HYSTORY AND MEMORY
As a follow-up to the article "St. Francis Xavier at Cochin", published in Dehoniana 96/3, the author, with this new article, describes the surprise of the Portuguese when they met some Indians who declared that they were "Christians of Saint Thomas", and briefly narrates the events of Christianity from the Middle Ages to 1599 and the Synod of Diamper.
* * * * *
Thanks to the work of its navigators, Portugal founded Portuguese colonies all along the west coast of India, yet they never penetrated into the interior of the country. The Portuguese, like the Spaniards, always brought priests with them. Thus, when Vasco da Gama in 1498, Cabral in 1500, and Albuquerque in 1503 arrived, they were accompanied by missionaries of the Gospel.
The Franciscans and the Dominicans arrived afterwards. "All the same none of them went further than working with the Portuguese" (Llorca).
An Unexpected Meeting
The priests, like all the Portuguese, thought that they were going to countries in which all the inhabitants were infidels and none of them knew about the Christian religion. But then, little by little, with great surprise, as they overcame the difficulties of the language they discovered the existence of a group of Christians who said they were descendants of Christians who had been converted by St. Thomas the Apostle. They said that this was the reason they defined themselves as Christians of St. Thomas.
However, even though the priests had met a Christian community which said that it went back to the time of the Apostles, they weren't worried about finding out if these Christians belonged to the Catholic Church and if they held themselves united to Rome.
These Christians were being guided by a hierarchy which was composed of one metropolitan bishop and three bishops, all who had come from Mesopotamia some years before. They looked after approximately 30,000 families spread over about twenty villages in Southern India; they were all inland, along a mountain chain in Eastern Ghat which the people usually called The Sierra.
When the Christians of St. Thomas arrived in Cochin they brought their precious merchandise of pepper and other spices through a labyrinth of various lagoons and canals. They dressed like the Indians, they used the Syriac language in the liturgy, they were descendants of Christians baptized by St. Thomas, merchants who had arrived from Syria and had married Indian woman after arriving here.
The Current Situation
I think that we were also surprised, especially we who do not have a great knowledge regarding the history of the Church, when we heard the news that our Institute had started an endeavor in India; and we were even more surprised when we had the chance to meet some of our brethren who had already been to that country. They explained to us that the Christians of St. Thomas occupy an important place within the Catholic Church of that region, particularly in the State of Kerala where we opened our mission. It is therefore important for us to understand what their characteristics are and learn what relations co-exist between Catholics who practice different rites.
The Catholic Bishops' Conference of India is currently composed of 108 bishops of the Latin rite, 25 of the Syrio-Malabar rite and 5 of the Syrio-Malankar rite. There are, therefore, approximately 140 bishops, all of them (except for 7) were born in India. Three are cardinals. The Catholics number approximately 14 million, divided as follows: three and a half million are of the Syrio-Malabar rite; 320,000 of the Syrio-Malankar rite; and 10,180,000 of the Latin rite. Among all the inhabitants of India 2.43% are Catholic; 82.64% are Hindu; 11.36% are Muslims; 1.96% are Sikhs; the rest are made up of Buddhists, Giainists, and others.
Was St. Thomas Really in India?
The surprise of the first Portuguese missionaries was so great that it led us to do some research and investigate the sources. Certainly, since very ancient times, in the southern regions of India, particularly in Malabar, there has existed a Christianity with an evangelization dating back to early times; some authors say it goes back as far as St. Thomas. Already, in the first years of Christianity, and certainly before the end of the 2nd century, it has been demonstrated that the Christians of India had relationships with the Church of Edessa. This fact was shown by the discovery, in Edessa, of the work entitled Acta Judae-Thomae, and by a Gospel in Aramaic, or Syrian, found in India by St. Pantana. Up until the year 450 Indian Christianity remained united with the Church of Persia and Mesopotamia. But throughout this entire period, up until the 5th Century, there are no documents which allow us to follow its development. What can be said about this very ancient tradition? Authors, both Indian and foreign, do not agree. Most of them recognize its validity; however, contrary opinions are not lacking.
Starting from the 5th century one can find the beginnings of some good documentation which speaks about the contact between the Christians of St. Thomas and the Church of Babylon. From these documents it can be supposed that the Christian Church of Malabar had embraced the Nestorian faith. And perhaps also that it was the Nestorian missionaries who introduced the Christian faith into Malabar, as they did in other regions of Asia.
Nestor, Patriarch of Constantinople, had given rise to the heresy which bears his name because of his difficulty admitting that in Christ both human nature and divine nature are united in one single person, as was later defined in Nicaea.
After the Council of Ephesus Nestorianism disappeared almost completely; but, due to the influx of certain theologians, the Church of Persia professed Nestorianism up until the end of the 5th century. The Church of Rome has never pronounced any excommunication against the Nestorian Church nor vice versa.
The Church in Asia
This Church could be called Asiatic in the modern sense of the word. It was a missionary Church and sought a homeland in the mountainous masses of Central Asia. In the 5th century the Christians of Mesopotamia, persecuted and ill treated, moved towards more eastern regions. When the Arab invaders arrived in the 7th century those people who were of Persian origin found themselves in difficulty. In the first half of the 7th century China also received groups of Christians from the Church of Persia, as is attested by the Monolith of Singan-Fu which was erected in the year 781 and which describes the evangelization of that region. At the end of the 8th century and at the beginning of the 9th that entire region of central Asia became Christian, thanks to the work of the Nestorian Monks and of traveling merchants who obtained the conversion of tribes and villages, with their respective chiefs, under the direction and the pontificate of the famous Catolicos Timoteo I.
The greatest expansion took place in the years 1283-1317, when the Catolicos Jahballaha, who was of Mongolian descent, united the various missions of China and consecrated 75 bishops. This was the period in which the Church reached as many as 50 million faithful, organized in 30 ecclesiastical provinces.
Pope John Paul II, in his discourse of January 6, 1996 to the Bishops of the Syrio-Malabar Synod, said "The Syrio-Oriental tradition has distinguished itself for its nurturing of the Christian faith... and also for the missionary zeal which brought the Good News of salvation through Jesus Christ to the whole of your India and as far as distant China". But the decline of this Church was sudden. When the Catolicos Jahballaha died it was difficult to receive further news about the Nestorian Christians of the 14th and 15th centuries. The political unrest, above all at the time of Tamberlane, almost caused the "Asiatic Church" to disappear. In the 16th century one had to go towards the south of India (Malabar) to find significant groups of Christians (cf. Oriente Cristiano (The Christian East) by G. de Vries). Could this have been the origin of the Christianity in the southern region of India?
In the period of the Late Middle Ages the Christians of St. Thomas received a visit from John of Montecorvino on the occasion of his journey to China. Some Dominicans had set up a dioceses in Quilòn and various Franciscans visited several times between 1415 and 1438.
Bishops of Syria and of Persia arrived periodically to look after the Christians of St. Thomas, whose last contacts with the Nestorians of Babylon seem to have taken place in the second half of the 15th century when three bishops and one metropolitan were sent to them. One of those three bishops even had a chance to speak to St. Francis Xavier. After that, traveling and communications between India and the Near East were greatly reduced.
The Portuguese in the East Indies
The period of the discovery, or the meeting between the Orient and the Occident, gave rise to a delicate situation: Christians who had different hierarchies, languages and liturgies, and who had no knowledge of each other, were attempting to coexist. In the course of these years there was a continual interchange of meetings and conflicts, of reunions and divisions. Pope John Paul II, in the above mentioned speech to the Bishops of the Synod of the Syrio-Malabar Church, stated "When other Christians from the West came to your lands you gave them generous hospitality. For you they represented a new opening to the universality of the Church. But, unfortunately, the lack of understanding with regard to your cultural and religious heritage caused great suffering and inflicted a wound which has only partly been healed and which still, today, demands a high degree of holiness and wisdom on the part of the pastors of the Church who are responsible for the building of peace and brotherhood among all the followers of Christ".
Mar Jacob Abuna, was one of those three bishops who had reached Malabar in the second half of the 15th century and who took care of the Christians of the Cranganor region. A copy of the Syrian Book of Psalms arrived first and, later, a copy of the New Testament. From Cranganor, Mar Jacob visited his faithful who were spread out in the interior of the country. He had a peaceful nature and had always considered the Portuguese to be brothers in the faith, in spite of the differences to be found in the Latin rite, and he showed himself grateful for their protection in the face of the persecution by the Moors and the non-Moors alike. Humble and judicious, it was with pleasure that he received instructions from his Latin Rite, Dominican and Franciscan friends, and he suppressed many abuses among his Christians (cf. Schurhammer). In a letter to King John III of Portugal, to whom we shall refer again later, St. Francis Xavier wrote "Mar Jacob is doing a great job with the Christians of St. Thomas and has great respect for the customs of the Holy Mother Church of Rome": so we know that Mar Jacob was a bishop who, with all his faithful, had united himself to the Catholic Church of Rome.
The Christians of St. Thomas, to get away from the oppression of the Muslims, turned to Vasco da Gama in 1503 and asked to be put under his protection. They did not realize that this act was going to have repercussions regarding the progress of their Church. The Portuguese, who felt it was important for them to have control of communications with the East, reduced navigation between India and Egypt and with the rest of the Persian Gulf. In this way they also reduced the contacts between the Malabar Christians and their Syrian metropolitan bishops. This is why there is no further news of the arrival of any bishops after the first half of the 16th century.
Differences
Schurhammer has collected a great deal of evidence which shows with what lack of tact and with what overbearingness the Portuguese missionaries claimed to have the right to impose their liturgy, their language and their hierarchy on the Christians of St. Thomas. They started by using legal criteria, without paying any attention to that which was ecumenical. Many centuries were to pass in this way. While the Portuguese were able to impose their laws on a conquered country, the ecclesiastics based their behavior on the Bull of Callistus III which not only created the Patronage giving them authority, but which also granted the Grand Prior of the Militia of Christ jurisdiction over Africa and the southern regions of Asia. Therefore, there was competition between the Nestorian Patriarch and the Archbishop of Goa to see who would have jurisdiction over the Christians of St. Thomas. The Syrio-Malabar Patriarch wanted to assign the bishops' sees to subjects under his obedience, while the Portuguese Franciscans wanted to secure a Latin bishop for Angamale. They reached the point of issuing scandalous political threats which made the whole situation chaotic.
At this point we can quote one historian who describes the situation: "When inspecting the documents and the lawsuits of the 16th and 17th centuries it is tremendously surprising to see up to what point the Christians of St. Thomas were victims of the conflicts between the Franciscans and the Jesuits, between the Jesuits and the Carmalites, between the dioceses of Cochin and that of Angamale, between the jurisdiction of the Patronage and the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith". The Syrio-Malabar Christians emigrated to other zones up until the end of the 16th Century. Their motive is explained by Roz: "The religious of St. Francis, like the other ecclesiastics of the Latin rite who had been educated by them, behaved in such a way against the Armenians (Syrians) that no bishop or kassanar (priest) could celebrate the Mass unless it was in secret and away from Cranganor: they were prohibited from celebrating the Mass in the Greek way, with leavened bread. Also, married kassanars (priests) were not permitted to celebrate the Mass and Christians were obliged to start Lenten fasting only on Ash Wednesday and to eat fish during Lent, even though these people did not eat fish during Lent... The ecclesiastics obstinately prohibited some things which had no meaning for the salvation of souls, wanting only to change the customs of the people. There were also many harassments which the people suffered from some, even religious, who understood absolutely nothing which was not of the Latin Rite and who considered anything different to be heresy or superstition. The people were obliged to eat fish and to drink wine during Lent, going against their own rite, even though their way of fasting was in compliance with the sacred canons and with the fasts of the early Church".
St. Francis Xavier and the Christians of St. Thomas
On the contrary, one must admire the behavior of St. Francis Xavier. His first contact with the Christians of St. Thomas took place on the island of Socotora, before he even arrived in Goa. He wrote to his brethren in Rome (doc.15): "We have been to a big island which is called Socotora. The inhabitants of this island are Christians, according to them, and consider themselves as such. They are very pleased that they have Christian names and they feel honored to say that they are Christians. Every village has its "cacir", which is like our parish priest. These "cacirs" know many prayers for the choir, but they do understand the prayers which are recited because they are not in their language. I think they are in Chaldean. They say that St. Thomas converted in these parts. When they say their prayers they sometimes say hallelujah, hallelujah, and they pronounce it almost as we do. The governor did not want me to stay on that island, in order not to run the risk of my being taken by the Turks".
It should be noted that in the letters that he wrote when he was already in India, Xavier refers only to Syrio-Malabar Christians and not to others. This is because in Pescheria, as also in Malabar, he had dedicated himself to the poor fishermen who lived along a narrow coastal fringe, while the Christians of St. Thomas, who were spice merchants, lived in the interior. He did not speak of social differences or of motives of caste. Even though it was inevitable that he should meet up with some of them, either along the coast or during the pilgrimages to the tomb of the Apostle, Francis Xavier never insisted on speaking about the differences of liturgy, of hierarchy or of language. That was not his mission. His task was the conversion of the infidels.
There is, however, one very significant detail. In his letter to his brethren in Rome, in which he describes his way of catechizing in the Pescheria district, he writes: "We all say together: Holy Mary Mother of Jesus Christ, protect us for the sake of your son Jesus Christ". One can sense his care not to say "Mother of God", which could have offended the sensibility of the Nestorians or ex-Nestorians who had recently converted.
As soon as he arrived in India Xavier realized how great the devotion towards St. Thomas was and he added that name in the recital of the "confiteor". "There is a place" he wrote, "where some of the local people say the body of St. Thomas is buried. There is a very devoted Church and everyone claims that it is there that the body of the glorious Apostle is to be found". Xavier hurried there too and withdrew to pray all through the night. It was from Sato Tomé that he set off for the mission of Malacca.
He writes again: "Five leagues from this city of Cochin there is a beautiful college built by a father of the order of St. Francis named Fra Vincenzo. There are one hundred pupils, children from that area, who live in the fortress of the king (in Cangranor). Fra Vicenzo begged me to ask for a priest from our brotherhood to explain grammar and to preach to the inhabitants of that fortress. In the surrounding areas there are many Christians from the time of St. Thomas: there are more than 60 groups and the students in that college are the descendants of the first Christians" (doc.71).
And now comes the most surprising thing: Xavier, who had only had a few contacts with the Christians of St. Thomas on his return from Malaccar and the Molucche, wrote to King John III and pleaded fervently in favor of Mar Jacob. "A bishop from Armenia", he wrote, "Jacob Abuna by name, has been serving God and Y. H. (Your Highness) in this area for 45 years. He is old, virtuous and holy, but Y. H. did not find him pleasing, nor did almost anyone here. Down here it is only the fathers of St. Francis who accept him and, if it weren't for them, this good and holy venerable old man would already be at rest in God's bosom". One can understand from these words in what solitude and abandonment the Bishop of the Christians of St. Thomas was living. That is why St. Francis Xavier intervened. His diplomacy was very personal. He wrote thus to the king: "Y. H. must write to him entreating him to pray fervently for you, for Y. H. has more need to be helped by the bishop with his prayers than the bishop has of the temporal favors of Y. H.".
In St. Francis Xavier love and charity shown more brightly than ecclesiastical jurisprudence.