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Where did Saint Thomas landed in India?
Where did the Apostle Thomas landed?
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Did Thomas the great travel to India?
Feb 19, 2016 · Thomas Christians hold that the Apostle Thomas landed on India’s Malabar Coast then went on to establish one of the world’s oldest Christian communities.
May 18, 2018 · There is more evidence of St. Thomas’s life in India than anywhere else; in 1956 Pope Pius XII granted minor basilica status to San Thome Cathedral in Madras.
Roman trade in the subcontinent according to the Periplus Maris Erythraei, 1st century CE. We must take the words of the “Saint Thomas Christians of India” (as they are called) that “the Apostle Thomas landed in Muziris (Cranganore) on the Kerala coast in AD 52 and was martyred in Mylapore near Madras in AD 72.”.
According to traditional accounts of the Saint Thomas Christians of India, the Apostle Thomas landed in Muziris on the Kerala coast in AD 52 and was martyred in Mylapore, near Madras, Tamil Nadu in AD 72. The port was destroyed in 1341 by a massive flood that realigned the coasts.
- Overview
- The Thomas tradition
- Early Christian migrants
- Relations with Rome and schism
Thomas Christians, indigenous Indian Christian groups who have traditionally lived in Kerala, a state on the Malabar Coast, in southwestern India. Claiming to have been evangelized by St. Thomas the Apostle, Thomas Christians ecclesiastically, liturgically, and linguistically represent one of the oldest Christian traditions in the world, particular...
By ancient belief and canonical doctrine, Thomas Christians trace their origins to the arrival of St. Thomas at Malankara, on a lagoon near present-day Kodungallur (Cranganore; near ancient Muziris) in 52 ce and to congregations he established in seven villages. That the historicity of this advent cannot be verified does not gainsay evidence—such a...
Among waves of Christian refugees who later settled on the Malabar Coast was a community of 400 Syriac-speaking Jewish-Christian families from Uruhu, near Babylon. That community—traditionally said to have been led by Thomas Kināyi (also called Thomas of Cana), a merchant-warrior; Uruhu Mar Yusuf, a bishop; and four pastors—settled on the south bank of the Periyar River. That arrival of the Malankara Nazarani, as they are referred to in Malayalam (Nazarani is derived from a Syriac term for Nazarene, indicating a Christian), in the 4th century is celebrated in their epics, such as the Muraroruvant Kalpanayala and the Nallororsilam and in the song “Kottayam Valiyapally.” The exclusive “Southists” (Tekkumbhagar), as distinct from the older “Northists” (Vatakkumbhagar), blended Christian faith and Hindu culture with Syriac doctrine, ecclesiology, and ritual. The local social status of the Southists paralleled that of elite Brahman and Nayar castes in Kerala. Other Christian refugees, fleeing Islamic oppression in Arab and Persian lands, came to Kerala beginning in the 7th and 8th centuries.
India’s ancient Christians looked to the Assyrian Church of the East (often disparaged as “Nestorian” by Western or Roman Catholic Christians, who associated it with the anathematized bishop Nestorius) and its catholicos (or patriarch) for ecclesiastical authority and to centres of learning in Edessa and Nisibis for instruction.
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As the Thomas Christian community grew, its members enjoyed about a millennium of theological and ecclesiastical cohesion and unity. That state of affairs changed after the Portuguese arrival. In April 1498 two Thomas Christians piloted Vasco da Gama’s small fleet from Melinda (East Africa) to Calicut (present-day Kozhikode), an event recorded by two Thomas Christian metrans (Malayam for “bishop”). Half a century later two more Thomas Christians made it possible for the Jesuit missionary St. Francis Xavier to bring shoreline fisherfolk, the Paravars and Mukkavars, into the Roman Catholic fold. Nevertheless, harmonious relations with the Catholics did not last. After 1561, Thomas Christians were branded heretics by the Goa Inquisition, which had been established under Portuguese rule. The 1599 Synod of Diamper (Udayamperoor) anathematized the catholicos of Chaldea and all Christians of India who did not submit to Rome. Ancient churches were destroyed, libraries were burned, and clerics from Mesopotamia were intercepted, imprisoned, and executed.
Yet, eventually, ancient skills of silent resistance and subversion wore out one prelate after another. In 1653 anti-Catholic kattanars met at Koonen (“Crooked”) Cross, a granite monument at Mattancheri. There they swore an oath to never again accept another farangi (European) prelate and installed their own high metran (patriarch). Archdeacon (Ramban) Parambil Tumi became their first indigenous prelate, taking the title Mar Thoma I (Mar is a Syriac term meaning “Saint”). A schism occurred, with some Thomas Christian clergy remaining Roman Catholic while others divided between East Syrian (more closely affiliated with the Assyrian Church of the East) and West Syrian (called Jacoba, after the evangelist Jacob Baradaeus) authority. The unity that Thomas Christians had enjoyed for a thousand years ended in the proliferation of ever more denominations.
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- Robert Eric Frykenberg
Jul 5, 2022 · There is more evidence of St. Thomas’s life in India than anywhere else; in 1956 Pope Pius XII granted minor basilica status to San Thome Cathedral in Madras. Serena Fass has collated traditions handed down over almost 2,000 years, along with a physical trail that includes some very old Crosses.
Saint Thomas took the Virgin Mother’s belt with him to India, and there it became the most valued treasure of his disciples, whose descendants in time came to be known as Saint Thomas Christians. A few centuries ago, in times of upheaval in India, it was taken into Syria, where during subsequent troubles in that country it disappeared.
