ST. THOMAS OF MADRAS. 237 came upon a story of a poor and aged Játlik, or Christian priest.'1 Whether the Christians on the coast of Malabar were a direct 'Thomas Christians' offshoot of the Nestorian Church of Asia, or the result of an of Persia; earlier seedling dropped by St. Thomas or St. Bartholomew on their apostolic travels, it is certain that from their first appearance in local history, the Malabar Christians obeyed bishops from Persia of the Nestorian rite.2 By the 7th century, the Persian Church had adopted the name of Thomas Christians, and this title would in time be extended to all its branches, including that of Malabar. The early legend of the and of India. Manichæan Thomas in the 3rd century, and the later labours of the Armenian Thomas, the rebuilder of the Malabar Church, in the 8th, had endeared that name to the Christians of Southern India. In their isolation and ignorance, they confounded the three names, and concentrated their legends of the three Thomases in the person of the Apostle.3 Before the 14th century, they had completed the process by believing that St. Thomas was Christ. Thomas The fitness of things soon required that the life and death Legend of the Apostle should be localized by the Southern Indian of St. Church. Patristic literature clearly declares that St. Thomas localized; had suffered martyrdom at Calamina, probably in some country east of Persia, or in Northern India itself. The tradition of the Church is equally distinct, that in 394 A.D. the remains of the Apostle were transferred to Edessa in Mesopotamia. The attempt to localize the death of St. Thomas on the south- in spite of western coast of India started, therefore, under disadvantages. difficulties, A suitable site was, however, found at the Mount near Madras, one of the many hill shrines of ancient India which have formed a joint resort of religious persons of diverse faiths,Buddhist, Muhammadan, and Hindu (ante, p. 203). at Madras. Marco Polo, the first European traveller who has left an 13th cenaccount of the place, gives the legend in its undeveloped form tury form 'Dr. Bellew's 'History of Kashgar,' in the Official Report of Sir Douglas Forsyth's Mission, p. 127. (Quarto, Foreign Office Press, Calcutta, 1875.) 2 Mr. Campbell's Bombay Gazetteer, Thána District, chap. iii. (Bombay, 1882.) 3 The Jacobites, or followers of Jacobus Baradaeus, prefer in the same way to deduce their name and pedigree from the Apostle James. Gibbon, iv. 603, footnote (ed. 1788). For the authorities, see Dr. Kennet's Madras monograph, St. Thomas, the Apostle of India (1882); and Colonel Yule's critical note, Marco Polo, vol. ii. p. 342 (2nd edition, 1875). of the legend. Mixed worship at the shrine. The legend as developed in the 13th century. The Apostle had, it seems, been acci dentally killed outside his hermitage by a fowler, who, 'not seeing the saint, let fly an arrow at one of the peacocks. And this arrow struck the holy man in the right side, so that he died of the wound, sweetly addressing himself to his Creator.'1 Miracles were wrought at the place, and conflicting creeds claimed the hermit as their own. 'Both Christians and Saracens, however, greatly frequent the pilgrimage,' says Marco Polo truthfully, although evidently a little puzzled. For the Saracens also do hold the Saint in great reverence, and say that he was one of their own Saracens, and a great prophet.' Not only the Muhammadans and Christians, but also the Hindus seem to have felt the religious attractions of the spot. About thirty years after Marco Polo, the Church itself was according to Odoric, filled with idols. Two centuries later. Joseph of Cranganore, the Malabar Christian, still testifies to the joint worship of the Christian and the heathen at St. Thomas' Mount. The Syrian bishops sent to India in 1504 heard that the Church had begun to be occupied by some Christian people. But Barbosa, a few years later, found it half in ruins, and in charge of a Muhammadan fakir, who kept a lamp burning.' 4 Brighter days, however, now dawned for the Madras legend. Portuguese zeal, in its first fervours of Indian evangelization, felt keenly the want of a sustaining local hagiology. Sain: Catherine had, indeed, visibly delivered Goa into their hands: and a parish church, afterwards the cathedral, was dedicated to her in 1512. Ten years later, the viceroy Duarte Menezes became ambitious of enriching his capital with the bones of an apostle. A mission from Goa despatched to the Coromandel coast in 1522, proved itself ignorant of, or superior to, the well-established legend of the translation of the Saint's remains to Edessa in 394 A.D., and found his sacred relics at the ancient hill shrine near Madras, side by side with those of a Relics at king whom he had converted to the faith. They were brought with pomp to Goa, the Portuguese capital of India, and there they lie in the Church of St. Thomas to this day.3 by the Portuguese. Goa. Final form of the legend. The finding of the Pehlvi cross, mentioned on a previous page, at St. Thomas' Mount in 1547, gave a fresh colouring to 1 Colonel Yule's Marco Polo (2nd edition, 1875), vol. ii. p. 340. • Ibid. Ibid. Colonel Yule's Cathay (2 vols. 1866) should also be referred to by students of the legend of St. Thomas, and his alleged labours in Asia and India. KING ALFRED'S EMBASSY. 239 the legend. So far as its inscription goes, it points to a Persian, and probably to a Manichæan origin. But at the period when it was dug up, no one in Madras could decipher its Pehlvi characters. A Bráhman impostor, knowing that there was a local demand for martyrs, accordingly came forward with a fictitious interpretation. The simple story of Thomas' accidental death from a stray arrow, had before this grown into a cruel martyrdom by stoning and a lance-thrust, with each spot in the tragedy fixed at the Greater and Lesser Mount near Madras. The Bráhman pretended to supply a confirmation. of the legend from the inscription on the cross—a confirmation which continued to be accepted until Dr. Burnell and Professor Haug published their decipherments in our own. day. In the 16th and 17th century,' says Colonel Yule, 'Roman Catholic ecclesiastical story-tellers seem to have striven in rivalry who should most recklessly expand the travels of the Apostle.' Embassy, The lying interpretation of the Bráhman, and the visible King relics in the church at Goa, seem to have influenced the Alfred's popular imagination more powerfully than the clear tradition of the early Church regarding the translation of the Apostle's relics to Edessa. Our own King Alfred has been pressed into the service of St. Thomas of Madras. This year,' 883 A.D., says the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 'Sighelm and Athelstane carried to Rome the alms which the king had vowed to send thither, and also to India to St. Thomas and to St. Bartholomew.'1 Gibbon suspects 'that the English ambassadors collected their cargo and legend in Egypt.' 2 There is certainly no evidence to show that they ever visited the Coromandel coast, but to and much to indicate that the 'India' of Alfred was the India of the early Church, and far north-west of the Madras exploits of the Apostle. The legend of St. Thomas' Mount has in our own century been illustrated by the eloquence and learning of bishops and divines of the Anglo-Indian Church. But,' concludes Colonel Yule, 'I see that the authorities now ruling the Catholics at Madras are strong in disparagement of the special sanctity of the localities, and of the whole story connecting St. Thomas with Mailapur,' the alleged scene of his martyrdom.3 1 Hough, i. p. 104 (1839); Dr. Kennet's Madras monograph, St. Thomas, the Apostle of India, pp. 6, 7 (1882). 2 Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. iv. p. 599, footnote 123 (ed. 1788); Hough, vol. i. pp. 105-107. * Colonel Yule's Marco Polo, ii. p. 344 (ed. 1875). which shrine Troubles of the Indian The St. Thomas As a matter of history, the life of the Nestorian Church in India has been a troubled one. A letter from the Patriarch Jesajabus to Simeon, Metropolitan of Persia, shows that before 660 A.D., the Christians along the Indian coast were destitute of a regular ministry. In the 8th century, the Armenian friar Thomas found the Malabar Christians driven back intɔ the recesses of the mountains. In the 14th century, Friar Jordanus declared them to be Christians only in name. without baptism. They even confounded St. Thomas with Christ.2 A mixed worship, Christian, Muhammadan, and Hindu, went on at the old high place or joint hill shrine near Madras. In some centuries, the Church in Southern India developed, like the Sikhs in the Punjab, into a military sovereignty. In others, it dwindled away; its remnants lingering in the mountains and woods, or adopting heathen rites. The family names of a forest tribe in Kánara, now Hindus, bear witness to a time when they were Christians; and there were probably many similar reversions to paganism. The downfall of the Nestorian Church in India was due, however, neither to such reversions to paganism nor to any persecutions of native princes; but to the pressure of the Portuguese Inquisition, and the proselytizing energy of Rome. Before the arrival of Vasco da Gama in 1498, the St. Thomas Christians had established their position as a powerful military caste in Malabar. The Portuguese found them firmly organized a military under their spiritual leaders, bishops, archdeacons, and priests, who acted as their representatives in dealing with the Indian princes. For long they had Christian kings, and at a later period chiefs, of their own. In virtue of an ancient charter ascribed to Cherumal Perumal, Suzerain of Southern India in the ninth century A.D., the Malabar Christians enjoyed all the rights of nobility. They even claimed precedence of the Nairs, who formed the heathen aristocracy. The St. Thomas Christians caste; ' Assemani Bibliotheca, quoted by Bishop Caldwell, Comparatie Grammar of the Dravidian Languages, p. 27, footnote (ed. 1875) Jesajabus died 660 A.D. 2 Jordanus, quoted in Mr. J. M. Campbell's Bombay Gazetteer, vol. xil part i. p. 200 (ed. 1882). 3 The Marathi Sidis. For an interesting account of them, see Mr. J. M. Campbell's Bombay Gazetteer, Kánara District, vol. xv. part i. p. 307 (ed. 1883). ▲ Histoire du Christianisme des Indes, par M. V. La Croze, vol. i. p. 72, ii. p. 133, etc. (2 vols. 12mo, The Hague, 1758). Idem, i. p. 67. For details, see The Syrian Church of Malabar, by Edavalikel Philipos, p. 23, and footnote (Oxford, 1869). Local legeni vainly places Cherumal Perumal and his grant as far back as 345 A.D. and the Nairs were, in fact, the most important military castes. on the south-west coast. They supplied the bodyguard of the Powerful local kings; and the Christian caste was the first to learn the and respected. use of gunpowder and fire-arms. They thus became the matchlockmen of the Indian troops of Southern India, usually placed in the van, or around the person of the prince. efforts at Rome. The Portuguese, by a happy chance, landed on the very PortuProvince of India in which Christianity was most firmly estab- guese lished, and in which Christians had for long formed a recog- their connised and respected caste. The proselytizing energy of the new- version to comers could not, however, rest satisfied with their good fortune. That energy was vigorously directed both against the natives and the ancient Christian communities. Indeed, the Nestorian heresy of the St. Thomas Christians seemed to the fervour of the friars to be a direct call from heaven for interference by the orthodox Church. The Portuguese established the Inquisition, as we shall presently see, at Goa in 1560. After various Portuguese attempts, strongly resisted by the St. Thomas Christians, the latter were incorporated into the Catholic Church, by the labours of Alexis de Menezes, Archbishop of Goa, in 1599. The Synod held by him at Udayampura (or Diamper), near Cochin, in that year denounced Nestorius and his heresies, and put an end to the existence of the Indian Nestorian Church. No document could be more exhaustively complete than Synod of the Acts and Decrees of the Synod of Diamper, in its pro- Diamper, visions for bringing the Malabar Christians within the Roman fold. The sacred books of the St. Thomas congregations, their missals, their consecrated oil and church ornaments, were publicly burned; and their religious nationality as a separate caste was abolished. But when the firm hand of Archbishop Menezes was withdrawn, his parchment conversions began to lose their force. Notwithstanding the watchfulness of the Goa Inquisition over the new converts, the Decrees of the Synod of Diamper fell into neglect,3 and the Malabar Christians chafed under a line of Jesuit prelates from 1601 to 1653. In 1653 they renounced their allegiance to their Jesuit For the military aspects of the Christian caste of St. Thomas, see La Croze (op. cit.), ii. pp. 128, 129, 130, 140, 155, etc. The History of the Church of Malabar and Synod of Diamper, by the learned Michael Geddes, Chancellor of the Cathedral Church of Sarum (London, 1694), an earlier and independent work, bears out this view. The Acts and Decrees of the Synod of Diamper (i.e. Udayampura) occupy 346 pages of the Chancellor of Sarum's History of the Church of Malabar, pp. 97-443 (ed. 1694). 3 La Croze, ii. p. 193. VOL. VI. Q 1599. |