António de Andrade

António de Andrade
Born	1580 Oleiros, Kingdom of Portugal
Died	March 19, 1634 (aged 53–54) Goa, Portuguese India
Nationality	Portuguese
Occupation	Jesuit priest, explorer
Known for	First European to cross the Himalayas and reach Tibet.

Father António de Andrade (1580 – March 19, 1634) was a Jesuit priest and explorer from Portugal. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1596. From 1600 until his death in 1634 he was engaged in missionary activity in India. Andrade was the first European to cross the Himalayas and reach Tibet, establishing the first Catholic mission on Tibetan soil.

Life

António de Andrade was born in Oleiros, Portugal. In 1600 he went to Goa, the capital of Portuguese India, where he pursued his higher studies and was ordained a priest. He was one of the Jesuits attached to the court of the Mughal emperor Jahangir, and was head of the Jesuit mission in Agra. In 1624 he left Agra, headed to Delhi where he and the Jesuit brother Manuel Marques joined a group of Hindu pilgrims bound for the temple of Badrinath located in the Northern part of the present-day Indian state of Uttarakhand. Overcoming incredible hardships in the journey they crossed the Mana pass (5608 meters) to Tibet, the first Europeans known to have done so.

Kindly received in Tibet by the sovereign of the Western Tibetan kingdom of Guge, in the capital city of Tsaparang, Andrade left after less than a month to obtain formal permission for the mission from the Father-Provincial in Goa, and to get funds and other missionaries to accompany him back to Tsaparang. Andrade returned to Tibet in 1625 and was joined by other Jesuit missionaries. They succeeded in building a church and made many converts, aided by support from the king and other members of the royal family. Andrade returned to Goa in 1629; the mission foundered soon afterward, with the invasion of Guge by Ladakh, the death of the pro-missionary king and the installation of a hostile Ladakhi-controlled government in Tsaparang. The missionaries were persecuted or expelled, the Tibetan Christians were sent to Ladakh, and by 1640 the mission, which had begun with so much promise, was over.

Andrade became the Father-Superior of the Jesuit province of Goa, where he died in March 1634, probably poisoned by an agent of a Portuguese who was being investigated by the Inquisition.

Andrade's two extensive accounts of Tibet, written in 1624 and 1626, were published in the Portuguese original in Lisbon in 1626 followed by a Spanish translation in Segovia (Spain) in 1628 and a publication in Cracow (Poland) in the same year, and quickly translated into all the major European languages; they had a significant influence on European knowledge of and attitudes toward Tibet. Modern translations of Andrade's accounts into Italian and French are found in Toscano (1977) and Didier (2002). An English translation of Andrade's writings relating to Tibet is currently in preparation.

See also

• Estêvão Cacella
• Bento de Góis
• Cornelius Wessels
• Ippolito Desideri

References

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). Catholic Encyclopedia. Robert Appleton Company. 

Bibliography

• Esteves Pereira, Francisco (editor). 1924. O Descobrimento do Tibet pelo P.Antonio de Andrade. Coimbra: Imprensa da Universidade.
• Wessels, C. (1924). Early Jesuit travellers in Central Asia 1603-1721. Asian Educational Services. ISBN 81-206-0741-4.  1997 reprint.
• Didier, Hugues. 1999. Os Portugueses no Tibete. Os primeiros relatos dos jesuittas (1624-1635).
• Didier, Hughes. 2002. Les Portugais au Tibet.
• Toscano, Giuseppe. 1977. Alla Scoperta del Tibet.

External links

• Detailed biography of de Andrade
• The Goa Jesuit Province of the Society of Jesus - The Jesuits in Goa
• TYBET - Wielkie Panstwo w Azyey (Tibet - A great country in Asia) - 1628