Malabar Christians

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Malabar Christians. A title applied in a wider sense to all the Christian communities of the Syrian rite living in Kerala in SW India (also known as ‘Thomas Christians’), and in a narrower sense to the community in communion with Rome (the ‘Syro-Malabar Church’). All claim that their Church was founded by St Thomas the Apostle, but there is no certain evidence that there were Christians in India earlier than the 6th cent. They probably came originally from E. Syria. At the Synod of Diamper in 1599 they renounced Nestorius and allied themselves with the RC Church. Though there was a breach with the W. in 1653, about two-thirds of them returned to communion with Rome in 1662. The rest joined the Syrian Orthodox. At the end of the 19th cent. a reforming group of the Syrian Orthodox constituted themselves the ‘Mar Thoma’ Church; this has links with the Church of South India. Another section sought union with Rome and in 1930 the Malankarese Church came into being. Within the Syrian Orthodox Church in India there are two Catholicoi, one recognizing the Patriarch in Damascus, the other independent. Since 1907 there has also been a small community again subject to the Patriarch of the Church of the East
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Malabar Christians. The Christians of the state of Kerala on the Malabar (SW) coast of India. They number over 2 million, now divided into several communities (see SYRIAN CHURCHES). They are known as ‘ Thomas Christians’ from their claim—taken seriously by some W. scholars too—that their ancestors were evangelized by St Thomas. In any case, by the 6th cent. there was a Church in the region using Syriac in its liturgy and dependent for bishops on the (Nestorian) catholikos of Baghdad. After heavy-handed missionary work by the Portuguese, the Church was formally purged of Nestorianism, brought under Roman obedience, and thoroughly Latinized at the synod of Diamper (Udayamperur, near Cochin) in 1599. Latin government of the Church continued as a source of tension down to the 20th cent. There was a defection of a large body eventually to the Syrian Orthodox in the 17th cent.; this schism gave rise to another in the 19th cent. with the creation of the Mar Thoma Church. The Catholics are now styled the ‘Syro-Malabar Church’, having been granted their own metropolitanate of Ernakulam with Indian bishops in 1923.