prisoned Aithallâhâ on his head.[1] Many of his adherents returned to the obedience of the Uniate Archbishop, and he had only a small remnant when the Hollandish conquest changed the whole situation. The Hollanders took Quillon from the Portuguese in 1661; in 1662 they captured Cranganore; in 1663 Cochin and the whole coast. The new Protestant masters reversed the situation. They had no interest in maintaining the Pope's authority; on the contrary, they encouraged schism and, if anything, rather persecuted the Catholics. So the Archdeacon Thomas and his friends now easily got what they wanted. But, strangely, they did not apply to their old patrons the Nestorians. They seemed to have got used to looking to the other faction for help; in any case, they must have been completely indifferent about their original heresy. It was Gregory, Jacobite Metropolitan of Jerusalem, who came to India in 1665 and ordained Thomas Metropolitan. Here, then, occurs one of the most astonishing transformations in Church history. The Uniate majority were not, of course, affected. But the schismatical Christians of Malabar, who had been Nestorian, now became Jacobite. Thomas accepted the Jacobite rite and was in communion with the Jacobite Patriarch of Antioch. That is still the state of a great part of the schismatical body.
Its further history is a bewildering confusion of rival claimants, schisms among themselves and complicated quarrels. The Nestorians made various unsuccessful attempts to recapture their ancient daughter Church. Early in the 18th century they sent a bishop, Mâr Gabriel, who formed for a time a schism from the Jacobite Metropolitan; but his party seems to have died out with him.[2] In 1750 the Mafrian Basil came to Malabar in order to ordain a certain Thomas. But he changed his mind, and ordained one Cyril instead. Thomas then made a schism, which
- ↑ There is a similar story that in 1810, when a bishop died without ordaining a successor, the clergy took a priest, brought him to the dead body, said the prayers for ordaining a bishop, and laid the dead hand on his head (Germann, p. 621). I have heard of several such cases of ordination by a dead hand (compare the Armenian practice, p. 416); but I do not think that, even in times of extreme necessity, they were ever acknowledged. This man, so ordained, was never recognized as a real bishop.
- ↑ Germann: p. 549; Silbernagl: Verfassung, u.s.w. 318.
