Jesuit on the Roof of the World

Jesuit on the Roof of the World by Trent Pomplun is the first major treatment of the mission to Tibet undertaken by the Tuscan Ippolito Desideri (1684–1733), one of the earliest European students of that land and its peoples. Since World War II, only Italians have paid much attention to Desideri in his own right; in English-language scholarship, he has appeared primarily in Tibetan Studies. Enzo Bargiacchi's recent studies of Desideri are brief and difficult to find, though his excellent bibliography lays the groundwork for scholarship like Pomplun's.1 The importance of global and cultural travelers like Desideri, and the usefulness of studies of his life and work, steadily increases as scholars become more interested in early-modern networks and the world-historical questions they produce. Unfortunately, this book has appeared too early to take into account the investigations of Alison Gopnik, who has shown the very real possibility that Desideri unintentionally served as a conduit through which ideas from Tibetan Buddhism could reach David Hume, influencing his thought and, therefore, the European Enlightenment more generally.2

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