Syrian Christian - Revision history

Pdewan: /* Physical measurements */

2014-12-03T19:32:29Z

‎Physical measurements

Pdewan at 17:01, 3 December 2014

2014-12-03T17:01:55Z

Pdewan: /* The 1800s */

2014-04-14T22:08:03Z

‎The 1800s

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Pdewan: /* Eutyches */

2014-04-14T21:54:52Z

‎Eutyches

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Pdewan: /* The fourth century */

2014-04-14T21:41:17Z

‎The fourth century

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Pdewan: /* The second century */

2014-04-14T20:10:29Z

‎The second century

Pdewan at 20:07, 14 April 2014

2014-04-14T20:07:42Z

Pdewan: Created page with " {| class="wikitable" |- |colspan="0"|
This article is an excerpt from
''' Castes and Tribes of Southern India '''
By '' Edgar Thurston,..."

2014-04-09T06:13:08Z

Created page with " {| class="wikitable" |- |colspan="0"|<div style="font-size:100%"> This article is an excerpt from<br/> ''' Castes and Tribes of Southern India ''' <br/> By '' Edgar Thurston,..."

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← Older revision		Revision as of 19:32, 3 December 2014
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	[[File: 458.png \| \|frame\|500px]]		[[File: 458.png \| \|frame\|500px]]
		+
		+	=See also =
		+	[[Catholic saints and blesseds: India]] for a complete list, as well as links to the biographies of the Christian saints and blesseds of India
		+
		+	[[Syrian Christian]] for a detailed article about the community.

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 The following note, containing a summary of the history of a community in connection with which the literature is considerable, is mainly abstracted from the Cochin Census Report, 1901, with additions.
-−
-[[File:    454.png   | |frame|500px]]
 =Syria or Serra?=
 The Syrian Christians have “sometimes been called the Christians of the Serra (a Portuguese word, meaning mountains). This arose from the fact of their living at the foot of the ghauts.”

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 Others argue that, even if there be any truth in the tradition of the arrival of Saint Thomas in India, this comprised the countries in the north-west of India, or at most the India of Alexander the Great, and not the southern portion of the peninsula, where the seeds of Christianity are said to have been first sown, because the voyage to this part of India, then hardly known, was fraught with the greatest difficulties and dangers, not to speak of its tediousness. It may, however, be observed that the close proximity of Alexandria to Palestine, and its importance at the time as the emporium of the trade between the East and West, afforded sufficient facilities for a passage to India. If the Roman line of traffic viâ Alexandria and the Red Sea was long and tedious, the route viâ the Persian Gulf was comparatively easy.
 =The second century=
-When we come to the second century, we read of Demetrius of Alexandria receiving a message from some  natives of India, earnestly begging for a teacher to instruct them in the doctrines of Christianity. Hearing this, Pantænus, Principal of the Christian College of Alexandria, an Athenian stoic, an eminent preacher and “a very great gnosticus, who had penetrated most profoundly into the spirit of scripture,” sailed from Berenice for Malabar between 180 and 190 A.D. He found his arrival “anticipated by some who were acquainted with the Gospel of Mathew, to whom Bartholomew, one of the apostles, had preached, and had left them the same Gospel in Hebrew, which also was preserved until this time. Returning to Alexandria, he presided over the College of Catechumens.” Early in the third century, St. Hippolytus, Bishop of Portus, also assigns the conversion of India to the apostle Bartholomew. To Thomas he ascribes Persia and the countries of Central Asia, although he mentions Calamina, “a city of India,” as the place where Thomas suffered death. The Rev. J. Hough  observes that “it is indeed highly problematical that Saint Bartholomew was ever in India.” It may be remarked that there are no local traditions associating the event with his name, and, if Saint Bartholomew laboured at all on this coast, there is no reason why the earliest converts of Malabar should have preferred the name of Thomas to that of Bartholomew. Though Mr. Hough and Sir W. W. Hunter,  among others, discredit the mission of St. Thomas in the first century, they both accept the story of the mission of Pantænus. Mr. Hough says that “it is probable that these Indians (who appealed to Demetrius) were converts or children of former converts to  Christianity.” If, in the second century, there could be children of former converts in India, it is not clear why the introduction of Christianity to India in the first century, and that by St. Thomas, should be so seriously questioned and set aside as being a myth, especially in view of the weight of the subjoined testimony, associating the work with the name of the apostle.
+When we come to the second century, we read of Demetrius of Alexandria receiving a message from some  natives of India, earnestly begging for a teacher to instruct them in the doctrines of Christianity. Hearing this, Pantænus, Principal of the Christian College of Alexandria, an Athenian stoic, an eminent preacher and “a very great gnosticus, who had penetrated most profoundly into the spirit of scripture,” sailed from Berenice for Malabar between 180 and 190 A.D. He found his arrival “anticipated by some who were acquainted with the Gospel of Mathew, to whom Bartholomew, one of the apostles, had preached, and had left them the same Gospel in Hebrew, which also was preserved until this time. Returning to Alexandria, he presided over the College of Catechumens.”
 In the Asiatic Journal (Vol. VI), Mr. Whish refutes the assertions made by Mr. Wrede in the Asiatic Researches (Vol. VII) that the Christians of Malabar settled in that country “during the violent persecution of the sect of Nestorius under Theodosius II, or some time after,” and says, with reference to the date of the Jewish colonies in India, that the Christians of the country were settled long anterior to the period mentioned by Mr. Wrede. Referring to the acts and journeyings of the apostles, Dorotheus, Bishop of Tyre (254–313 A.D.), says “the Apostle Thomas, after having preached the Gospel to the Parthians, Medes, Persians, Germanians, Bactrians, and Magi, suffered martyrdom at Calamina, a town of India.” It is said that, at the Council of Nice held in 325 A.D., India was represented by Johannes, Bishop of India Maxima and Persia. St. Gregory of Nazianzen (370–392 A.D.), in answering the reproach of his being a stranger, asks “Were not the apostles strangers? Granting that Judæa was the country of Peter, what had Paul in common with the Gentiles, Luke with Achaia, Andrew with Epirus, John with Ephesus, Thomas with India, Mark with Italy”? St. Jerome (390 A.D.) testifies to the general belief in the mission of St. Thomas to India. He too mentions Calamina as the town where the apostle met with his death. Baronius thinks that, when Theodoret, the Church historian (430–458 A.D.), speaks of the apostles, he evidently associates the work  in India with the name of St. Thomas. St. Gregory of Torus relates that “in that place in India, where the body of Thomas lay before it was transferred to Edessa, there is a monastery and temple of great size.” Florentius asserts that “nothing with more certainty I find in the works of the Holy Fathers than that St. Thomas preached the Gospel in India.” Rufinus, who stayed twenty-five years in Syria, says that the remains of St. Thomas were brought from India to Edessa. Two Arabian travellers of the ninth century, referred to by Renaudot, assert that St. Thomas died at Mailapur.

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 The following note, containing a summary of the history of a community in connection with which the literature is considerable, is mainly abstracted from the Cochin Census Report, 1901, with additions.
- [[File:    454.png   | |frame|500px]]
+[[File:    454.png   | |frame|500px]]
+=Syria or Serra?=
-The Syrian Christians have “sometimes been called the Christians of the Serra (a Portuguese word, meaning mountains). This arose from the fact of their living at the foot of the ghauts.”  The glory of the introduction of the teachings of Christ to India is, by time-honoured tradition, ascribed to the apostle Saint Thomas. According to this tradition so dearly cherished by the Christians of this coast, about 52 A.D. the apostle landed at Malankara, or, more correctly, at Maliankara near Cranganūr (Kodungallūr), the Mouziris of the Greeks, or Muyirikode of the Jewish copper plates. Mouziris was a port near the mouth of a branch of the Alwaye river, much frequented in their early voyages by the Phœnician and European traders for the pepper and spices of this coast, and for the purpose of taking in fresh water and provisions. The story goes that Saint Thomas founded seven churches in different stations in Cochin and Travancore, and converted, among others, many Brāhmans, notably the Cally, Calliankara, Sankarapuri, and Pakalomattam Nambūdri families, the members of the last claiming the rare distinction of having been ordained as priests by the apostle himself.
+The Syrian Christians have “sometimes been called the Christians of the Serra (a Portuguese word, meaning mountains). This arose from the fact of their living at the foot of the ghauts.”
-He then extended his labours to the Coromandel coast, where, after making many converts, he is said to have been pierced with a lance by some Brāhmans, and to have been buried in the church of  St. Thomé, in Mylapore, a suburb of the town of Madras. Writing concerning the prevalence of elephantiasis in Malabar, Captain Hamilton records  that “the old Romish Legendaries impute the cause of those great swell’d legs to a curse Saint Thomas laid upon his murderers and their posterity, and that was the odious mark they should be distinguished by.” “Pretty early tradition associates Thomas with Parthia,  Philip with Phrygia, Andrew with Syria, and Bartholomew with India, but later traditions make the apostles divide the various countries between them by lot.”  Even if the former supposition be accepted, there is nothing very improbable in Saint Thomas having extended his work from Parthia to India. Others argue that, even if there be any truth in the tradition of the arrival of Saint Thomas in India, this comprised the countries in the north-west of India, or at most the India of Alexander the Great, and not the southern portion of the peninsula, where the seeds of Christianity are said to have been first sown, because the voyage to this part of India, then hardly known, was fraught with the greatest difficulties and dangers, not to speak of its tediousness. It may, however, be observed that the close proximity of Alexandria to Palestine, and its importance at the time as the emporium of the trade between the East and West, afforded sufficient facilities for a passage to India. If the Roman line of traffic viâ Alexandria and the Red Sea was long and tedious, the route viâ the Persian Gulf was comparatively easy.
+He then extended his labours to the Coromandel coast, where, after making many converts, he is said to have been pierced with a lance by some Brāhmans, and to have been buried in the church of  St. Thomé, in Mylapore, a suburb of the town of Madras. Writing concerning the prevalence of elephantiasis in Malabar, Captain Hamilton records  that “the old Romish Legendaries impute the cause of those great swell’d legs to a curse Saint Thomas laid upon his murderers and their posterity, and that was the odious mark they should be distinguished by.”
 When we come to the second century, we read of Demetrius of Alexandria receiving a message from some  natives of India, earnestly begging for a teacher to instruct them in the doctrines of Christianity. Hearing this, Pantænus, Principal of the Christian College of Alexandria, an Athenian stoic, an eminent preacher and “a very great gnosticus, who had penetrated most profoundly into the spirit of scripture,” sailed from Berenice for Malabar between 180 and 190 A.D. He found his arrival “anticipated by some who were acquainted with the Gospel of Mathew, to whom Bartholomew, one of the apostles, had preached, and had left them the same Gospel in Hebrew, which also was preserved until this time. Returning to Alexandria, he presided over the College of Catechumens.” Early in the third century, St. Hippolytus, Bishop of Portus, also assigns the conversion of India to the apostle Bartholomew. To Thomas he ascribes Persia and the countries of Central Asia, although he mentions Calamina, “a city of India,” as the place where Thomas suffered death. The Rev. J. Hough  observes that “it is indeed highly problematical that Saint Bartholomew was ever in India.” It may be remarked that there are no local traditions associating the event with his name, and, if Saint Bartholomew laboured at all on this coast, there is no reason why the earliest converts of Malabar should have preferred the name of Thomas to that of Bartholomew. Though Mr. Hough and Sir W. W. Hunter,  among others, discredit the mission of St. Thomas in the first century, they both accept the story of the mission of Pantænus. Mr. Hough says that “it is probable that these Indians (who appealed to Demetrius) were converts or children of former converts to  Christianity.” If, in the second century, there could be children of former converts in India, it is not clear why the introduction of Christianity to India in the first century, and that by St. Thomas, should be so seriously questioned and set aside as being a myth, especially in view of the weight of the subjoined testimony, associating the work with the name of the apostle.

Syrian Christian - Revision history

Pdewan: /* Physical measurements */

Pdewan at 17:01, 3 December 2014

Pdewan: /* The 1800s */

Pdewan: /* Eutyches */

Pdewan: /* The fourth century */

Pdewan: /* The second century */

Pdewan at 20:07, 14 April 2014

Pdewan: Created page with " {| class="wikitable" |- |colspan="0"| This article is an excerpt from ''' Castes and Tribes of Southern India ''' By '' Edgar Thurston,..."

Pdewan: Created page with " {| class="wikitable" |- |colspan="0"|
This article is an excerpt from
''' Castes and Tribes of Southern India '''
By '' Edgar Thurston,..."