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ST. THOMAS THE APOSTI.E AND INDIA
2 5
The rage of the Brahmins now was brought to the boiling
point, and the foremost amongst them planned utterly to
destroy the Apostle of Jesus Christ. His extremely nefarious scheme
was this: he murdered his own son and then accused St.
Thomas of being the murderer. The king, of course, believed him
and immediately wanted to have the holy man executed.
However, St. Thomas persuaded him to have the boy’s body brought
before him; and beseeching him in the name of crucified Christ
he brought him back to life again. The young man rose up
as out of a deep sleep and, at the question of his resurrector,
silently pointed to his own father as being the murderer.1 The
Brahmin at once was brought to his proper punishment; and
the king himself and many of his subjects now eagerly asked
the Apostle to have them baptized.
The Brahmin party now was beaten all along the line, and
it became clear that the only recourse was to open violence.
One day when St. Thomas was preaching to the people — or
according to another version while he was praying by himself
— some Brahmins created a violent disturbance amongst the
assembled crowd. Stones began to fly, and the Apostle
severely wounded sank to the ground. Then one of the murderers
came forward and stung him through with his lance. His
disciples brought his dead body to the church he had built near
the spot and there buried it.
Thus was the tale told to the Portuguese explorers when
they first reached India.2 Thus did the Portuguese writers
whose works were eagerly read during the 16th century impart
the legend to Europa — especially the greatest of them all,
’our great Joäo de Barros’, to speak with his countryman and
successor DO COUTO.
1 This is how the story is told by De Barros Decada III: 7, 11
and by CamÖES Os Lusiadas X, 114—116. Another version has it that it
was the king’s own son whom the Brahmin murdered.
2 We are told that already in 1502 legates of the St. Thomas
Christians visited Vasco da Gama and presented him with some old songs and
accounts of their church. In the year before one of their priests, Joseph
by name, went to Europe and visited Rome. On this Joseph cp. the
Itinerarium Portugallensium (1508), fol. LXXXVIII, and Grynæus Novus
orbis (1555), p. 205.
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