George of the Cross

The summons to the Synod of Diamper is addressed first to “George, Archdeacon of the Christians of St. Thomas”, and orders him to attend on pain of excommunication (Synod of Diamper, Publication and Calling (pp. 89 and 93)). The acts record that after Aleixo de Menezes had sworn the profession of faith, “the Reverend George, Archdeacon” knelt before him and made the same profession aloud in the Malabar tongue, and the clergy after him (Synod of Diamper, Action II (p. 116)). In the passages cited the acts call him only George.

The Carmelite Giuseppe Sebastiani, writing some sixty years later, explains the office. The archdeacon, he says, held the first dignity after the metropolitan; the office passed by old privilege within one family; and its holder was in effect the head and prince of the Christians of St Thomas, who had no other dignitary of their own nation. The archdeacon after the union with Rome he names Giorgio della Croce, George of the Cross, “virtuous and prudent”, who held the office for forty years under the first two archbishops and was succeeded by his nephew Thomas, later Thoma I (Sebastiani, Prima speditione book 1, ch. 1 (pp. 2–3)). See the Synod of Diamper and the Coonan Cross Oath.