The Synod of Diamper and the Coonan Cross Oath

In May 1599 Aleixo de Menezes, archbishop of Goa, summoned the Christians of St Thomas in the mountains of Malabar to a synod. His summons says that they had kept the faith since the apostle Thomas preached to them (see the tradition of Thomas in India); that Pope Clement VIII had ordered him, on the death of their archbishop Mar Abraham, to take possession of the bishopric and admit no bishop from Babylon, “as has been hitherto the Custom”, such bishops being Nestorian heretics; and that for two years his orders had gone unobeyed. It called Archdeacon George, the priests and four laymen from every town to Diamper (Synod of Diamper, Publication and Calling (pp. 89–94)). A decree of the synod says that meetings held after Mar Abraham’s death had sworn to accept no bishop except from the patriarch of Babylon, and declares those oaths void (Synod of Diamper, Action III, decree 19 (pp. 175–177)).

The synod opened on 20 June 1599 in the church of All Saints at Diamper (Synod of Diamper, Action I (pp. 97–98)). The next day Menezes swore a profession of faith, and after him the archdeacon, kneeling before him, the clergy and the lay representatives. It received the Council of Trent, anathematised Nestorius, condemned the teaching that the law of St Thomas and the law of St Peter were two different laws, and promised to accept no bishop but one appointed by the pope and never again to obey the patriarch of Babylon (Synod of Diamper, Action II, decree 2 and the profession of faith (pp. 106–119)). The decrees forbade naming the patriarch in the liturgy (Synod of Diamper, Action III, decree 8 (pp. 144–145)), listed Syriac books that no one might keep or read (Synod of Diamper, Action III, decree 14 (p. 154)), and ordered books written in Syriac to be handed in within two months for correction or destruction (Synod of Diamper, Action III, decree 16 (pp. 171–172)). The acts count 813 members, 133 of them priests and 660 lay representatives, and say that all signed (Synod of Diamper, conclusion (p. 423)).

For the breach of 1653 the nearest account found is that of the Carmelite Giuseppe Sebastiani, the pope’s delegate to Malabar, printed in 1666 (Sebastiani, Prima speditione title page). He says that George’s nephew Thomas, archdeacon after him, was at odds with the Jesuit archbishop Francisco Garcia (Sebastiani, Prima speditione book 1, ch. 1 (pp. 2–3)). A Syrian bishop who called himself patriarch reached India and was held by the Jesuits; the archdeacon’s people went to Mattancherry, by Cochin, asking to see him; and he was shipped to Goa. They then swore in the church there, on the Gospels and before a crucifix set on the altar, never again to acknowledge Garcia as their prelate (Sebastiani, Prima speditione book 1, ch. 2 (pp. 3–4)). His account has no cross outside the church and no ropes. No account of those was found earlier than 1873, when the English clergyman Thomas Whitehouse printed what a metropolitan of the Thomas Christians had told him: the oath was sworn at the foot of the cross outside the church, with long ropes tied to it for those who could not reach it (Whitehouse, Lingerings of Light p. 160). A history kept among them, professing to date from 1770 (Whitehouse, Lingerings of Light p. 63), says, as he quotes it, that the Portuguese had drowned the patriarch and that all then swore in the church at Mattancherry to acknowledge Portuguese bishops no longer (Whitehouse, Lingerings of Light p. 160).

Later twelve priests made Thomas a bishop, on the strength of a letter that Sebastiani calls forged (Sebastiani, Prima speditione book 1, ch. 2 (pp. 5–6)). In December 1657 priests of “many churches” signed before Sebastiani a declaration renouncing Thomas and promising obedience to Rome (Sebastiani, Prima speditione book 2, ch. 13 (pp. 136–137)).

The churches descended from the Thomas Christians read these events differently. The account published by an eparchy of the Syro-Malabar Church, which is in communion with Rome, calls the oath the Coonan Cross Oath. It says that Latin missionaries, suspecting the Thomas Christians of heresy, “started Latinizing them”, that the oath began the division of a church that had been one, and that those who returned to Latin rule became the Syro-Malabar Church (Syro-Malabar Eparchy of Melbourne, Significant Dates opening narrative and the entries for 1599 and 1653). The Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church says that the synod brought the “enforced domination” of Roman Catholicism and that the oath overthrew it (Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church, History History, second and third paragraphs). The Mar Thoma Church calls the synod “a coercive attempt” to impose Latin customs (Mar Thoma Church, History section ‘Portuguese Intervention and Challenges’). Other churches of the same descent, among them the Jacobite and Syro-Malankara churches that the Syro-Malabar account names (Syro-Malabar Eparchy of Melbourne, Significant Dates opening narrative and the entries for 1599 and 1653), are not represented here.