The Thomas Christians of India

On the southwest coast of India, in Kerala, an ancient Christian community has called itself the Church of Saint Thomas — the Mar Thoma Nasrani — for as far back as its records reach, worshipping in Syriac under the Church of the East and tracing its origin to the apostle’s mission. This file describes that living community: its self-identity, its East Syriac heritage and liturgy, its standing in Kerala society, and the later fragmentation into the several Churches that all still claim Thomas.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Apostle)

A People Named for the Apostle

The strongest witness to the antiquity of the Thomas tradition is not a manuscript but a community. Along the Malabar coast of Kerala lives a body of Christians who have, throughout their recorded history, named themselves for the apostle Thomas — the Mar Thoma Nasrani, the “Saint Thomas Christians” or “Syrian Christians” of India (Brown 1956; Mundadan 1984). Mar is the Syriac title “lord/saint,” Thoma is Thomas, and Nasrani (from Nazarene) is the term for Christians long used across the Syriac and Islamic East. Whatever a historian concludes about the apostolic kernel of their origin-story (see The India Mission Assessed), the community itself is undeniably ancient and undeniably bound, in its own self-understanding, to Thomas: its memory of the apostle is not a borrowed legend but the core of its identity (Frykenberg 2008; Brown 1956).

The East Syriac Heritage

For most of their documented history the Saint Thomas Christians were ecclesiastically and liturgically part of the Church of the East — the East Syriac, or “Nestorian,” Church centered in Mesopotamia and Persia — receiving bishops from its catholicos and worshipping in the Syriac language with the East Syriac rite (the liturgy of Addai and Mari) (Brown 1956; Frykenberg 2008). This connection is itself historically secure and of great importance: from at least the early centuries through the sixteenth, the Malabar Church was a province of the great Syriac Christianity of the East, the same tradition that produced Ephrem and Isaac the Syrian and that carried the Gospel across Persia to China (see St. Isaac the Syrian). The Syriac liturgical and cultural link is the firm ground on which the more contested apostolic claim stands: the community was unquestionably an outpost of Syriac Christianity, and Syriac Christianity unquestionably remembered Thomas as the apostle of the East (see The Eastern Mission Traditions).

Standing in Kerala Society

The Saint Thomas Christians held, by tradition and by the testimony of medieval and early-modern observers, an honored and high place in the caste society of Kerala — often described as enjoying a status near that of the upper castes, with privileges, social respect, and a tradition of having been received and granted rights by local rulers (Brown 1956; Frykenberg 2008). Their origin-tradition includes the conversion of high-caste (Brahmin) families by the apostle, and the community preserved a strong sense of noble descent and of belonging to the land from ancient times (Mundadan 1984; see The Indian Church Tradition). Copper-plate grants and other documents from the early medieval period attest the community’s rights and standing, anchoring its presence in Kerala well before the European arrival, even where they do not reach back to the apostolic age (Frykenberg 2008; Mundadan 1984).

The Coming of the Portuguese and the Fragmentation

The unity of the Malabar Church under the Church of the East was broken after the Portuguese reached India at the end of the fifteenth century. The Latin Church, encountering an ancient Christian community it regarded as schismatic and “Nestorian,” sought to bring it under Roman obedience — a process that culminated in the Synod of Diamper (Udayamperur) in 1599, which Latinized the liturgy, severed the link to the Church of the East, and provoked deep resentment (Frykenberg 2008; Brown 1956). In 1653 a large part of the community repudiated Portuguese control in the Coonan Cross Oath (Koonan Kurishu Sathyam), the decisive rupture from which the modern divisions flow (Frykenberg 2008). From these events descend the several distinct Churches that all still trace themselves to Saint Thomas: the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church (in communion with Rome, East Syriac rite); the Malankara Churches, some of which entered communion with the Syriac Orthodox (Oriental Orthodox) Church of Antioch and adopted the West Syriac rite, while others became the Mar Thoma Syrian Church (a reformed body) or the autocephalous Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church (Frykenberg 2008; Brown 1982).

Relation to the Eastern Orthodox Church

A clarification proper to this reference: the Saint Thomas Christians, in their various branches, are not part of the Eastern Orthodox communion. Historically they belonged to the Church of the East; their Orthodox-aligned branches today belong to the Oriental Orthodox family (the non-Chalcedonian Churches in communion with the Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, and Ethiopian Churches), not to the Eastern Orthodox Church (Frykenberg 2008; Brown 1982). This reference guide venerates Thomas as an apostle of the one undivided Church of the apostolic age, and honors the Saint Thomas Christians as an ancient community bearing his name; it does not thereby assert ecclesial communion with the present-day Indian Churches, whose Christological and jurisdictional history lies outside the scope of this collection (cf. Christology on the Chalcedonian definition). The point relevant here is historical: a real, ancient, Syriac Christian people of Kerala has borne the apostle’s name throughout its recorded life.

Why the Community Matters to the Tradition

For the question of Thomas’s mission, the living community supplies what no text can: continuity. Texts can be late, legendary, or borrowed; a people that has called itself the Church of Saint Thomas for the whole span of its recorded history, worshipped in the Syriac that carried the Thomas tradition, and held a detailed local memory of the apostle’s coming, is evidence of a different kind (Mundadan 1984; Brown 1956). It does not by itself establish the apostolic mission as historical fact — the community’s own records of its origin are late and the apostolic claim is the most contested element (see The India Mission Assessed). But it gives the tradition a rootedness in a real Church and a real land that distinguishes it from the purely literary legends of other apostles, and it is the chief reason serious historians treat the Indian mission of Thomas as a question worth weighing rather than a fable to be dismissed.

See Also

References

  • Brown, Leslie W. The Indian Christians of St. Thomas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956; rev. 1982. (The community, its Syriac heritage, and its history.)
  • Mundadan, A. Mathias. History of Christianity in India, Vol. I: From the Beginning up to the Middle of the Sixteenth Century. Bangalore: Church History Association of India, 1984.
  • Frykenberg, Robert Eric. Christianity in India: From Beginnings to the Present. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. (Diamper, the Coonan Cross Oath, and the modern Churches.)