The Enduring Legacy: A History of the Mar Thoma Church
The account of its own past published by the Malankara Mar Thoma Syrian Church, one of the churches descended from the Thomas Christians of Kerala. It is cited for that church’s judgement of the Synod of Diamper.
The page traces the church to the apostle Thomas and to its old ties with the Church of the East. In the section on the Portuguese it says that the Synod of Diamper, convened in 1599 by Archbishop Aleixo de Menezes, was “a coercive attempt” to dismantle the Syrian identity of the community and to impose Latin customs, that East Syrian books were condemned or destroyed, and that the autonomy of the church was suppressed. A caption calls the Coonen Cross a symbol of the declaration of independence by the Thomas Christians.
It is a statement of what the church holds today and names no sources. It is cited only as that church’s reading of the events.
Cited in
- 1599 to 1653, firm date