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Art. XVI.—A Memoir of the Primitive Church of Malayála, or of the Syrian Christians of the Apostle Thomas, from its first rise to the present time
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2011
Extract
The Syrian or primitive church of Malayála Christians acknowledges Saint Thomas for its founder; and from the earliest dawn of Christianity in India, the tomb of that apostle has been as much venerated in the East as the tomb of Saint Peter was at Rome. This is not asserted on the authority of any obscure tradition, but unites in its favour all the proofs which can warrant its correctness: the accumulated testimonies of the first ages of the church; of Saint Jerome; of Saint John, surnamed Chrysostom; Athanasius, and Eusebius.
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References
* St. Jerome of Palestine, a.d. 379; John, surnamed Chrysostom, patriarch of Constantinople, a.d. 403; Athanasius, patriarch of Alexandria, a.d. 325; Ensebius, bishop of Cæsarea, a.d. 338.
* This circumstance is related in the following extract from SirPalgrave, F.'s History of the Anglo Saxons, p. 185, 12mo, Lond. 1831Google Scholar.
“From the many travellers who visited the court of Alfred, he had heard of the existence of the Syrian Christians, and he determined to send the bishop of Sherburn, whose name was Swithelm, to give them help. Swithelm not only bore king Alfred's gifts to India, but returned in safety with the presents which the Hindo-Syrians had sent as tokens of their gratitude, gems and precious spices of sweet odour. And Alfred's fame was greatly increased by this enterprise.”—Ed.
† The name of Christians of St. Thomas, transmitted from age to age by the followers of this church; the custom of celebrating in the Syrian tongue public worship; the name of a bishop Johannes, found amongst the signatures of the first general council of Nice, a.d. 325, and who there bears the title of Bishop of Persia and of India,—are also important facts, and tend to confirm the general opinion that St. Thomas was the first apostle of India.
* The descendants of this colony are now divided into two classes—the Jerusalem or white Jews, and the ancient or black Jews. The white Jews, in number now not exceeding 200, live in the town of Mattancherry, about one mile distant from Cochin, which is also inhabited by black Jews. They have two respectable synagogues in the town, one for each class; but the great body of the black tribe inhabit towns in the interior of the country, and have many other synagogues.
The tradition handed down to them by their fathers is, that they are part of the tribe of Manasseh, which was carried into captivity by Nebuchadrezzar, and sent to the easternmost part of his mighty empire; that they came to Cranganór, where their forefathers continued a thousand years. They enjoyed a patriarchal jurisdiction within the district, with certain privileges of nobility, which were engraven on a plate of brass. The grant, to this effect, by the sovereign of the country, is signed by seven kings as witnesses. This record is still in their possession. It bears no date, but it proves the estimation in which the colony was held at the time the grant was made.1 The destruction of Cranganór, which contained 80,000 people, the Jews describe as being like the desolation of Jerusalem, and arose from discord among themselves. One of their chiefs called to his assistance a native prince, who razed their city to the ground. Such of the people as escaped captivity or slaughter fled to Cochin, and built the town of Mattancherry, a.d. 1689–1700. When the Dutch made themselves masters of Cochin, the white Jews reckoned their numbers not to exceed 4,000.
page 173 note 1 In the Asiatic Journal, N. S. vol. vi. p. 6Google Scholar, will be found an article on the Jews of Malabar, containing a fac-simile, with a transcript in modern Tamil letters, and a translation by the late C. M. Whish, Esq. of the Madras Civil Service, of the inscription above mentioned, from which it is clearly proved that the date of the document is the year 231 of the Christian era. The original documents from which this article was drawn up are in the possession of the Royal Asiatic Society, having been presented to it by Thomas Hervey Baber, Esq. of the Bombay Civil Service.—Ed.
* At Parúr, there is now standing an ancient Syrian church, supposed to be the oldest in Malabar. It is called the church of St. Thomas the Apostle. The ancient church of Neranum, tradition also refers to apostolic times.
† Baldeus, the Dutch minister, traveller, and historian, says, “On the rocks near the sea shore of Conlang (Quilon), stands a stone pillar, erected there (as the inhabitants report) by St. Thomas: I saw this pillar in 1062.”
‡ About the year 64 of the Christian era, the division of time into manwantaras, or patriarchal ages, was introduced by the Bráhmans. They were formed from the computed conjunctions of Saturn with the sun, and were nine in number; the earliest commencing with the year 4,225 before Christ. The object of this is assumed to have been the assertion of a claim to an antiquity beyond that of the Mosaic account; the knowledge of which had, just previously to this change in the mode of computation, reached India.
§ a.d. 1688–1723, Hamilton, in his curious account of the East Indies, gives the following history of the death of St. Thomas, which agrees in every point with the tradition preserved by the Christians of the present day.
“There is a little dry rock on the land called the “Little Mount,” where the apostle designed to have hid himself till the fury of the pagan priests, his persecutors, had blown over.
” There was a cave in that rock for his purpose, but not one drop of water to drink; so St. Thomas cleft the rock with his hand, and commanded water to come into the cleft, which command it readily obeyed; and ever since there is water in that cleft, both sweet and clear. When I saw it there were not above three gallons in it. He stayed there three days, but his enemies had account of his place of refuge and were resolved to sacrifice him, and in great numbers were approaching the mount. When he saw them coming he left his cave, and came down in order to seek shelter somewhere else; and, at the foot of the mount, as a testimony that he had been there, he stamped with his bare foot on a very hard stone, and left the print of it, which remains there to this day a witness against those persecuting priests. The print of his foot is about sixteen inches long, and, in proportion, narrower at the heel and broader at the toes than the feet now in use among us. He, fleeing for his life to another larger mount, about two miles from the little one, was overtaken on the top of it before he was sheltered, and then they ran him through with a lance; and in the same place where he was killed he lies buried.
“When the Portuguese first settled there, they built a church over the cave and well on the Little Mount, and also one over his grave on the great one; where the lance that killed the apostle is still kept as a relic. In that church there is a stone tinctured with the apostle's blood, that cannot be washed out. I have been at both mounts, and have seen those wonderful pieces of antiquity.”
Mailápúr was taken by the Portuguese a.d. 1547, when they founded an episcopal church under the name of St. Thomè; a.d. 1551, they built the church on the great mount, now known under the name of the “Mount,” eight miles from Fort St. George, which is called the church of “Our Lady of the Mount.” Underneath the great altar of this church is placed the cross, believed by the Christians to be the work of the apostle St. Thomas. This miraculous cross is cut out of a piece of grayish unpolished rock, about two feet square. Its four branches are of equal length. It is cut in relief one inch from the stone, and is about four inches in breadth. Eight days before Christmas, when the Portuguese celebrated the feast of the “Expectation of the Virgin Mary,” the saint performed an annual miracle (by changing the colour of the cross successively into red, brown, and the purest white, and afterwards surrounding it with dark and moist clouds, when it was covered with so great a moisture, that the water distilled from the stone all over the altar,) till he was silenced by the profane neighbourhood of the English. It was the custom for all Portuguese ships on first coming in sight of the church of Our Lady of the Mount, to salute it with a broadside.
The church built on the Little Mount over the well and cave is called the “Church of the Resurrection.”
* The point of tradition handed down by Saint Jerome and by Eusebius is, that Pantenus found in India the Gospel of Saint Matthew written in Hebrew. But Mosheim and other critics inform us, that the ancients comprehended under the name of India, Ethiopia, Syria, Persia, &c, and that the mission of Pahtenus was probably to one of those states.
† Called by MrWrede, , Cannaneo, Thome; vide As. Res. vol. vii. p. 364.Google Scholar
* About three hundred years ago, the tablets on which are engraved the rights of nobility, and other privileges, granted by the princes of a former age to the Syrian Christians, were deposited by the Bishop of Angamalè in the hands of the Portuguese at Cochin, and were lost, to the extreme regret of the whole nation. After the loss of those tablets, the Christians could produce nothing in support of their claims to nobility, except what was handed down by tradition; and it was even doubted whether such grants had ever existed, till the arrival of Colonel Macaulay (now Lieutenant-General Colin Macaulay) as British resident in Travancore, who directed an immediate search to be made for the lost tablets, and was fortunate enough to discover them, in the year 1806, to the great joy of the Syrian church. The inscription on the largest plate is thirteen inches in length, and about four inches broad. The plates are written on both sides.
The cuneiform or nail-headed character is on the plate reputed to be the oldest, and the grant on this plate is witnessed by four signatures engraved in an old Hebrew character, resembling the alphabet called Palmyrene. These plates are now in the possession of the college at Cottayam.1
page 177 note 1 In the article before referred to in the Asiatic Journal, it is stated by Mr. Whish that the Jews say St. Thomas arrived in India in a.d. 52; and themselves in the year 69. Doubts are there expressed as to the existence of any such grant as that mentioned above; as a copy, purporting to be made from it, proved, on examination by Mr. Whish, to be word for word the same as that of the Jews.—Ed.
* The Archbishop Menezes, who held them to be Nestorians, erased their names from the prayer-book, and changed the titles of the churches. Two of these churches are to this day to be seen at Quilon and Ralay-Conlan.
* “In the fifth century there were created five superior rulers of the church, who were distinguished from the rest by the title of Patriarch, viz. those of Rome, Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria, and Palestine. The Oriental historians mention a sixth, viz. the Bishop of Seleucia and Ctesiphon, to whom the Bishop of Antioch voluntarily ceded a part of his jurisdiction. But this addition is unworthy of credit. At the head of the Asiatic Christians is the Patriarch of Antioch, who resided in the monastery of Saint Ananias, situated near the city of Mardin. But, owing to the great extent of the government of this prelate, he has a colleague who is called Maphrian, or Primate of the East. This primate resides in the monastery of Saint Matthew, in the neighbourhood of Mousul. Their spiritual dominion is very extensive, takes in a great part of Asia, and comprehends also within its circuit the Arabian Nestorians; as also the Christians of Saint Thomas, who dwell on the coast of Malabar.”—Mosheim'S Eccles. Hist.
† Their principal seats of learning were at Cranganór, and in its neighbourhood, at Vaiapacolta, the most ancient colony of the Syrian Christians, where the Jesuits found established a college that was resorted to by the youth of the whole of the Syrian Christians of the coast of Malabar, for instruction.
* A young Catanár, who hadistudied at Vaiapacotta, and had married a short time preceding the holding of the synod of Udiamper, would not submit to the new discipline of Menezes, and would not abandon his young wife, whom he had married agreeably to the ancient ecclesiastical canons, and to the constant custom of his church. The prelate, in consequence, excommunicated him. Whether it was the thunder of the excommunication, which was much feared amongst the Christians, or whether, for the sake of an example, recourse was had to other means, but which Christian charity will not permit the supposition of, does not appear; but this poor Catanár, this presumed culprit, fell sick, and died a few days after, contrite and receiving absolution. This event caused, as might have been expected, much alarm amongst the Christians of the diocese.—La Croze.
* “About the same time (the surrender of Cochin to the Dutch arms),” Baldæus says, “Joseph de Sancta Maria, of the order of the Discalceated Carmelites, sent by the pope in quality of bishop among the Christians of Saint Thomas, came, on his return to Europe, to Cochin to salute our general, and was very kindly received by his Excellency. He had two sorts of enemies to contend with during his stay in these parts: first of all, with the Portuguese, who could not brook that any other but their countrymen should be exalted to that dignity, and that not by the pope, but by their own king: the other was the Arehidabo (as the Portuguese style him), or chief head of the Christians of Saint Thomas hereabouts, who, being a negro, would neither submit himself nor his flock to the Romish jurisdiction.”—Baldæus, , Travels, a.d. 1663.Google Scholar
* “On the capture of Cranganore by the Dutch,” Baldæus says, “we found there a noble college of the Jesuits, with a stately library belonging to it. Besides the church of the Franciscans, they had a stately cathedral, adorned with the tombs of the archbishops of this place. Without the walls of Cranganore was the college of Chanotte, famous for the resort of the Christians of Saint Thomas hither, who exercise their religious worship here in the Syriac tongue; and, having erected a school for the education of youth, had several masters and priests of their own.”
Of this city, or of these buildings, not a stone now remains to mark their sites.
† Of all the Jesuits who distinguished themselves by their zealous labours, none acquired so great a reputation as Francis Xavier, commonly called by the Roman Catholics “the Apostle of India.” He came into India a.d. 1522, and died in China a.d. 1552. The body of this sainted missionary lies interred at Goa, in a superb mausoleum (his coffin is enchased with silver and precious stones), where it is worshipped with the highest marks of devotion. In Travancór, at Cotate, there is a magnificent church dedicated to Xavier, in which the Roman Catholic Christians pay to that saint the most devout tribute of veneration and worship.