and the Nairs were, in fact, the most important military castes on the south-west coast.1 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. 1599. 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 But when the firm hand of Archbishop Menezes was withdrawn, his parchment conversions began to lose their force.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, 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. 2 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. and Con versions, Reversions bishop. A Carmelite mission was despatched from Rome in 1656 to restore order. The vigorous measures of its head, 1653-1663. Joseph of St. Mary, brought back a section of the old Christian communities; and Joseph, having reported his success at Rome, returned to India as their bishop in 1661. He found the Protestant Dutch pressing the Portuguese hard on the Malabar coast, 1661-1663. But the old military caste of Malabar Christians rendered no assistance to their Catholic superiors, and remained tranquil spectators of the struggle, till the capture of Cochin by the Dutch brought about the ruin of the Portuguese power in 1663. Malabar freed by the Dutch, ence. 1663; The Malabar Christians, thus delivered from the temporal Christians power of the Portuguese, re-asserted their spiritual independThe Portuguese had compelled the native princes to persecute the old Christian communities; and by confiscations, imprisonments, and various forms of pressure, to drive the Indian Nestorians into reconciliation with Rome. Such a persecution of a long recognised caste, especially of a valued military caste, was as foreign to the tolerant spirit of Hinduism, as it was repugnant to the policy of the Indian princes, and it has left a deep impression on the traditions of the south-western coast. The native Jacobite historian of the Church of Malabar rises to the righteous wrath of an old Scottish covenanter in recounting the bribing of the poorer chiefs by the Portuguese, and the killings, persecutions, and separations of the married. clergy from their wives. The new Dutch masters of the southern coast, after a short antagonism to the Carmelite prelate and the native bishop whom he left behind, lapsed into indifference. They allowed the Roman missionaries free scope, but put an end to the exercise of the temporal power in support of the Catholic bishop.2 receive a Jacobite bishop, 1665. The chief spiritual weapon of conversion, a weapon dexterously used by the Portuguese Viceroys, had been the interruption of the supply of Nestorian bishops from Persia. This they effected by watching the ports along the west coast of India, and preventing the entrance of any Nestorian prelate. The Syrian Church in India had therefore to struggle on under its archdeacon, with grave doubts disturbing the mind of its clergy and laity as to whether the archidiaconal consecration was sufficient for the ordination of its priests. The overthrow of the Portuguese on the seaboard put an end to this long episcopal blockade. In 1665, the Patriarch of 1 La Croze, vol. ii. pp. 169, 176, 183, 189, 192, 198, 203, etc. 2 La Croze, vol. ii. pp. 204, 205. MALABAR CHRISTIANS SINCE 1665. 243 Antioch sent a bishop, Mar Gregory, to the orphaned Syrian Christians since 200,000; Since the arrival of Mar Gregory in 1665, the old Syrian Malabar Church of India has remained divided into two sects. The Pazheia kúttakár, or Old Church, owed its foundation to Arch- 1665; bishop Menezes and the Synod of Diamper in 1599, and its reconciliation, after revolt, to the Carmelite bishop, Joseph of St. Mary, in 1656. It retains in its services the Syrian language (1) Syrian and in part the Syrian ritual. But it acknowledges the Catholics, supremacy of the Pope, and his vicars-apostolic. Its members are now known as Catholics of the Syrian Rite, to distinguish them from the converts made direct from heathenism to the Latin Church by the Roman missionaries. The other section of the Syrian Christians of Malabar is called the Putten kúttakár, or New Church. It adheres to the Jacobite tenets introduced bites, by its first Jacobite bishop, Mar Gregory, in 1665. (2) Jaco 100,000? the The present Jacobites of Malabar condemn equally the Tenets of errors of Arius, Nestorius, and the bishops of Rome. They Malabar hold that the Bread and Wine in the Eucharist become the Jacobites. Real Body and Blood of Christ, and give communion in both kinds mixed together. They pray for the dead, practise confession, make the sign of the cross, and observe fasts. But they reject the use of images; honour the Mother of Jesus and the Saints only as holy persons and friends of God; allow the consecration of a married layman or deacon to the office of priest; and deny the existence of purgatory. In their Creed they follow the Council of Nicæa (325 A.D.). They believe in the Trinity; assert the One Nature and the One Person of Christ, and declare the procession of the Holy Ghost to be from the Father, instead of from the Father and the Son.2 extinct in The Syrian Catholics and Syrian Jacobites of Malabar main- Nestotain their differences with a high degree of religious vitality at rianism the present day. Their congregations keep themselves distinct Malabar. from the Catholics of the Latin Rite converted direct from heathenism, and from the Protestant sects. No Nestorian Church is now known to exist in Malabar.3 The Syrian 1 The Syrian Christians of Malabar, being a Catechism of their doctrine and ritual, by Edavalikel Philipos, Chorepiscopus and Cathanar (i.e. priest) of the Great Church of Cottayam in Travancore, pp. 3, 4, 8 (Parker, 1869). 2 The above summary is condensed from the Catechism of Edavalike Philipos, op. cit. pp. 9-13, 17, 19. 3 Idem, p. 29. Portu Christians were returned in 1871 at about one-third of a million; but the Census officers omitted to distinguish between Catholic Syrian and Jacobites. The Catholic Archbishop and Vicar-Apostolic of Verapoli, to whose kind assistance this chapter is indebted in many ways, estimates the Syrian Catholics at 200,000, and the Jacobites at 100,000. The totals for all Southern India cannot, however, be ascertained until the next Census of 1891. Roman friars had visited India since the 13th century. The guese mis- first regularly equipped Catholic mission, composed of Fransionaries, 1500 A.D., ciscan brethren, arrived from Portugal in 1500. Their attacks on the native religions seemed part of the Portuguese policy of aggression on the Native States. The pious Portuguese monks were popularly identified with the brutal Portuguese soldiery, whose cruelties have left so deep a stain on early European identified enterprise in India. The military attempts of the Portuguese, with Portu- and their ill-treatment of the native princes and the native population, provoked unmerited hatred against the disinterested, if sometimes ill-judged, zeal of the Portuguese missionaries. guese aggressions. Native reprisals or persecutions.' Native reprisals, which certain writers have dignified by the name of persecutions, occasionally took place in return for Portuguese atrocities. But the punishments suffered by the friars were usually inflicted for disobedience to the native civil power, or for public attacks on native objects of veneration; such attacks as are provided for by the clauses in the AngloIndian Penal Code, which deal with words or signs calculated to wound the religious feelings of others. Attacks of this kind lead to tumults among an excitable population, and to serious breaches of the peace, often attended with bloodshed. The native princes, alarmed at the combined Portuguese assault on their territory and their religion, could not be expected to decide in such cases with the cold neutrality of an Anglo-Indian magistrate. Father Pedro de Covilham was killed in 1500. For some time, indeed, missionary work was almost confined to the Portuguese settlements, although King Emmanuel (1498-1521) and his son John III. (1521-57) had much at heart the conversion of the Indians. The first bishop in India was Duarte Nunez, a Dominican (1514-17); and John de Albuquerque, a Franciscan, was the first bishop of Goa (1539Xavier and 53). With St. Francis Xavier, who arrived in 1542, began the the Jesuits, labours of the Society of Jesus in the East, and the progress of Christianity became more rapid. Slow progress. 1542. St. Francis' name is associated with the Malabar coast, and with the maritime tracts of Madura and Southern Madras. EARLY JESUIT MISSIONS. 245 He completed the conversion of the Paravars in Tinnevelli St. Francis District.1 His relics repose in a silver shrine at Goa.2 Xavier. Punnaikáyal, in Tinnevelli, was the scene, in 1549, of the death of Father Antonio Criminale, the protomartyr of the Society of Jesus; and in the following year, several other lives were lost in preaching the gospel. Goa became an Archbishopric in 1577. In 1596 to 1599, the Archbishop of Goa, Alexis de Menezes, an Augustinian, succeeded in recon- Alexis de Menezes. ciling the Indian Nestorians to Rome; and at the Synod of Diamper (Udayampura, near Cochin) in 1599, the affairs of the Indian Christians were settled. The use of the Syrian rite was Syrian rite reformed, retained after it had been purged of its Nestorianism. The but relater history of the Syrian Christians in Malabar has already tained, been traced. Jesuits. 1599. The Jesuit mission to the Madras coast dates from 1606, The and is associated with the names of Robert de Nobili (its Madras founder, who died 1656), John de Britto (killed in Madura 1693), Beschi the great scholar (who died about 1746), and other illustrious Jesuits, chiefly Portuguese. They laboured in Madura, Trichinopoli, Tanjore, Tinnevelli, Salem, etc. The mission of the Karnátic, also a Jesuit mission, was French in its origin, and due in some measure to Louis XIV. in 1700. Its centre was at Pondicherri. work done The early Jesuit missions are particularly interesting. Their Good priests and monks became perfect Indians in all secular by the matters, dress, food, etc., and had equal success among all Jesuits. castes, high and low. In the south of the peninsula they brought, as we have seen, the old Christian settlements of the Syrian rite into temporary communion with Rome, and converted large sections of the native population throughout extensive districts. The Society of Jesus had also numerous although less important missions in the north of India. During the 17th and 18th centuries, religious troubles and difficulties arose in Western India through the action of the missionaries in regard to caste observances. Schisms troubled the Church. The Portuguese king claimed, as against the Pope, to appoint the Archbishop of Goa; and the Dutch adventurers for a time persecuted the Catholics along the coast. But in the 16th century it seemed as if Christianity was destined to be established by Jesuit preachers throughout See article TINNEVELLI DISTRICT, The Imperial Gazetteer of India. See articles MADURA and TINNEVELLI, idem. |