The Nestorian Controversy and the Church in India

The Nestorian Controversy and the Church in India is a dispute over the relationship between early Christian sects.

The Church of the East was often isolated from other ancient churches due to its location outside the Roman Empire. Archbishop Nestorius of Constantinople was declared a heretic by the Council of Ephesus. However, the Church of the East refused to acknowledge his deposition because he supported the same christolical position that the Church of the East had always held. Later, the Anaphora of Mar Nestorius which he composed came to be used in Church of the East. The Church of the East was therefore pejoratively labelled the "Nestorian Church". However the label was incorrect because Nestorius was neither the founder of the Church of the East, nor ever a member.

Christianity in India

Christianity is said to have been established in India in 52 CE with the arrival of St.Thomas the Apostle in Cranganore (Kodungaloor). Subsequently, the Christian community of the Malabar Coast established close ties with the other St. Thomas Christians of the Middle East in the Persian Empire. They eventually coalesced into the Church of the East, centered on the Catholicos-Patriarch of Seleucia-Ctesiphon.

When Pope Julius III on April 6, 1553 confirmed John Sulacca as Chaldean Patriarch, he said that the discipline and liturgy of the Chaldeans had already been approved by his predecessors, Nicholas I (858-867), Leo X (1513–1521) and Clement VII (1523–1534). A Papal letter also mentions Patriarch Simon Mamma as a patriarch of the Christians in Malabar. This shows that at times Chaldean Patriarchs in communion with Rome presided over the Christians of Malabar.

Portuguese

When the Portuguese arrived in India in the 16th century, they were ignorant of other Christian Rites. They assumed the four bishops the encountered were Nestorian. The Portuguese were startled by the absence of images and by the use of leavened bread, although these two points are in accordance with Chaldean usage.[1] Their report of 1504 was addressed to the Chaldean Patriarch. Their ignorance led to the controversial Synod of Diamper forcing the Latin Rite on the Malabar Syriac Christians in 1599. However the Syriac Church at Malabar was already in union with Rome.[2][3][4] Ironically, St. Francis Xavier praised bishops who provided leadership to this community, including Mar Jacob, Mar Joseph and Mar Abraham and acknowledged their communion with the Holy See.

However, when the Portuguese deported Mar Joseph to Portugal it was the Chaldean Patriarch (not the Nestorian) who sent Mar Abraham to take his place. This appears from Action iii, Decree X of the third provincial council at Goa in 1585, which recites that Mar Abraham came as Archbishop of Angamale, with a letter from Pope Pius IV. Pope Gregory XIII's November 29, 1578 letter was written to Mar Abraham asked him to convert non-Christians only.[5]

The Synod of Diamper of 1599 marked the formal subjugation of the Malabar Syriac Christian community to the Latin Church.

Mar John, Metropolitan of India (1122 CE)

Prester John from Hartmann Schedel's Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493

In 1122, Mar John, Metropolitan designate of India and his suffragens went to Rome and received the pallium from Pope Callixtus II.[6] He described to the Pope and the Cardinals the miracles that were wrought at the tomb of St. Thomas at Mylapore.[7] This visit apparently from the Saint Thomas Christians of India cannot be confirmed, as evidence comes only from secondary sources.[8][9][10] A letter surfaced during the 1160s claiming to be from Prester John. Over one hundred different versions of the letter were published over the next few centuries. Most often, the letter was addressed to Emanuel I, the Byzantine Emperor of Rome, though some were addressed to the Pope or the King of France.

A Latin text with its Hebrew translation reads as follows:

Praete janni invenitur ascendendo in Kalicut in arida...[11]

This is well-known knowledge about the Jews who are found there near Prester John. The Hebrew letters of Prester John shows that he lived in Malabar (southern India).[11]

Connecting Prester John with India is documented in the Hebrew text on the one hand, while legend also lends support to an Indian origin. India is mentioned several times in these letters.[12] Second, Kalicut (one of the most important port-cities in southern India and the place where Vasco da Gama was sent), is mentioned in one of the letters.Third, the statement in a letter[11] "In the large India is buried the body of St Thomas the Apostle."[13]

The author claimed that St. Thomas was buried in India, a belief held also by the Christians of southern India.[14] Not only that, but the author of the letters claimed[15] about 'St. Thomas holiday', that is, apparently, St. Thomas' memorial day is held by the same Christians on July 3.[16][17] Fourth, the author of the letters mentioned that pepper grew in this land,[18] a vegetable typical to Malabar.[19] Fifth, stories in the letters describe warriors riding elephants. Unlike the African elephant, the Asian elephant could be ridden, which indicates an Indian context.[11][20]

Mar Ya'qob Metropolitan and Patriarch Yahballaha III

Riccoldo da Monte di Croce was in an audience with Patriarch Yahballaha III. In the 15th century, the Roman Catholic Church considered the Church of the East heretical so Yahballaha is depicted wearing a jester's hat rather than a turban.

At the beginning of the fourteenth century the Indian church was again dependent upon the Church of the East. The dating formula in the colophon to a manuscript copied in June 1301 in the church of Mar Quriaqos in Cranganore mentions the patriarch Yahballaha III (whom it describes as Yahballaha V), and the Metropolitan Yaqob of India. Cranganore, described in this manuscript as 'the royal city', was the metropolitan seat for India at this time.[21]

In the 1320s patriarch Yahballaha III's anonymous biographer and his friend Rabban Bar Sauma praised the Church of the East's achievement in converting 'the Indians, Chinese and Turks'.[22] India was listed as one of the Church of the East's 'provinces of the exterior' by the historian ʿAmr in 1348.[23]

Yahballaha held contacts with the Byzantine Empire and with Latin Christendom. In 1287, when Abaqa's son and successor Arghun Khan sought an ambassador for an important mission to Europe, Yaballaha recommended his former teacher Rabban Bar Sauma, then the Visitor-General. Arghun agreed and Bar Sauma traveled through Europe, meeting with the Pope and many monarchs, and bringing gifts, letters, and European ambassadors on his return. Via Rabban Sauma, Yahballaha received a ring from the Pope's finger, and a papal bull that recognized Yahballaha as the patriarch of the eastern Christians.[24]

In May 1304, Yahballaha professed the Catholic faith in a letter addressed to Pope Benedict XI. But the union was refuted by his Nestorian bishops.

In 1439, Pope Eugene IV sent an apostolic letter through his legates to King Thoma of Villarvattom stating, "To our dearest son in Jesus the great king Thomas of India happiness and apostolic benediction. We have been often told that you and your subjects are true and faithful Christians".[25] Udayamperoor (known as Diamper in Portuguese), the capital, was the venue of the famous Synod of Diamper of 1599 CE. It was held in the All Saints Church in Diamper. The venue was apparently chosen because the place was the capital of a Christian principality.[26]

St. Francis Xavier

St. Francis Xavier, in a letter from Cochin to St. Ignatius Loyola, dated 14 January 1549, asks for indulgences for certain churches saying, "This would be to increase the piety of the natives who are descended from the converts of St. Thomas and are called Christians of St. Thomas." In another letter dated 28 January 1549 to Rodriguez, St. Francis Xavier asks for indulgences for a church at Cranganore, "which is very piously frequented by the Christians of St. Thomas, to be a consolation for these Christians and to increase piety." Xavier's letters show that the Christians of Malabar were in communion with Rome, even before the arrival of Mar Joseph in 1555.

In a letter to king John III of Portugal dated 26th January 1549 Francis Xavier describe jacob Abuna as a virtuous and saintly man

Xavier wrote to king John III of Portugal on 26th january 1549, in which he declared, "a bishop of Armenia Mesopotamia by the name of Jacob Abuna has been serving God and Your Highness in these regions for forty·five years. He is a very old, virtuous and saintly man, and at the same time, one who has been neglected by Your Highness and by almost all of those who are in India. God is granting him his reward, since he desires to assist him by himself, without employing us as a means to console his servants. He is being helped here solely by the priests of St. Francis Y. H. should write a very affectionate letter to him, and one of its paragraphs should include an order recommending him to the governors, to the veadores da fazenda and to the captains of Cochin so that he may receive the honour and respect which he deserves when he comes to them with a request on behalf of the Christians of St. Thomas. Your Highness should write to him and earnestly entreat him to undertake the charge of recommending you to God, since YH. has a greater need of being supported by the prayers of the bishop than the bishop has need of the temporal assistance of Y.H. He has endured much in his work with the Christians of St Thomas."[3][4]

In that same year Francis Xavier also wrote to his Jesuit colleague and Provincial of Portugal, Fr. Simon Rodrigues giving him the following description: "Fifteen thousand paces from Cochin there is a fortress owned by the king with the name of Ctanganore. It has a beautiful college, built by Frey Wcente, a companion of the bishop, in which there are easily a hundred students, sons of native Christians, who are named after St. Thomas. There are sixty villages of these Thomas Christians around this fortress, and the students for the college as I have said, are obtained from them There are two churches in Cranganore, one of St Thomas, which is highly revered by the Thomas Christians."[3][4]

This attitude of Xavier and the Franciscans before him does not reflect any of the attitudes that followed the spread of the Tridentine spirit of the Counter-Reformation, which tended to foster a uniformity of belief and practice. It is possible to follow Portuguese historians such as Joéo Paulo Oliveira e Cosca's line of argument, yet they seem to neutralize the Portuguese cultural nationalism in their colonial expansion and the treatment of the natives. However, documents brought out from the Portuguese national archives recently help to confirm a greater openness or pragmatism in the first half of the 16th century.[4][27]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Father Nidhiry: A History of His Times by Prof. Abraham Nidhiry
  2. ↑ Encyclopaedia of sects & religious doctrines, Volume 4 By Charles George Herbermann page 1180,1181
  3. 1 2 3 COSTELLIOE,Letters 232-246
  4. 1 2 3 4 "Christen und Gewürze" : Konfrontation und Interaktion kolonialer und indigener Christentumsvarianten Klaus Koschorke (Hg.)Book in German, English, Spanish, 1998 Page 31,32
  5. ↑ Coleridge 1876, p. 74, 90.
  6. ↑ Silverberg 2001, pp. 29–34.
  7. ↑ "Raulin, op. cit., pp. 435-436. Counto. Asia Lisbonne, 1788, Dec. XII, p. 288."
  8. ↑ Halsall, Paul (1997). "Otto of Freising: The Legend of Prester John". Internet Medieval Sourcebook. Retrieved June 20, 2005.
  9. ↑ Silverberg 2001, pp. 3–7.
  10. ↑ Bowden, p. 177
  11. 1 2 3 4 Prester John: Fiction and History by Meir Bar-Ilan, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, 52900 Israel
  12. ↑ (pp. 41, 89, 107, 119, and more)
  13. ↑ Actually, the Hebrew text reads 'the unclean Thomas', because the Hebrew translator did not want to admit the holiness of one of the apostles, and therefore changed the title.
  14. ↑ On the Christians of southern India that relate their beginning to St. Thomas See Brown 1956
  15. ↑ (p. 133)
  16. ↑ Brown 1956, p. 50.
  17. ↑ Silverberg 2001, pp. 16-35.
  18. ↑ (pp. 55, 91, 131)
  19. ↑ Pepper was one of the exports of India from ancient times. See Warmington 1974, pp. 180 ff On the export of exotic animals from India, See Warmington 1974, pp. 145 ff
  20. ↑ Warmington 1974, pp. 150–152
  21. ↑ MS Vat Syr 22; Wilmshurst, EOCE, 343 and 391
  22. ↑ Wallis Budge, pp. 122–3.
  23. ↑ Wilmshurst, EOCE, 343
  24. ↑ Phillips, p. 123
  25. ↑ A. J. John, Anaparambil
  26. ↑ "Indian Churches - History in Malayalam". synodofdiamper.com.
  27. ↑ Arquivio Nacional torre do Tombo Lisbo:Nucleo Antigo N 875 contains a summary of letters from india written in 1525 and also the kings replay to it :Cf.OLIVERIA E COSTA,Portuguese,Apendice Documental 170-178

Sources

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