Bento de Góis: the Azorean Jesuit who walked from India to China

At the end of March 1607, in the frontier city of Suzhou, near the western end of the Great Wall of China, a sick man had a dream. Bento de Góis, a Jesuit lay brother from the Azores, had been ill for a month, and he dreamed that someone had come from Peking to find him. In the morning he sent his companion, an Armenian called Isaac, to the bazaar to buy things to give to the poor.2 sources2 sources

In the market someone pointed out a traveller just arrived from the capital. He followed Isaac home and greeted the sick man in Portuguese. He was Zhong Mingli, a young Chinese Christian from Macau whom the Jesuits called João Fernandes, and he carried letters from Matteo Ricci, the Italian who led the Jesuit mission in Peking.3 sources3 sources

Nunc dimittis is Simeon's prayer in Luke's Gospel: now, Lord, you let your servant go in peace. Góis had quoted it in a letter from Lahore in 1602. Eleven days after Fernandes arrived, on 11 April 1607, he died.4 sources4 sources

Cathay entered European books after the Mongol conquests of the thirteenth century. The name came from the Khitan, a people of northern China, and Marco Polo used it for northern China under Kublai Khan, whose capital was Cambaluc. When the Portuguese reached southern China by sea in the 1510s, they did not at first match its cities to the places in the old travellers' books.1 source1 source

Ricci had made the connection. In a letter of 13 October 1596 he wrote that China and Cathay were one country, and he warned his brethren in India two or three times that Cathay and Cambaluc were only old names for northern China and Peking.2 sources2 sources

The Jesuits at the court of the Mughal emperor Akbar heard another story. In 1598, at Lahore, a Muslim merchant of about sixty said he had spent 13 years in Xambalu, capital of Xetay, that is Khitai. Its king ruled 1,500 cities, and most of its people were Isauites, followers of Jesus, with churches, images of the crucified Christ and celibate priests in black. Jerónimo Xavier, head of the Jesuit mission, reported this on 26 July 1598.2 sources2 sources

Ricci's account suggests the traders had seen Chinese temples, with images, candles, robed priests and chanting, and taken them for churches. But if Cathay was a separate country of Christians cut off from Rome, the Jesuits wanted to reach them, and a land route to China might also be shorter than the sea.3 sources3 sources

Góis was born at Vila Franca do Campo, on São Miguel, probably in 1562. Nothing certain is known of his family or why he went to India as a soldier. Jesuit tradition says that after a wild youth he knelt before an image of the Virgin and Child in a church at Colachel, on the Travancore coast, and was overcome with remorse.3 sources3 sources

Jesuit records at Goa show that he entered the novitiate there in February 1584, aged about 23. He left for Hormuz before finishing it, asked to come back, and by the spring of 1588 was a novice again. He remained a lay brother, refusing repeated suggestions that he study for the priesthood.2 sources2 sources

At the end of 1594 he joined Xavier and a priest from São Miguel, Manuel Pinheiro, on the third Jesuit mission to Akbar, reaching Lahore on 5 May 1595. Góis learned Persian, the language of the Mughal court, travelled with Akbar to Kashmir and the Deccan, and in 1601 went to Goa with an embassy from the emperor.2 sources2 sources

That visit decided his future. The Provincial at Goa was looking for a man for Cathay, and Góis had judgement, nerve, fluent Persian and long experience of Muslim customs. He accepted, and in 1602 he went back to Agra, where the court had moved, to prepare.2 sources2 sources

A subject of the Iberian kings would be stopped on the road; an Armenian Christian merchant could travel freely. So Góis took the Armenian costume of a long coat and turban, with a scimitar, bow and quiver, let his hair and beard grow and called himself Abdullah Isai: Abdullah, servant of God, and Isai, the Christian. On the road he was often taken for a sayyid, a descendant of the Prophet.3 sources3 sources

Akbar gave him passports addressed to friendly rulers and, according to the Jesuit historian Pierre du Jarric, 400 pieces of gold. The viceroy paid for a stock of trade goods. Xavier gave him four servants and two companions: a merchant called Demetrius and a Greek, Leo Grimon, whom Ricci calls a priest.2 sources2 sources

Góis's own letter from Lahore says he took leave of Xavier at Agra on 29 October 1602. Du Jarric gives 31 October, and Ricci's account 6 January 1603. At Lahore he took on Isaac, an Armenian with a wife and children there, who stayed with him to the end. The yearly caravan for Kashgar, 400 to 500 people with horses, camels and carts, left Lahore in Lent 1603.3 sources3 sources

The caravan crossed the Indus at Attock and went on through Peshawar. On the way a wandering holy man told Góis of Capperstam, Kafiristan, where no Muslim might enter and people wore black to their temples, and gave him a cup of its wine. It tasted like European wine, and Góis wondered whether the people were Christians. His note is probably one of the earliest surviving references to the Kafirs.2 sources2 sources

In the passes before Kabul robbers attacked the caravan, and Góis fled into the scrub with the rest. At Kabul, still a Mughal city, the caravan broke up for a time. Grimon, worn out, went back to Lahore, and Demetrius stayed behind on business.1 source1 source

At Kabul Góis met Hajji Khanum, sister of Muhammad Khan, king of Kashgar, and mother of the ruler of Khotan, on her way home from Mecca and out of money. He lent her about 600 pieces of gold without interest. She repaid him in jade, which the Chinese prized highly, and her son later spoke for him at Yarkand.2 sources2 sources

Beyond Parwan, the last Mughal town, Akbar's passports counted for little. In one ambush rebels plundered the packs; Góis lost a horse and bought it back with two pieces of cloth. Another time four brigands caught him behind the caravan. He threw his turban at them, and while they kicked it about he galloped off.1 source1 source

On the Pamir plateau the cold and thin air killed five of his horses; the men ate garlic, leeks and dried apples as a remedy and rubbed garlic on the horses' gums. Crossing the Chichiklik pass the caravan spent six days in the snow, and many travellers froze to death. Below it, in the Tangitar gorge, Isaac fell into a river and lay as if dead for some eight hours until Góis revived him.2 sources2 sources

Góis rode ahead into Yarkand, the capital of the kingdom of Kashgar, and they arrived in November 1603. Ricci's account says the caravan had halted eight months at Kabul, but Henry Yule, who edited the text in 1866, showed that its stages add up to a year more than the known dates allow.2 sources2 sources

At Yarkand a new caravan had to be formed for Cathay, and that took a year: the king sold its leadership, and it left only when enough merchants had joined and they knew China would let them in. The great trade good was jade, fished from the river of Khotan or quarried in the mountains, carried to the Chinese emperor.2 sources2 sources

Góis won over the king, Muhammad Khan, with a pocket watch and looking glasses, and went to Khotan to collect his debt in jade. At a dinner a man drew a sword and ordered him to invoke the Prophet; Góis refused, and the other guests threw the man out.2 sources2 sources

The new caravan left on 14 November 1604. At Aksu Góis danced for the twelve-year-old governor, a nephew of the king, to show how people danced in his country. At Chalis, probably Karashahr, the ruler summoned him at night to debate with Muslim scholars. He went expecting to die, and came back the next day after a supper and a night at the palace.2 sources2 sources

As he prepared to leave Chalis after three months, the answer arrived. A caravan came back from Peking whose members had lodged in the same hostel as Ricci's Jesuits. They described their faces and the clocks and clavichord they had given the emperor, and showed a scrap of paper with Portuguese writing picked up from the sweepings of their rooms. Cathay was China, and Cambaluc was Peking.2 sources2 sources

When the prince wrote his safe-conduct and asked whether to describe him as a Christian, Góis said yes. An old Muslim cleric threw his cap on the ground and said this man was faithful to his religion, unlike their own people, who changed theirs with their place of residence.2 sources2 sources

With Isaac and a few others he went on through Turfan and Hami. The road to the frontier was raided by Tatar horsemen, so the travellers moved by night, past the bodies of murdered traders. One night Góis fell from his horse and was left behind; Isaac rode back in the dark and found him by his voice calling on the name of Jesus.1 source1 source

By Ricci's count they reached the Great Wall at Jiayuguan nine days from Hami and waited 25 days for permission to enter; a later Jesuit account says 20. One more day brought them to Suzhou, at the end of 1605. Góis arrived with 13 animals, five hired servants, two boys he had bought as slaves and property worth about 2,500 pieces of gold.3 sources3 sources

Suzhou, then in the province of Shaanxi and now the city of Jiuquan in Gansu, guarded the western gap in the Great Wall. Its Muslim traders from Kashgar and further west lived in their own quarter, locked in every night. Every sixth year 72 of them went on to Peking as ambassadors bringing tribute from seven or eight western kingdoms.2 sources2 sources

The tribute was a fiction everyone understood: the emperor paid more for the jade than anyone else would, so places in the embassy were sold. With food dear, Góis sold his best piece of jade for 1,200 pieces of gold, about half its value. Named one of the 72, he then had to buy more jade, and borrowed to feed his party.1 source1 source

His first letter to Ricci never arrived, addressed in European script to a name nobody in Peking knew; in China Ricci was called Li Mateu. A second, sent at Easter 1606 with a Muslim who slipped out of the city, reached Peking in November. Góis asked the fathers to rescue him from what he called his prison at Suzhou.2 sources2 sources

Another foreigner would only make things harder, so the Jesuits sent Fernandes, a Chinese candidate for the Society. He left Peking on 11 December 1606, in the depth of winter. At Xi'an his companion ran off with half his money, and he reached Suzhou on the last day of March 1607 with almost nothing.2 sources2 sources

Fernandes found him dying, with no doctor or medicine to be had. According to Trigault, Góis said that although he had not been able to confess for years, his conscience did not trouble him. He had already warned the fathers in Peking never to trust the Muslim merchants and never to send anyone by his route, which was dangerous and useless.2 sources2 sources

He died on 11 April 1607, aged about 45. Ricci suspected poison. The merchants seized his goods and destroyed his diary, which also recorded what they owed him, and wanted to bury him as a Muslim. Fernandes kept their clerics out, bought a wooden coffin and buried him where the grave could be found again, while he and Isaac recited the rosary.2 sources2 sources

By the merchants' custom the goods of anyone who died on the road were shared out, and they now seized Isaac and threatened to kill him unless he invoked the Prophet. Fernandes petitioned the viceroy at Ganzhou, but the governor of Suzhou took a bribe from 30 or 40 merchants, threatened Fernandes with a flogging and jailed him for three days.2 sources2 sources

The case dragged on for five months; Fernandes and Isaac had no common language until Fernandes learned some Persian. In the end Fernandes told the court that Isaac was no Muslim, pulled a piece of pork from his sleeve, and the two of them ate it in front of the judge. The merchants gave up. Only the jade Góis had buried was recovered; it paid his debts and most of the journey to Peking.1 source1 source

They reached Peking at the end of October 1607. For a month Isaac told Ricci what he remembered, helped by fragments of Góis's notes, and Fernandes handed over the safe-conducts of the kings of Kashgar, Khotan and Chalis and a painted paper cross, the only one Góis had dared to carry. On his way back to India, Isaac was captured by Dutch corsairs in the Singapore Strait, ransomed by the Portuguese of Malacca, and settled at Chaul, south of Bombay.2 sources2 sources

Ricci wrote the story into his history of the China mission, unfinished when he died in 1610. The Jesuit Nicolas Trigault published it in Latin at Augsburg in 1615 as De Christiana expeditione apud Sinas; Ricci's Italian manuscript was printed only in 1911. Góis's letters from the road were used separately by the Jesuit chronicler Fernão Guerreiro.3 sources3 sources

He is usually counted as the first European known to have travelled overland from India to China across Central Asia, more than 4,000 kilometres. Yule wrote in 1866 that for the country between Badakhshan and Yarkand, Góis was the only European since Marco Polo whose journey had left a narrative.3 sources3 sources

The archaeologist Aurel Stein, who followed much of his route, recalled Góis's account when he crossed the snowy Chichiklik plateau in 1906. At Suzhou he noted that nothing marked the place where Góis was buried.2 sources2 sources

In Portugal he was nearly forgotten until Yule's edition and the French Jesuit Joseph Brucker revived interest. On 11 April 1907, the tercentenary of his death, the Lisbon Geographical Society held a tribute and a Te Deum was sung in the parish church of Vila Franca do Campo. Burkiewicz notes that the four hundredth anniversary in 2007 was marked only in his home town.3 sources3 sources

In 2025 the historian Joaquim Magalhães de Castro announced a tour for Portuguese travellers called O Caminho de Bento de Góis, and in 2026 the Polish historian Łukasz Burkiewicz published an overlooked Latin account of the journey by Tomasz Dunin Szpot, a Jesuit who wrote in Rome before 1713. Yule quoted the epitaph one of Góis's fellow Jesuits gave him: seeking Cathay, he found heaven.3 sources3 sources