It is four weeks until we pack our bags, wave goodbye to Europe and begin our month in China. Already we have spent hours investigating where to go on our route, starting in Beijing and heading west towards Larung Gar and Tibet before returning east again to Shanghai. Figuring out our route was difficult enough even with google maps and lonely planet, but the Jesuits whose path we will be re-creating had only their wits and some very vague maps to guide them on their expeditions.
The Maastricht University Jesuit Special Collections were created by the unification of three different collections, two from former Jesuit colleges (the theological faculty Canisianum in Maastricht and the philosophical faculty Berchmanianum in Nijmegen) and the former large seminary Warmond. The archives below the library are home to thousands of ancient books seemingly about almost everything, from science and medicine to philosophy to folktales to the travels of Jesuits who, like us, studied here in Maastricht and longed to explore the world. Whilst we know we can travel their route in less than a month, many of them spent their lives on missions to write about foreign cultures and peoples. It is difficult when surrounded by pages and pages of their thoughts, observations and lives to not feel connected to these long dead strangers who set off on their own adventures so many centuries ago.
