Kochi
Port on the Malabar coast of India, the Cochin of the Portuguese records. At Mattancherry beside it, in 1653, Thomas Christians swore to obey their Jesuit archbishop no longer.
The acts of the Synod of Diamper speak both of a king of Cochin, “an Infidel”, to whom the town of Diamper was subject (Synod of Diamper, title page), and of a Portuguese governor of Cochin, who came to the synod with the magistrates of the city (Synod of Diamper, conclusion (p. 423)). The Carmelite Giuseppe Sebastiani puts “Matangeri”, Mattancherry, a quarter of a league from Cochin, and tells that the Thomas Christians gathered in the church there swore never again to acknowledge Archbishop Garcia (Sebastiani, Prima speditione book 1, ch. 2 (p. 4)). The declaration of obedience to Rome that he obtained in 1657 is dated from the church of St Thomas outside the walls of Cochin (Sebastiani, Prima speditione book 2, ch. 13 (p. 137)). See the Synod of Diamper and the Coonan Cross Oath.
What happened here
- 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.