MALABARESI. - This is the name given to the Christians of the Syro-Oriental rite inhabiting the southwestern coast of India called Malabar, situated in the civil districts of Cochin and Travancore. They call themselves "Christians of St. Thomas" and trace their Christianity back to the preaching of that Apostle. It is not certain, but it is probable, that this preaching took place there. In its favor there is a not negligible literary tradition and a strong local tradition. At least by the 2nd century there were already Christians in India, probably dependent on Edessa. The dependence of those Christians on the primatial see of Seleucia-Ctesiphon in Persia probably dates back only to the middle of the 5th century. From that time onward the "Christians of St. Thomas" always received their own bishops from the Persian katholikós. When later the Persian Church, toward the end of the 5th century, became Nestorian, the bishops coming from there introduced Nestorian formulas into India. Theodore of Mopsuestia, Diodore of Tarsus and Nestorius came to be commemorated in the liturgy.
About the history of the Malabarese up to the arrival of the Portuguese in India in 1498, we are poorly informed. The Portuguese established contact with the Malabarese fairly early; the latter then numbered about 30,000 families. As early as 1503 they requested the protection of the Portuguese. The latter at first admitted them to participation in the Sacraments. The missionaries, however, soon discovered the difference in doctrine and were scandalized by the diversity of rites. Little by little the Malabarese, abandoning the errors of Nestorius, united formally with Rome. The archdiocese of Goa, founded in 1539, sought to subject the Malabarese to itself, while the patriarch of Babylon, who had become Catholic in 1552, claimed for himself jurisdiction over the Eastern Catholics of India. Rome at first protected the bishops sent by him, but finally, also out of fear that heresies might infiltrate, deemed it more prudent to subject the Malabarese to the Latin bishops. Clement VIII in 1595 charged the archbishop of Goa, Aleixo de Menezes, to appoint an apostolic vicar in the event of the death of the Syrian bishop Abraham. Menezes, in 1599, with great zeal but with little understanding for the particularities of the Eastern Christians, made the apostolic visitation of the Malabarese. He asked them to detach themselves from the patriarch of Babylon, whom he believed to be Nestorian, whereas in reality he was Catholic. In June 1599 a Synod was held at Diamper, in which 153 priests and 660 laymen participated. At that Synod union with Rome was solemnly accepted and a reform in a markedly Latinizing sense was decreed. The Synod was never recognized by Rome.
The Holy See in December of the same year appointed the Catalan Jesuit Francesco Roz bishop of Angamala and subjected the Malabarese to him. He had great difficulties with the native archdeacon, who from ancient times had been accustomed to governing the Church in fact in the shadow of the foreign bishop. Now he felt himself set aside by Roz, who had no confidence in him. These difficulties led, under Roz's second successor, Francesco Garcia, to schism. The occasion for it was, in 1652, the arrival of a Syrian monk named Athallah who claimed to have been appointed by the Pope as patriarch of the Malabarese. He was arrested by the Inquisition and finally in 1654 burned as a heretic. The archdeacon Thomas de Campo, basing himself on a supposed authorization from the alleged patriarch Athallah, had himself elected bishop and was "consecrated" by the imposition of the hands of twelve priests, while the alleged letter of Athallah was placed on his head. Finally he and his followers passed to the obedience of the Jacobite patriarch of Antioch, and thus the Jacobite Church of India had its origin.
To heal the schism the Congregation of Propaganda Fide sent the Italian Carmelite Giuseppe Sebastiani, who succeeded in winning back to the union the majority of the apostates. He was appointed vicar apostolic by Alexander VII and received episcopal consecration in Rome in the greatest secrecy (1659). Before the Dutch, who in 1663 occupied Cochin, drove out Fr. Sebastiani, the latter, making use of his extraordinary faculties, consecrated the native priest Alessandro de Campo as bishop. From 1700 to 1887 the Malabarese were subject to the jurisdiction of the Carmelite apostolic vicars, who had conflicts with the Portuguese jurisdiction of Goa. The Malabarese often complained of the Carmelite bishops as well. The arrival of Eastern bishops coming from Mesopotamia caused great agitation each time and sometimes true schisms, since from time immemorial the Malabarese had received their own bishops from that region.
From the beginning of the 19th century, among the Eastern Catholics of India there made itself felt the desire, understandable given their number and importance, to have their own native bishops. The Carmelite apostolic vicars always opposed this desire. A schism provoked by the arrival in 1874 of the bishop Elias Melus, sent against the will of Rome by the Chaldean patriarch Joseph Audo, showed anew the urgency of the problem. The Holy See in 1887 withdrew the Malabarese from the jurisdiction of the Carmelite bishops of Verapoly and erected two new vicariates, Trichur and Kottayam, which were however entrusted to Latin bishops. Only on 11 August 1896 were three native priests appointed apostolic vicars and consecrated bishops. Finally Pius XI, with the constitution Romani Pontificis (21 December 1923), erected an ecclesiastical province directly dependent on the Holy See with metropolitan see at Ernakulam and the suffragan sees of Changanacherry, Trichur and Kottayam.
Since the time of the institution of the native hierarchy, in 1896, the Church has taken a great development among the Malabarese. The number of the faithful rose in 50 years from 244,310 to 928,881. According to the most recent statistical data the number of the faithful is 974,109; that of the priests 1153; of the churches and chapels 589; of the nuns 3109. The religious life flourishes among the Malabarese. Since 1831 the Congregation of the Carmelite Tertiaries has existed. Around 1925 in the diocese of Kottayam the Congregation of the Oblates of the Sacred Heart was founded, and at the same time the Lazarists began their own Eastern branch. There are seven flourishing Congregations of nuns. The formation of the clergy, which is excellent, is given in 1 major seminary and 4 minor seminaries. Numerous confraternities promote the piety of the laity, and there exist many youth associations for students and numerous schools, some even of university rank. Five monthly magazines serve the apostolate of the press. A sign of the religious vitality of the Malabarese is the fact that every year from 1000 to 1500 conversions from paganism are recorded.
Bibliography6 works
Guglielmo de Vries
THE MALABAR RITE
The Malabarese rite is, in origin, nothing other than the Chaldean rite as it was practiced in Mesopotamia; but from the 16th century onward it underwent Latin influences so important that it can be counted today as belonging as much to the Latin rite as to the Chaldean rite. In fact, the internal arrangement of the church conforms to the Latin rite, especially the sanctuary and the altar with its cloths, tabernacle, candlesticks, etc., and also the liturgical vestments of the sacred ministers; then, as regards the texts and rubrics, the entire Ritual (Sacraments, sacramentals, blessings), the entire Pontifical (in which the Latin language is used for sacred ordinations), and finally, at least for the Mass, the entire liturgical year, which begins with the four Sundays of Advent, and the entire calendar, which is progressively updated as new feasts are introduced into the Latin Church; so that the Missal of Verapoly (1929) is almost entirely in conformity with the Latin one.
On the other hand, Syriac has been preserved as the sole liturgical language, although it is totally foreign to the indigenous language, and then the divine Office with its Syriac prayers and poems, divided into two books, one for feasts, the other for ferias; in it the Latin calendar is not followed, but rather the periods of the Chaldean ecclesiastical year. The chant is neither Indian nor Latin, but traditional, of Mesopotamian origin. The Mass too is the Chaldean one with the most ancient anaphora of the Apostles, except that unleavened bread is used, hosts of the Latin shape, the Latin prayers of vesting, the Creed is recited immediately after the Gospel, the words of consecration are taken from the Roman canon, as also the Agnus Dei, the Domine non sum dignus and the formula of Communion; the latter is distributed to the faithful under one kind only. The rite of funerals retains on the one hand very many hymns proper to the Chaldean rite, but in it one also encounters the Latin ceremony of the Absolutio ad tumulum with the singing of the Libera me and with the prayer Fidelium. Therefore not only the external aspect, such as genuflection on one knee, has been Latinized, but also what intimately constitutes the rite: prayers, calendar and sacramental rites.
The historical causes that brought about this state of affairs go back to the 16th century. Twenty years after the arrival of the Portuguese in the Malabar, one of them, Alvarez Penteado, wrote in 1518 that the Malabarese should be obliged to follow the customs of Rome. At the third provincial Council of Goa (1585) it was decided to translate into Syriac the following Latin books: Breviary, Missal, Pontifical and Ritual (cf. Bullarium patronatus Portugalliae..., Appendix, I, Lisbon 1872, p. 75). In 1599 the Synod of Diamper decreed that heretical books (including liturgical ones) be burned, that the anaphoras of Theodore of Mopsuestia and of Nestorius be suppressed, that the formula Mater Dei be introduced instead of Mater Christi, that the Latin calendar be used, certainly devoid of the mention of any Nestorian saint, etc.
Of the liturgical manuscripts produced before that Synod, only those preserved in the Vatican Library are known (cf. G. Levi Della Vida, Ricerche sulla formazione del più antico fondo dei manoscritti orientali della Biblioteca Vaticana [Studi e testi, 92], Città del Vaticano 1939, pp. 176-89); in them the pressure of the Latin missionaries is already noticeable; for example, cod. Vat. sir. 66 is fundamentally a Pontifical of the Chaldean rite with the addition of the anaphoras of the Apostles and of Theodore, but the first 25 folios contain the Syriac translation of the Latin rite of ordinations.
The first liturgical books were printed by the S. Congregazione di Propaganda Fide in Rome: the liturgy of the Holy Apostles (1774), the Missal (1775), the Ritual (1775), again the Missal (1844) and the Ritual (1845); these and other books were subsequently printed in several editions in various printing houses of the Malabar.
Bibliography6 works
Alfonso Raes
so Antonio de Gouvea, Jornada do Arcebispo de Goa..., Coimbra 1606, last addition, without pagination, taken up again by J. F. Raulin, Historia ecclesiae Malabaricae..., Roma 1745, pp. 293-333, and by P. Le Brun, Explication littérale... de la Messe, III, Parigi 1843, pp. 390-447; for the present text, the English version by D. Attwater, Eastern Catholic Worship, Nuova York 1945, pp. 186-208.