Ippolito Desideri S.J. Opere e Bibliografia [Subsidia ad Historiam Societatis Iesu 15]. By Enzo Gualtiero Bargiacchi

Abstract

In the past decade, Enzo Gualtiero Bargiacchi, an independent scholar from Pistoia, Italy, has been quietly laying the groundwork for a scholarly reappraisal of Ippolito Desideri. The Tuscan priest, who traveled in India, Ladakh, Nepal, and Tibet during the early eighteenth century, is commonly believed to be the first “modern” Tibetologist, and Bargiacchi's comprehensive bibliography is an indispensable tool for any serious study of the Jesuit missionary. As its title indicates, Ippolito Desideri S.J. Opere e Bibliografia is divided into two parts: a survey of Desideri's works and a comprehensive bibliography of works written about the Italian missionary. Its first part contains a detailed account of the rather complex state of Desideri's Italian manuscripts, including his well-known account of his travels in Tibet, as well as lesser-known works such as his so-called Manuale missionario and the three difese that he argued before the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith when he came to battle the Capuchins for the legal rights to the Tibetan mission. Bargiacchi also provides the reader with up-to-date information about Desideri's several letters, including material found in the work of Henri Hosten and Silvia Castello Panti in addition to the letters collected in Luciano Petech's I missionari italiani nel Tibet e nel Nepal. Even more importantly, Bargiacchi provides a useful survey of unedited letters and copies that can be found in the Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu and the Archivio storico della Congregazione de Propaganda Fide. Bargiacchi provides a helpful introduction to each section of his list of Desideri's works, and each section is neatly indexed. He also provides complete information about the location of original manuscripts and the publication history of each of his entries. He rounds out the first part of Ippolito Desideri S.J. Opere e Bibliografia with a brief list of works that Desideri wrote in Tibetan, Portuguese, Latin, and Tamil. Bargiacchi does not include a comprehensive list of Desideri's Tibetan writings, but rather directs the reader to the first volume of Giuseppe Toscano's Opere Tibetane di Ippolito Desideri, S.J. (Rome 1981), pages 39–62, which contains an excellent list of manuscripts, fragments, and works believed to have been lost. To this I would add Toscano's bibliography of Tibetan works cited by Desideri in his mid-period manuscript The Origin of Sentient Beings and Other Phenomena (Sems can dang chos la sogs pa rnams kyi ‘byung khungs), which can be found in the third volume of the same series (Rome 1984), pages 18–23. It is to be regretted that Toscano did not write such bibliographies for all of Desideri's Tibetan works. If Toscano's notes for his draft translation of Desideri's magnum opus, the Questions Concerning Reincarnation and the View of Emptiness Offered to the Scholars of Tibet by the Christian Lama Ippolito (Mgo skar bla ma i po li do shes bya ba yis phul ba'i bod kyi mkhas pa rnams la skyes pa snga ma dang stong pa nyid kyi lta ba'i sgo nes zhu ba), which are in Bargiacchi's possession, contain such a bibliography, I would encourage him to publish it.