Note 80 — S (continued 2)

Until the arrival of the Portuguese, the Malabar church was following unmolested, in its ritual, practice and communion, a creed of the Syro-Chaldæan church of the East. When they set out on their voyages, conquest and conversion were no less dear to the heart of Portuguese than enterprise and commerce. Though, in the first moments, the Syrians, in their neglected spiritual condition, were gratified at the advent of their co-religionists, the Romanist Portuguese, and the Portuguese in their turn expected the most beneficial results from an alliance with their Christian brethren on this coast, “the conformity of the Syrians to the faith and practice of the 5th century soon disappointed the prejudices of the Papist apologists. It was the first care of the Portuguese to intercept all correspondence with the Eastern Patriarchs, and several of their Bishops expired in the prisons of their Holy Office.” The Franciscan and Dominican Friars, and the Jesuit Fathers, worked vigorously to win the Malabar Christians over to the Roman Communion. Towards the beginning of the last quarter of the 16th century, the Jesuits built a church at Vaippacotta near Cranganūr, and founded a college for the education of Christian youths. In 1584, a seminary was established for the purpose of instructing the Syrians in theology, and teaching them the Latin, Portuguese and Syriac languages. The dignitaries who presided over the churches, however, refused to ordain the students trained in the seminary. This, and other causes of quarrel between the Jesuits and the native clergy, culminated in an open rupture, which was proclaimed by Archdeacon George in a Synod at Angamāli. When Alexes de Menezes, Archbishop of Goa, heard of this, he himself undertook a visitation of the Syrian churches. The bold and energetic Menezes carried all before him. Nor is his success to be wondered at. He was invested with the spiritual authority of the Pope, and armed with the terrors of the Inquisition. He was encouraged in his efforts by the Portuguese King, whose Governors on this coast ably backed him up. Though the ruling chiefs at first discountenanced the exercise of coercive measures over their subjects, they were soon won over by the stratagems of the subtle Archbishop. Thus supported, he commenced his visitation of the churches, and reduced them in A.D. 1599 by the decrees of the Synod of Diamper (Udayamperūr), a village about ten miles to the south-east of the town of Cochin. The decrees passed by the Synod were reluctantly subscribed to by Archdeacon George and a large number of Kathanars, as the native priests are called; and this practically converted the Malabar Church into a branch of the Roman Church. Literature sustained a very great loss at the hands of Menezes, “for this blind and enthusiastic inquisitor destroyed, like a second Omar, all the books written in the Syrian or Chaldæan language, which could be collected, not only at the Synod of Diamper, but especially during his subsequent circuit; for, as soon as he had entered into a Syrian Church, he ordered all their books and records to be laid before him, which, a few indifferent ones excepted, he committed to the flames, so that at present neither books nor manuscripts are any more to be found amongst the St. Thomé Christians.”80