TOURNON, CARLO TOMMASO MAILLARD de. - Patriarch of Antioch and cardinal, b. 21 Dec. 1668 in Turin, son of a minister of the Duke of Savoy, d. at Macao on 8 June 1710. As a young priest he came to Rome and was one of the co-founders of the Academy of Arcadia. Clement XI, in order to settle the question of the rites in Malabar and in China (v. RITI, QUESTIONE dei), decided to send there an apostolic visitor with the task of studying the question on the spot, and appointed for this purpose de T. (5 Dec. 1701), whom he consecrated patriarch of Antioch on 27 Dec. 1701 and furnished with the faculties of a legate a latere.
To ensure the success of the legation, briefs were sent to Pedro II of Portugal, Philip V of Spain, Louis XIV of France, to the emperor of China, to the Ordinaries of Goa, Mylapore, Manila, Macao, to those of Indochina and China and to other personages and institutions. With the bull Speculatores domus Israel of 2 July 1702 the legate received his faculties and the corresponding instructions. On a French ship he set out from Spain for India on 9 Feb. 1703. The king of Portugal, Pedro II, 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 being made without touching either Lisbon or Goa. De T. landed at Pondicherry on 6 Nov. 1703 and arrived on 4 Nov. at Madras, received solemnly by the bishop of Mylapore and acknowledged as apostolic legate. A long illness kept him at Pondicherry, during which he gathered information on the Malabar rites, which he condemned in 16 points by the decree of 23 June 1704, published only on 8 July, three days after his departure for Manila. The Jesuits, appealing to oral explanations of the legate, asked for a postponement of three years. The archbishop of Goa, Agostino da Anunciação, forbade the execution of the decree in his archdiocese and in the suffragan dioceses. De T. had already left 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., begging the Jesuits to procure him an audience at the imperial court of K'ang Hsi. In a first deliberation with the various religious superiors at Canton, de T. decided to conceal temporarily from the court his status as legate in order to settle first of all 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 the Fathers Claudio Filippo Grimaldi,
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TOURNON, CARLO TOMMASO MAILLARD de - Portrait. From Memorie storiche dell'em. card. di Tournon, Venice 1761. Copy from 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. set out for Peking, after the bishop of Macao, João de Cazel, had recognized him as legate. In two audiences, of 31 Dec. 1705 and of 29 June 1706, the legate was received by the Emperor with all honors. The Emperor, with the intention of settling 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 bring the Emperor into missionary questions. In the audience of 29 June 1706 he informed the Emperor that he had summoned to Peking Charles Maigrot, apostolic vicar of Fukien, who, being a good connoisseur of Chinese literature and customs, could provide him with clarifications on the points disputed among the missionaries.
Maigrot, in various disputes before the Emperor, was not very brilliant. De T. soon realized that the negotiations had come to nothing and sought an occasion 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 Joachim 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 received the order 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. Indignant at this publication, the Emperor on 13 June 1707 had him arrested and taken to Canton. 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 Chancery of Lisbon. The legate resisted this injunction and was therefore confined by the governor in a palace at Macao. Harassed from all sides and abandoned, he did not allow himself to be moved to concessions with which he could have bought his freedom.
On 1 Aug. 1707 he was created cardinal; but his sufferings continued, until a few years later he died. His body in 1723 was transported to Rome and buried in the chapel of the College of Propaganda at Piazza di Spagna.
Bibliography3 works
Nicola Kowalsky