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 at 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, wishing to resolve the question of the rites in Malabar and China (v. dei), decided to send an apostolic visitor to study the matter on the spot, and appointed de T. for this purpose (5 Dec. 1701). He was consecrated Patriarch of Antioch on 27 Dec. 1701 and invested with the faculties of a legate *a latere*.
To ensure the success of the legation, briefs were dispatched to Pedro II of Portugal, Philip V of Spain, Louis XIV of France, the Emperor of China, the ordinaries of Goa, Mylapore, Manila, Macao, those of Indochina and China, and to other persons and institutions. By the bull *Speculatores domus Israel* of 2 July 1702 the legate received his faculties and corresponding instructions. He departed from Spain for India on a French ship on 9 Feb. 1703. King Pedro II of Portugal took offence 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 at either Lisbon or Goa. De T. reached Pondichéry on 6 Nov. 1703 and arrived at Madras on 4 Nov., where he was solemnly received by the bishop of Mylapore and acknowledged as apostolic legate. A long illness detained him at Pondichéry, during which he gathered information on the Malabar rites, which he condemned in sixteen points by decree of 23 June 1704, published only on 8 July, three days after his departure for Manila. The Jesuits, appealing to oral explanations given by the legate, requested a three-year delay. The archbishop of Goa, Agostino da Anunciação, forbade the execution of the decree in his archdiocese and its suffragan sees. De T. had already left for Manila on 11 July 1704, arriving there on 2 Apr. 1705.
On 20 May 1705 he wrote to Fr. Antonio Thomas S.J., asking the Jesuits to obtain for him an audience with the imperial court of K’ang Hsi. At an initial meeting with the various religious superiors at Canton, de T. decided to conceal temporarily from the court his status as legate in order to regulate first 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 Frs. Claudio Filippo Grimaldi, Tommaso Perera and Antonio Thomas had presented the petition on 17 July 1705, granted the audience. On 9 Sept. 1705 de T. departed for Peking, after the bishop of Macao, João de Cazel, had acknowledged him as legate.
At two audiences on 31 Dec. 1705 and 29 June 1706 the legate was received by the Emperor with all honours. Desiring to settle the question of the rites, the Emperor asked the legate for a declaration on the matter; de T., however, wished to avoid a response 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 Carlo Maigrot, apostolic vicar of Fukien, a man well versed in Chinese literature and customs, who could provide clarifications on the points in dispute among the missionaries.
Maigrot acquitted himself poorly in various disputations before the Emperor. Soon de T. realized that negotiations had come to nothing and sought an opportunity to depart. On 28 Aug. 1706 the legate’s secretary, Giovanni Chin-Hsiu, and the interpreter Appiani were arrested. 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 October 1706 the legate received orders to return to Canton. On 25 Jan. 1707 he published at Nanking the decree of the Holy Office, issued on 20 Nov. 1704, against the Chinese rites. The Emperor, enraged by this publication, had de T. arrested on 13 June 1707 and taken to Canton. The bishop of Macao, who in 1705 had acknowledged de T. as legate, then demanded that his credentials be exhibited by the royal chancery of Lisbon. The legate resisted this demand and was consequently confined to a palace in Macao by the governor. Beset on all sides and abandoned, he refused to make concessions by which he might have purchased his freedom.
On 1 Aug. 1707 he was created a cardinal; but his sufferings continued until, a few years later, he died. His remains were transferred to Rome in 1723 and buried in the chapel of the College of Propaganda at Piazza di Spagna.