Note 370 — APPENDIX B.

Gaspar da Gama was quite right. There were no Christians at Calecut when Vasco da Gama first visited that town, nor are there many now. Cochin, and not Calecut, was the chief seat of the Syrian Christians of Malabar. They were an offshoot of the church of Persia, which recognised the Nestorian patriarch of Babylon (Mosul). After the condemnation of their dogmas by the Council of Ephesus (431) they sought a refuge in distant countries. After 1599 many of them recognised the Pope, but after the ascendency of the Dutch (since 1653) some turned Protestants, whilst others recognised the Jacobite bishop of Antioch as their head. Popularly they are known as S. Thomas Christians, although there exists not the slightest evidence of that Apostle ever having visited India. Their worship is of a simple nature: they admit no images to their churches, reject the doctrine of transubstantiation, and allow their priests to marry (G. Milne Rae, The Syrian Church in India, 1892; Percy Badger, The Nestorians and their Ritual, 1852; German, Die Kirche der Thomaschristen, 1877).