It may be that amongst this crowd of visitors from other countries some would apply to Bishop Demetrius for a missionary to be sent to India; indeed, it is stated that some of the catechists who had passed under the hands of Pantaenus did actually beseech him to come and nourish the faith and bless the lives of the Christians scattered abroad. When he went and how long he stayed with the Church on the Malabar coast we know not, for as yet no fragment of ancient history gives any sign. But the alleged discovery of the autograph Gospel of St. Matthew amongst these Jewish Christians awakens our interest. It was believed that this Gospel, written in Aramaic, was brought thither by St. Bartholomew after the martyrdom of St. Stephen. After his visit Pantaenus brought back this precious MS. in the year A.D. 211 when he returned to take up his old position with the catechumens in Alexandria. We would fain know more of this strong and cultured man, to whom was entrusted the task of instructing the Church at a period when already the bitterest doctrinal differences had arisen within her borders, and also of strengthening, as doubtless he did, the hearts of the little colony of Christian believers on the Malabar coast. These probably held the Faith not unalloyed with errors born of ignorance within and their environment without.
Once more the veil of obscurity, like a shifting mist, settles on that Indian Church; no word breaks the silence, no streak of light enables us to see the growing powers of this faithful few, hedged in by Judaism on the one hand and the native religions on the other.
In the year A.D. 345 Thomas Cananaus, as we have seen, landed in Malabar. Two centuries afterwards the Egyptian merchant and traveller, Cosmas Indicopleustes, journeyed thither, and we get another glimpse, disappointingly meagre, of the Christians in India.
“What I have seen,” says he, “and experienced in the majority of places during my stay I truthfully declare. On the Island of Taprobane (i.e. Ceylon), in Inner India, where the Indian Ocean is, there is to be found a community of Christians, consisting of both clergy and the faithful, but I do not know whether there are any Christians to be found beyond this. Similarly in Male (Malabar, perhaps more particularly Quilon, which was later known by the Arabs as Kullam-male) where pepper grows and in the place called Caliana (Kalyan near Bombay) there is also a Bishop, who receives imposition of hands from Persia, as well as in the isle called the Isle of Discoris in the same Indian Sea. The inhabitants of that island speak Greek, having been originally settled there by the Ptolemies who ruled after Alexander of Macedon. There are clergy there also, ordained and sent from Persia to minister among the people of the island, and a multitude of Christians.... In a very great number of places one found churches of Christians with Bishops, martyrs, monks and recluses, wherever in fact the Gospel of Christ had been proclaimed.”
This extract, taken with its context, not only proves how widely dispersed the Christian faith had become in the fifth century but also attracts our attention to the diffusion of the Nestorian doctrine which, with its imperfect presentation of Christianity, carried everywhere the element of its own failure, even where apparently such a success. It was an age in which, humanly speaking, the Church had her magnificent opportunity, but being divided and unworthy she failed to carry conquest. Had she remained true to the Apostolic teaching how different it might have been!
Again the curtain falls and for six centuries the Syrian Church on the Malabar coast is out of sight and mind. Just a break for a moment in the year A.D. 883 when we see two priests of the Anglo-Saxon Church, Sighelm and Athelstan, taking to India the votive offerings of the great King Alfred of England, which he had promised to the shrine of St. Thomas during his siege of London. We only know they went and returned safely.
But during these centuries Islam was advancing, its crescent banners red with blood, its eyes fired with hatred, trampling in its onrush the Christian Churches and all other religions and effacing only too effectively the fruit of the work of evangelizing Asia. The seats of learning, the sacred temples of the Christian faith, the priceless archives rich in the thought and piety of the age, the seven Churches of the Apocalyptic messages, all were overthrown as the Crescent supplanted the Cross. The tide of conquest not only overran the holy places of the East, but flung itself against the ramparts of European Christianity. The peril of the age woke the chivalry of the Crusaders, and the flower of Knighthood perished in trying to wrest the sacred spots of Palestine from the Infidel.
Scarcely had this storm spent itself when another cloud arose in the East and burst with force and rage. The great Mongol chieftain Chengis Khan, beating down Islam with its own weapon, had made himself master of China and the whole of Western Asia, and now, flushed with victory, essayed to conquer Europe also. Islam had brought the flag of the prophet as far as the gates of Vienna; Chengis Khan on that fateful day in April, 1241, broke down the defence of Prince Henry at Liegnitz. It seemed as though all Europe lay defenceless, when suddenly, by one of the great acts of God in history, the Tartar host like a swarm of locusts arose and departed whence they came.
Then we see the Church of Rome diplomatically trying to meet the desire of Kubla Khan to make some alliance with the Christian Kingdoms of Europe against Islam, their common foe. It is an amazing fact, well worth keeping in mind, that, after the visit of Polo to his court, the Khan of Persia actually wrote letters to the French King asking for “a hundred Christians, intelligent men, acquainted with the seven arts, well justified to enter into controversy and able clearly to prove by force of argument to idolators and other kinds of folk that the law of Christ was best, and that all other religions were false and naught; and that if they would prove this he and all under him would become Christians and the Church’s liegemen.” It is disappointing to find that this open door did not admit the pure Gospel; it was a cry from Macedon with no St. Paul to answer it.