Tradition · Syriac Christian community of Kerala

Saint Thomas Christians

Also known as Syrian Christians of India, Nasrani, Nasrani Mappila, Marthoma Suriyani Nasrani, Malankara Nasrani, Mar Thoma Nasranis, Thomas Christians, Mār Tōmā Nasrāṇi

Function

Religious institution & practice

Confidence

Mixed / layered — The community and its East Syriac church are documented from the sixth to ninth centuries onward; its foundation by Thomas is tradition.

Worth knowing

Their oldest secure document, the Kollam copper plates of about 849, is witnessed in Kufic Arabic, Middle Persian Pahlavi and Hebrew-script Judeo-Persian. The oldest Syriac manuscript known to have been copied in India, a lectionary now Vatican Syriac 22, was written at Kodungallur in 1301 by a deacon of fourteen.

Connections (13)

• Teaching lineageThomas the Apostle

  The community takes its name from the apostle and traces its origin to his conversion of thirty-two Brahmin families, among them Pakalomattom, Sankarapuri, Kalli and Kaliyankal, a tradition found in the Thomma Parvam of 1601. Its medieval metropolitans were styled bishops of the seat of Saint Thomas, its churches carry the Mar Thoma Sleeva or St Thomas cross, and Thomas remains a favourite name in Kerala. Robert Frykenberg judges the traditions of dubious historicity but of great antiquity and popular appeal.

• Associated withChristianity

  The Saint Thomas Christians are, by their own account, the oldest Christians in India, and they used Syriac, the Aramaic of the Church of the East, as their liturgical language. The Government of India classes them as Syrian Christians, a term from the Dutch colonial period that set them apart from converts of the Latin rite. The saying 'Indian in culture, Christian in faith and Syrian in liturgy' describes a church that kept Hindu marriage rites such as the minnu and the manthrakodi.

• TransmissionEdessa / Urfa

  Syriac, the liturgical language of the Saint Thomas Christians, developed from the Aramaic of the kingdom of Osroene, whose capital was Edessa, and the city's school made it a centre of Greek and Syriac Christian thought. The Indian church developed contacts with Church of the East authorities based at Edessa, and its Syriac Bible, the Peshitta, was among the books the Synod of Diamper ordered burnt in 1599. Edessa also kept the apostle's relics and produced the Acts of Thomas.

• Historical linkKollam / Quilon

  The Kollam copper plates, dated to the fifth regnal year of the Chera king Sthanu Ravi, about 849, grant land, serfs and privileges to the Christian merchant Maruvan Sapir Iso, called the founder of the trading town and builder of the Tarisa church. Two merchant guilds, the anjuvannam and manigramam, were settled as tenants, and the Six Hundred, Venad's Nair militia, guarded town and church. They are the earliest native document for Christianity in south India, and the Malayalam era, Kollavarsham, is named after the city.

• Historical linkKodungallur & Mar Thoma church

  Kodungallur, Shengala in Syriac, was probably the seat of the metropolitan the Church of the East sent to India. The oldest Syriac manuscript known to have been copied in India, a lectionary of Paul's letters now Vatican Syriac 22, was written there in 1301 at the church of Mar Quriaqos and names Mar Jacob as metropolitan of the see of Saint Thomas. In 1524 the Zamorin's forces burned its three churches and the community scattered inland, carrying its venerated stone cross with it.

• Historical linkUdayamperoor

  In June 1599 Aleixo de Menezes, Archbishop of Goa, held the Synod of Diamper at Udayamperoor after the last East Syriac metropolitan, Abraham, had died and the young Archdeacon Givargis had submitted. The synod put the community under the Portuguese Padroado, reduced the Archdiocese of Angamaly to a suffragan see of Goa, purged its East Syriac liturgy, ordered Syriac books including the Peshitta burnt and condemned customs such as untouchability. Resentment of its decrees led to the revolt of 1653.

• Historical linkOur Lady of Life, Mattancherry

  On 3 January 1653 Archdeacon Thomas and representatives of the community swore at the church of Our Lady at Mattancherry never again to obey the Padroado archbishop Francisco Garcia or the Portuguese. The Coonan Cross Oath became a lasting split once the Syriac Orthodox bishop Gregorios Abdal Jaleel consecrated the archdeacon as Thoma I in 1665. Between 1661 and 1665 the Pazhayakoor, who stayed with Rome, claimed 72 of the 116 churches and the Puthenkoor 32, sharing the other twelve.

• Historical linkAngamaly

  Angamaly was the inland seat of the archdeacon and closely tied to Abraham, the last East Syriac metropolitan, and the Synod of Diamper in 1599 turned the Archdiocese of Angamaly and All India into a suffragan see of Goa. Francisco Roz, the Padroado bishop of Angamaly, met open opposition there. In 1787 representatives of eighty-four Pazhayakoor churches met at Angamaly and drew up the Angamaly Padiyola, declaring loyalty to Paremmakkal Thoma and demanding their native East Syriac hierarchy back.

• Historical linkKottayam

  Kottayam became a centre of the community after the Portuguese era. The venerated Saint Thomas cross of Kodungallur is said to have passed by way of Kaduthuruthy to Kottayam, where it is still kept. In 1815 the British Resident John Munro founded a seminary at Kottayam for the training of Jacobite priests and invited Anglican missionaries to teach there, the beginning of the Church Mission Society's ties with the Puthenkoor that later fed the Mar Thoma reform and further divisions.

• Associated withMarco Polo

  Marco Polo, sailing home from China in the 1290s, recorded 'Nestorian' Christians at Kollam and Christians on the Malabar coast, and visited the tomb of Thomas at Mylapore, a visit dated 1292; an earlier date of 1288 is rejected because he was then in China. He is one of a handful of European witnesses, with Jordanus and Marignolli in the fourteenth century, to an organised East Syriac church that the West otherwise knew mostly through the legend of Prester John.

• Historical linkNiranam St Mary's, Pathanamthitta

  After the Coonan Cross Oath, Niranam became the stronghold of the Pakalomattom family, whose bishops led the Puthenkoor, beginning with Thoma IV, who died in 1686. In the early 1770s Jacobite bishops reconsecrated Thoma VI as Dionysius, binding the faction to the West Syriac rite, and in 1912 Niranam hosted the consecration of the first Maphrian Catholicos, the event that split the Jacobite church into Bava and Metran factions. Rival churches at Niranam both claim the old church's succession.

• TransmissionThomas of Cana

  The Knanaya or Southists, a subgroup of the Saint Thomas Christians, trace their descent to Thomas of Cana's party, while the Northists claim the apostle's converts. Scholars read his arrival as a real migration of East Syriac Christians and the moment the Kerala church was linked to the Church of the East, and the community's histories say it revived a church then without leaders. His copper plates, which raised the standing of all the Christians, were lost after the seventeenth century.

• Associated withAppam and hoppers

  At the end of the eighteenth century the Carmelite friar Paolino da San Bartolomeo reported that the Saint Thomas Christians of Kerala celebrated the agape, the Christian love-feast, with a rice-cake dish called appam. Kerala's Syrian Christians also keep their own variants, such as the fried, tube-shaped kuzhalappam, and Jewish historians note that the Cochin Jews fermented the batter with fresh toddy instead of yeast, so the dish runs through each of Kerala's old trading communities.

Sources

Wikipedia, "Saint Thomas Christians", "Synod of Diamper", "Coonan Cross Oath" and "Quilon Syrian copper plates". Leslie W. Brown, The Indian Christians of St Thomas (1956); Robert Eric Frykenberg, Christianity in India: from Beginnings to the Present (2008).

• Wikipedia — Saint Thomas Christians
• Wikipedia — Synod of Diamper
• Wikipedia — Coonan Cross Oath
• Wikipedia — Quilon Syrian copper plates