There was one very serious thorn in the side of these prosperous Jesuits. Dominican, Franciscan, and other missionaries had followed them into the country, and were expressing the most cordial abhorrence of their procedure. Their arrogance, their unpriestly occupations, and their commerce and usury were bad enough, but they were not even preaching the Gospel. They suppressed the doctrine of the Redemption, did not anoint dying women (out of concession to Chinese delicacy), and permitted their converts to join in the rites of the old Chinese religion. The Dominicans and Franciscans disturbed their profitable policy by thrusting the crucifix before the eyes of the amazed Chinese, and there were fierce wrangles. The friars appealed to Rome, and in 1645 the Propaganda condemned the Jesuit concessions. The Jesuits ignored the condemnation, on the ground that it was issued on false information, and sent Mandarin Martini to Rome. Martini unblushingly asserted that the rites they permitted were purely civil in character, and he was able to return with an authorisation of their practices. But the Dominicans sent a fresh envoy to Rome, and, in the meantime, the terrible Jansenist Arnauld had learned the facts and was holding up the Jesuits to the ridicule of Europe.
All the machinery of intrigue at Rome was now in motion, and in 1684 three bishops who belonged to the rival French Congregation of Foreign Missions were sent out to make an investigation. When the Jesuits found it impossible to persuade these commissioners that the early Chinese had received a knowledge of the true God from the children of Noah, that the cult of ancestors was equivalent to the services in honour of the souls in purgatory, and so on, they used their court-influence ruthlessly against them and the missionaries. In the course of time, however, an adverse report reached Rome, and a serious inquiry opened. The ten Jesuits at the Chinese court wrote to say that the emperor himself endorsed their interpretation of the Chinese doctrines and rites, but, although the new Pope, Clement XI., was favourable to the Society, and Père la Chaise threw the influence of France into the scale, the testimony of the other missionaries was too plain to be ignored. An experienced missionary and able young prelate, Mgr. (later Cardinal) de Tournon, was sent out in 1703 to examine the Jesuit practices in India and China.