OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 151 his shrine, perhaps in the neighbourhood of Madras, was de- voutly visited by the ambassadors of Alfred, and their return with a cargo of pearls and spices rewarded the zeal of the English monarch, who entertained the largest projects of trade and discovei'y.^^^' When the Portuguese first opened the navi- gation of India, the Christians of St. Thomas had been seated for ages on the coast of Malabar, and the difference of their character and colour attested the mixture of a foreign race. In arms, in arts, and possibly in virtue, they excelled the natives of Hindostan ; the husbandmen cultivated the palm-tree, the merchants were enriched by the pepper-trade, the soldiers pre- ceded the twirs or nobles of Malabar, and their hereditary privileges were respected by the gratitude or the fear of the king of Cochin and the Zamorin himself They acknowledged a Gentoo sovereign, but they were governed, even in temporal concerns, by the bishop of Angamala. He still asccrted his ancient title of metropolitan of India, but his real jurisdiction was exercised in fourteen hundred churches, and he was en- trusted with the care of two hundred thousand souls. Their religion would have rendered them the firmest and most cordial a.d. isoo, *c. allies of the Portuguese, but the inquisitors soon discerned in the Christians of St. Thomas the unpardonable guilt of heresy and schism. Instead of owning themselves the subjects of the Roman pontiff, the spiritual and temporal monarch of the globe, they adhered, like their ancestors, to the communion of the Nestorian patriarch ; and the bishops whom he ordained at Mosul traversed the dangers of the sea and land to reach their diocese on the coast of Malabar. In their Syriac liturgy, the names of Theodore and Nestorius were piously commemorated ; they united their adoration of the two persons of Christ ; the martyrdom in the city of Maabar, or Meliapour, a league only from Madras (d'Anville, Ecclaircissemens sur I'lnde, p, 125), where the Portuguese founded an episcopal church under the name of .St. ThomiJ, and where the saint performed an annual miracle, till he was silenced by the profane neighbourhood of the English (La Croze, torn. ii. p. 7-16). [For the account of Christianity in India, given by Cosmas, see R. A. Lipsius, Die apokryphen Apostelgeschichten und Apostelle- genden, i. 283 sqq. Cp. above, vol. iv. p. 234, n. 78.] ^26 Neither the author of the Saxon Chronicle (A. n. 883) nor William of Malmesbury (de Gestis Regum Anglias, 1. ii. c. 4, p. 44) were capable, in the twelfth century, of inventing this extraordinary fact ; they are incapable of explain- ing the motives and measures of Alfred ; and their hasty notice serves only to provoke our curiosity. William of Malmesbury feels the difficulty of the enter- prise, quod quivis in hoc skcuIo miretur ; and I almost suspect that the English ambassadors collected their cargo and legend in Egypt. The loyal author has not enriched his Orosius (see Harrington's Miscellanies) with an Indian, as well as a Scandinavian, voyage.
