ned the spirits and gods
of the country." Relations hereof were transmitted to the Congregation
de Propaganda Fide, under pope Urban VIII.

Upwards of a hundred thousand souls zealously professed the faith, and
they had above two hundred churches. But a debate arose whether certain
honors paid by the Chinese to Confucius and their deceased ancestors,
with certain oblations made, either solemnly, by the mandarins and
doctors at the equinoxes, and at the now and full moons, or privately,
in their own houses or temples, were superstitious and idolatrous. Pope
Clement XI., in 1704, condemned those rites as superstitious, _utpote
superstitione imbutos_, the execution of which decree he committed to
the patriarch of Antioch, afterwards cardinal Tournon, whom he sent as
his commissary into that kingdom. Benedict XIV. confirmed the same more
amply and severely by his constitution, _ex quo singulari_, in 1742, in
which he declares, that the faithful ought to express God, in the
Chinese language, by the name Thien Chu, _i.e._ the Lord of heaven: and
that the words Tien, the heaven, and Xang Ti, the Supreme Ruler, are not
to be used, because they signify the supreme god of the idolaters, a
kind of fifth essence, or intelligent nature, in the heaven itself: that
the inscription, King Tien, worship thou the heaven, cannot be allowed.
The obedience of those who had formerly defended these rites to be
merely political and civil honors, not sacred, was such, that from that
time they have taken every occasion of testifying it to the world. By a
like submission end victory over himself, Fenelon was truly greater than
by all his other illustrious virtues and actions.

The emperor Kang-hi protected the Christian religion in the most
favorable manner. Whereas his successor, Yongtching, banished the
missionaries out of the chief cities, but kept those religious in his
palace who were employed by him in painting, mathematics, and other
liberal arts, and who continued mandarins of the court. Kien-long, the
next emperor, carried the persecution to the greatest rigors of cruelty.
The tragedy was begun by the viceroy of Fokieu, who stirred up the
emperor himself. A great number of Christians of {364} all ages and
sexes were banished, beaten, and tortured divers ways, especially by
being buffeted on the face with a terrible kind of armed ferula, one
blow of which would knock the teeth out, and make the head swell
exceedingly. All which torments e