Place · Thomas Christian 'half church' · India
Thiruvithamcode Arappally
Also known as St Mary's Orthodox Syrian Church, Thiruvithamkode, Thomayar Kovil, Amalagiri church, Thiruvithamkode Arappalli, Tiruvitāṅkōṭu Arappaḷḷi
A small stone church at Thiruvithamcode in Kanyakumari district, Tamil Nadu, counted as the half church that makes Kerala's list the seven-and-a-half churches of Thomas. Tradition says Thomas founded it around 63 or 64 CE for a king he had converted; an older tradition makes it the refuge of sixty-four Christian families who fled persecution at Mylapore. Its fabric is seventeenth-century: the Synod of Diamper found the congregation without priests and ordered the church rebuilt in the Portuguese fashion.
- Function
- Sacred site & pilgrimage
- Confidence
- Traditional / narrative attribution — Apostolic foundation is tradition; the Synod of Diamper's decree on the church and its seventeenth-century rebuilding are documented.
- Location
- 8.248, 77.297
Worth knowing
Thiruvithamcode was the cradle and namesake of Travancore, Thiruvithamkoor, and the name Arappalli has been read both as royal church and as half church. Its walls are of local stone dressed with a multi-tipped chisel, a technique possibly brought to Kerala by foreign contact in the sixteenth century.
About the place
Wikipedia gives no coordinates for the church; these are for Thiruvithamcode town, about 2 km from Thuckalay.
The apostolic foundation is tradition, and the church's claim to be India's oldest unreconstructed church conflicts with the record that it was rebuilt after the Synod of Diamper of 1599.
Connections (3)
- FoundedThomas the Apostle
Thiruvithamcode in Kanyakumari district is the half church of the seven-and-a-half, and its current tradition says Thomas founded it around 63 or 64 CE after converting the local king, who built the church. The name Arappalli is read both as royal church and as half church, the second because it was smaller and lay far to the south. An older recorded tradition instead derives its Christians from families who fled persecution in Mylapore, which makes the apostolic foundation a later layer.
- Traditional linkSan Thome, Mylapore
An older documented tradition of Thiruvithamcode traces its Christians not to the apostle but to Mylapore: sixty-four families of Dariyaykal, confessors who stood firm when a sorcerer the tradition calls Manikyavacakar turned most of the Christians of Mylapore and the Coromandel coast away, some time before the ninth century. One group fled to the Todamala hills and the other to Thiruvithamcode, where the king settled them and let them build a church. István Perczel and Thomas Whitehouse record the story.
- Historical linkUdayamperoor
The Synod of Diamper, in Action VIII Decree VI, found the Christians of Thiruvithamcode, the southernmost Nasrani settlement, without priests, drifting into local beliefs and living without baptism, in a church in very poor condition. Archbishop Menezes decreed that it be rebuilt in the Portuguese fashion and given a vicar and church furnishings, acting through that vicar rather than visiting himself. The church thus became one of the first rebuilt under the synod's decrees, in the early seventeenth century.
Sources
Wikipedia, "St. Mary's Church, Thiruvithamcode", "Thiruvithamcode" and "Seven churches of Saint Thomas". István Perczel, "Syriac Christianity in India", in Daniel King (ed.), The Syriac World (2018); Thomas Whitehouse, Lingerings of Light in a Dark Land (1873).
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