Gleanings from Desideri’s Account Book 2: The Teacher, the Servant, and the Cook

abstract:The domestic life of Ippolito Desideri during his sojourn as a missionary in Tibet (1716–1721) cannot fail to be of great interest, yet he has left us with precious little information in his writings meant for public circulation about how he lived, what he ate, what he wore, his interaction with artisans and officialdom, his relations with his Capuchin housemates, etcetera. Much data on these and similar topics can be gleaned from his unpublished household expense diary. This register, or Account Book as we have denominated it, is a meticulous and often heavily annotated accounting of receipts and expenditures, from Desideri’s arrival in Lhasa in March of 1716 to his departure from Tibet at the end of December 1721. A close reading of this text yields significant insights into the Jesuit missionary’s domestic life from a sociological, cultural, material, and economic point of view, and serves to provide a corrective supplement to the image he projects of himself in his public writings. In this brief account I will present the evidence of the Account Book concerning Desideri’s relationships with his domestic staff: his Tibetan language teacher, his servant/factotum, and his cook, and discuss what this may suggest concerning the missionary’s character, his daily life, and his position in the local social environment.