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 term for God.

The term approved, if not suggested, by K`ang Hsi, and indisputably the right one, as shown by recent research, was set aside by the Pope in 1704 in favour of one which was supposed for a long time to have been coined for the purpose, but which had really been applied for many centuries previously to one of the eight spirits of ancient mythology.
In addition to his military campaigns, K`ang Hsi carried out several journeys of considerable length, and managed to see something of the empire beyond the walls of Peking.