DESIDERI, IPPOLITO. — Jesuit, missionary, and explorer, born in Pistoia on 21 December 1684, died in Rome on 14 August 1733. Sent to India to re-establish the mission in Tibet, already begun by Fr. A. de Andrade (1624), he departed from Delhi on 24 September 1714 and, following a wide circuit through the cities of Kashmir and Lahta, reached Lhasa on 18 May 1716, where he was well received by the king and the Dalai Lama.
Having obtained permission to remain there for the study of the religion of the Lamas and the preaching of the Gospel, he devoted himself to the language and to reading numerous volumes containing the religious doctrines of the Tibetans, succeeding in composing apologetic works that met with considerable favor. The invasion of the Tartars (1717) and the extermination of the royal family forced him to withdraw to Takpo-khier, near the Capuchins, where he remained to complete his works until 1721, when, by virtue of a decree of Propaganda Fide assigning Tibet to the Capuchins, he was ordered to return to India, from where in 1727 he set out again for Rome.
In addition to several letters and four works in Tibetan, still unpublished, he wrote: Notizie storiche del Tibet e memorie dei viaggi e missioni ivi fatte dal p. I. D. d. C. d. G. Dal medesimo scritte e dedicate, 1712-23, also unpublished; these have led him to be regarded as one of the finest explorers and describers of Tibet (S. Hedin, Southern Tibet, I [Stockholm 1915], pp. 278-79).