Possibly the mental attitude of Angelita's master, de Tournon, may also account in part for the publication of this calumny. De Tournon was known to be a bitter enemy of the Society, and he took no pains to conceal it when sent to the East to decide the vexed question of the Rites. Although on his arrival at Pondicherry in 1703, the Fathers met him on the shore and conducted him processionally to the city, he interpreted these marks of respect and the lavish generosity with which they looked after all his needs as nothing but policy. Not only did he refuse to give them a hearing on their side of the controversy, but he hurried off elsewhere as soon as he had formulated his decree. When he arrived in Canton, the first words he uttered were: "I come to China to purify its Catholicity," and before taking any information whatever, he ordered the removal of all the symbols which he considered superstitious. The act created an uproar, as it was only through the influence of the Fathers that de Tournon was permitted to go to Pekin; and although they managed to make his entrance into the imperial city unusually splendid, he immediately informed the emperor of a plan he had made to reconstruct the missions but, expressed himself in such an offensive fashion that the emperor immediately dismissed him. He then repaired to Canton, and on January 28, 1707, issued the famous order forbidding the cult of the ancestors, with the result that the emperor sent down officials to conduct him to Macao, where he was reported to have died in prison, on June 8, 1710.
The Mohammedan mandarin, Yang, who had trumped up the astronomical accusations against Schall, had meantime succeeded to the post as head of the mathematical board, but the young emperor was not satisfied with the results obtained, and he ordered a public dispute on the relative merits of Chinese and European astronomy. Verbiest was on one side, and Yang on the other. The test was to be first, the determination, in advance, of the shadow given at noon of a fixed day by a gnomon of a given height; second, the absolute and relative position of the sun and the planets on a date assigned; third, the time of a lunar eclipse. The result was a triumph for Verbiest. He was immediately installed as president, and his brethren were allowed to return to their missions. Verbiest's career, at Pekin, was more brilliant than that of either Ricci or Schall. There is no end of the things he did. The famous bronze astronomical instruments which figured so conspicuously in the Boxer Uprising of 1900 were of his manufacture; he built an aqueduct also, and cast as many as one hundred and thirty-two cannon for the Chinese army. The emperor followed his astronomical classes, appointed him to the highest grade in the mandarinate, and gave him leave to preach Christianity anywhere in the empire. Innocent XI, to whom he dedicated his Chinese Missal, sent him a brief in 1681, which contained the greatest praise for "using the profane sciences to promote Christianity," a commendation which was more than welcome at that time, when the book of Navarrete was doing its evil work against the Society.