The Martyrdom at Mylapore

The tradition records that Thomas ended his life a martyr in India, run through with a spear on a hill near Mylapore on the Coromandel coast — the site of the “Little Mount” and St. Thomas Mount near modern Chennai — after converting the wife and son of King Misdaeus (Mazdai) and provoking the king’s wrath. This file reports the martyrdom as the Acts of Thomas and the local Indian tradition record it, distinguishing the apocryphal narrative from the continuously remembered tomb-site.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Apostle)

The Narrative of the Acts

The Acts of Thomas close with the apostle’s martyrdom, the thirteenth act (Acts of Thomas 159–170; trans. Klijn 2003). The setting is the realm of King Misdaeus (in the Syriac, Mazdai), whose queen Tertia, son Vizan, and the noblewoman Mygdonia the apostle has converted and persuaded to a life of continence — the breaking of the royal marriage being, in the Acts’ encratite logic, the height of the Gospel and the immediate cause of the king’s fury (Acts of Thomas 82–158; see The Acts of Thomas). The enraged Misdaeus orders Thomas seized. The apostle is led out of the city to a hill, where soldiers run him through with their spears (in the Acts, four soldiers pierce him together), and he dies giving thanks and commending his converts to the Lord (Acts of Thomas 159–168; trans. Klijn 2003). The converts bury him; and afterward, the Acts relate, when one of the king’s sons is afflicted, dust from the apostle’s grave brings healing, and Misdaeus himself at last turns to the faith (Acts of Thomas 170; trans. Klijn 2003). This narrative is the source of the martyrdom tradition and is reported here as the Acts’ own account — apocryphal in frame, and not asserted as history (METHODOLOGY §3.5).

The Spear and the Iconography

The instrument of the martyrdom — the spear (or lance) — became the apostle’s defining attribute. In Orthodox and Western iconography Thomas is regularly shown with a spear, and sometimes with the carpenter’s square or rule, recalling both his death and the carpenter-trade of the Acts (the spear as Thomas’s attribute is standard in the iconographic tradition). The manner of death — pierced with a lance — carries an evident resonance with the Passion he had insisted on touching: the apostle who demanded to thrust his hand into the spear-wound in his Lord’s side (John 20:25) is, in the tradition, himself slain by the spear, his body pierced as his Lord’s had been. The hymnography and homiletic tradition draw out this parallel, the disciple’s death conformed to the Master’s (cf. the synaxarion notices for October 6).

Mylapore and the Mounts

The Indian tradition locates the martyrdom and the tomb with precision on the Coromandel (southeast) coast, at Mylapore — now a part of Chennai (Madras) — and at the nearby hills that bear the apostle’s name: the Little Mount (Chinnamalai), traditionally the place of his prayer and refuge, and St. Thomas Mount (Periyamalai/Parangimalai), traditionally the place of his death by the spear (Mundadan 1984; Medlycott 1905). At Mylapore stands San Thome, the cathedral built over the traditional tomb of the apostle, a site of pilgrimage and the focus of the local Thomas-martyrdom tradition (Frykenberg 2008; Mundadan 1984). The Mylapore tomb-tradition is continuous and locally rooted, and it is attested by medieval travelers — Marco Polo in the late thirteenth century describes the shrine of Saint Thomas in this region and the veneration there, and earlier and later western and eastern pilgrims report the tomb (Marco Polo, Travels, on the shrine of Saint Thomas; cited in Medlycott 1905; Mundadan 1984). The continuity of the tomb-site is one of the firmer elements of the Indian tradition, distinct in character from the apocryphal narrative of the Acts.

The Northern and Southern Settings

A difficulty already noted (see The Mission to India) recurs here: the Acts of Thomas set the early mission in the Indo-Parthian northwest (King Gundaphar) but the martyrdom in the realm of Misdaeus, while the living Indian tradition fixes the death firmly in the south at Mylapore. Whether the Acts’ Misdaeus is to be located in the south, whether the tradition fused a northern mission with a southern martyrdom, or whether the southern tomb-tradition developed independently and was later harmonized with the Acts, is debated (Mundadan 1984; the question is taken up in The India Mission Assessed). For the present file the descriptive point holds: the Acts narrate a martyrdom by the spear under King Misdaeus, and the Indian tradition locates that martyrdom and the tomb at Mylapore on the southeast coast.

How the Church Holds the Martyrdom

The Orthodox Church venerates Thomas as a holy apostle and martyr, and the spear-martyrdom is part of his received memory, reflected in icon and hymn. An Orthodox reader holds the martyrdom-tradition with the same discernment applied to the mission: the fact that Thomas died a martyr in the East is the Church’s firm tradition, and the tomb at Mylapore is a continuously venerated site; the details — Misdaeus, Tertia, the four soldiers, the dust that healed — come from the apocryphal Acts of Thomas and are reported as that text’s narrative, not certified as history (METHODOLOGY §3.5; see The Acts of Thomas). The relics that followed the martyrdom — the tomb at Mylapore, the translation to Edessa, the later journey to Ortona — are the subject of the companion file, and there the evidence is firmer, because the cult of the relics is attested by datable witnesses (see The Relics and Edessa).

See Also

References

  • The Acts of Thomas 159–170. Trans. A. F. J. Klijn, The Acts of Thomas: Introduction, Text, and Commentary. 2nd rev. ed. Leiden: Brill, 2003. (The martyrdom by the spear under King Misdaeus/Mazdai.)
  • Medlycott, A. E. India and the Apostle Thomas. London: David Nutt, 1905. (Mylapore, the Mounts, and the medieval testimonies.)
  • Mundadan, A. Mathias. History of Christianity in India, Vol. I. Bangalore: Church History Association of India, 1984. (The Mylapore tomb-tradition; the northern/southern problem.)
  • Frykenberg, Robert Eric. Christianity in India: From Beginnings to the Present. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. (San Thome and the Mylapore shrine.)
  • Marco Polo. The Travels. (The shrine of Saint Thomas on the Coromandel coast; cited in Medlycott 1905.)