The Jesuits in Tibet at the Time of the VI and VII Dalai Lamas

The Jesuit Fathers, a Roman Catholic missionary order, sent personnel to Tibet during the 17th and 18th centuries in order to convert Tibetans to Christianity but very quickly their method of conversion became also a method of learning Tibetan Buddhism and Tibetan religion. Highly influenced by the methods and life of St. Francis Xavier, missionary to Japan and China, who established the first Christian communities at Goa, those Jesuits established small Christian settlements in Eastern Tibet and at the same time developed the first appreciation of Tibetan civilization within Europe. The Jesuit mission in Tibet lasted from 1625 to 1721 and the Jesuits left after having established dialogue with the Tibetan monks of Lhasa not on their own accord but following a withdrawal of the Jesuits from the Spanish and Portuguese empires of that time.