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NOVEMBER, 1928]
THOMAS CANA
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12. The list of Bishops. This list of Bishops is a remarkable document. Most of the names and dates for 825-1500 are not found in our European authors. The list must how. ever be far from completė. Did all these bishops come from Antioch, as stated ? In other words were they all Jacobite ?
Mar Sabore Ambroat' of A.D. 825 is Mâr Sabor and Mar Aprốt (Prodh, Pirût, etc.). The name of the merchant Towrio' is a misspelling of Sowrio, Savaris, Sabir Isô. Correa (1570) has strangely enough 'Apreto and Thor' (Lendas da India, I. 594)
Fr. Bernard of St. Thomas (Brief Sketch of the History of the St. Thomas Christians, Trichinopoly, 1924, pp. 13, 19) has a similar list, to be compared with the Conancode MS. As he refers to Le Quien (II. col. 1275) for Mår Sabor and Mar Prodh, his date for them, A.D. 880, must be that of Le Quien. Fr. Bernard mentions that all these bishops were sent by the orthodox Patriarch of Antioch (pp. 12, 13, 19). [But see infra for Jacobite and Nestorian bishops.]
He next names: 988: John; 1056: Thomas ; 1122: John III, who went to Rome in 1122 (perhaps the Jacob, 1122, of the Conancode MS.); 1231 (sic): Joseph; 1235 : David; 1295: Paulos; 1301 : Jacob; 1407: Jaballaha ; 1490 : John (add : and Thomas, who returned to Mesopotamia soon after, but returned in 1504); 1504 : Thomas, Jaballaha, Jacob, and Denha (for these four see also Mingana, op. cit., 41-42). Our list shows that the bishops appointed to India did not uniformly take the name Thomas, contrary to what certain writers have suggested.
Raulin (Hist. eccles. Malabaricæ, Rome, 1745, p. 435) adds : John II. in 890.
For Jacob in 1321, see Mingana, op. cit., p. 69, where he is styled in Codex Syr. Vat. N. XXII: "Bishop Mar Jacob, Metropolitan and director of the holy see of the Apostle St. Thomas, that is to say our director and the director of all the holy Church of Christian India." Was he an Indian? Zechariah, son of Joseph, son of Zechariah, a deacon, who wrote the above in 1301, in a colophon, at the Church of St. Cyriacus of Shingala (Cranganore), calls himself a disciple and one of the relatives of this bishop.
"In A.D. 1000 there resided at Cranganore a bishop named John. In a historical Syriac work it is written that he resuscitated his servant, i.e., the sacristan of the church of Cran. ganore. Gouvea says that Fr. Roz, Archbishop of Cranganore, read this in the aforesaid book. S. Giamil (Genuinae Relationes, Romae, 1902, p. 436) states that the book is still in the Vatican Library." Cf. R. P. A. Kaliancara,139 Defensio Indici Apostolatus Div. Thomae A postoli, Cochin, 1912, pp. 28-29. Gouvea' is a mistake for de Souza ', Oriente Conquistado, Pte. II. Conq. 1, Div. 2,16. We have quoted elsewhere the very words of Roz. The Mar Johannan of A.D. 1000 is no doubt the Johannes, Metropolitan, of A.D. 988 in the Con. ancode MS.
Do Couto, Da Asia, Dec. 12. c. 5 (t. 8, Lisboa, 1788, p. 288), writes of Mar Johannan : “After the death of these Chaldeans (Mar Xabro and Mar Prodh), they sent to Babylonia asking for Bishops, as they had no facility to send to Rome, because through the death of these there was left to them only a Deacon, who assumed the work of a priest, thinking he could do so, since all were so ignorant. Receiving this message, the Greek Patriarch provided them with an Archbishop, called Mar Joanna, and the two Suffragans, his Coadjutors and future successors. This Chaldean Archbishop arranged the Chaldean Breviary which this Church used until now, and he made his residence at Cranganor. By the death of this Archbishop and these Bishops, (P. 289) there succeeded another, called Mar Jacob, who had also come from Babylonia ; he governed many years, and died about the year 1500." Do Couto's last date cannot be correct. The story of the single deacon who assumed the work of a priest is also told about A.D. 1490. It is possible however that at times the priesthood had practically died out in Malabar. From & report by Mesopotamian bishops, who came to Malabar in 1555 and visited the Syrian Churches during two years and a half, we learn
190 R. P. A. Kaliancara is a fictitious name. The author died a few years ago.
