Representations of Tibet and Responses to Missionary Failure in Ippolito Desideri’s Italian Writings

Abstract

This chapter considers the long shadow of failure on the 1716–1721 mission to Tibet by Italian Jesuit Ippolito Desideri (1684–1733). Analysing Desideri’s letters, his missionary manual, and his Notizie historiche del Thibet, it focuses on the historical actors’ perceptions of missionary failure, and on the expectations and biases these perceptions created, to expose otherwise neglected aspects of this intercultural encounter. It investigates the impact that these perceptions had on the tensions extant in the Jesuit Province of Goa, on Desideri’s description of the populations of the so-called “Three Tibets” (Baltistan, Ladakh and Tibet), and on the missionary policy he proposed for creating a Catholic Christendom that could spread globally.