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JARL CHARPENTIER
The Portuguese kings, D. Manuel (1495 — 1521) and D.
Joào III (1521 —1557), were very eager to get to know
something more about St. Thomas and especially if any relics of
him were to be found at Mylapore. Already in 1517 some
Portuguese sailors had landed at that place in the company of
an Armenian called Khwäja Iskander and were shown ruins of
great churches in one of which St. Thomas ought to have been
buried. They also found there an old blind ’Moor’ who expected
to be made seeing again through a miracle of the Apostle."
In 1519 again a few Portuguese visited the place. Then D.
Duarte de Menezes" in 1522 sent Manuel de Frias as ’captain
of the Coromandel Coast’ to Mylapore to make thorough
researches; and in the following year he and his men found in the
church of the sepulchre rests of two skeletons and a piece of
iron. These, of course, were believed to be the relics of St.
Thomas and of his benefactor, a king called Sa(n)gama3, as well
as the point of the lance with which the Apostle had been
speared. These relics were encased in precious coffins and
buried beneath the altar although parts of them must
undoubtedly have been brought to Goa. Apparently at that time one
had no knowledge of that translation of the relics to Edessa
which is mentioned in the Acts of St. Thomas, by Ephraem
Syrus etc.
But the South Indian tradition of the Apostle had been
known to European travellers before the advent of the
Portuguese. Of these the earliest one seems to have been the
famous marco Polo who on his way back from his long stay
with Kubilai Khan in China visited the coasts of South India
and got to know about the Christians of St. Thomas. In Book
III, ch. 17—184 he tells us what he had learnt about them and
about the Apostle himself. According to him St. Thomas was
1 Already Marco Polo (III, ch. 18 Yule) tells us that Christians and
Saracens alike worshipped at the sepulchre of St. Thomas; also that the
earth from that spot was renowned for its healing qualities.
2 Governor of Portuguese India 1521 —1524.
3 Thus do couto Decada VII: 10,5; the name Sa(n)gama apparently
belongs to a ruler of the 14th century A.D.
4 Ed. Yule II, 277 sqq. Cp. Ramusio Navigationi et viaggi II (1573),
fol. 54r.
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