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(1900)
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ST. THOMAS THE APOSTLE AND INDIA

SI

Acts unknown to us, and that it was afterwards, amongst the
great community of converted Hindus, mixed up with local South
Indian traditions and with legendary traits belonging to Hindu
tales of gods and saintly men.

The fates of the Christians of St. Thomas after the arrival
of the Portuguese in India became vexed and mournful but cannot
be followed here in detail. Suffice it to say that pleased as the
Portuguese had at first been to find these fellow-believers on
Indian soil their clergy soon became very much upset when
finding out that they were schismatics of the Nestorian creed
towards which the Roman Church seems always to have cherished
a violent hatred. Thus the clergymen of Goa inaugurated a
policy of most serious coercion in order to get the Christians
of St. Thomas within the fold of the Catholic Church. The
ill-famed Inquisition of Goa, instituted in 1560, soon turned its
weapons against them and tried with its well-known methods
to save their souls from everlasting fire. The Jesuits, who in
India did always plead the milder form of policy towards pagans
and schismatics, founded seminaries ■—■ such as that in
Vaipi-cotta (1584) — where young Syrian Christians were educated
to be confessors of the Roman creed and to spread it amongst
their countrymen. Finally the young and energetic Archbishop
of Goa, D. Aleixo de Menezes", in 1599 convocated a synod in
Diamper (Udayampura) in the Western Ghats, one of the
headquarters of the Nestorian Christians. There after much haggling
and strife they were made to abjure their heresies and to declare
their allegiance to the Pope. Great stores of their ancient
literature were burnt. The Archbishop then went for an extensive
journey to visit the communities of these Christians in order to
purge them of heretical priests and books — an undertaking
which was certainly not without grave personal risk."

1 Menezes was an Augustine friar who held the Primate of Portuguese
India between 1595 and 1611.

2 The journey of the Archbishop as well as the synod have been
described by the Augustine friar D. ANTONIO de Gouvea in a work called
’Jornada do Arcebispo D. Frey Aleixo de Menezes, primaz da India Oriental,
e religioso da ordern de Santo-Agostinho, quando foy äs serras de Malabar,
e lugares em que morao os Antigos ChristSos de Sao Thomé, e os tirou
de muitos erros, e heregias em que estaräo, e reduzio å nossa Santa fé

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