Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 14.djvu/743

 THOMAS

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THOMAS

once attracts attention. Theophilus (surnamed the Indian), an Arian, sentby Emperor Constantius (about 354) on a mission to Arabia Felix and Abyssinia, is one of the earliest, if not the first, who draws our at- tention to them. He had been sent when very young a hostage a Div(Tis, by the inhabitants of the Maldives, to the Romans in the reign of Constantine the Great. His travels are recorded by Philostorgius, an Arian Greek Church historian, who relates that Theophilus, after fulfilUng his mission to the Homcrites, sailed to his island home. Thence he visited other parts of India, reforming many things — for the Cliristians of the place lieard the reading of the Gospel in a sitting, etc. This reference to a body of Christians with church, priest, and liturgy, in the immediate vicinity of the Maldives, can only apply to a Christian Church and faithful on the adjacent coast of India, and not to Ceylon, which was well known even then under its own designat ion, Taprobane. The people referred to were then Christians known as a body who had their liturgy in the SjTiac language and inhabited the west coast of India, i. e. Malabar. This Church is ne.^rt men- tioned and located by Cosmas Indicopleustes (about 535) "in Male [Malabar] where the pepper grows"; and he adds that the Christians of Ceylon, whom he specifies as Persians, and "those of Malabar" (the lat- ter he leaves unspecified, so they must have been na- tives of the country) had a bishop residing at Caliana (Kal3'an), ordained in Persia, and one likewise on the Island of Socotra.

II. St. Gregory of Tours (Glor. Mart.), before 590, reports that Theodore, a pilgrim who had gone to Gaul, told liim that in that part of India where the corpus (bones) of Thomas the Apostle had first rested (Mylapur on the east or Coromandel Coast of India) there stood a monastery and a church of striking di- mensions and elaborately adorned, adding: "After a long interval of time these remains had been removed thence to the city of Edessa." The location of the first tomb of the Apostle in India is proof both of his martyrdom and of his Apostolate in India. The evi- dence of Theodore is that of an eye-witness who had visited both tombs — the first in India, while the sec- ond was at Edessa. The primitive Christians, there- fore, found on both coasts, east and west, witness to and locate the tomb at Mylapur, "St. Thomas", a httle to the south of Madras; no other place in India laj-s any claim to possess the tomb, nor does any other country. On these facts is based their claim to be known as St. Thomas Christians.

III. Further proof may be adduced to justify this claim. A Syrian ecclesiastical calendar of an early date confirms the above. In the quotation given be- Ic.w two points are to be noted which support its an- tiquity — the fact of the name given to Edessa and the fact that the memory of the translation of the Apo.s- tle's relics Was so fresh to the writer that the name of the individual who had brought them was yet remem- bered. The entry reads : " 3 July, St. Thomas who was pierced with a lance in India. His body is at Urhai [the ancient name of Edessa] having been brought there by the merchant Khabin. A great festival. " It is only natural to expect that we should receive from Edessa first-hand evidence of the removal of the relics to that city; and we are not disappointed, for St. Ephraem, the great doctor of the Syrian Church, has left us ample details in his writings. Ephraem came to Ede.ssa on the surrender of Nisibis to the Persians, and he lived there from 363 to 373, when he died. This proof is found mostly in his rhythmical compo- sitions. In the forty-second of his "Carmina Nisi- bina" (Leipzig, 1866) he tells us that the Apostle was put to death in India, and that his remains were sub- sequently buried at Edessa, brought there by a mer- chant — but his name is never given; apparently at that d.ate the name had dropped out of popular mem- ory. The same is repeated in varying form in several

of his hymns edited by Lamy (Ephr. Hymni et Ser- mones, IV). " It was to a l;ind of dark people he was sent, to clothe them by B.-ijitism in white robes. His grateful dawn dispelled India's painful darkness. It was his mission to espouse India to the One-Begotten. The merchant is blessed for having brought so great a treasure. Edessa thus became the blessed city Iby possessing the greatest pearl India could yield. Thomas works miracles in India, and at Edessa Thomas is destined to baptize peoples perverse and steeped in dai-kness, and that in the land of India." For fuller proof of the Apostleship of St. Thomas the reader is referred to the work of the present writer "India and the Apostle Saint Thomas" (London, 1905). This short excursus was necessary to estab- lish the claim of the Christians on the coast and espe- cially that of the Malabar Syrian Church to be the daughter of the Apostle St. Thomas.

IV. These Christians have no written records of the incidents of their social life from the time of their first conversion down to the arrival of the Portuguese on the coast, just as India had no history until the ar- rival of the Mohammedans.

V. Fortunately the British Museum has a large collection consisting of several folio volumes contain- ing MSS. letters, reports, etc., of Jesuit missions in India and elsewhere; among these in addl. vol. 9853, beginning with the leaf 86 in pencil and 525 in ink, there is a "Report" on the "Serra" (the name by which the Portuguese designated Malabar), written in Portuguese by a Jesuit missionary, bearing the date 1604 but not signed by the writer; there is evidence that this "Report" was known to F. de Souza, author of the "Oriente Conquistado", and utihzed by him. The writer has carefully put together the traditional record of these Christians; the document, is yet un- published, hence its importance. Extracts from the same, covering what can be .said of the early part of this history, will ofifer the best guarantee that can be offered. The writer of the "Report" distinctly in- forms us that these Christians had no written records of ancient history, but relied entirely on traditions handed down by their elders, and to these they were most tenaciously attached.

Of their earliest period tradition records that after the death of the Apostle his disciples remained faith- ful for a long time, the Faith was propagated with great zeal, and the Church increased considerably. But later, wars and famine supervening, the St. Thomas Christians of Mylapur got scattered and sought refuge elsewhere, and many of them returned to paganism. The Christians, however, who were on the Cochin side, fared better than the former, spread- ing from Coulac (Quilon) to Palur (Paleur), a village in the north of Malabar. These had fared better, as they lived under native princes who rarely interfered with their Faith, and they probably never suffered real persecution such as befell their brethren on the other coast; besides, one of the paramount rajahs of Malabar, Cheruman Perumal, had conferred on them a civil status. The common tradition in the country holds that from the lime of the Apostle seven churches were erected in different parts of the coun- try, besides the one which the Apostle himself had erected at Mylapur. This tradition is most tena- ciously held and is confirmed by the "Report". It further asserts that the Apostle Thomas, after preach- ing to the inhabitants of the Island of Socotra and establishing there a Christian community, had come over to Malabar and landed at the ancient port of Cranganorc. They hold that after preaching in Mal- abar the Apostle went over to Mylapur on the Coro- mandel Coast; this is practicable through any of the many paths across the dividing mountain ranges which were well known and much frequented in olden times. The Socotrians had yet retained their Faith when in 1542 St. Francis Xavier visited them on his