INTRODUCTION

The Syrian Church in Malabar is an institution which, on account of its antiquity, its wonderful preservation of the Syriac Scriptures and Liturgy, and the persecution its bishops suffered under the Portuguese, has, at all times, attracted the interest of the historian, roused the curiosity of the traveller, and elicited the wonder and admiration of the antiquarian. It is not astonishing, therefore, that several eminent writers, actuated with the best of motives, have turned their attention to the history of this interesting Church, and have produced quite a mass of literature on the subject. But, either because they had no access to reliable authorities and trustworthy documents, or because they did not fully grasp the real significance of certain events, or lastly because they had not sufficient opportunities of making local investigations and of becoming acquainted with the people and the Church they were writing about,-the fact is that even the best of these historians have made many erroneous statements. One such error seems to me to tower above all others, and is most commonly met with not merely in Magazines¹ and Reviews², but also in serious and learned works intended to enlighten the student of the history of this Church. This error is contained in the oft-repeated statement that the Syrian Church in the fifth century fell into the Nestorian heresy, and remained Nestorian till the Synod of Diamper in 1599, when it accepted Catholicism.

This statement I have examined in the following pages, and found to be erroneous and contrary to the facts of history. With this end in view, I have had to leave off as irrelevant to my purpose, much interesting matter specially concerning the history of the first five centuries of this Church. For the same reason I have said nothing about the famous Christian copper plate tablets. I have divided the subject into four chapters. In the first, I have attempted to confirm the origin of this Church from St. Thomas, because this is to some degree the basis of my thesis. In the second chapter, I have pointed out the sources from which the error originated, and have added a short sketch of the history of the Eastern Church in so far as it helps to understand the state of the Indian Church in those remote centuries. The third chapter I have devoted to a review of the Malabar Church from the origin of Nestorianism to the Synod of Diamper, with a view to show that, till the Synod, it had not succumbed to Nestorian or any other heresy. In the last chapter, I have endeavoured to show, from the very decrees of the Synod, that this Church could not at that time have been Nestorian.

CHAPTER I.

St. Thomas, the Apostle of India.

It is generally admitted by historians that from very early times there existed a community of Christians on the remote shores of Southern India. The question of their origin, however, seems to have occasioned a difference of opinion. Some authors assert that this community was planted here towards the latter half of the fourth century bya Syrian merchant, Thomas of Cana; others hold that Christianity was first preached in these parts in the fifth century by Nestorian Missionaries from Persia; while a third class of writers account for the origin of these Christians by the arrival in their midst of St. Thomas, one of the Apostles of Christ.

This last view seems to be the more probable one. Eusebius, the Father of Church History, speaks of Christians in India in 190 a.d. He says that, at their request, the philosopher Pantaenus was sent to India by Demetrius, Bishop of Alexandria. And Pantaenus bears witness to the fact that he saw with these Christians ...........

CHAPTER II.

We have seen in the first chapter that the balance of opinion is on the side of the Apostolic origin of the Syrian Church of Malabar. We shall now enquire whether this Church founded by the Apostle has always followed his directions and kept the Faith taught by him, or whether, in the fifth and sixth centuries or later, it fell into the Nestorian or any other heresy. We hope to establish that this Church followed the doctrines of the Catholic Religion.........................

In this chapter we shall investigate the state of the Indian Church from the close of the fifth century to the beginning of the seventeenth, and we shall pay special attention to the religion of the bishops who have governed this Church.
The first historical notice of the Indian Church after a Nestorian Catholicos had occupied the see of Seleucia, is given by Cosmas Indicopleustes who visited India in 522 a.d. In his "Christian Topography"78 he says:¾ "We have found the Church not destroyed but very widely diffused and the whole world filled with the doctrine of Christ which is being day by day propagated and the Gospel preached over the whole earth.This, as I have seen with my own eyes..................

We intend in this chapter to point out briefly that some of the decrees of the Synod of Diamper, which have been presumably drawn up to expose and correct the so-called Nestorian errors of the St. Thomas Christians, as well as the events that preceded the Synod itself, are the best and most obvious proofs that these Christians were Catholics even before the Synod.

In the year 1594, Father Alexius de Menezes, a young man of thirty-five, was appointed Archbishop....................