INTRODUCTION: SNOW AND MIRRORS
Trent Pomplun is Associate Professor of Theology at Loyola University Maryland. His research interests include late medieval and early modern Catholicism, missions history, and Indo-Tibetan religion and culture. Jesuit on the Roof of the World is his first book.
"A great feat of historiography, this at-once sympathetic and
unblinking account of Desideri's missionary career and the
collective fantasies behind it makes for terrific reading. Treated
to a feast of intimate details drawn from letters, journals, and
theological tracts alike, the reader comes to understand from the
inside the ambitions and the disappointments of this seminal moment
in the history of what we now call interreligious dialogue.
Desideri's
fascinating story helps us appreciate his complex combination of
admiration, accommodation, and refutation of Tibetan Buddhist
thought, all set against the turbulent period in Lhasa during the
life of the
Sixth Dalai Lama, not to mention virulent competition between
Christian missionary sects at the time."
-- Janet Gyatso, author of Apparitions of the Self: The Secret
Autobiographies of a Tibetan Visionary
"This is a very important book. It is the first in English
seriously to treat the life and work of Ippolito Desideri, an
eighteenth-century Italian Jesuit who was the first Christian
intellectual seriously to engage Tibetan Buddhism in its own terms,
to the point of writing extensive treatises in scholastic Tibetan.
Pomplun is a first-rate Tibetanist as well as a good theologian,
and he writes beautifully. The result is a book of considerable
intellectual
weight that is a delight to read."
--Paul J. Griffiths, author of Lying: An Augustinian Theology
of
Duplicity, and Intellectual Appetite: A Theological Gramma
"The Jesuit missionary Ippolito Desideri, who lived in Lhasa during
the turbulent years of the early 1700s, has been perceived as a
uniquely fascinating and sympathetic figure by Western observers of
Tibet ever since the rediscovery of his writings over a century
ago. Previous scholarship, however, has not clearly situated
Desideri in the context of his times and of his spiritual and
intellectual formation. In Jesuit on the Roof of the World,
Trent
Pomplun vividly portrays Desideri's world in its remarkable
contours, at once at the intersections of Asia and Europe, and
medieval and modern. The book is a pleasure to read, and one, at
last, that I can
recommend to readers in both European and Asian studies."
-- Matthew T. Kapstein, Director of Tibetan Studies, École Pratique
des Hautes Études, Paris
"It would be hard to imagine a scholar more ideally suited to
understand Desideri's story in all its aspects, from every
important perspective, and to appreciate its wonder, irony, and
ultimately futility." --First Things
"This is a brilliant book, a fascinating account that is part
review of the intensity of Jesuit formation, part biographical and
historical narrative, and part philosophical and theological review
of missiology and soteriology in the post-Tridentine era. Pomplun's
work has that none-too-common quality for nonfiction books: being a
page-turner. . . The book is a delight to read, shedding light on a
little known area of Jesuit and Tibetan studies, one whose
historical context has a particularly vivid contemporary
significance--namely, the philosophical, social, and theological
meanings and values layered in 'interreligious dialogue.' This is a
great book."
--CHOICE
"Pomplun's study is well researched and elegantly written, a
sophisticated sympathetic, even exciting account of Ippolito
Desideri's (1684-1733) five-year mission to Tibet. . . generous,
thought provoking, and exceptionally well-researched. I recommend
it highly for both its treatment of initial Christian contact with
Tibet and for its historiographical methodology."--Theological
Studies
"An insightful book. . . This volume is highly recommended for both
the serious student of Jesuit history, and Tibetan
culture."--CatholicBooksReview.org
"Pomplun makes a significant contribution to Tibetan studies and
the history of the Jesuit missions through his meticulously
researched and perceptive reconstruction of the life and times of
Ippolito Desideri, the notorious eighteenth-century Jesuit
missionary to Tibet. Despite being written for partisan
purposes...Pomplun rewards ecclesiastically minded readers with
judicious treatment of relatively unkown debates concerning free
will, the terms under which
non-Christian religious beliefs and practices were evaluated as
positive or negative for salvation, the influence of movements such
as Hermeticism and Pythagoreanism in forming a late baroque
Catholic
imaginaire receptive to pagan wisdom as an expression of perennial
religious truth, and the salvation of individual non-Christian
believers."--Religious Studies Review
"This book provides many details on both Tibetan Buddhism and
Jesuit history. The presentation is rather scholarly."--Catholic
Library World
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