Die Entdeckung der indischen Thomas-Christen. Zwei italienische Quellen des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts aus der Wiener Sammlung Woldan (Text, Übersetzung und Kommentar) (review)

It was only in the early-modern period and the age of explorations that the so-called “Thomas Christians” came into focus for the Europeans. According to tradition, it is believed that St. Thomas the Apostle landed at the Malabar Coast in the year 52 AD, where he established seven churches. This tradition is supported by the Syriac Acts of Thomas (early-third century) as well as by several patristic texts from the third to the seventh century. The most prominent among them might be Cosmas Indicopleustes, the Greek traveler and geographer of the first half of the sixth century. The tradition indicates that Thomas went to India, where he died as a martyr. His traditional tomb has been venerated in Mylapore on the eastern coast of the Indian peninsula through the centuries. However, only after the discovery of the sea route to India by Vasco da Gama, who landed in Calicut in the present-day state of Kerala, did more frequent information about Malabar Christianity reach the West. At the same time, the encounter with the Portuguese was the beginning of a miserable history of Western Christian colonization, with the 1599 synod of Diamper as a sad landmark in the latinization of the genuine Thomas tradition.

This valuable volume edits, translates, and comments on two of the most important sources of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that document encounters between the Occident and the Thomas Christians. Found in the Woldan Collection of the library of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, these are the accounts about Joseph of Cranganore (sixteenth century) and the report from the Tuscan Carmelite monk Vincenzo Maria Murchio on his church mission to the Indian Malabar coast in 1655.

After a general introduction combined with a chronological table of the Thomas Christians, the discussion moves to the report about Joseph of Cranganore. The two edited versions—Italian and Latin—have remarkable and interesting differences. Joseph, an East Syriac Christian from the Malabar Coast, embarked in 1501 with Alvares Cabral and reached Lisbon, Rome, and Venice. The Italian version penned by an anonymous author is based on talks with Venetian merchants. By 1508, Arcangelo Madrigano had translated this text into Latin, and it was widely disseminated. However, the Latin version purports to be a report of a Portuguese seaman. The translator corrects and manipulates the Italian version to smoothen several East Syriac (“Nestorian”) theological and canonical details that might have caused trouble with the Inquisition. The profound German translation by the editor is based on the Italian version only, while the commentary refers to the differences between the two versions.

The second edited text is from the probably most comprehensive book about India of the early-modern period, the Viaggio all’Indie Orientali of Murchio. The author was part of the Carmelite delegation sent by Pope Alexander VII to Malabar to deal with the rebellion of the Thomas Christians against the Portuguese colonials. This had culminated in the break with Rome by the famous Coonan Cross Oath of 1653. The edited Italian text with German translation focuses on the Christians of Malabar and comes from the second book of Murchio’s voluminous work. It illustrates his largely positive attitude toward the genuine tradition of the Thomas Christians.

The instructive and informative commentary is especially strong when explaining specific geographical and historical circumstances of the early-modern period. Unfortunately, there are weaknesses in its theological explanations. The portrayals of so-called Monophysites and Nestorians (e.g., pp. 87 and 213) are regrettably not on the level of current theological and ecumenical studies. The book closes with an informative and useful appendix about India in old maps of the Woldan Collection, a bibliography, and an index...