Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 14.djvu/747

 THOMAS

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THOMAS

rians in belief, and because of this false report all siib- Bcquent writers continued to call llieui Neslorians. The reader who has gone throuf^h llii' sl.ilement of facets above related must be conscious that such an al- teiiii^t at distorting or boldly denying public facts is utterly hopeless. They maintain, in support of their false view, that there always had been a small body among the Clialdeans in Mesopotamia who remained attached to tlie true Faith, and from them they re- ceived tlicir bish(i])s. This plea is historically false for the bisliops tlirv receive<! all came to them from the Nestoriaas, an(i as to the hyjiollirsis of the exist- ence during all these centuries back of a Catholic party among the Nestorian Chaldeans, it. is too absurd to be discussed. It wius only after the conversion of Sulaka in 15.52 that the Chaldeans in part returned to the unity of faith. The truth is that the Malabar Church remained from A. D. 4!tt) up till (hen in heresy.

XI. During thecenturies that these Christians were isolated from the rest of Christ cndoin their sole inter- course was limited to .Mesopotamia whence the Nes- torian Patriarch would from time to t ime sujiply them with prelates. But from the close of the thirteenth century Western travellers, chiefly missionaries sent out by the )5opes, sent to the West occasional news of their existence. Some of these it will be useful to re- produce licre. The firet who informed the world of the exist enc" of these St. Thomas Christians was Friar John of Mon.e Corvino. After he had spent several years as a nii.ssionary in Persia ami adjoining coun- tries, he proceeded to China, pa.ssing through the In- dian ports between the years 1-J92 an.l 1294. He tells us in a letter written from Cambales (Peking) in 1305 that he had remained thirteen months in tliat ]>arl of India uln-re the Church of St. Thomas the Ajxislle stixxl (Mylaporet; he also baptized in different places about one hundred persons. In the same lc-tl<'r he says that there were in Malabar a few Christians and Jews, but they were of Uttle worth; he also s.ays that "the inhabitants pensecute much the Christians" (\'ule, "Cathay and the Way Thither", I).

The next, visitor is Marco Polo, who on his return from China (c. 1293)touched the India of St. Thomiis. Of his tomb he tells us: "The body of Messer Saint Thonia.s the .\postle hes in the province of Malabar, at a certain httle town having no great population; 'tis a place where few traders go . . . Both Christians and Saracens however greatly frequent it in pilgrim- age, for the Saracens also hold the Saint in great rev- erence, . . . The Christians who go in pilgrimage take of the earth from the place where the Saint was killeil and give a portion thereof to any who is sick, and by the power of God and of St. Thomas the sick man is incontinently cured. . . . The Christians", he resumes later, "who have charge of t he church have a great number of Indian nut trees [cocoanuts], and thereby get their living" (Marco Polo, Yule's, 2nd edit., II, 338). Friar .Jordan, a Dominican, came to India as a missionary in 1.321; he then had as com- p.iiiiiitis four Franciscan friars, but on approaching Indi.a he had parted from them to make diversion; in the meanwhile the vessel conveying the others was by stress of weather compelled to enter Tana, a port on the west coast, where the Khasi of the place put them to death as they would not embrace ^Iohammedan- i.sm; the feast of Ble.s,sed Thomas of Tolentino and his companions is fixed on 6 .\pril in the " Martyrologium Romanum". Later Jordanus. hearing what had hap- pened, rescued their bodies and gave them burial. He must then have gone back to Europe, for he is next heard of in France in 1330, when Pope .John XXII consecrated him at Avignon Bishop of QuiUm. He left for the East the same year with two lettf^rs from the pope, one to the chief of the Christians of (Juilon and the other to the Christians at Molephatam, a town on the Gulf of Manaar. In the first the pope beseeches "that divisions cease and clouds of error

stain not the brightness of faith of .all generated by the waters of baptism. . . and that the phantom of B(^hism and wilfid blindness of unsullieil faith darken not the vision of those who believe in Christ and adore His name".

Much the same in other words is repeated in the second letter, and they are urged to unity with the Holy Catholic Roman Church. The pope recom- mends the bishop to the kindness of the people, and thanks them for that shown to the friars who are working among them. All we know is that Bishop Jordanus was sent out with these letters, but nothing further is heard of him. He wrote a small book named "Mirabilia", edit(-d by Col. A. Yule for the Hakluyt Society, pulilislicd in 1X63 (see al-so "Ca- thay", I, 184)." The next visitor is Ble.s.sed Oderic of Pordenone, who about l:i_'l _>.", hmdcd at Tana, re- covered the bodies of tlic Idin U in-, 'I'homas and his companions who had then' .^iiltcird martyrdom, and conveyed them to China, On hi.s w.-iy he halted at (^uilon, which he calls Paluinlinni: thence he took pas- .sageon a Chinese junk for a certain city called Zayton in China. He mentions the Chri-stians at Quilon, and that at Mylapore there were fourteen houses of Nes- torians ("Cathay", I, .57). A few years later Gio- vanni de Marignolli, the papal delegate to China, ar- rived at Quilon. He stayed there at a church dedi- cated to St. George, belonging to the Latin Rite, and he adorned it with fine paintings and taught there the Holy Law. After dwelling their for upwards of a year he sailed to visit the shrine of the .\postle; he calls the town MirapoUs. After describing the culture of pepper on the coast he adds: "tlie i)ei)per does not grow in forests but in gardens ijrepai-ed for the pur- l)ose; nor are the Saracens the proprietors, but the Christians of St. Thomas, and these are the masters of the public weighing-office" [customs' office]. Before quitting Quilon he erected a monument to commem- orate his visit, and this was a marble jiillar with a stone cross on it, intended to last, as he says, till the world'send. "It had the pope's arms", hesays, "and my own engraved on it, with an inscription both in Indian and Latin characters. I consecrated and blessed it in the presence of an infinite multitude of people." The monument stood there till late in the nineteenth century, when by the gradual erosion of the coast it fell into the sea and disappeared. He con- cludes his narrative by saj'ing that after staying a year and four months he took leave of the brethren, i. e. the missionaries who were working in that field.

XII. The two last Syrian bishops were Mar Joseph Sulaka and Mar Abraham; both arrived in Malabar after the arrival of the Portuguese. Their case pre- sents two questions for discussion; were they canoni- cally appointed, and had they completely rejected Nestorianism? As to the first there is no doubt that liis appointment was canonical, for he, th(! brother of the first Chaldean patriarch, was appointed by his successor Abed Jesu and sent out to .Malabar, and both the above patriarchs had their jurisdiction over the Church in Malabar confirmed by the Holy See. Mar Joseph was sent to India with letters of introduc- tion from the pope to the Portuguese authorities; he was besides accompanied by Bishop .Ambrose, a Do- minican and papal commi.ssary to the first patriarcli, by his socius Father .\nthony, and by Mar Klias Hor- maz, .\rchbishop of Diarbekir. They arrived at Goa about 1.5(')3, and were detained at Goa for eighteen months before being allowed to enter the diocese. Proceeding to Cochin they lost Bishop Ambro.se; the others travelled through Malabar for two and a half years on foot, visiting CN-ery church and detached set- tlement. By the time they arrived at .Angamale war broke out. Then Mar Elias, Anthony the socius of the fieceased prelate, and one of the two Syrian monks who had accompanied them, left India to return; the