Place · Syrian Christian church · India
Kollam Marth Mariam
Also known as Kollam, Marth Mariam, Marth Mariam (Malankara)
The 1-century Marth Mariam Church at Kollam in Kerala — one of the earliest Christian foundations of the Malabar Coast, part of the Saint Thomas apostolic tradition. The church is said to be among the first Christian communities established on the southern Kerala coast after Thomas's 52 CE landing at Muziris. The current Marth Mariam church structure is 17-century Portuguese Baroque rebuild on much older foundations; the Portuguese adopted the structure as their Malabar parish. The adjacent 849 CE Tharisapalli copper plates (recording a Christian trading guild grant by Chera king Ayyanadigal Thiruvadigal) document Kollam's Christian community's trade connections. The church is managed by the Latin Catholic Church of Kerala. The 1991 Tharisapalli plates research project (by the Kerala Council for Historical Research) established the authentic dating of the Kollam Christian presence. The annual Marth Mariam Perunal each August draws 100,000 pilgrims.
- Function
- Sacred site & pilgrimage
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 8.893, 76.588
Connections (2)
- Trade routeBharuch (Barygaza)
The ninth-century Kollam copper plates grant the Christian merchant Mar Sapir Iso land, tolls and jurisdiction, and are witnessed in Kufic Arabic, Pahlavi and Judeo-Persian — Muslim, Zoroastrian and Jewish traders signing a Christian's charter in a Hindu kingdom. It is the single most informative document surviving about how the Indian Ocean trading world actually worked at the level of one port town.
- Companion in the same setChayal, Idukki
Chāyal in the Idukki hills is the one inland church of the seven and Kollam the southern port, which together describe the shape of the pepper trade rather than of any missionary route: the spice came down from the hill country to the coast, and the churches sit along that descent. Chāyal is also the least certainly located of the seven, and more than one village in the Western Ghats has been proposed for it over the past century.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Kollam”. Kerala church records; Susan Bayly, Saints, Goddesses and Kings (1989).
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