Journey

The Thomas Christians of Malabar

Stops (9)

1. Kodungallur & Mar Thoma church · Kodungallur (Muziris) — the landing, 52 CE

   The Roman-period pepper port where tradition places Thomas's arrival. Excavation at Pattanam nearby has found Mediterranean amphorae and a first-century harbour, so the port existed and traded with Rome; whether an apostle came with the ships is a separate question the evidence does not reach. The Cheramān mosque and the Jewish settlement are within a few kilometres.

2. Palayoor · Palayoor — the Brahmin conversion story

   One of the seven-and-a-half churches, and the one with the sharpest story: Thomas is said to have thrown water into the air at a Nambūdiri bathing tank and made it hang there, converting the Brahmins who watched. The Syrian Christians' claim to high-caste origin runs through this site and has mattered socially ever since.

3. Kottakavu, Ernakulam · Kottakāvu, North Paravur — the granite cross

   Another of the seven, on the Periyar near Kochi, with a granite cross of the kind Kerala Christians carved long before any European arrived. The Persian crosses, some with Pahlavi inscriptions, are the oldest physical evidence of the church in India, and they point to Mesopotamia rather than to Rome.

4. Kollam Marth Mariam · Kollam — the port and the copper plates

   One of the earliest Christian foundations on the coast, at the port that gave the Malayalam era its starting date in 825. A Persian bishop is recorded here in the ninth century, and the copper plates granted to the Christian merchant Mar Sapir Iso set out his trading and social privileges in writing.

5. Kokkamangalam Mar Thoma, Alappuzha · Kokkamangalam — the backwater church

   One of the seven, on the Vembanad water between Vaikom and Alappuzha. The set is strung along the waterways rather than the roads, because the waterways were how Kerala moved: the churches sit where boats stopped, which is also where the pepper and the Jewish and Muslim traders were.

6. Niranam St Mary's, Pathanamthitta · Niranam — where Malayalam poetry starts

   One of the seven, on the Pamba in Pathanamthitta, and home of the Niranam poets who wrote some of the earliest Malayalam verse in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The church tradition and the language's literature begin in the same handful of small towns, which is not a coincidence anyone has fully explained.

7. Chayal, Idukki · Chāyal — the seventh, inland

   The one hill church of the seven, in Idukki near the Sabarimala approach, and the least certainly located. The tradition's geography runs from a Roman port on the sea to a village in the Western Ghats — the shape of the spice trade coming down from the pepper country rather than of any missionary route.

8. San Thome, Mylapore · San Thome, Mylapore — the tomb

   Built over the tomb tradition assigns to Thomas, on the Coromandel coast where he is said to have been killed. Marco Polo describes pilgrims at the shrine in the 1290s, and Arab and Syriac sources do so earlier, so the tomb was a known destination long before the Portuguese rebuilt it in 1523 and the British again in 1893.

9. Our Lady of Life, Mattancherry · Mattancherry — the Coonan Cross Oath, 1653

   The coda, sixteen centuries after the landing. On 3 January 1653 the Archdeacon Thomas and representatives of the community gathered outside Our Lady of Life and swore never to submit to the Portuguese, holding ropes tied to the granite cross because too many had come to touch it. The oath broke the Thomas Christians from Rome’s Padroado and split them into Puthenkoor and Pazhayakoor — two churches which both claimed to be the true heirs of the seven and a half.

Sources

• Wikipedia