multiple languages, comprising the first accurate account of Tibetan geography, government, agriculture, customs, and

Tibetan Buddhist
philosophy and religious 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 appeared only in 2010.

Main works

  • "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)
  • Ippolito Desideri: An Account of Tibet. The Travels of Ippolito Desideri of Pistoia, S.J., 1712–1727. Edited by Filippo De Filippi, with an introduction by C. Wessels, S.J. London: George Routledge & Sons, Ltd. 1932 (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 Petech (1954–1957, in Petech,"Missionari Italiani nel Tibet e nel Nepal" (Rome: Libraria dello Stato, 1954–57),vols. 5–7.
  • "Dispelling the Darkness. A Jesuit's Quest for the Soul of Tibet." Donald S. Lopez Jr. and Thupten Jinpa, Trans. and eds. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2017)
  • "When Thomas Aquinas met Nagarjuna: Two Works by Ippolito Desideri, S.J.", Translated and introduction by Guido Stucco. (
    CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
    , 2016)

See also

References

  1. ^ Wessels 1924, p. 273.
  2. ^ Lopez & Jinpa 2017, p. 2.
  3. ^ Wessels 1924, p. 207.
  4. ^ "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), page 45.
  5. ^ "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), page 62.

Sources

  • Wessels, Cornelius (1924). Early Jesuit Travellers in Central Asia, 1603–1721. Springer.
    ISBN 9789401768368
    .
  • Lopez, Donald S. Jr.; Jinpa, Thupten (2017). Dispelling the Darkness: A Jesuit's Quest for the Soul of Tibet. Harvard University Press.
    ISBN 9780674659704
    .
  • de Filippi, F. (1932). An Account of Tibet: the travels of Ippolito Desideri (1712-1727).
  • Petech, L. (1954–57). I Missionari italiani nel Tibet e nel Nepal. Rome.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  • Castello Panti, S. (1984). Ippolito Desideri e il Tibet. Pistoia.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  • Rauty, N (1984). Notizie inedite su Ippolito Desideri e sulla sua famiglia tratte dagli archivi pistoiesi. Pistoia.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  • Luca, A. (1987). Nel Tibet Ignoto. Lo straordinario viaggio di Ippolito Desideri. Bologna.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  • Bargiacchi, E.G. (February 2003). "La 'Relazione' di Ippolito Desideri fra storia locale e vicende internazionale". Storia Locale: Quaderni Pistoiesi di Cultura Moderna e Contemporanea: 4–103.
  • Bargiacchi, E.G. (2006). Ippolito Desideri S.J. alla scoperta del Tibet e del buddhismo. Pistoia.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  • Bargiacchi, E.G. (2007). Ippolito Desideri S.J.: Opere e bibliografia. Rome.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  • Sweet, M.J. (August 2006). "Desperately Seeking Capuchins: Manoel Freyre's 'Report on the Tibets and their Routes (Tibetorum ac eorum Relatio Viarum)' and the Desideri Mission to Tibet". Journal of the International Association for Tibetan Studies (2): 1–33.
  • Sweet, M.J. "The Devil's Stratagem or Human Fraud: Ippolito Desideri on the Reincarnate Succession of the Dalai Lama" Buddhist-Christian Studies, 29, 2009, 131–140.
  • Pomplun, R.T. (2006). "Divine Grace and the Play of Opposites". Buddhist-Christian Studies. 26 (26): 159–163.
    S2CID 170208259
    .
  • Pomplun, T. Jesuit on the Roof of the World: Ippolito Desideri's Mission to Tibet (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).
  • Michael J. Sweet, An Unpublished Letter in Portuguese of Father Ippolito Desideri, S.J., in AHSI, vol.79 (2010), p. 29

External links
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