When Thomas Aquinas Met Nagarjuna : Two Works by Ippolito Desideri, S.j.

In the early 1700s, Ippolito Desideri, a Jesuit theologian from Pistoia, Italy, traveled to Tibet and lived there for five years. During the time he spent in Lhasa he became acquainted with the language, philosophy and customs of his hosts and authored four books in Tibetan in which he argued against some fine points of the Buddhist Madhyamika philosophy, and introduced the basic tenets of theism to his readers.