Thomas Christians

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St. Thomas Cross

Thomas Christians are the members of Indian Christian churches who trace their history back to a first mission by the Apostle Thomas and today have a total of around seven million members. These are mainly:

Thomas Christians, like other religious communities in India, have their own ancient tradition of meditation practices ( Dhyanam ) .

Names

The term "Thomas Christians" has no official character. Their age is not known exactly. The name comes from the local Thomas cult, which is associated with the veneration of an apostle's grave. The Apostle Thomas , venerated as India's first missionary, is subsequently also considered to be the founder of an apostolic bishopric ( cathedra ) in India. Local Christians and church leaders draw conclusions from this for their position and rights in the whole of Christianity and within their own ecclesiastical denomination. The assertion of independent apostolicity gives rise to tensions and demands for autonomy, which lead to church division.

Native names are Nasranikkal ("Nazranis") and Suryanikkal ("Syrian Christians").

founding

According to local Thomas hagiography, the apostle Thomas left Jerusalem around 40 AD and came to northern India around the year 52 after he had evangelized in the Middle East (now Iran , Iraq , Afghanistan and Balochistan ) . According to a later legend, Thomas traveled there along the south-western coast of India (then Malabar , today the state of Kerala ) and finally reached Madras (today: Chennai in the state of Tamil Nadu ) on the Coromandel coast , where he was fatally hit by a spear. A church was built over his supposed grave there (today St. Thomas Mount ) in 1547, in which there is a cross with a Middle Persian inscription from the 8th / 9th centuries. Century is located. The better known veneration of Thomas relics in Edessa is explained with the transfer of a large part of his bones there in the 3rd century. The old Christian churches of India regard Thomas as their founder and spiritual father to this day and refer to themselves as "Daughters of St. Thomas".

Even if the founding story, like many other apostolic foundations, is legendary, Christianity in India is older than many churches in Europe. In the third century in Syria / Mesopotamia the Thomas tradition superimposed the older Addai tradition . Around the same time, the Acts of Thomas were written , which tell of a missionary trip to India, however the description to the north of the country, today's Afghanistan and Balochistan. The Indian tradition has been widespread among the church fathers since the 4th century. In the middle of the 6th century, the Alexandrian traveler known as Kosmas Indicopleustes found Christians in southern India.

As a church located outside the Roman Empire and beyond the “Islamic Belt”, these Indian Christians had little contact with the Imperial Church or even the Roman Church for centuries and developed an independent church life in community with the Catholicos of the East Syrian “Church of the East” of Seleukia-Ctesiphon (later in Baghdad or Mosul ). Their traditional order of worship is attributed to the Eastern Syrian rite and was celebrated in the Syrian language until modern times .

Allegedly as early as 345, at least before the eighth century, a merchant Thomas of Cana is said to have settled and privileged Christian-Syrian immigrants in Cranganore . In the course of this, the Thomas Christians of India obtained their own metropolitan from Persia and Mesopotamia , who was in tenth place in the ranking of the East Syrian Church. As usual, he was assisted by an “archdeacon” (despite the name a presbyter / priest) as a kind of vicar general . Since the East Syrian "Metropolitans of All India", as foreigners, hardly knew the local language Malayalam , they usually had to be content with the role of a kind of auxiliary bishop , while the actual church leadership was carried out by a local who traded as the " Archdeacon of India " and in South India officiated as a princely ethnarch of the Christian population.

In the 1550s, the East Syrian “Church of the East” split into a branch that remained autocephalous (“ Nestorians ”) and one that took up fellowship with the Pope in Rome (“ Chaldean Catholic Church ”).

colonialism

The interior of the Valia Palli (Great Church) in Kottayam

When the Portuguese, looking for new trade routes, came to India in 1498, they were surprised to find Christian communities there. Although the Portuguese were initially very happy to find Christians in India and were welcomed as brothers by the Thomas Christians , after a few happy decades, especially with the onset of the Counter-Reformation , the centuries-long time began, on the one hand, and the Latinization of worship and forms of piety, on the other the resistance of locals against it, with the result that the Indian-Eastern Christianity split into several groups.

Cheria Pally (Little Church) in Kottayam (1579)

Legitimized by the padroado system and with military force, which did not stop at the abductions of bishops and sea blockades, the Portuguese colonizers began to bring the Thomas Christians under the sovereignty of bishops of the Latin rite. In 1553 the Roman Catholic Diocese of Goa was founded, the territory of which stretched from the Cape of Good Hope to the borders of China, thus including India. When the last East Syrian "Metropolitan of India", Mar Abraham, who converted to Catholicism, died in 1597, the Portuguese grip on the Thomas Christians increased. The Latin Archbishop of Goa , Aleixo de Menezes (1559-1617), who was also the political ruler on behalf of the Portuguese viceroy, organized the Synod of Diamper in 1599 with the aim of preserving the Church of the Thomas Christians and its liturgy in the spirit of the Roman Catholic Council of Trento, including for the first time compulsory celibacy for deacons and priests. In 1599, the East Syrian "Metropolis of All India" with its seat in Angamaly was occupied by a Latin bishop, Francisco Roz SJ (ordained 1601; † 1624) and downgraded to the suffragan of the Portuguese Metropolitan of Goa (moved to Cranganore in 1605 ). In the following centuries, European bishops or apostolic vicars appointed by Goa or Rome were almost the only ones who were appointed who paid little attention to local traditions. The Padroado regime did not allow another East Syrian bishop to officiate on its Indian territories. The still Syrian-language liturgy (mass celebration) of the Thomas Christians was initially only corrected in a doctrinal way, then also in its design according to the Latin model, and translations from Latin into Syriac were made for quite a few non-Eucharistic services and regularly used liturgically until well into the 20th century .

The forced "Latinization" of Indian Christians, disregarding their Eastern Church traditions and the local "archdeacons", finally led to a break with Portugal and Rome in 1653. With the oath of the Leaning Cross, Indian Thomas Christians vowed on January 3, 1653 in Mattancherry near Cochin never to tolerate a Portuguese Jesuit bishop again. On May 22, 1653 twelve priests ordained - in an "emergency ceremony" without the participation of a bishop - the previous archdeacon Thomas Parambil ( Thomas de Campo ) as Mar Thomas I as their ecclesiastical head. The majority of the Thomas Christians joined the new metropolitan and left the Latin archbishop. The oath of the crooked cross is the beginning of the division of Indian Christians into different church groups with different liturgies, which still exists today.

Modern times

Historical development and division of the Indian Thomas Christians

The majority of the Thomas Christians in Malabar / Malankara returned to unity with the Catholic Church from 1662 after Pope Alexander VII sent Italian Carmelites to look after them and appointed vicars apostolic for the non-Portuguese territories . Through intermediate stages they became what is today the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church . On February 1, 1663, Chandy Parampil ( Alexander de Campo ; 1663–1687), a cousin of the aforementioned Mar Thomas I, was promoted to Apostolic Vicar for Malabar and thus the first (and until the 18th century only) indigenous Indian ( Titular) bishop of the Thomas Christians of the East Syrian Rite ( group I ) united with Rome .

The smaller, non-Catholic part of the Thomas Christians approached the Syrian Orthodox Church of Antioch , i.e. H. the so-called Jacobites, took over from her the confession to the Council of Ephesus and gradually the Western Syrian liturgy ( Group II ). They were subsequently under their own local "Metropolitan of Malankara". But for them the problem of the orderly ordination of their head of church in apostolic succession arose again and again . For this they remained dependent on the Church of Antioch and bishops sent by it to India, who also established their own allegiances there. From the resulting disputes, the small independent Syrian Church in Thozhiyur (Anjur, near Trichur ) emerged in 1772 ( Group III ). During the British colonial rule in 1888 the non-Catholic Thomas Christians of the West Syrian rite also split off the Mar Thoma Church ( group IV ), which was unified with the Church of England .

In 1912, an attempt was made in India to enhance the importance of the Thomas Christians within the Antiochian patriarchate by giving a branch of the Church in Malankara, which was striving for autonomy, the office of " Maphrians ", which expired in the 19th century . H. of the " Catholicos of the East" (formerly the second highest dignitary of the Syrian Orthodox Church; official name: Basilios), was revived, in personal union with the office of "Metropolitan of Malankara".

The Indian branch of the Syrian Orthodox Church around the native Metropolitan (Catholicos), which insists on independence from the Antiochian Patriarch, established the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church in 1934 . Thus, two Syrian Orthodox jurisdictions faced each other in India, the party of the patriarch ( group IIa : "Patriarchists") and that of the metropolitan of Malankara operating as "Catholicos" ( group IIb ). The schism was temporarily ended in 1964 and a common hierarchy under that of the Antiochian Patriarch Ignatius Jacob III. consecrated Catholicos Mar Basilios Augen I. (1965–1975). However, under Basilio's eyes, who assumed the title of “Successor to the Throne of the Apostle Thomas”, tensions rose again. The independent apostolicity claimed with this title was understood by the patriarchate as an impairment of the rights of the Apostolic See of Antioch. The conflict intensified when, in 1972, the Antiochene patriarch dispatched a patriarchal assistant who was unacceptable to Indians who were concerned about independence and equality. When the Syrian Orthodox Synod in Damascus removed Catholicos Basilios eyes from office in 1975 and appointed Mor Paulose Philoxenos as Baselios Paulose II (1975-1996) to Maphrian (Catholicos) in his place , the breach was carried out. The supporters of the resigning Basilios Augen in turn elected Mor Basilios Marthoma Mathews I as Catholicos and built the autocephalous Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church , while the rest remained as the autonomous Malankara Syrian Orthodox Church under the suzerainty of the Antiochian Patriarchate.

In 1932 a part of the Syrian Orthodox Thomas Christians of Western Syriac Liturgy took up church fellowship with Rome and founded the Malankar Catholic Church ( Group V ).

Even among the Thomas Christians of the East Syrian rite unified with Rome ( Group I ), the desire for local bishops finally prevailed. They received support from the Chaldean Catholic Church on the one hand, and the autocephalous Assyrian Church of the East on the other .

Despite the Latin hierarchy, contacts between the Thomas Christians and the Eastern Syrians of both denominations in Mesopotamia were intensified in the 19th century. At the request of an Indian delegation, the Catholic patriarchal administrator Yohannan VIII. Hormizd consecrated a Malabar priest in the person of Paulus Pandari as bishop (nominally from Mar Behnam near Mosul) de facto for the service of the Thomas Christians in 1798, without Roman consent. The attempt made in 1861/62 to extend the jurisdiction of the Catholic Patriarchate from Babylon to India failed not least because of the resistance of the curiac Elias Chavara against the Chaldean patriarch Joseph VI. Audo sent East Syrian Catholic Bishop Thomas Rocos. The work of 1874 also by Joseph VI. Bishop Elias Mellus , who was sent to India , was expressly disapproved of by Rome and finally stopped in 1882. As a result, in 1907, a smaller part of the Indian Eastern Syrians joined the Assyrian Church of the East as their Indian diocese, breaking the connection with the Roman Pope ( Group VI ). With Mar Abdišo Thondanat († 1900) and Mar Abimalek Timotheus they received their own metropolitans. Under the latter's successor, Mar Thomas Darmo , the metropolis split in 1964 into followers of the Julian and those of the Gregorian calendar, whose groups then reflected the split in the Assyrian mother church in India (which continues to this day). So far only in India was the reconciliation of new and old calendars under Catholicos Patriarch Mar Dinkha IV.

The Catholic Thomas Christians of the East Syrian Rite ( Group I ) received local bishops of their own rite in 1896 and were organized as the Syro-Malabar Church from 1923 within the Roman Catholic Church, but deliberately independently of the Chaldean Catholic Church , which since 1992 has been called " Church in its own right ”is led by the quasi-patriarchal Grand Archbishop of Ernakulam- Angamali .

Most groups of Thomas Christians are again strictly divided within the church into the “Southern Christians” ( Knananites ) who care for endogamy and the other church members (“Northern Christians”).

Today's churches

With East Syrian rite

With the West Syrian rite

literature

  • Albrecht Dihle : Art. India . In: Reallexikon für Antike und Christianentum , Vol. 18, Anton Hiersemann Verlag, Stuttgart 1998, Sp. 1–56.
  • Heinzgerd Brakmann: Thomas Christians. In: Lexicon for Theology and Church. 3. Edition. 10 (2001) col. 1-5. (with further reference)
  • István Perczel: Language of religion, language of the people, languages ​​of the documents: the legendary history of the Saint Thomas Christians of Kerala. In: Ernst Bremer u. a. (Ed.): Language of Religion - Language of the People. Medieval Judaism, Christianity and Islam (MittelalterStudien 11). Fink, Munich 2006, pp. 387-428.
  • Placid J. Podipara : The Thomas Christians (series The Eastern Christianity N. F. 18). Augustinus-Verlag Würzburg, 1966.
  • Helmut Waldmann: The royal road of the apostles in Edessa, India and Rome. Verlag der Tübinger Gesellschaft, Tübingen 1997 (full text as PDF)
  • Robert Wallisch: The Discovery of the Indian Thomas Christians . Verlag der Österr. Academy of Sciences, Vienna 2008, ISBN 978-3-7001-3952-2 .
  • Henning Wrogemann (ed.): India - melting pot of religions or competition between missions? Protestant mission in India since its beginnings in Tranquebar (1706) and the mission of other denominations and religions. (Sources and contributions to the history of the Hermannsburg Mission and the Ev.-Luth. Missionswerk in Lower Saxony 17). LIT Verlag, Berlin 2008. ISBN 978-3-8258-0914-0 . Page 83–102.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Developing a Practice of Orthodox Christian Meditation Practice. A Christian Dhyanam from the East. Mission Society of St. Gregorios of India, Madison, Wisconsin (USA).
  2. ^ Albrecht Dihle: Art. India . In: Reallexikon für Antike und Christianentum , Vol. 18 (1998), Col. 1–56, here Col. 46.