Aleixo de Menezes
Archbishop of Goa and primate of the Indies. In 1599 he went in person to the Thomas Christians of Malabar and held the Synod of Diamper, which bound them to obedience to Rome.
The acts of the synod he called style him “Dom Frey Aleixo de Menezes”, archbishop metropolitan of Goa and primate of the Indies. In his summons he says that Pope Clement VIII had charged him with the vacant bishopric of the Thomas Christians, that his orders were not obeyed there, and that he therefore left his own church and went to Malabar himself to bring them to obedience to Rome and to purge their books (Synod of Diamper, Publication and Calling (pp. 89–93)). At the synod he was the first to swear the profession of faith, kneeling at the altar (Synod of Diamper, Action II, decree 2 (p. 106)), and at its close he signed the decrees on his throne, after which the clergy and the lay representatives signed them at a table set in the church (Synod of Diamper, conclusion (pp. 422–423)).
The Carmelite Giuseppe Sebastiani, writing some sixty years later, says that Menezes belonged to the order of St Augustine and calls him the “new apostle” of those peoples (Sebastiani, Prima speditione book 1, ch. 1 (p. 2)). The churches descended from the Thomas Christians judge his synod very differently; see the Synod of Diamper and the Coonan Cross Oath.
In the timeline
- 1599 to 1653, firm dateThe Synod of Diamper and the Coonan Cross Oath
In June 1599 the archbishop of Goa holds a synod at Diamper that binds the Thomas Christians of Malabar to Rome and cuts their tie to the patriarch of Babylon. In 1653 many of them swear to obey their Jesuit archbishop no longer, and the community divides.