Antoine Thomas

After a long and difficult sea journey - passing through Goa, Siam (Thailand), and Malacca - he reached Macau in 1682 just in time to observe an eclipse of the Sun (1683).

Thomas was called by the ageing Father Ferdinand Verbiest, who had just found himself appointed 'vice-president of the Tribunal of Mathematics', (a very important and influential post in the Qing Empire of China), to join him in Beijing.

Charles-Thomas Maillard de Tournon, a papal legate, arrived in Beijing in 1705 purportedly to inquire about the orthodoxy of the Chinese rites (particularly the 'Veneration of Ancestors' ritual, accepted by the Jesuits).

No pleading from Antoine Thomas, then Superior of the Jesuits in China, could prevent Tournon from issuing a decree from Nanjing (1707) obliging the missionaries under severe penalties to abolish those rites.

A last desperate attempt by Thomas, beseeching the legate to defer the implementation of the decree until further news was received from Rome, fell on deaf ears.