Early History, Early Prelates, Medieval History, Nasrani History, Persian Church, Thomas the Apostle

Dear Jeevan Philip This is in response to your …

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Comment posted on Prelates of Nasranis till the Synod of Udayamperoor- List of early Bishops till 1599 AD by Admin

Dear Jeevan Philip

This is in response to your posts 4618, 4932 and 5500. Sorry that it took time to respond.

I agree that we don’t have many documents prior the Portuguese to understand the situation before the sixteenth century. But at the same time, there are few which are already mentioned in the article sources/ comments and which will help us to arrive at conclusions.

The spread of Christianity before the western colonization was on the basis of certain kind of regional grouping.

William G Young, in the “Handbook of source material for students of Church history” writes,

“ Asian Churches and their history should not be treated as if they were isolated countries. This is practically true in the first fifteen centuries, when the history of Christianity in Asian Churches is closely bound tighter. You can not treat the Church in China or India or Turkestan in isolation from that in Mesopotatnia and Persia – they all belong together. Their history should be seen as aspects of the one Church history, the one developing pattern.”

So we see that the communion of faithful was centered in culturally and politically important cities where the Church had considerable strength such as Rome, Antioch, Jerusalem, Constantinople, Selleucia Ctesiphon etc. In the course of time the heads of such groupings assumed special titles such as Great Metropolitan, Patriarch etc with heads of other cities called Metropolitans and those of small regions called Bishops.

It was in the first Ecumenical Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, these canonical norms got universal application. In the History of the Council of Nicaea written by Gelasius of Cyzicus ( AD 425), it is written that Council appointed thirteen Council fathers to communicate, the Symbol of faith and 20 Constitutions of Nicaea to the churches of respective region. The Mar John of Persia who was the great Metropolitan of India was one among them.

After the Council of Nicaea, we see fairly unanimous attestation of Saint Thomas Apostolic mission in India by Early Church fathers. With the literatures we have, I think its safe to conclude that the Church fathers definitely knew the India they were mentioning. There is no reason to doubt the India in their reference to be different from Malabar just by assumptions.

The problem about the mission of Saint Bartholomew, Pantaenus is that there are no local traditions recorded about this. (Medlycott is good source and I have already included this in the article)

Its very true that there were no Malabar School in comparison to the Schools of Nisbis, Edessa etc . I certainly don’t think that this is because of any fault of the early Prelates. One possible reason would be that the ancestors did not feel the need to consider Mesopotamian Schools alien. A comparison of today’s situations would be very helpful before we blame the Chaldeans, as we have all kinds of ecclesiastical jurisdictions in Kerala now. The kind of schools we really have today are the great schools of Pentecostals/ Charismatic’s/ Incultralisation etc .

Are we really in a position to blame the early Prelates that there were no early hierarchy in Malabar according to our fancy today ? We certainly didn’t preserve any information and have a schismatic nature. I think more than anyone it is the Christians here who are responsible for the situation of Christianity in India.

There is an essay – “Was the Pre- XVIIth Century Church of the Thomas Christians of India ( Malabar) “A particular Church” ?” by Dr. Placid Podipara. I have greatly benefited by reading this article. In this essay, Fr. Placid compares the Church of Malabar with the elements that make faithful combine in to Particular churches ie, 1) Liturgy 2) Ecclesiastical discipline 3) Spiritual heritage- Canon Law, Asceticism, Monasticism, Theological System with due consideration to history, genius and temperament. I recommend this article.

I have not read any documents or passages which mentions that the prelates prior to Sixteenth century came here for money. In fact if we look at the literature available, it talks about the good will of the Prelates prior to the sixteenth century. I have read that some bishops came to Malabar from Jacobite Patriarch after the Koonan Kurish Satyam for money and I have not verified these information.