He Tianzhang

[4] There, Bishop Bernardino della Chiesa [zh] waived the standard age requirement for the priesthood for He Tianzhang, and subsequently ordained him in March of that year.

[6] According to Witek, He Tianzhang argued that the constitution "could not be put into practice", and that he did not find fault with students revering the tablet of Confucius.

[7] At the same time in 1717, the Kangxi Emperor approved a memorial from the Qing Ministry of War to restrict missionaries to practice Catholicism only at the Beijing court.

De Yin (德音), the governor of Shanxi [zh] at the time, soon wrote to the Ministry of Rites for directions in dealing with He Tianzhang.

[11] In 1732 He returned to Jiangzhou, Shanxi, and worked under the Franciscan vicar apostolic, Francesco Saraceni, who prohibited several Chinese customs for the Catholics, including using spiritual tablets for the dead.

[12] In June 1732 Garreto, who became the coadjutor bishop in Shaanxi and Shanxi, also instructed He to follow the 1714 constitution and forbid ancestral tablets.

Witek analysed that He "knew very well" that local Christians were unable to follow the Catholic commands, and that the Chinese Rites were "indispensable" to them.

[4] In the 20th century, scholars including Louis Pfister [de] and Fang Hao [zh] believed that He Tianzhang had a European father and a Chinese mother.

[3] Regarding his race and nationality, in a 1716 letter, He Tianzhang lamented about his "sad Chinese appearance" and affirmed that he was a subject of the King of Portugal.

[17] When the Qing government, intending to banish foreign missionaries, interrogated He in 1717, he again argued that he had always been a subject of the king of Portugal, and by which he had acquired a permit to stay in China.

Witek observed that, by using the phrase "citizen of Macau", the officials recognised He was Chinese and "did not fall within the ambit" of the imperial prohibition against foreign missionaries.