Re-exploring the Past: The Fort Kochi Chapters – 3

Street leading to St Francis Church, Fort Kochi

There were Christians in Kerala long before the Brahmins, who came to be known as Namboothiris, landed in the state from North India some time after 6^th century CE. Tradition has it that Thomas, disciple of Jesus, brought Christianity to Kerala in the first century. That is quite possible, given the trade relationships that Kerala had with the Roman Empire in those days. Pliny the Elder, Roman author, chastised in his encyclopaedic work, Natural History (published around 77 CE), the Romans’ greed for pepper from India. He was displeased with his country spending “no less than fifty million sesterces” on a commodity which had no value other than its “certain pungency.” Did Thomas sail on one of the many ships that came to Kerala to purchase “pungency”? Possible. 

Even if Thomas did not come, the advent of Christianity in Kerala precedes the arrival of the Namboothiris. The Persians established trade links with Kerala in 4^th century CE. Thomas of Cana, or Knai Thoma as he is known in the history of Kerala’s Christianity, is believed to have brought Persian Christianity to Kerala in around 345 CE.

Jesus became one of the many gods of the local pantheon. Those who accepted Jesus as their God came to be known as Nasranis (from Nazarene). Persia provided Kerala’s Christians with church buildings, bishops, and Syriac liturgy. The Syriac language, a dialect of Aramaic (Jesus’ language), was used for religious purposes. Qurbana, which is the Malayalam word for Mass even now, is the Aramaic word for ‘sacrificial offering.’

The Persian bishops didn’t mind Kerala’s Christians following certain Hindu traditions which they had been used to. These Christians also celebrated the Hindu festivals, played Hindu music, and even prayed in Hindu temples with a figure of Jesus placed along with the Hindu idols. The Hindu customs related to birth, marriage, and death were observed by the Christians too.

How Roman Catholicism came to Kerala

All that changed totally with the arrival of the Portuguese. The Portuguese missionaries were appalled by the pagan practices of the Nasranis of Kerala. They made the Nasranis toe the Roman Catholic line and pledge allegiance to the Pope and his canon law. 

One group of Christians refused to accept the Portuguese orders. They took another pledge by holding on to a rope whose one end was attached to the cross of the Mattancherry church, not far from the church where Vasco da Gama was buried.

The energy of the religious fervour of the Nazranis who took the pledge holding the rope was so much that the cross suffered a bent and the pledge came to be known in history as the Coonan (Bent) Cross Oath. Thus in 1653, a millennium and a half after Christianity entered the region, Kerala’s Christians became two factions: Roman Catholics led by the missionary zeal of the Portuguese priests and the Orthodox who resisted.

Coonan Cross Oath in artist's imagination

Other denominations

The Orthodox group met with many divisions and subdivisions later because of petty reasons.

Even among the Papists, a division emerged eventually. A sizeable section of them was not willing to accept the Roman ways totally. They stuck to their original Syriac liturgies and practices and thus came to be known as Syro-Malabar Christians. It was only in the second half of the twentieth century that Malayalam became the language of Syro-Malabar church’s Qurbana. Recently some very unsavoury controversy hit the church regarding whether the priest should face the altar during the Qurbana or face the people. Petty matters can become big controversies that lead to major rifts in religions.

Vasco da Gama was a Roman Catholic and his body was buried in St Francis church, Fort Kochi. That church, built by the Portuguese in 1503 and dedicated to St. Bartholomew, was India’s oldest European church. The Dutch took it over after defeating the Portuguese and it became Protestant. Then it went into the hands of the British and became Anglican. The British wanted to blow it up initially, but at the last moment, the commanding officer changed his mind.

Now the Church of South India (CSI), a Protestant denomination, looks after it. Vasco da Gama’s mortal remains were taken back to his country a decade and a half after his burial in that church. Vasco da Gama now has his eternal rest in a Catholic tomb, a majestic one, in his own country. This Fort Kochi series, which will end with one more post, was stimulated by my recent visit to St Francis church.

Vasco da Gama was a deeply religious person, according to historians. Just before his first voyage to India, he spent a whole night in a Lisbon chapel seeking divine blessings for his mission to bring “Christians and spices” to Portugal from India. His religious fervour inflicted much cruelty on many people in India. He used extreme violence against unarmed civilians to establish Portuguese dominance both politically and spiritually.

I left Fort Kochi pondering the calamitous relationship between politics and religion, which continues to be a menace even today in my country. 

St Francis Church, Fort Kochi

To be Concluded

Chapter 1

Chapter 2