the Imperial family. An important question, however, now came to a head,
and completely put an end to the hope that China under the Manchus might
embrace the Roman Catholic faith. The question was this: May converts
to Christianity continue the worship of ancestors? Ricci, the famous
Jesuit, who died in 1610, and who is the only foreigner mentioned by
name in the dynastic histories of China, was inclined to regard worship
of ancestors more as a civil than a religious rite. He probably foresaw,
as indeed time has shown, that ancestral worship would prove to be an
insuperable obstacle to many inquirers, if they were called upon to
discard it once and for all; at the same time, he must have known
that an invocation to spirits, coupled with the hope of obtaining some
benefit therefrom, is _worship_ pure and simple, and cannot be explained
away as an unmeaning ceremony.

Against the Jesuits in this matter were arrayed the Dominicans and
Franciscans; and the two parties fought the question before several
Popes, sometimes one side carrying its point, and sometimes the other.
At length, in 1698, a fresh petition was forwarded by the Jesuit order
in China, asking the Pope to sanction the practice of this rite by
native Christians, and also praying that the Chinese language might be
used in the celebration of mass. K`ang Hsi supported the Jesuits in
the view that ancestral worship was a harmless ceremony; but after much
wrangling, and the dispatch of a Legate to the Manchu court, the Pope
decided against the Jesuits and their Imperial ally. This was too much
for the pride of K`ang Hsi, and he forthwith declared that in future he
would only allow facilities for preaching to those priests who shared
his view. In 1716, an edict was issued, banishing all missionaries
unless excepted as above. The Emperor had indeed been annoyed by another
ecclesiastical squabble, on a minor scale of importance, which had been
raging almost simultaneously round the choice of an appropriate Chinese