When one thinks of the Catholic missions to Tibet, one almost always thinks of the Jesuit Ippolito Desideri (1684–1733), whose Notizie istoriche de’ Regni del Thibet (c. 1728) is generally considered the first ‘scientific’ account of Tibetan religion and culture. It is sometimes forgotten, though, that Desideri's manuscripts languished in the archives of the Society of Jesus and were not re-discovered until the late nineteenth century. Nor was Desideri the first to found a mission to Tibet or write about the land of snows. That honour, of course, goes to the Jesuit António de Andrade (1580–1634), the founder and director of the first Catholic mission to Tibet (1624–1635) and author of the Novo descobrimento do Gram Cathayo, ou reinos de Tibet (Lisbon, 1626). Specialists have long been aware of Andrade through the work of Giuseppe Toscano and Hugues Didier. With Michael Sweet and Leonard Zwilling's “More than the Promised Land”, Andrade's collected writings have finally been made accessible to students and researchers in English.

Sweet and Zwilling are no strangers to mission history. Their magnum opus, Mission to Tibet: The Extraordinary Eighteenth-Century Account of Father Ippolito Desideri, S.J. (Boston, 2010), is the single most important academic study of the celebrated missionary. Its introduction alone is a most important monograph, and its translations set the standard for the field. With a thorough interpretative introduction, wonderful translations, and additional documents for specialists, “More than the Promised Land” follows the same model. The introduction situates Andrade's writings in the context of medieval and early modern epistolary conventions, Portuguese nationalism, the Mughal missions, Ladakhi politics, and the later Western ‘discovery’ of Tibet. Chronologically arranged, the translations comprise Andrade's letter of 16 May 1624, which is based upon the surviving Italian translation published in the Lettere annue d'Ethiopia, Malabar, Brasil e Goa Anno 1620 fin'al 1624 (Rome, 1627); his Novo descobrimento do Gram Cathayo; his Relaçam da missam do Tibet (Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu, Goa 73, fols. 47^r–48^v); his annual letter of 1626 (ARSI Goa 73, fols. 24^v–46^v); and subsequent letters of 2 September 1626 and 4 February 1633 (ARSI Goa 73, fols. 71^r–92^v, 93^r–95^v). Sweet and Zwilling also provide transcriptions of Andrade's Relaçam da missam do Tibet and the final letter from 1633.

Sweet and Zwilling deliberately limit the scope of their work to Andrade's writings and the Western Tibetan mission based in Tsaparang. They do not deal with Jesuits who served in other parts of Tibet during the same time, such as João Cabral (1599–1669), Estévão Cacella (1585–1630), and Francisco de Azevedo (1578–1660)—or Jesuits who visited central Tibet later in the century, such as Johannes Grüber (1623–1680) and Albert d'Orville (1621–1662). This is a wise decision: Sweet and Zwilling's annotations show Andrade's apparently unassuming writings to be surprisingly rich and nuanced. There is more than enough to satisfy the curiosity of scholars working in missions history, Portuguese history, and Tibetan religion and culture. First and foremost, Andrade's writings remain an important historical source for our knowledge of the political intrigues between Ladakh, Guge, and the Ganden Phodrang government in Lhasa during the seventeenth century. Sweet and Zwilling also make a convincing case for the importance of placing those rivalries in the larger context of Mughal and Indo-Portuguese politics. They engage—and correct—the fullest range of existing scholarship on Andrade and the missions in Tsaparang from Cornelius Wessels to Hugues Didier. Indeed, in both telling and translation, the founder of the first mission to Tibet emerges as no less scientific than Ippolito Desideri and often more accommodating. More than anything, though, Andrade comes off as a skillful, albeit idiosyncratic, observer. He describes the Tibetans’ daily liturgies, prayer, chants, processions, prostrations, and ritual dances (Tib. ’chams). Likely knowing little if any literary Tibetan, he stumbles to explain basic aspects of Buddhist doctrine (pp. 92–93, 94, 100, 124–126, 138) and the ubiquitous mantra oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ (pp. 131–132). Still, there are plenty of surprising moments in his writings. Rather than demonise Tibetan iconographic depictions of Tantric deities, which often appear in violent or sexually suggestive poses, the Jesuit calmly notes that Tibetans depict some deities in demonic form to “illustrate the powers they possess against evil spirits” (pp. 110–111)—this after Andrade had criticised the “abominable and outlandish shapes” of Hindu deities at the Badrinath Vaiṣṇava temple in Uttarakhand (p. 68). Apart from a famous passage in the Annual Letter of 1626, in which Andrade comments favourably on the Tibetans’ propensity to accept the Catholic faith (p. 136), he seems to have been little-inclined to romanticise Tibet and its people. Like the later travellers Desideri and Kawaguchi, Andrade reports on Tibetan methods of punishment and torture (p. 146) and spares few details about the larger realities of war and political rivalry (pp. 154–159, 171–172). In fact, Andrade's description of the Tibetans’ use of skulls and bones as ritual implements (p. 108) allowed for the first treatment of Tibetan ‘philosophy’ in Europe in Juan Eusebio Nieremberg's De arte voluntatis (Lyon, 1631).

Two things make “More than the Promised Land” required reading. First, Andrade's account reveals that much of what modern men and women call ‘dialogue’ was transacted not through intellectual, but material, culture. Practices (processions, prostrations, processions, devotions) and consecrated items of almost every conceivable sort (amulets, images, relics) abound in the Jesuit's writings, giving one the distinct impression that ‘dialogue’ was something that happened primarily through actions and images, rather than through words. Second, ones sees that when Andrade and his interlocutors resorted to conversation, their ‘dialogue’ was often mediated, if not compromised. This elementary truth seems not to have been given the attention it deserves in studies of the missions. Section 4 of the Introduction, White Turbans, Black Robes, and Yellow Hats: The Relationships between Muslims, Catholic Missionaries and Tibetan Buddhists (pp. 24–31) and the subsequent Section 5, The Three Jewels of the Trinity: Tibetan Buddhism through a Glass Darkly (pp. 31–41), are in my opinion the best reflections yet written on the crucial role played by Muslim interpreters in dialogues between Christians and Buddhists. Pre-judging neither the missionaries nor their Tibetan interlocuters, Sweet and Zwilling provide a nuanced and plausible reading of how and why the missionaries misunderstood Buddhism—without casting blame upon any of the parties involved. In studies of missions burdened by the “play of opposites” and dialectical theories of “othering,” Sweet and Zwilling's pages are fresh and exciting, even necessary.

“More than the Promised Land” quite simply establishes Sweet and Zwilling as the most important scholars of the Catholic missions to Tibet working today. Their body of work deserves reading by anyone interested in mission history, cross-cultural encounter, and inter-religious dialogue. Unlike most historians, they are intimately familiar with both Christian and Buddhist sources in their primary languages, including religious and philosophical texts normally passed over by other scholars. Their bibliographic prowess in both fields, ranging effortlessly from manuscripts in several languages to the most remote journals and Festschriften, is simply astounding. All that remains is for Sweet and Zwilling to turn their scholarly attention to the missionaries they excluded from this study, to the great Capuchin missions in Tibet, or perhaps even to Ippolito Desideri's Tibetan manuscripts. After “More than the Promised Land”, nothing seems beyond their reach.