China were confiscated at Livorno. Noël seems to have accepted that there was little to be done or been otherwise occupied for the rest of the year. Castner continued his lobbying, assisted after 26 February 1704 by Jean-François de Pélisson, who arrived with further documentation from the Jesuits in China. On 20 November Pope ClementXI's decree ruled almost completely against the Jesuits, formalizing a ban on both the rites and further discussion of the topic. Christians could not refer to God as (tiān, "Heaven" or "the sky") and their churches could not display the imperial plaque ordering parishioners to "Revere Heaven" (, Jìng Tiān). Tournon was to prepare more detailed regulations to avoid "every hint of pagan superstition", and the decree was worded legalistically and carefully—"hall or temple", "sacrifice or offering"—to limit any chance the Jesuits might evade or limit its application. Noël returned east in 1706, traveling—at Castner's insistence—not via Goa and through the Straits of Malacca but around Timor; this route proved faster and subsequently became standard for journeys between Europe and Macao. They arrived on 22 July 1707, finding the legate Tournon under arrest in Macao and the entire mission in chaos. The sickly Tournon had arrived at Macao in April 1705 and Beijing on 4 December, insisting on the incompatibility of Confucianism and Roman Catholicism. His first imperial audience the same month had been diplomatic and held out hope for permanent relations between China and the Papal States; his second, on 29 June 1706, had found the emperor displeased that any controversy had arisen over the Jesuits' accommodation of rites he had personally verified as secular and, in any case, necessary for Chinese society. Tournon—still generally uninformed on the details of the situation—had deferred to the "great expert" Maigrot, whose analysis had prompted Rome's reversal, and the emperor agreed to receive him at the new summer palace at Rehe (now Chengde). Maigrot had already been summoned from Fujian and was interviewed on 2 August 1706. Despite having lived in China since 1684, he proved so grossly ignorant—he knew only Fuzhounese and required Dominique Parrenin to translate the emperor's questions; he claimed to have read the Four Books but to not be able to remember two characters from them by heart; he had not even read Matteo Ricci's Chinese catechism; and he could read only one of the four Chinese characters on the plaque behind the emperor's