Ippolito Desideri

Ippolito Desideri (21 December 1684 – 14 April 1733) was an Italian Jesuit missionary in Tibet and the first European to have successfully studied and understood Tibetan language and culture.

Desideri was born in 1684 to a fairly prosperous family in Pistoia, Tuscany. He was educated from childhood 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.

His application for the Indies mission was accepted by the Father-General of the Society of Jesus, Michelangelo Tamburini, 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.

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