Malankara Church - Early History of Christianity in India

Early History of Christianity in India

As a Saint Thomas Christian group, the Malankara Church traced its origins to Thomas the Apostle, said to have proselytized in India in the 1st century. Different strains of the tradition have him arriving either by sea or by land. There is no direct contemporary evidence for Thomas coming to India, but such a trip would certainly have been possible for a Roman Jew to have made; communities such as the Cochin Jews and the Bene Israel are known to have existed in India around that time. The earliest text connecting Thomas to India is the Acts of Thomas, written in Edessa perhaps in the 2nd century. Some early Indian sources, such as the "Thomas Parvam" or "Song of Thomas", further expand on the tradition of the apostle's arrival and activities in India and beyond. Generally he is described as arriving in the neighbourhood of Maliankara and establishing Seven Churches, the Ezharapallikal: Cranganore (ml:കൊടുങ്ങല്ലൂര്‍), Paravur (Kottakavu)(ml:കോട്ടക്കാവ്), Palayoor (ml:പാലയൂര്‍), Kokkamangalam (ml:കൊക്കമംഗലം), Niranam (ml:നിരണം ), Chayal (Nilackal) (ml:നിലക്കല്‍) and Kollam (Quilon) (ml:കൊല്ലം ). Eusebius of Caesarea mentions that his mentor Pantaenus found a Christian community in India in the 2nd century, while references to Thomas' Indian mission appear in the works of 3rd- and 4th-century writers of the Roman Empire, including Ambrose of Milan, Gregory of Nazianzus, Jerome, and Ephrem the Syrian, showing that the Thomas tradition was well established across the Christian world by that time.

Whatever the historicity of the Thomas tradition, the earliest organised Christian presence in India dates to around the 3rd century, when East Syrian settlers and missionaries from Persia, members of the Church of the East or Nestorian Church, established themselves in Kerala. The Thomas Christians trace the further growth of their community to the mission of Thomas of Cana, a Nestorian from the Middle East said to have relocated to Kerala some time between the 4th and 8th century. The subgroup of the Saint Thomas Christians known as the Southists trace their lineage to the high-born Thomas of Cana, while the group known as the Northists claim descent from Thomas the Apostle's indigenous converts who intermarried with Thomas of Cana's children by his concubine or second wife.

As the community grew and immigration by East Syrians increased, the connection with the Church of the East, centred in the Persian capital of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, strengthened. From the early 4th century the Patriarch of the Church of the East provided India with clergy, holy texts, and ecclesiastical infrastructure, and around 650 Patriarch Ishoyahb III solidified the Church of the East's jurisdiction over the Saint Thomas Christian community. In the 8th century Patriarch Timothy I organised the community as the Ecclesiastical Province of India, one of the church's illustrious Provinces of the Exterior. After this point the Province of India was headed by a metropolitan bishop, provided from Persia, the "Metropolitan-Bishop of the Seat of Saint Thomas and the Whole Christian Church of India". His metropolitan see was probably in Cranganore, or (perhaps nominally) in Mylapore, where the shrine of Thomas was located. Under him were a varying number of bishops, as well as a native Archdeacon, who had authority over the clergy and who wielded a great amount of secular power.