I first heard about Desideri in my summer Buddhist Studies course in Nepal. In the early eighteenth century, he entered Nepal, and was the first missionary to take up extended residence there. (Others had tried, but even killed by disease or the hardship of trekking the Himalayas.) Sadly, much Desideri scholarship and sources are not available in English. Michael J. Sweet and Leonard Zwilling only came out with their mammoth translation of his journals* in 2010, the year this historian's biography was released. Pomplun's website reveals that he is currently working on a book-length study of Desideri's theology and translating his Tibetan works into English (which has never been done). Judging from this book, I have good reason to be excited about these works.

The chapter on Desideri's young life was perhaps the least interesting. Born in Italy, he entered the Jesuits at a young age. At this time, the missions to Asia and the Americas were the peak aspiration of young Jesuits across Europe. Many applied to their superiors for the privilege of this life; few were chosen. Accounts of violent deaths at the hands of natives (particular in Japan and the Americas) only increased this furor, as novices projected the martyrdom fantasies of early Christianity - a fast track into heaven - onto the exotic faraway lands of the New World and the Orient.

In 1712, Desideri was granted permission to go to Tibet. His trek from Italy to India and up to Tibet took three years. Settling in Lhasa, he found a patron in Tibet's ruler, Lhazang Khan, and rapidly applied himself to learning the Tibetan language. In no time at all he was composing Tibetan catechisms and refutations of erroneous Tibetan doctrines, such as reincarnation and the lack of God. Yet this bright period was short-lived. Within a few years Khan was deposed by invading forces, and Desideri was forced to go into hiding. Simultaneously he was vying with the Caputchin friars, who after arriving a year after him told him that the Pope had given Tibet to their order and not the Jesuits. (This kind of competition between religious orders, with the competing theologies of missions each brought to the foreign land, also happened in Japan and China.) These Capuchins eventually got him expelled from Tibet. Forced to go home in 1721, Desideri was forever embittered, feeling that his talents and calling were being wasted by a relentless bureaucracy.

Yet Desideri was not idle back in Europe. There he published his accounts of Tibet. At this time, missionary accounts were bestsellers in Europe, and the line between sensational storytelling and historical facticity was often blurred. Historians unable to corroborate events he details or locate people he mentions suspect that he may have invented details to bolster the popularity and funding of the missions, and comparisons with his private letters show he omitted some of the hardships and political machineries he faced in order to make the Tibet mission more appealing for young priests.

Most fascinating to me is the final chapter on these published accounts. Connecting to my other recent readings, Pomplun details how theologians confronted with massive numbers of people who had never heard of Christ had to reformulate the question of salvation outside Christendom. Yet this modern sensibility was part and parcel with Desideri's blatantly confrontational views of the Tibetan religion. He saw the Dalai Lama as a Satanic Anti-Pope, described Tibet in ways evocative of a circle of Dante's hell, and interpreted Tibetan texts as pointing toward fulfillment in Christ:

"Called to Tibet for the greater glory of God, the Jesuit missionary met a magnanimous king, wicked minsters, and all manners of black magic. In doing so, he found his position not merely confirmed in the teachings of the Catholic Church but prophecied in the Tibetan tales themselves. I like to imagine that as he followed an ancient sorcerer's footsteps across Tibet, Ippolito Desideri came to think of himself as a second Padmasambava, locked in battle with demons for the land of snows, and intending to repeat his rival's great feats for the Roman Catholic Church." (196)

Not only did Desideri contribute to the Orientalist vogue in Europe, the simultaneous demonization and idealization (but always exotification) of Asia, but also laid the grounds for much modern scholarship. His account of Tibet is heralded by Tibetologists as the beginning of their field. Pomplun has written the best kind of academic book: a concise, well-written study both edifying for the historian and accessible for the public. I look forward to his future work on this Jesuit and his mystique.

* Mission to Tibet: The Extraordinary Eighteenth-Century Account of Father Ippolito Desideri, S.J.. The whole thing is 795 pages, including a 62-page introduction and 80 pages of footnotes and bibliography. ( )