Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 6.djvu/503

Rh the Reformed Syrians or St. Thomas' Syrians owning Titus Mar Thoma as their supreme spiritual head. Thus, while the Jacobite Syrians have accepted and acknowledged the ecclesiastical supremacy of the Patriarch of Antioch, the St. Thomas' Syrians, maintaining that the Jacobite creed was introduced into Malabar only in the seventeenth century after a section of the church had shaken off the Roman supremacy, uphold the ecclesiastical autonomy of the church, whereby the supreme control of the spiritual and temporal affairs of the church is declared to be in the hands of the Metropolitan of Malabar. The St. Thomas' Syrians hold that the consecration of a Bishop by, or with the sanction of the Patriarch of Babylon, Alexandria or Antioch, gives no more validity or sanctity to that office than consecration by the Metropolitan of Malabar, the supreme head of the church in Malabar,in as much as this church is as ancient and apostolic as any other, being founded by the apostle St. Thomas; while the Jacobites hold that the consecration of a Bishop is not valid, unless it be done with the sanction of their Patriarch. The St, Thomas' Syrians have, however, no objection to receiving consecration from the head of any other episcopal apostolic church, but they consider that such consecrations do not in any way subject their church to the supremacy of that prelate or church.

Both the Latins and the Romo-Syrians use the liturgy of the Church of Rome, the former using the Latin, and the latter the Syriac language. It is believed by some that the Christians of St. Thomas formerly used the liturgy of St. Adæus, East Syrian, Edessa, but that it was almost completely assimilated to the Roman liturgy by Portuguese Jesuits at the Synod of Diamper