THOMAS
682
THOMAS
bishops, assigning to one the name of Thomas and to
the other that of John. The two bishops started on
their journey to India accompanied by the two messen-
gers. On arrival they were received with great joy
by the people, and the bishops commenced consecra-
ting altars and ordaining a large number of priests "as
they had been for a long time deprived of bishops".
One of them, John, remained in India, while the
other, Thomas, accompanied by Jo.seph, one of the
two messengers, returned to Mesopotamia, taking
with them the offerings collected for the patriarch.
Joseph retiu-ned to India in 1493, but Thomas re-
mained in Mesopotamia.
After about ten years, when the next patriarch or- dained three other bishops for India, Thomas went back with them. These new bishops were also chosen from the monks, one was named Jaballa (he was the metropolitan), the second was named Denha, and the third Jacob. These four bishops took ship from Or- mus and landed at Kananur; they found there some twenty Portuguese who had recently arrived and pre- sented themselves to them, said they were Cliristians, explained their condition and rank, and were kindly treated. Of this large number of bishops only one remained to work, and this was Mar Jacob; the other three, including the metropolitan, after a short time returned to their country. Gouvea adds that they were either dissatisfied with their charge or did not like the country. The Portuguese writers mention only two bishops as residents, John who had come before their arrival in India and Mar Jacob. Nothing further is known of John, but Jacob li\'ed in the coun- try till his death. St. Francis Xavier makes a very pretty elogium of him in a letter written to King John III of Portugal on 26 Jan., 1549. "Mar Jacob [or Jaoome Abuna, as St. Francis styles him) for forty-five years has served God and your Highness in these parts, a very old, a virtuous, and a holy man, and at the same time unnoticed by your Highness and by al- most all in India. God rewards him ... He is no- ticed only by the Fathers of St. Francis, and they take so good care of him that nothing more is wanted. . . . He has laboured much among the Christians of St. Thomas, and now in his old age he is very obedient to the customs of the Holy Mother Church of Rome. " This elogium of St. Francis suras up his career for the forty-five years he worked in Malabar (1.504-49). He came out as a Nestorian, remained such during his early years, but gradually as he came in touch with the Catholic missionaries he allowed them to preach in his churches and to instruct his people; in his old age he left Cranganore and went to live in the Fran- ciscan convent at Cochin and there he died in 1549. There remain two others — the last of the Mesopota- mian prelates who presided over these Christians — Mar Joseph and Mar Abraham; their career wiH be detailed further on.
X. When Cosmas gave us the information of the existence of a Christian community in "Male (Mala- bar) where the pepper is grown" he also supplied us with additional details: that they have a bishop resid- ing at Kalyan; tliat in Taprobano [Ceylon] "an island of interior India where the Indian Ocean is s tuatcd" there is a "Cliristian Church with clergy and the faithful; similarly in the island of Dioscordis [Socotra] in the same Indian Ocean". Then he enumerates tlie churches in Arabia Felix, Bactria, and among the Huns; and all these churches are by him represented to be controlled by the Metropolitan of Persia. Now at that time the holder of this dignity was Patrick, the tutor, as .-Vssemani designates him, of Tliomas of Edessa, a prominent Nestorian to which sect C^>s^las also belonged; hence his interest in supjjlying all these details. The bishop and clergy whom the Metropoli- tan, Patrick, would send out to all the above-men- tioned places and churches would and nuist have been undoubtedly infected with one and the same heresy.
Hence it is quite safe to conclude that at the time of
the visit of Cosmas to India (a. d. 530-35) all these
churches, as also the Church in India, were holding
the Nestorian doctrine of their bishops and priests.
Nor should this historical fact cause surprise wlien we
take into consideration the opportunities, the bold at-
titude and violent measures adopted by the promoters
of this heresy after expulsion from the Roman Em-
pire. When the Emperor Zeno ordered Cyrus, Bishop
of Edessa, to purge his diocese of that heresy (a. d.
4S9), the Nestorians were forced to seek refuge across
the Roman boundary into Persia. Among them were
the banished professors and students cf the Persian
School of Edessa, the centre of the Nestorian error,
and they found refuge and protection with Barsumas,
Metropolitan of Nisibis, himself a fanatical adherent
of Nestorius. Barsumas at this time also held from
the Persian king the office of governor of the frontier.
With the influence Barsumas possessed at court it was an easy thing for him to make the king, already so disposed, believe that the actual bishops holding sees in his territory were friendly to his enemies, the Ro- mans, and that it would be better to replace them by men he knew who would owe allegiance only to the Persian monarch. This stratagem rapidly succeeded in capturing most of those sees; and the movement be- came so strong that although Barsumas predecea,sed Acka (Acacius), the occupant of the chief see of Seleu- cia, a Catholic, yet a Nestorian was selected to suc- ceed the latter (a. d. 496). Thus within the short space of seven years the banished heresy sat mistress on the throne of Seleucia, in a position to force every existing see eastward of the Roman Empire to em- brace the heresy and to secure its permanence. Thus the Indian Church suffered the same fate which befell the Churches of Persia, and by 530-35 we find that she has a Nestorian prelate consecrated in Persia and pre- siding at Kalyan over her future destiny. If further proof is wanted to uphold the above finding, we offer the following historical facts of the control exercised by the Nestorian Patriarch. In 650-60, as above stated, Jesuab of Adiabene claimed authority over India and reproached Simeon of Revardshir, the Met- ropolitan of Persia, for not having sent bishops to India and so deprived that Church of the succession of her ministry*. In 714-28 Saliba Zacha, another Nestorian Patriarch, raised the see of India to metro- politan rank. Again in 857 Theodosius, another Nes- torian Patriarch, included the See of India among the exempted which, owing to distance from the patri- archal see, should in future send letters of communion but once in six years. This ruling was subse- quently incorporated in a synodal canon.
If we look to the general tradition of the St. Thomas Christians it will be found that all their prelates came from Babylon, the ancient residence as they say, of the Patriarch or CathoUcos of the East. It is further known and acknowledged by them that whenever they remained deprived of a bishop for a long time they used to send messengers to that Patriarchate asking that bishops be sent out to them. Sufficient proof of this practice has been given above when dis- cussing the arrival of four bishops in 1504. The Holy See was fully aware that the Malabar Christians were under the control of the Nestorian Patri.arch. When Julius III gave Sulaka his Bull of nomination as the Catholic Chaldean patriarch, he distinctly laid down the same extent of jurisdiction which had been claimed anil controlled by his late Nestorian predecessor; hence in tlie last clause it is distinctly laid down: "In Sin Massin et Calicuth et tota India." It becomes necessary to fix this historical truth clearly, because during this di'iiade some of the younger generation in Malabar have Ix-giui to deny this historical fact. They would wish people to believe that all the Portu- guese missionaries, bisho])s, i)rie,sts, and writers were completely mistaken when they styled them Nesto-
