Mr. Venkayya adds that “it was supposed by Dr. Burnell[76] that the plate of Vîra-Râghava created the principality of Manigrāmam, and the Cochin plates that of Anjuvannam.[77] The Cochin plates did not create Anjuvannam, but conferred the honours and privileges connected therewith to a Jew named Rabbân. Similarly, the rights and honours associated with the other corporation, Manigrâmam, were bestowed at a later period on Ravikkorran. It is just possible that Ravikkorran was a Christian by religion. But his name and title give no clue in this direction, and there is nothing Christian in the document, except its possession by the present owners. On this name, Dr. Gundert first said[78] ‘Iravi Corttan must be a Nasrani name, though none of the Syrian priests whom I saw could explain it, or had ever heard of it.’ Subsequently he added: ‘I had indeed been startled by the Iravi Corttan, which does not look at all like the appellation of a Syrian Christian; still I thought myself justified in calling Manigrâmam a Christian principality—whatever their Christianity may have consisted in—on the ground that, from Menezes’ time, these grants had been regarded as given to the Syrian colonists.’ Mr. Kookel Keloo Nair considered Iravikkorran a mere title, in which no shadow of a Syrian name is to be traced.”
Nestorius, a native of Germanicia, was educated at Antioch, where, as Presbyter, he became celebrated, while yet very young, for his asceticism, orthodoxy, and eloquence. On the death of Sisinnius, Patriarch of Constantinople, this distinguished preacher of Antioch was appointed to the vacant See by the Emperor Theodosius II, and was consecrated as Patriarch in 428 A.D. The doctrine of a God-man respecting Christ, and the mode of union of the human and the divine nature in Him left undefined by the early teachers, who contented themselves with speaking of Him and regarding Him as “born and unborn, God in flesh, life in death, born of Mary, and born of God,” had, long before the time of Nestorius, begun to tax the genius of churchmen, and the controversies in respect of this double nature of Christ had led to the growth and spread of important heretical doctrines. Two of the great heresies of the church before that of Nestorius are associated with the names of Arius and Apollinaris. Arius “admitted both the divine and the human nature of Christ, but, by making Him subordinate to God, denied His divinity in the highest sense.” Apollinaris, undermining the doctrine of the example and atonement of Christ, argued that “in Jesus the Logos supplied the place of the reasonable soul.” As early as 325 A.D. the first Œcumenical Council of Nice had defined against the Arians, and decreed that “the Son was not only of like essence, but of the same essence with the Father, and the human nature, maimed and misinterpreted by the Apollinarians, had been restored to the person of Christ at the Council of Constantinople in 381.” Nestorius, finding the Arians and Apollinarians, condemned strongly though they were, still strong in numbers and influence at Constantinople, expressed in his first sermon as Patriarch his determination to put down these and other heretical sects, and exhorted the Emperor to help him in this difficult task. But, while vigorously engaged in the effectual extinction of all heresies, he incurred the displeasure of the orthodox party by boldly declaring, though in the most sincerely orthodox form, against the use of the term Theotokos, that is, Mother of God, which, as applied to the Virgin Mary, had then grown into popular favour, especially amongst the clergy at Constantinople and Rome. While he himself revered the Blessed Virgin as the Mother of Christ, he declaimed against the use of the expression Mother of God in respect of her, as being alike “unknown to the Apostles, and unauthorised by the Church,” besides its being inherently absurd to suppose that the Godhead can be born or suffer. Moreover, in his endeavour to avoid the extreme positions taken up by Arians and Apollinarians, he denied, while speaking of the two natures in Christ, that there was any communication of attributes. But he was understood on this point to have maintained a mechanical rather than a supernatural union of the two natures, and also to have rent Christ asunder, and divided Him into two persons. Explaining his position, Nestorius said “I distinguish the natures, but I unite my adoration.” But this explanation did not satisfy the orthodox, who understood him to have “preached a Christ less than divine.” The clergy and laity of Constantinople, amongst whom Nestorius had thus grown unpopular, and was talked of as a heretic, appealed to Cyril, Bishop of the rival See of Alexandria, to interfere on their behalf. Cyril, supported by the authority of the Pope, arrived on the scene, and, at the Council of Ephesus, hastily and informally called up, condemned Nestorius as a heretic, and excommunicated him. After Nestorianism had been rooted out of the Roman Empire in the time of Justinian, it flourished “in the East,” especially in Persia and the countries adjoining it, where the churches, since their foundation, had been following the Syrian ritual, discipline, and doctrine, and where a strong party, among them the Patriarch of Seleucia or Babylon, and his suffragan the Metropolitan of Persia, with their large following, revered Nestorius as a martyr, and faithfully and formally accepted his teachings at the Synod of Seleucia in 448 A.D. His doctrines seem to have spread as far east as China, so that, in 551, Nestorian monks who had long resided in that country are said to have brought the eggs of the silkworm to Constantinople. Cosmos, surnamed Indicopleustes, the Indian traveller, who, in 522 A.D., visited Male, “the country where the pepper grows,” has referred to the existence of a fully organised church in Malabar, with the Bishops consecrated in Persia. His reference, while it traces the origin of the Indian church to the earlier centuries, also testifies to the fact that, at the time of his visit, the church was Nestorian in its creed “from the circumstance of its dependence upon the Primate of Persia, who then unquestionably held the Nestorian doctrines.”
The next heresy was that of Eutyches, a zealous adherent of Cyril in opposition to Nestorius at the Council of Ephesus in 431 A.D. But Eutyches, in opposing the doctrine of Nestorius, went beyond Cyril and others, and affirmed that, after the union of the two natures, the human and the divine, Christ had only one nature the divine, His humanity being absorbed in His divinity. After several years of controversy, the question was finally decided at the Council of Chalcedon in 451, when it was declared, in opposition to the doctrine of Eutyches, that the two natures were united in Christ, but “without any alteration, absorption, or confusion”; or, in other words, in the person of Christ there were two natures, the human and the divine, each perfect in itself, but there was only one person. Eutyches was excommunicated, and died in exile. Those who would not subscribe to the doctrines declared at Chalcedon were condemned as heretics; they then seceded, and afterwards gathered themselves around different centres, which were Syria, Mesopotamia, Asia Minor, Cyprus and Palestine, Armenia, Egypt, and Abyssinia. The Armenians embraced the Eutychian theory of divinity being the sole nature in Christ, the humanity being absorbed, while the Egyptians and Abyssinians held in the monophysite doctrine of the divinity and humanity being one compound nature in Christ. The West Syrians, or natives of Syria proper, to whom the Syrians of this coast trace their origin, adopted, after having renounced the doctrines of Nestorius, the Eutychian tenet. Through the influence of Severus, Patriarch of Antioch, they gradually became Monophysites. The Monophysite sect was for a time suppressed by the Emperors, but in the sixth century there took place the great Jacobite revival of the monophysite doctrine under James Bardæus, better known as Jacobus Zanzalus, who united the various divisions, into which the Monophysites had separated themselves, into one church, which at the present day exists under the name of the Jacobite church. The head of the Jacobite church claims the rank and prerogative of the Patriarch of Antioch—a title claimed by no less than three church dignitaries. Leaving it to subtle theologians to settle the disputes, we may briefly define the position of the Jacobites in Malabar in respect of the above controversies. While they accept the qualifying epithets pronounced by the decree passed at the Council of Chalcedon in regard to the union of the two natures in Christ, they object to the use of the word two in referring to the same. So far they are practically at one with the Armenians, for they also condemn the Eutychian doctrine; and a Jacobite candidate for holy orders in the Syrian church has, among other things, to take an oath denouncing Eutyches and his teachers.
We have digressed a little in order to show briefly the position of the Malabar church in its relation to Eastern Patriarchs in the early, mediæval, and modern times. To resume the thread of our story, from about the middle of the fourth century until the arrival of the Portuguese, the Christians of Malabar in their spiritual distress generally applied for Bishops indiscriminately to one of the Eastern Patriarchs, who were either Nestorian or Jacobite; for, as observed by Sir W. W. Hunter, “for nearly a thousand years from the 5th to the 15th century, the Jacobite sect dwelt in the middle of the Nestorians in the Central Asia,” so that, in response to the requests from Malabar, both Nestorian and Jacobite Bishops appear to have visited Malabar occasionally, and the natives seem to have indiscriminately followed the teachings of both. We may here observe that the simple folk of Malabar, imbued but with the primitive form of Christianity, were neither conversant with nor ever troubled themselves about the subtle disputations and doctrinal differences that divided their co-religionists in Europe and Asia Minor, and were, therefore, not in a position to distinguish between Nestorian or any other form of Christianity. Persia also having subsequently neglected the outlying Indian church, the Christians of Malabar seem to have sent their applications to the Patriarch of Babylon, but, as both prelates then followed the Nestorian creed, there was little or no change in the rituals and dogmas of the church. Dr. Day[79] refers to the arrival of a Jacobite Bishop in India in 696 A.D. About the year 823 A.D., two Nestorian Bishops, Mar Sapor and Mar Aprot, appear to have arrived in Malabar under the command of the Nestorian Patriarch of Babylon. They are said to have interviewed the native rulers, travelled through the country, built churches, and looked after the religious affairs of the Syrians.
We know but little of the history of the Malabar Church for nearly six centuries prior to the arrival of the Portuguese in India. We have, however, the story of the pilgrimage of the Bishop of Sherborne to the shrine of St. Thomas in India about 883 A.D., in the reign of Alfred the Great; and the reference made to the prevalence of Nestorianism among the St. Thomas’ Christians of Malabar by Marco Polo, the Venetian traveller.
The Christian community seem to have been in the zenith of their glory and prosperity between the 9th and 14th centuries, as, according to their tradition, they were then permitted to have a king of their own, with Villiarvattam near Udayamperūr (Diamper) as his capital. According to another version, the king of Villiarvattam was a convert to Christianity. The dynasty seems to have become extinct about the 14th century, and it is said that, on the arrival of the Portuguese, the crown and sceptre of the last Christian king were presented to Vasco da Gama in 1502. We have already referred to the high position occupied by the Christians under the early kings, as is seen from the rare privileges granted to them, most probably in return for military services rendered by them. The king seems to have enjoyed, among other things, the right of punishing offences committed by the Christian community, who practically followed his lead. A more reasonable view of the story of a Christian king appears to be that a Christian chief of Udayamperūr enjoyed a sort of socio-territorial jurisdiction over his followers, which, in later times, seems to have been so magnified as to invest him with territorial sovereignty. We see, in the copper-plate charters of the Jews, that their chief was also invested with some such powers.
Mention is made of two Latin Missions in the 14th century, with Quilon as head-quarters, but their labours were ineffectual, and their triumphs but short-lived. Towards the end of the 15th, and throughout the whole of the 16th century, the Nestorian Patriarch of Mesopotamia seems to have exercised some authority over the Malabar Christians, as is borne out by the occasional references to the arrival of Nestorian Bishops to preside over the churches.
Until the arrival of the Portuguese, the Malabar church was following unmolested, in its ritual, practice and communion, a creed of the Syro-Chaldæan church of the East. When they set out on their voyages, conquest and conversion were no less dear to the heart of Portuguese than enterprise and commerce. Though, in the first moments, the Syrians, in their neglected spiritual condition, were gratified at the advent of their co-religionists, the Romanist Portuguese, and the Portuguese in their turn expected the most beneficial results from an alliance with their Christian brethren on this coast, “the conformity of the Syrians to the faith and practice of the 5th century soon disappointed the prejudices of the Papist apologists. It was the first care of the Portuguese to intercept all correspondence with the Eastern Patriarchs, and several of their Bishops expired in the prisons of their Holy Office.” The Franciscan and Dominican Friars, and the Jesuit Fathers, worked vigorously to win the Malabar Christians over to the Roman Communion. Towards the beginning of the last quarter of the 16th century, the Jesuits built a church at Vaippacotta near Cranganūr, and founded a college for the education of Christian youths. In 1584, a seminary was established for the purpose of instructing the Syrians in theology, and teaching them the Latin, Portuguese and Syriac languages. The dignitaries who presided over the churches, however, refused to ordain the students trained in the seminary. This, and other causes of quarrel between the Jesuits and the native clergy, culminated in an open rupture, which was proclaimed by Archdeacon George in a Synod at Angamāli. When Alexes de Menezes, Archbishop of Goa, heard of this, he himself undertook a visitation of the Syrian churches. The bold and energetic Menezes carried all before him. Nor is his success to be wondered at. He was invested with the spiritual authority of the Pope, and armed with the terrors of the Inquisition. He was encouraged in his efforts by the Portuguese King, whose Governors on this coast ably backed him up. Though the ruling chiefs at first discountenanced the exercise of coercive measures over their subjects, they were soon won over by the stratagems of the subtle Archbishop. Thus supported, he commenced his visitation of the churches, and reduced them in A.D. 1599 by the decrees of the Synod of Diamper (Udayamperūr), a village about ten miles to the south-east of the town of Cochin. The decrees passed by the Synod were reluctantly subscribed to by Archdeacon George and a large number of Kathanars, as the native priests are called; and this practically converted the Malabar Church into a branch of the Roman Church. Literature sustained a very great loss at the hands of Menezes, “for this blind and enthusiastic inquisitor destroyed, like a second Omar, all the books written in the Syrian or Chaldæan language, which could be collected, not only at the Synod of Diamper, but especially during his subsequent circuit; for, as soon as he had entered into a Syrian Church, he ordered all their books and records to be laid before him, which, a few indifferent ones excepted, he committed to the flames, so that at present neither books nor manuscripts are any more to be found amongst the St. Thomé Christians.”[80]
Immediately after the Synod of Diamper, a Jesuit Father, Franciscus Roz, a Spaniard by birth, was appointed Bishop of Angamāli by Pope Clement VIII. The title was soon after changed to that of Archbishop of Cranganūr. By this time, the rule of the Jesuits had become so intolerable to the Syrians that they resolved to have a Bishop from the East, and applied to Babylon, Antioch, Alexandria, and other ecclesiastical head-quarters for a Bishop, as if the ecclesiastical heads who presided over these places professed the same creed. The request of the Malabar Christians for a Bishop was readily responded to from Antioch, and Ahattala, otherwise known as Mar Ignatius, was forthwith sent. Authorities, however, differ on this point, for, according to some, this Ahattala was a Nestorian, or a protégé of the Patriarch of the Copts. Whatever Ahattala’s religious creed might have been, the Syrians appear to have believed that he was sent by the Jacobite Patriarch of Antioch. The Portuguese, however, intercepted him, and took him prisoner. The story goes that he was drowned in the Cochin harbour, or condemned to the flames of the Inquisition at Goa in 1653. This cruel deed so infuriated the Syrians that thousands of them met in solemn conclave at the Coonen Cross at Mattāncheri in Cochin, and, with one voice, renounced their allegiance to the Church of Rome. This incident marks an important epoch in the history of the Malabar Church, for, with the defection at the Coonen Cross, the Malabar Christians split themselves up into two distinct parties, the Romo-Syrians who adhered to the Church of Rome, and the Jacobite Syrians, who, severing their connection with it, placed themselves under the spiritual supremacy of the Patriarch of Antioch. The following passage explains the exact position of the two parties that came into existence then, as also the origin of the names since applied to them. “The Pazheia Kūttukar, or old church, owed its foundation to Archbishop Menezes and the Synod of Diamper in 1599, and its reconciliation, after revolt, to the Carmelite Bishop, Joseph of St. Mary, in 1656. It retains in its services the Syrian language, and in part the Syrian ritual. But it acknowledges the supremacy of the Pope and his Vicars Apostolic. Its members are now known as Catholics of the Syrian rite, to distinguish them from the converts made direct from heathenism to the Latin Church by the Roman missionaries. The other section of the Syrian Christians of Malabar is called the Puttan Kūttukar, or new church. It adheres to the Jacobite tenets introduced by its first Jacobite Bishop, Mar Gregory, in 1665.”[81] We have at this time, and ever after, to deal with a third party, that came into existence after the advent of the Portuguese. These are the Catholics of the Latin rite, and consist almost exclusively of the large number of converts gained by the Portuguese from amongst the different castes of the Hindus. To avoid confusion, we shall follow the fortunes of each sect separately.
When the Portuguese first came to India, the Indian trade was chiefly in the hands of the Moors, who had no particular liking for the Hindus or Christians, and the arrival of the Portuguese was therefore welcome alike to the Hindus and Christians, who eagerly sought their assistance. The Portuguese likewise accepted their offers of friendship very gladly, as an alliance, especially with the former, gave them splendid opportunities for advancing their religious mission, while, from a friendly intercourse with the latter, they expected not only to further their religious interests, but also their commercial prosperity. In the work of conversion they were successful, more especially among the lower orders, the Illuvans, Mukkuvans, Pulayans, etc. The labours of Miguel Vaz, afterwards Vicar-General of Goa, and of Father Vincent, in this direction were continued with admirable success by St. Francis Xavier.