Summary
This article surveys European information and other extant sources pertaining to Tibet in the early modern period, when the region was still relatively unknown to Europeans and, like Cathay (with which it tended to be associated), was thought to be home to Christian communities. The article is organized into three major themes that focus on discerning, mapping, and exploring Tibet. The first part examines the features of what was for Europeans an uncertain association between Tibet and Cathay. The second part of the study, concerned with mapping, analyses the Jesuit cartographical work in China, partly using Chinese sources, that eventually gave Tibet a location independent from Cathay, even though cartographers in Europe continued to depict Cathay as sharing the spotlight with Tibet. Finally, the third section examines mid seventeenth-century Jesuit explorations in central Asia that provided fresh first-hand information for the likes of Athanasius Kircher in his China Illustrata (1667), one of the main sources of European knowledge about Tibet in those times. This research shows an undecided European attitude towards the region in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: it was expressed in a double movement that generated new knowledge while embracing an imaginary past in central Asia, “dragging” Tibet with it.
Summary also in Spanish.

Local access dig.pdf. [Hosne-Tibet.pdf]

The Jesuit missions to China and Peru, 1570-1610 : expectations and appraisals of expansionism / Ana Carolina Hosne.
Includes bibliographical references (pages [174]-187) and index.

Synopsis:
The Jesuit Missions to China and Peru were, in their different ways, astonishingly successful, with Catholicism establishing deep roots in Peru, and with the Ming emperors in China giving Jesuits a privileged position at the imperial court, from which position, later, they almost brought about the conversion of the Chinese emperor, and thereby potentially all of China, to Roman Catholic Christianity. This book explores how leading Jesuits, Ricci (1552-1610) in China and Acosta (1540-1600) in Peru, adapted Catholic teaching to fit the prevailing religious outlook and practices in the two countries in order to make Catholicism more understandable and palatable to the local population. It examines in detail Catholic theology, the Jesuit approach to mission, and the concepts which underpinned adaptation, showing in the detail of catechisms produced in each of the territories how adaptation worked out in practice. The book concludes by outlining how the relationship between Catholicism and local culture in the two countries developed., The rulers of the overseas empires summoned the Society of Jesus to evangelize their new subjects in the 'New World' which Spain and Portugal shared; this book is about how two different missions, in China and Peru, evolved in the early modern world. From a European perspective, this book is about the way Christianity expanded in the early modern period, craving universalism. In China, Matteo Ricci was so impressed by the influence that the scholar-officials were able to exert on the Ming Emperor himself that he likened them to the philosopher-kings of Plato's Republic. The Jesuits in China were in the hands of the scholar-officials, with the Emperor at the apex, who had the power to decide whether they could stay or not. Meanwhile, in Peru, the Society of Jesus was required to impose Tridentine Catholicism by Philip II, independently of Rome, a task that entailed compliance with the colonial authorities' demands. This book explores how leading Jesuits, Matteo Ricci (1552-1610) in China and José de Acosta (1540-1600) in Peru, envisioned mission projects and reflected them on the catechisms they both composed, with a remarkable power of endurance. It offers a reflection on how the Jesuits conceived and assessed these mission spaces, in which their keen political acumen and a certain taste for power unfolded, playing key roles in envisioning new doctrinal directions and reflecting them in their doctrinal texts.

Local access dig.pdf. [Hosne-Jesuit Missions China Peru.pdf]