The Saint Thomas Christians, also called Syrian Christians or Nasrani, are an ancient community of Christians from Kerala, India, who trace their origins to the evangelistic activity of Saint Thomas in the 1st century thus making it one of the oldest Christian communities of the world.[3][4]The community was historically united in leadership and liturgy, but since the 17th century have been split into several different church denominations and traditions.
Historically the Saint Thomas Christian community was part of the Church of the East, centred in Persia. They were organised as theEcclesiastical Province of India in the 8th century, served by bishops and a hereditary Archdeacon. In the 16th century the overtures of thePortuguese padroado to bring the Saint Thomas Christians into the Catholic Church led to the first of several rifts in the community and the establishment of Catholic and Malankara Church factions. Since that time further splits have occurred, and the Saint Thomas Christians are now divided into several different Eastern Catholic, Oriental Orthodox, and independent bodies, each with their own liturgies and traditions.
The Saint Thomas Christians represent a single ethnic group. Saint Thomas Christian culture is largely developed from East Syrian and Jewishinfluences blended with local customs and later elements derived from indigenous Indian and European colonial contacts. Their language isMalayalam, the local tongue of Kerala and Syriac is used for liturgical purposes.
Mission in India[edit]
Main articles: Saint Thomas Christians and Christianity in India
Thomas is traditionally believed to have sailed to India in AD 52 to spread the Christian faith among the Jews, some of whom had migrated toKerala.[2][5] He is supposed to have landed at the ancient port of Muziris (modern-day North Paravur and Kodungalloor in Kerala state). The port was destroyed in 1341 due to a massive flood that realigned the coasts. He established Ezharappallikal or Seven and half churches in Kerala. These churches are at Kodungallur, Palayoor, Kottakkavu (Paravur), Kokkamangalam, Niranam, Nilackal (Chayal), Kollam and Thiruvithamcode(half church).[26]
Eusebius of Caesarea quotes Origen (died mid-3rd century) as having stated that Thomas was the apostle to the Parthians, but Thomas is better known as the missionary to India through the Acts of Thomas, perhaps written as late as c. 200. In Edessa, where his remains were venerated, the poet St. Ephrem (died 373) wrote a hymn in which the Devil cries,
St. Ephrem, a doctor of Syriac Christianity, writes in the forty-second of his "Carmina Nisibina" that the Apostle was put to death in India, and that his remains were subsequently buried in Edessa, brought there by an unnamed merchant.[27]
A Syrian ecclesiastical calendar of an early date confirms the above and gives the merchant a name. The entry reads: "3 July, St. Thomas who was pierced with a lance in 'India'. His body is in Urhai (Edessa) having been brought there by the merchant Khabin. A great festival."
A long public tradition in Edessa honoring Thomas as the "Apostle of India" resulted in several surviving hymns, that are attributed to Ephrem, copied in codices of the 8th and 9th centuries. References in the hymns preserve the tradition that Thomas' bones were brought from India to Edessa by a merchant, and that the relics worked miracles both in India and Edessa. A pontiff assigned his feast day and a king and a queen erected his shrine. The Thomas traditions became embodied in Syriac liturgy, thus they were universally credited by the Christian community there. There is a legend that Thomas had met the biblical Magi on his way to India.
According to Eusebius' record, Thomas and Bartholomew were assigned to Parthia and India.[28][29] The Didascalia (dating from the end of the 3rd century) states, “India and all countries condering it, even to the farthest seas... received the apostolic ordinances from Judas Thomas, who was a guide and ruler in the church which he built.” Moreover, there is a wealth of confirmatory information in the Syriac writings, liturgical books, and calendars of the Church of the East, not to mention the writings of the Fathers, the calendars, the sacramentaries, and the martyrologies of the Roman, Greek and Ethiopian churches.[2]
An early 3rd-century Syriac work known as the Acts of Thomas[3] connects the apostle's Indian ministry with two kings, one in the north and the other in the south. According to one of the legends in the Acts, Thomas was at first reluctant to accept this mission, but the Lord appeared to him in a night vision and said,
Remains of some of his buildings, influenced by Greek architecture, indicate that he was a great builder. According to the legend, Thomas was a skilled carpenter and was bidden to build a palace for the king. However, the Apostle decided to teach the king a lesson by devoting the royal grant to acts of charity and thereby laying up treasure for the heavenly abode. Although little is known of the immediate growth of the church, Bar-Daisan (154–223) reports that in his time there were Christian tribes in India which claimed to have been converted by Thomas and to have books and relics to prove it.[5] But at least by the year of the establishment of the Second Persian Empire (226), there were bishops of the Church of the East in northwest India (Afghanistan and Baluchistan), with laymen and clergy alike engaging in missionary activity.[6]
It is most significant that, aside from a small remnant of the Church of the East in Kurdistan, the only other church to maintain a distinctive identity is the Saint Thomas Christian congregations along the Malabar Coast (modern-day Kerala) in southwest India. According to the most ancient tradition of this church, Thomas evangelized this area and then crossed to the Coromandel Coast of southeast India, where, after carrying out a second mission, he died near Madras. Throughout the period under review, the church in India was under the jurisdiction of Edessa, which was then under the Mesopotamian patriarchate at Seleucia-Ctesiphon and later at Baghdad and Mosul. Historian Vincent A. Smith says, “It must be admitted that a personal visit of the Apostle Thomas to South India was easily feasible in the traditional belief that he came by way of Socotra, where an ancient Christian settlement undoubtedly existed. I am now satisfied that the Christian church of South India is extremely ancient...”.[7]
Thomas is believed to have left northwest India when invasion threatened and traveled by vessel to the Malabar coast, possibly visiting southeast Arabia and Socotra en route, and landing at the former flourishing port of Muziris (modern-day North Paravur and Kodungalloor)[26] near Cochin (c. 51–52 AD) in the company of a Jewish merchant Abbanes (Hebban). From there he is said to have preached the gospel throughout the Malabar coast. The various churches he founded were located mainly on the Periyar River and its tributaries and along the coast, where there were Jewish colonies. He reputedly preached to all classes of people and had about 17,000 converts, including members of the four principal castes. Later, stone crosses were erected at the places where churches were founded, and they became pilgrimage centres. In accordance with apostolic custom, Thomas ordained teachers and leaders or elders, who were reported to be the earliest ministry of the Malabar Church.
Death[edit]
According to tradition,[30] St. Thomas was killed in 72 AD. Nasrani Churches from Kerala in South India claim that St. Thomas martyred at Mylapore nearChennai in India and his body was interred there. St. Ephrem the Syrian (306 – 373) states that the Apostle was martyred in India, and that his relics were taken then to Edessa. This is the earliest known record of his martyrdom.[31]
Some Patristic literature state that St. Thomas died a martyr, in east of Persia or in North India[32]:237 by the wounds of the four spears pierced into his body by the local soldiers.[33]:217 Some modern scholars like Glenn W Most infer Saint Clement of Alexandria's quotation[34] of Gnostic Heracleonto mean that St. Thomas died a natural death in Edessa.[33] :218
The accounts of Marco Polo from the 13th century state that the Apostle had an accidental death outside his hermitage in Chennai by a badly aimed arrow of a fowler who not seeing the saint shot at peacocks there.[32]:238 Later in the 16th century, the Portuguese in India is said to have created a myth that St. Thomas was killed in Chennai by stoning and lance thrust by local priests, based on the incorrect interpretation of inscriptions found on the Pehlvi Cross discovered at St. Thomas Mount in 1547. Later decipherments of the inscriptions by experts proved this to be false.[32]:239 Since at least the 16th century, the St. Thomas Mount has been a common site revered by Hindus, Muslims and Christians.[32]:31 The records of Barbosa from early 16th century inform that the tomb was then maintained by a Muslim who kept a lamp burning there.[32]:237 The San Thome Basilica presently located at the tomb was first built in the 16th century and rebuilt in the 19th.[35]
Relics[edit]
Mylapore[edit]
Few relics are still kept in the church at Mylapore, Tamil Nadu, India. Marco Polo, the Venetian traveller and author of Description of the World,popularly known as Il Milione, is reputed to have visited Southern India in 1288 and 1292. The first date has been rejected as he was in China at the time, but the second date is accepted by many historians.[citation needed] He is believed to have stopped in Ceylon (Sri Lanka), where he documented the tomb of Adam. He also stopped at Quilon (Kollam) on the western Malabar coast of India, where he met Syrian Christians and recorded their tradition of St. Thomas and his tomb on the eastern Coromandel coast of the country. Il Milione, the book he dictated on his return to Europe, was on its publication condemned by the Church as a collection of impious and improbable traveller's tales. It became very popular reading in medieval Europe and inspired Spanish and Portuguese sailors to seek out the fabulous (and possibly Christian) India described in it.
Edessa[edit]
According to tradition, in 232 AD, the greater portion of relics of the Apostle Thomas are said to have been sent by an Indian king and brought from India to the city of Edessa, Mesopotamia, on which occasion his Syriac Acts were written.
The Indian king is named as "Mazdai" in Syriac sources, "Misdeos" and "Misdeus" in Greek and Latin sources respectively, which has been connected to the "Bazdeo" on the Kushan coinage of Vasudeva I, the transition between "M" and "B" being a current one in Classical sources for Indian names.[36] The martyrologist Rabban Sliba dedicated a special day to both the Indian king, his family, and St Thomas.
In the 4th century, the martyrium erected over his burial place brought pilgrims to Edessa. In the 380s, Egeria described her visit in a letter she sent to her community of nuns at home (Itineraria Egeriae):[37]
[clarification needed] In 522 AD, Cosmas Indicopleustes (called the Alexandrian) visited the Malabar Coast. He is the first traveller who mentions Syrian Christians in Malabar, in his book Christian Topography. He mentions that in the town of "Kalliana" (Quilon or Kollam) there was a bishop who had been consecrated in Persia. Historian Aprem Mooken writes, "Most church historians, who doubt the tradition of the doubting Thomas in India, will admit there was a church in India in the middle of the sixth century when Cosmas Indicopleustes visited India."[39]
[clarification needed] King Vira Raghavaa gave a copper plate recording a grant given to Iravi Korttan, a Christian of Kodungallur (Anglicised to "Cranganore"), with the date estimated at around 744 AD.[citation needed] In AD 822 two Nestorian Persian Bishops, Mar Sabor and Mar Proth, came to Malabar to occupy their seats in Kollam and Kodungallur, to care for the local Syrian Christians (also known as St. Thomas Christians).[citation needed]
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