TOURNON, CARLO TOMMASO MAILLARD de. — Patriarch of Antioch and cardinal, born on 21 Dec. 1668 in Turin, son of a minister of the duke of Savoy; died in Macao on 8 June 1710. As a young priest he came to Rome and was one of the co-founders of the Accademia dell'Arcadia. Clement XI, in order to settle the question of the rites in Malabar and China (v. dei), decided to send there an apostolic visitor charged with studying the question on the spot, and appointed de T. for this purpose (5 Dec. 1701), consecrating him patriarch of Antioch on 27 Dec. 1701 and granting him the faculties of a legate a latere.
To ensure the success of the legation, briefs were sent to Pedro II of Portugal, Filippo V of Spain, Luigi XIV of France, the emperor of China, the Ordinaries of Goa, Mylapore, Manila, and Macao, those of Indochina and China, and other persons and institutions. By the bull Speculatores domus Israel of 2 July 1702, the legate received his faculties and the corresponding instructions. He departed from Spain for India on a French ship on 9 Feb. 1703. King Pedro II of Portugal showed himself offended because the general visitation had been ordered without consulting him, as patron of the missions, and because the legate’s journey was undertaken without touching either Lisbon or Goa. De T. landed at Pondichéry on 6 Nov. 1703 and arrived in Madras on 4 Nov., where he was solemnly received by the bishop of Mylapore and recognized as apostolic legate. A long illness kept him in Pondichéry, during which he gathered information about the Malabar rites, which he condemned in sixteen points by the decree of 23 June 1704, published only on 8 July, three days after his departure for Manila. The Jesuits, appealing to the legate’s oral explanations, requested a delay of three years. The archbishop of Goa, Agostino da Anunciação, prohibited the execution of the decree in his archdiocese and in its suffragan dioceses. De T. had already departed for Manila on 11 July
1704, where he arrived on 2 Apr. 1705. On 20 May 1705 he wrote to Fr. Antonio Thomas S. J., asking the Jesuits to obtain an audience for him at the imperial court of K'ang Hsi. In an initial deliberation with the various religious superiors at Canton, de T. decided temporarily to conceal from the court his status as legate, in order first to regulate the religious situation. He took the Piedmontese Lazarist Luigi Antonio Appiani as his principal assistant and interpreter. On 22 July 1705, the Emperor, to whom Fathers Claudio Filippo Grimaldi,
(fot. Enc. Catt.)
TOURNON, CARLO TOMMASO MAILLARD de — Portrait. From Memorie storiche dell'em. card. di Tournon, Venice 1761. Copy in the Vatican Library.
Tommaso Pereira and Antonio Thomas had presented the petition on 17 July 1705, granted the audience. On 9 Sept. 1705 de T. departed for Beijing, after the bishop of Macao, João de Cazel, had recognized him as legate. In two audiences, on 31 Dec. 1705 and 29 June 1706, the legate was received by the Emperor with all honors. The Emperor, intending to settle the question of the rites, asked the legate for a declaration on the matter; the latter, however, wished to avoid answering, so as not to involve the Emperor in missionary questions. At the audience of 29 June 1706, he informed the Emperor that he had summoned to Beijing Carlo Maigrot, apostolic vicar of Fukien, who, being well acquainted with Chinese literature and customs, would be able to provide him with clarifications on the points debated among the missionaries.
Maigrot, in various disputes before the Emperor, was not very impressive. De T. soon realized that the negotiations had come to nothing and sought an opportunity to leave. On 28 Aug. 1706, the legate’s secretary Giovanni Chin-Hsiu and the interpreter Appiani were captured. On 29 Sept. 1706, the Emperor recalled Gioacchino Bouvet and Sabino Maciani, who had been sent as legates to the Pope, on the pretext that de T. had not presented his credentials.
At the beginning of Oct. 1706, the legate was ordered to return to Canton. On 25 Jan. 1707, he published at Nanjing the decree of the Holy Office, issued on 20 Nov. 1704 against the Chinese rites. Angered by this publication, the Emperor had him arrested and taken to Canton on 13 June 1707. The bishop of Macao, who in 1705 had recognized de T. as legate, then demanded that his credentials be exhibited to him by the Royal Chancellery of Lisbon. The legate resisted this injunction and was therefore confined by the governor in a palace in Macao. Harassed from every side and abandoned, he could not be induced to make concessions with which he might have purchased his freedom.
On 1 Aug. 1707 he was created cardinal; but his sufferings continued until he died a few years later. In 1723 his remains were transported to Rome and buried in the chapel of the College of Propaganda in Piazza di Spagna.