Malankara Church
The Malankara Church, also known as Malankara Syrian Church, was the unified body of Puthankur Saint Thomas Christians who claim origins from the missions of Thomas the Apostle. This community, under the leadership of Thoma I, opposed the Padroado Jesuits as well as the Propaganda Carmelites following the Coonan Cross Oath of 1653, which was taken to resist Western Catholic influences.
The Malankara Church eventually came under the influence of the Syriac Orthodox Church but later split successively, leading to the creation of churches across various denominations and traditions. The Malankara divisions and branchings have resulted in the present-day Jacobite Syrian Christian Church, Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church, Malankara Mar Thoma Syrian Church, Malabar Independent Syrian Church, Syro-Malankara Catholic Church, the Saint Thomas Anglicans of the Church of South India and the St. Thomas Evangelical Church of India.
Early history of Christianity in India
Ecclesiastical Communion
Historically, Malabar traded frequently with the nations of the Middle East, and traders from Egypt, Persia, and the Levant frequently visited Malabar for spices. These groups included Arabs, Jews and also Christians, and the Christians who visited here maintained contact with the Malankara Church. As such the Church in India was in ecclesiastical communion with the Church of the East, otherwise called the Persian church. The Malankara Church was headed by a Metropolitan consecrated from the Persian Church and ordinary administration of the Church was vested upon a local, dynastic archdeacon, who was referred to as the Head of the Malankara Christian community.Cheppeds: Collection of deeds on copper plates
The Rulers of Kerala, in appreciation for their assistance, gave to the Malankara Nazranis, three deeds on copper plates. They gave the Nasranis various rights and privileges which were written on copper plates. These are known as Cheppeds, Royal Grants, Sasanam etc.- Thomas of Cana copper plates: Dated between 345 and 811 AD, Thomas of Cana, a merchant from Persian Mesopotamia, was granted a deed of socio-economic rights known today as the Thomas of Cana copper plates by the Chera Dynasty. Thoma's plates were recorded and translated in the 16th and 17th century by Portuguese officials. The plates are later noted to have disappeared while in the possession of the Portuguese and remain lost.
- Tharissa palli Deed I: In 849 AD, Perumal Sthanu Ravi Gupta gave a deed to Isodatta Virai for Tharissa Palli at Curakkeni Kollam. According to historians, this is the first deed in Kerala that gives the exact date.
- Tharissa palli Deed II: Continuation of the above, given after 849 AD.
- Iravi Corttan Deed: In 1225 AD, Sri Vira Raghava Chakravarti gave a deed to Iravi Corttan of Mahadevarpattanam in 774. Two Brahmin families are witness to this deed showing that Brahmins were in Kerala by the 8th century.
Archdeacons
The position of archdeaconthe highest for clergy who are not a bishophad great importance in the church of India in the centuries leading up to the formation of an independent Malankara Church. Though technically subordinate to the metropolitan, the archdeacon wielded great ecclesiastical and secular power, to the extent that he was considered the secular leader of the community and served as effective head of the Indian Church in times when the province was absent a bishop. Unlike the metropolitan, who was evidently always an East Syriac sent by the patriarch, the archdeacon was a native Saint Thomas Christian. In the documented period, the position was evidently hereditary, belonging to the Pakalomattam family, who claimed a privileged connection to Thomas the Apostle.Details on the archidiaconate prior to the arrival of the Portuguese are elusive, but Patriarch Timothy I called the Archdeacon of India the "head of the faithful in India", implying an elevated status by at least that time. In the recorded period of its history, the office of archdeacon was substantially different in India than in the rest of the Church of the East or other Christian churches. In the broader Church of the East, each bishop was attended by an archdeacon, but in India, there was only ever one archdeacon, even when the province had multiple bishops serving it.
Following the collapse of the Church of the East's hierarchy in most of Asia in the 14th century, India was effectively cut off from the church's heartland in Mesopotamia and formal contact was severed. By the late 15th century India had had no metropolitan for several generations, and the authority traditionally associated with him had been vested in the archdeacon. In 1491, the archdeacon sent envoys to the Patriarch of the Church of the East, as well as to the Coptic Pope of Alexandria and to the Syriac Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch, requesting a new bishop for India. The Patriarch of the Church of the East Shemʿon IV Basidi responded by consecrating two bishops, Thoma and Yuhanon, and dispatching them to India. These bishops helped rebuild the ecclesiastical infrastructure and reestablish fraternal ties with the patriarchate, but the years of separation had greatly affected the structure of the Indian church. Though receiving utmost respect, the metropolitan was treated as the spiritual authority in his own diocese; the Archdeacon was firmly established as the real power in the Malankara community.
Arrival of the Portuguese
At the time the Portuguese arrived in India in 1498, the Saint Thomas Christians were in a difficult position. Though prosperous owing to their large stake in the spice trade and protected by a formidable militia, the tumultuous political climate of the time had placed the small community under pressure from the forces of the powerful rajas of Calicut, Cochin, and the various smaller kingdoms in the area. When the Portuguese under Vasco da Gama arrived on the South Indian coast, the leaders of the Saint Thomas community greeted them and proffered a formal alliance to their fellow Christians. The Portuguese, who had keen interest in implanting themselves in the spice trade and in expanding the domain of their bellicose form of Christianity, jumped at this opportunity.The Portuguese brought to India a particularly militant brand of Christianity, the product of several centuries of struggle during the Reconquista, which they hoped to spread across the world. Facilitating this objective was the Padroado Real, a series of treaties and decrees in which the Pope conferred upon the Portuguese government certain authority in ecclesiastical matters in the foreign territories they conquered. Upon reaching India the Portuguese quickly ensconced themselves in Goa and established a church hierarchy; soon they set themselves to bringing the native Christians under their dominion. Towards this goal, the colonial establishment felt it necessary to conduct the Saint Thomas Christians fully into the Latin Church, both in bringing them into conformity with Latin church customs and in subjecting them to the authority of the Archbishop of Goa.
Following the death of Metropolitan Mar Jacob in 1552, the Portuguese became more aggressive in their efforts to subjugate the Saint Thomas Christians. Protests on the part of the natives were frustrated by events back in the Church of the East's Mesopotamian heartland, which left them devoid of consistent leadership. In 1552, the year of Jacob's death, a schism in the Church of the East resulted in there being two rival patriarchates, one of which entered into communion with the Catholic Church, and the other of which remained independent. At different times both patriarchs sent bishops to India, but the Portuguese were consistently able to outmaneuver the newcomers or else convert them to Latin Catholicism outright. In 1575 the Padroado declared that neither patriarch could appoint prelates to the community without Portuguese consent, thereby cutting the Thomas Christians off from their hierarchy.
By 1599 the last Metropolitan, Abraham, had died, and the Archbishop of Goa, Aleixo de Menezes, had secured the submission of the young Archdeacon George, the highest remaining representative of the native church hierarchy. That year, Menezes convened the Synod of Diamper, which instituted a number of structural and liturgical reforms to the Indian church. At the synod, the parishes were brought directly under the Archbishop's authority, certain "superstitious" customs were anathematized, and the traditional variant of the East Syriac Rite, was purged of elements unacceptable by the Latin standards. Though the Saint Thomas Christians were now formally part of the Catholic Church, the conduct of the Portuguese over the next decades fueled resentment in parts of the community, ultimately leading to open resistance.
Coonan Cross and the independent church
Over the next several decades, tensions seethed between the Latin prelates and what remained of the native hierarchy. This came to a head in 1641 with the ascension of two new protagonists on either side of the contention: Francis Garcia, the new Archbishop of Kodungalloor, and Archdeacon Thomas, the nephew and successor to Archdeacon George. In 1652, the escalating situation was further complicated by the arrival in India of a mysterious figure named Ahatallah.Ahatallah arrived in Mylapore in 1652, claiming to be the rightful Patriarch of Antioch who had been sent by the Catholic pope to serve as "Patriarch of the Whole of India and of China". Ahatallah's true biography is obscure, but some details have been established. He appears to have been a Syriac Orthodox Bishop of Damascus who converted to Catholicism and went to Rome in 1632. He then returned to Syria in order to bring the Syriac Orthodox Patriarch Ignatius Hidayat Allah into communion with Rome. He had not accomplished this by the time Hidayat Allah died in 1639, after which point Ahatallah began claiming he was Hidayat Allah's rightful successor. In 1646, he was in Egypt at the court of the Coptic Pope Mark VI, who dispatched him to India in 1652, evidently in response to a request for aid from Archdeacon Thomas. Reckoning him an impostor, the Portuguese arrested him, but allowed him to meet with members of the Saint Thomas Christian clergy, whom he impressed greatly. The Portuguese put him on a ship bound for Cochin and Goa, and Archdeacon Thomas led his militia to Cochin demanding to meet with the Patriarch. The Portuguese refused, asserting that he was a dangerous invader and that the ship had already sailed on to Goa.
Ahatallah was never heard from again in India, and rumours soon spread that Archbishop Garcia had disposed of him before he ever reached Goa. Contemporary accounts allege that he was drowned in Cochin harbour, or even that the Portuguese burned him at the stake. In reality, it appears that Ahatallah did in fact reach Goa, whence he was sent on to Europe, but evidently died in Paris before reaching Rome, where his case was to be heard. In any event, Garcia's dismissive response to the Saint Thomas Christians' appeals only embittered the community further.
This was the last straw for the Saint Thomas Christians, and in 1653, Thomas and representatives of the community met at the Church of Our Lady in Mattancherry to take bold action. In a great ceremony before a crucifix and lighted candles, they swore a solemn oath that they would never obey Garcia or the Portuguese again, and that they accepted only the Archdeacon as their shepherd. The Malankara Church and all its successor churches regard this declaration, known as the Coonan Cross Oath.