The Relics and Edessa

The history of the relics of Thomas is firmer than the narrative of his life, because the cult of those relics is attested by datable witnesses. The tradition records the apostle’s burial at Mylapore in India and the translation of his relics westward to Edessa in the third or fourth century, where the shrine is attested by the pilgrim Egeria and the hymns of Ephrem; and a later, medieval translation carried relics by way of Chios to Ortona in Italy. This file traces the relic-history through its written and material witnesses.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Apostle)

The First Resting-Place: Mylapore

The tradition holds that Thomas was buried where he was martyred, at Mylapore on the Coromandel coast of India, and that his tomb there became a place of veneration (see The Martyrdom at Mylapore). The Mylapore tomb is the starting-point of the relic-history: from it, the tradition relates, the apostle’s relics were later translated to the West, while the tomb itself remained a venerated (if, after the translation, emptied or partial) shrine, continuously honored by the Saint Thomas Christians and attested by medieval travelers (Mundadan 1984; Medlycott 1905). The continuity of the Mylapore site (San Thome) is one of the firmer points of the Indian tradition (see The Indian Church Tradition).

The Translation to Edessa

The single most important and best-attested fact in the relic-history is that, by the fourth century, the relics of the apostle Thomas were venerated at Edessa, the great Syriac Christian city of northern Mesopotamia (modern Şanlıurfa). The tradition records a translation of the relics from India to Edessa in the third century — often dated to the time around the mid-third century, with some traditions naming a translation in 232 or 233 — and from the fourth century the Edessene shrine of Saint Thomas is firmly attested by independent witnesses (Mundadan 1984; Medlycott 1905). [Disputed: the date of the translation of Thomas's relics from India to Edessa is variously given — the Edessene tradition and the *Chronicle of Edessa* point to a third-century translation (a date around 232/3 is commonly cited), while the secure independent attestation of the Edessene shrine begins in the fourth century with Egeria and Ephrem; the precise date of the translation is traditional rather than documented (Medlycott 1905; Mundadan 1984).]

The Edessene cult is attested by two witnesses of the first rank. The Spanish pilgrim Egeria, who traveled through the East in the early 380s, records visiting Edessa and “the martyrium of Saint Thomas the apostle,” where she venerated the relics and read from the writings associated with the apostle: she describes a large and beautiful church built over the shrine (Egeria, Itinerarium / Travels 17–19; trans. Wilkinson 1999). And Ephrem the Syrian, the great deacon and hymnographer of the Syriac Church (d. 373), who lived his last years at Edessa, sings in his hymns of the relics of Thomas at Edessa — celebrating that the apostle who was martyred in India was brought to rest in the Syriac city, and treating the relics as a treasure of Edessa (Ephrem, Carmina Nisibena 42; and the hymns on Saint Thomas; see St. Ephrem the Syrian). Together Egeria and Ephrem place the relics of Thomas at Edessa beyond doubt by the later fourth century, giving the relic-history a firm anchor the life-narrative lacks.

The Edessene Shrine and Its Significance

That the relics of the apostle of India should rest at Edessa is fitting and historically illuminating. Edessa was the cradle of Syriac Christianity, the home of the Acts of Thomas (composed there in the third century; see The Acts of Thomas) and of the Abgar legend that made Thomas the apostolic source of the Edessene mission (the Doctrine of Addai; see The Eastern Mission Traditions). The Syriac Church that venerated Thomas’s relics at Edessa was the same Church that would carry the Gospel eastward to Persia, Central Asia, and India in later centuries — the Church of the East under whose obedience the Saint Thomas Christians of Kerala would worship (see St. Isaac the Syrian). The Edessene shrine thus stands at the meeting-point of the apostle’s eastern mission and the Syriac Christianity that remembered it; the relics’ presence there is both a fact of cult and a sign of the deep bond between Thomas and the Syriac East.

The Later Translations: Chios and Ortona

The relics did not remain at Edessa. As Edessa came under Islamic and then crusader-era pressures, the relics (or a principal portion of them) were translated again, in the medieval period, to the Greek island of Chios in the Aegean, and from Chios were carried in 1258 to Ortona in the Abruzzo on the Adriatic coast of Italy, where they remain enshrined in the cathedral of San Tommaso (the medieval translation to Ortona, 1258; Medlycott 1905; Mundadan 1984). This western translation is documented in the medieval records of Ortona and is the source of the apostle’s cult in Italy; it represents the final westward stage of relics that had begun, by tradition, at Mylapore in India. Other portions and traditions of relics are associated with Mylapore itself and with various places that received parts of the apostle’s remains over the centuries (Mundadan 1984).

The Relic-History as the Firmer Ground

The relic-history is, on the whole, the firmest part of the Thomas tradition outside the Gospel. While the life-narrative depends on the apocryphal Acts and the local oral traditions, the cult of the relics at Edessa is securely attested in the fourth century by Egeria and Ephrem, two independent and datable witnesses, and the later translations to Chios and Ortona are documented in medieval records (Medlycott 1905; Wilkinson 1999; Mundadan 1984). This firmness matters for the historical question (see The India Mission Assessed): the established fourth-century belief that the apostle’s relics had been brought from India to Edessa shows that the India-mission tradition was already old and widely received by then — not a late invention but a tradition the fourth-century Syriac Church held as the explanation of why it possessed the apostle’s body. The relics, in other words, are evidence not only of the cult but of the antiquity of the tradition that the apostle of India was Thomas.

See Also

References

  • Egeria. Itinerarium (Travels) 17–19. Trans. John Wilkinson, Egeria’s Travels. 3rd ed. Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1999. (The martyrium of Saint Thomas at Edessa, c. 384.)
  • Ephrem the Syrian. Carmina Nisibena 42; Hymns on Saint Thomas. (The relics of Thomas at Edessa.)
  • Medlycott, A. E. India and the Apostle Thomas. London: David Nutt, 1905. (The translation to Edessa; the later translation to Ortona.)
  • Mundadan, A. Mathias. History of Christianity in India, Vol. I. Bangalore: Church History Association of India, 1984. (The relic-history and its bearing on the tradition.)