The Saint Thomas Christians (" Nasrani ") of southwestern India may have connections with the Essenes, according to the Manimekalai, one of the great Tamil epic poems, which refers to a people called " Issani ".

By his compromises in India with the Christians of St. Thomas, he developed the Jesuit missionary methods along lines that subsequently became a successful blueprint for his order to follow.

The tradition also has support from the Saint Thomas Christians of India who claim to still have one of the Theotokos icons that St. Luke painted and which St. Thomas brought to India.

Missionaries established dioceses in the Arabian Peninsula and India ( the Saint Thomas Christians ).

The wedding ceremony of Saint Thomas Christians, an ethnoreligious group of Christians in India incorporate elements from Hindu, Jewish and Christian weddings.

In India, the local Church of the East community, known as the Saint Thomas Christians, experienced its own rifts as a result of Portuguese influence.

An Eastern Catholic Bishop of the Syro-Malabar | Syro-Malabar Church holding the Mar Thoma Cross which symbolizes the heritage and identity of the Saint Thomas Christians of Christianity in India | India

The Saint Thomas Christians are an ancient body of Christians on the southwest coast of India who trace their origins to the evangelical activity of Thomas the Apostle in the 1st century.

By the 5th century the Saint Thomas Christians were part of the Church of the East, or Nestorian Church.

Until the middle of the 17th century and the arrival of the Portuguese, the Thomas Christians were all one in faith and rite.

Thomas Becket's murder at Canterbury Cathedral in 1170 led to the cathedral becoming a place of pilgrimage for Christians worldwide.

Prester John was reportedly a descendant of one of the Three Magi, said to be a generous ruler and a virtuous man, presiding over a realm full of riches and strange creatures, in which the Patriarch of the Saint Thomas Christians resided.

At first, Prester John was imagined to reside in India ; tales of the Nestorian Christians ' evangelistic success there and of Thomas the Apostle's subcontinental travels as documented in works like the Acts of Thomas probably provided the first seeds of the legend.

This text inculcated in Westerners an image of " India " as a place of exotic wonders and offered the earliest description of Saint Thomas establishing a Christian sect there ( the Saint Thomas Christians ), motifs that loomed large over later accounts of Prester John.

These visits apparently from the Saint Thomas Christians of India cannot be confirmed, evidence of both being secondhand reports.

In the 13th century, Thomas Aquinas said that, since not all Christians, in particular the old and the children, can be trusted to observe due caution, it was by then " a prudent custom in some churches for the blood not to be offered to the people, but to be consumed by the priest alone ".

Thomas Madden represents a view almost diametrically opposed to that of Asbridge ; while the crusade was certainly linked to church reform and attempts to assert papal authority, he argues that it was most importantly a pious struggle to liberate fellow Christians, who, Madden claims, " had suffered mightily at the hands of the Turks ".

Many Protestant Christians were burnt at the stake or otherwise killed in the reign of Queen Mary I of England, including Thomas Cranmer and two bishops Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley, the Oxford Martyrs.

Indian Orthodoxy traces its roots to the arrival in India of St. Thomas the Apostle in AD 52 ( according to tradition ) and his evangelism among both the Brahmans of the Malabar Coast and the ancient Jewish community there.

* c. 52: Arrival of Apostle Thomas to Malabar, India.

An Eastern Catholic Bishop of the Syro-Malabar | Syro-Malabar Church holding the Mar Thoma Cross which symbolizes the heritage and identity of the Syrian Malabar Nasrani | Syrian Church of Saint Thomas Christians of Christianity in India | India

Tharisapalli Copper-plate grant ( 14th century ) – One of the reliable documentary evidences of the privileges and influence that Saint Thomas Christians enjoyed in early Malabar.

He was driven into exile from the states of Travancore and Cochin where the majority of St. Thomas Christians lived, to Anjoor in the state of Malabar.

In 1519, a Portuguese traveler Duarte Barbosa on his visit to Malabar commented on the practice of Saint Thomas Christian priests using Kudumi similar to that of Hindus, in his manuscript " Book of Duarte Barbosa ".

In the social stratification of medieval Malabar, Saint Thomas Christians succeeded in relating their social status with that of upper-caste Hindus on account of their numerical strength and influence and observance of many Brahmin customs.

Antonio Gouvea, Portuguese envoy to Malabar, mentions in his 16th-century work Jornada that almost all the churches of Saint Thomas Christians followed the models of Hindu temples of that period, but were distinguished by the huge granite cross in the front yard of the church.

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It is most significant that, aside from a small remnant of the Church of the East in Kurdistan, the only other church to maintain a distinctive identity is the Mar Thoma or “ Church of Thomas ” congregations along the Malabar Coast of Kerala State in southwest India.

Piecing together the various traditions, one may conclude that Thomas left northwest India when invasion threatened and traveled by vessel to the Malabar coast, possibly visiting southeast Arabia and Socotra enroute and landing at the former flourishing port of Muziris on an island near Cochin ( c. AD.

In accordance with apostolic custom, Thomas ordained teachers and leaders or elders, who were reported to be the earliest ministry of the Malabar church.

Christianity arrived along the southern Indian Malabar Coast via Thomas the Apostle in 52 and from this came Thomasine Christianity.

A Syrian Malabar Nasrani Church in Kerala, with the Holy of Holies containing the Nasrani Menorah or Mar Thoma Sliba ( St. Thomas Cross ) veiled by a red curtain in the tradition of Temple in Jerusalem | ancient Jewish synagogue.

There was also an indigenous head of the Church of Malabar, which, according to historians, means the “ head of the caste ”, that is the head of the St Thomas Christians but also the “ Archdeacon of All India ”.

By the 10th century, in Malabar there were two Nazrani groups, the St. Thomas Christians and Knanaya community.

Saint Thomas Christians of Malabar had hardly any contact with other Christians before the arrival of Knanaya people from Persia.

According to tradition, St. Thomas, one of the twelve Apostles of Jesus, landed at Kodungalloor, an ancient port on India's Malabar Coast, in the year 52.

In the course of these he visited Malabar, touching at Pandarani ( 20 m. north of Calicut ), at Cranganore, and at Kulam or Quilon, proceeding thence, apparently, to Ceylon and to the shrine of St Thomas at Maylapur near Madras.

As a result, the King of Portugal, got the right of nomination to the ancient See of Saint Thomas in Malabar.

* Milne Rae, George-Syrian Church in India Whitehouse, Thomas – ( 1873 ) Lingerings of light in a dark land: researches into the Syrian church of Malabar * * Brown, Leslie-The Indian Christians of St Thomas

Portuguese missionaries had reached the Malabar Coast in the late 15th century, made contact with the St Thomas Christians in Kerala and sought to introduce the Latin Rite among them.

St. Thomas Christians of Malabar Through Ages, C. S. S.