St Thomas Christians

chained_bear commented on the word St Thomas Christians

"There were evil pagans such as the cannibals but there were also supposed to be Christians in India, co-religionists of the West who might be called upon to aid in the common effort against the Muslims. ... One source of this peculiar optimism was the body of legends surrounding the apostle Thomas, who was thought to have preached in India and made many converts there. He was supposedly buried in India--at Mylapore, south of Madras (now Chennai), according to some accounts--where many miracles were performed at his tomb. According to some Western authorities, the local king and population were Christian. In fact, there really was a significant if not immense Christian population in western India, on the Malabar Coast (the modern state of Kerala), where much of the spice trade was headquartered. The Christians of these regions still refer to themselves as St Thomas Christians, although it is more likely that their ancestors were converted by Syrian missionaries in the fourth and fifth centuries than in apostolic times."

Paul Freedman, Out of the East: Spices and the Medieval Imagination (New Haven and London: Yale UP, 2008), 100

November 28, 2017