Chapter I
THE
TRADITION OF ST THOMAS
The Christian Church, as distinct from the Old Israel, arose
out of the events described in the central portion of the Apostles’ Creed, that
is to say, the birth, passion and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. These
happened in the small country of Palestine on the south-eastern shore of the
Mediterranean Sea in the first century A.D., and the history of the Church is
the story of their consequences throughout the world. It was as i f a rock had
been flung into a pool of water, causing first a great splash at the place
where it fell and then a series of waves spreading out in all directions in
widening circles. So the effects of the birth, life, death, resurrection and
ascension of our Lord spread outwards from Palestine through the work of his
apostles, their helpers and successors, who planted the Church in country after
country, until it had penetrated into all five continents.
The expansion of which we read in the New Testament and in
most Church History books is that which took place in the Roman Empire, that is
in the lands surrounding the Mediterranean Sea. There, chiefly through the
labours of St Paul and his companions,—though not through them alone—, the
Church spread in a wonderfully short time through Asia Minor, Macedonia and
Greece. Through others it reached Antioch, Alexandria and Rome itself. It
continued to spread after the death of the apostles to every province of the
Empire, encountering from time to time the hostility of the populace or of the
government and enduring fearful times of persecution, until in the fourth
century the emperors themselves became Christians and made Christianity the
established religion of the Empire. Thereafter different lines of development
began to appear, partly because of differences of race, language and politics,
partly because of differences in theology. On the one hand there was the
Latin-speaking Church of the western half of the Empire, with Rome as its
centre and the Pope as its chief guru. This Church, as centuries passed, won
the barbarian peoples of western and northern Europe to Christianity, and (much
later) gave the Faith to America; but in the course of history it first became
estranged from the Church of the eastern Empire and then split up into Roman
Catholics and Protestants in the sixteenth century. On the other hand there was
the Greek- speaking Church of the eastern half of the Empire. It had its early
centres at Antioch and Alexandria, presided over by their Patriarchs, but later
became based on Constantinople, the capital of the eastern Roman Empire. There
it was ruled by the Emperor as well as the Patriarch of that city. In time it
became separated from the Church of the west. It is commonly known as the Greek
or the Orthodox or the Byzantine Church. This Church in the ninth and tenth
centuries brought the barbarian nations of south-eastern Europe and Russia to
Christianity; but before then it had lost most of the Christians of Egypt and
Syria, in the fifth and sixth centuries through theological dis agreements and
in the seventh century through invasion and conquest by the Mohammedan Arabs as
well. The predominant Churches in those countries, speaking Coptic in Egypt and
Syriac in Syria, and known as Monophysite, became separated from the Orthodox
Church.
But besides these lines of development within the Roman
Empire there were other lines of expansion outside the Empire southwards and
eastwards. From Alexandria the Church spread to Ethiopia in the continent of
Africa. Through Antioch and West Syria it spread to East Syria, and took root
in the land between the rivers Euphrates and Tigris which we call Mesopotamia
and its modern inhabitants call Iraq. This was border country between the Roman
Empire and the Persian, and it fairly soon passed into the possession of the
Persians, at whose hands the Christians had to endure terrible persecutions.
Largely because of this political difference, but also because of theology, the
Church in the Persian dominions became separated from Christians further west
in the fifth century, and thereafter lived a life of its own. It is known as
the Nestorian Church, and in its early days it had a great record of missionary
enterprise not only in the parts of Persia east of Mesopotamia, but throughout
Asia, even as far as China. Because of the conquests of Muslim Arabs and Turks
and other peoples of Central Asia most of the churches planted by the
Nestorians have perished, the Nestorian Church itself has almost disappeared,
and the story of the eastern expansion of Christianity is very little known.
It was one of the early eastward movements that first brought
Christianity to India. According to tradition it was brought in this has been
the constant tradition of the Syrian Christians of Malabar, and it has been
widely believed in the West also that this apostle’s sphere of work was in
India. Unfortunately, however, we have no contemporary records to establish the
matter beyond doubt. We know of St Thomas from the Gospels, which are books written
in the century in which he lived by men among whom the memory of the Twelve was
fresh, some of whom may well have known him personally. They do not tell us
much about him; but they do at least supply us with firm contemporary evidence
that there really was such a person, and that he was one of those chosen by our
Lord as his apostles, and they shew us two or three glimpses of his
personality. Of his mission to India on the other hand we have no similar
record dating from his own life-time. No book or inscription or monument of the
first century or even of the second remains to tell us of this; it is not until
the third century that the ancient Christian writers begin to mention it, and
even then they give no more than slight allusions, never a full account.
Consequently there is much uncertainty about the actual history of St Thomas,
and it is necessary to inquire what grounds there are for believing that he
came to India and founded the Church here.
It .will be convenient to state first the Syrian Christian
tradition, and then to see what early Christian writers have to say about the
activities of St Thomas and the origins of Christianity in India. The tradition
current among the Syrians is as follows.1 St Thomas, after visiting Socotra (an
island in the Arabian Sea off the north-east coast of Africa), landed at
Cranganore (Kodangaluru), on the Periyar estuary north of Cochin, in about 53
a.d. .He is said to have preached to the Jewish colony settled there and to
have made converts both among them and among their neighbours. Travelling in
the coastal region southwards he founded churches in seven places, Maliankara
(near Cranga nore), Palayur, Parur, Gokamangalam, Niranam, Chayal and Quilon,
in four of which places Syrian churches still exist.2 He is further said to
have ordained presbyters for the churches from four Brahmin families called
Sankarapuri, Pakalomattam, Kalli and Kaliankal. After this he is said to have
crossed over to the east coast and to have travelled eastwards from there to
Malacca and even to China, and finally to have returned to Mylapore, now part
of the city of Madras (which did not exist in the first century). Here his
preaching aroused the hostility of the Brahmins, who raised a riot against him,
during which he was speared to death. The year of his martyrdom is said to have
been about 72 a.d.
This was the tradition found among the Christians of Malabar
by the Portuguese, when they arrived and settled in India in the sixteenth
century. It must, of course, have been current long before then; but the
Portuguese accounts of what they were told seem to be the earliest literary
form of the Indian tradition now surviving.
Some two hundred years earlier the Venetian traveller Marco
Polo, who was in South India in 1288 and again in 1292, was shown ‘at a certain
little town’, which he does not name, a tomb reputed to be that of St Thomas;
it was then a place of pilgrimage for both Christians and Mohammedans. It is
usually supposed that the ‘little town* was Mylapore. At any rate it was there
that certain Portuguese in 1517, who had come across an old chapel carved with
crosses, were told by a Mohammedan that it was built over the place where St
Thomas was buried. Other European travellers who visited South India in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries2 refer to a church of St Thomas, and one of
them, Nicolo de Conti, locates it at ‘Malpuria, a maritime city situated in the
second gulf beyond India* (i.e. the Bay of Bengal). But the earliest witness
from India to a shrine of St Thomas in this country is a certain Theodore in
the sixth century, who told Gregory, Bishop of Tours (in France), of a
monastery and a fine church in that part of India where the saint was
originally buried, which he professed to have seen himself. Gregory of Tours
wrote in 590 A.D.
Such is the tradition
originating in India. Let us now turn to what the Early Church outside India
has to say of the activities of St Thomas. Unfortunately the Fathers give very
little information about him. At first indeed they give none at all; but from
about the middle of the third century allusions begin. There is general
agreement that his sphere of work lay somewhere in the East, but some
discrepancy as to the country. The prevailing opinion is that it was India;
this is the view accepted by Fathers writing towards the end of the fourth
century,— St Ambrose, St Gregory of Nazianzus, St Ephraem the Syrian and St
Jerome. With the exception of St Ephraem their references are very slight; they
merely bring in St Thomas by way of illustration while writing of other things.
It will be sufficient - to quote one example from St Jerome which may stand as
typical of all the others. His subject is the omnipresence of our Lord after
the Resurrection, and he says:
He dwelt in all
places: with Thomas in India, with Peter at Rome, with Paul in Illyricum, with
Titus in Crete, with Andrew in Achaia, with each apostolic man in each and all
countries.
St Ephraem was a hymn-writer of Syria, who spent the last ten
years of his life at Edessa (the modem Urfa in Turkey), one of the chief
centres of Christianity in Eastern Syria, which claimed to be the resting place
of the bones of St Thomas brought back from India by a Syrian merchant. An
annnal festival of St Thomas in commemoration of this event was celebrated
there on July 3rd, and is still kept in the Syrian churches. St Ephraem has
several hymns in honour of St Thomas, in which he sings of the apostle’s
preaching of the Gospel in India, of the bringing of his bones to Edessa, of
the honour that the Edessene Church got thereby, and of miracles wrought at the
shrine.
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