History

It is a great moment of the History of India that is a fisherman called Thomas, One of the 12 disciple of Christ, followed the call of the Master at the risk of the his life and dared to sail to the distant shores of India.

Thomas is one of the few disciple of Christ, about whom we know a good deal. St. John who wrote the last Gospel seems to have had the life and death of Thomas very vividly in his mind, when he concluded his Gospel with the great Faith-proclamation of Thomas “My Lord, my God” (St. Jn. 20,29). This lively popularity of St. Thomas in the primitive Church may also explain, why there are more ancient literary works purporting to portray the life of Thomas and more allusions about him in the many literary documents of the early centuries, than about any of the other apostles.

“The 7 Churches” Founded by St. Thomas:

Since Musiris(the present day Kodungallur) was a harbour well-known all over the ancient world, there is every possibility that St. Thomas should have decided to visits the Malabar Coast. There was a regular traffic between those countries and Musiris, especially after a Roman merchant called Hippalus discovered in A.D.47 the sailing monsoon winds, which have ever since come to be known as the Hippalus winds, by which the sailors could cross over the Arabian sea to the Malabar Coast in a matter of weeks, instead of months, along the costal line. The tradition is that St. Thomas landed in Kodungallur/Musiris in the year 52 A.D. Thomas must have found a great number of Jews in Kerala, to whom in the first place he must have preached the Gospel. In all narratives about the apostolate of Thomas in Kerala, Kodungallur is mentioned as the first of the seven “Churches”/Christian Communities founded by St. Thomas : Kodungallur, Palayur, Kottakkavu(Parur), Kokkamangalam (near Shertallai) Niranam, Quilon and Nilakkal (Chayal) are the 7 churches reckoned to be founded by St. Thomas.

Mylapore – Edessa – Ortona- Crangannore (Kodungallur)

There is an amazing amount of ancient narratives and testimonies about the preaching of St.Thomas in India and about his martyrdom at Mylapore, near Madras, many of which are certainly not dependent upon each other but are derived from a more ancient common source. St. Ephrem (who lived A.D.300-365) in Edessa, in the present day Turkey, witnesses to the universality of an early tradition, both in the East and the West, about the apostolate of St. Thomas in India and his martyrdom at Mylapore.

Here is one of his many testimonies : -

“That Noble merchant, O Thomas, who traveled to India and came back several times, deemed all the precious things he found there as but dirt in comparison to your sacred bones which he brought over(to Edessa)”

(St. Ephrem , Carmina Nisibena, ed.Lipsia p.704)

In the 7th century the middle east fell to the Muslim powers and the position of the Christians became insecure. Thus according to reliable tradition, the bones of St. Thomas are said to have been taken by Christians to Chios and from there on 17 June, 1258 to Ortona in Italy they are kept to this day.

On the auspicious occasion of the 19th century celebrations of the Great Entrance of St. Thomas to India, the Holy See thought to offer a befitting gift to St. Thomas Christians in Kerala. As a realization of this great decision, late Cardinal Tisserant, then the Prefect of Oriental Congregation, on his historic visit to Kerala took the bone of the Right Arm of the Apostle and deposited it in the shrine built for that purpose at the present site of the Marthoma Nagar, Azhicode on December 6, 1953. Thus the place where St. Thomas landed in India has become the most sacred shrine of St. Thomas (Mart Thoma) in Kerala, where thousands throng to receive the blessings of that Hand which touched the Wounds of Jesus Christ.

On November 21st, (or the next Sunday), at the Commemoration of His “Entrance to India”, people of all religions from far and near gather at Marthomalayam to honor the humble fisherman of Galilee, whose Faith-adventure opened India to the light of Christ and to the fraternity of a world-culture, that we call the Christian Era in Bharata.

The Shrine was entrusted by the Holy See to the Devamatha Province of the CMI-Fathers, who have an ashram here and attend to the needs of pilgrims and also run a hospital which has become a specialized medical centre for the mental patients.