﻿ON THE COAST OF MALA.BAR. S69 



The Cassanas were not permitted to use tlie Ma- 

 labar language in their cliurclies, and in instructing 

 the youth ; but taught them in the Chaldcean tongue. 



They reckoned their Sunday from Saturday even- 

 ing Vespers, till the first matin of Sunday, so that 

 after sun-rise they might work again. 



This was the happy situation of tlie NesforianSi 

 or St. Thome Christians, before the arrival of the 

 Portuguese in India. Agreeably to the spirit of 

 those times, and especially of that bigoted nation, 

 one of tlieir first endeavours was to win over those 

 heretics to the Roman rite : every art and every re- 

 source was exhausted, especially during the reign of 

 Don Manuel, to reclaim those forlorn sons to the 

 bosom of the church of Rome : but all peaceable and 

 conciliatory means proved fruitless, though the sly 

 Jesuits had in some manner paved the way to aii 

 union, by mitigating the terms of their submission, 

 under the supremacy of the Pope ; by instituting se- 

 minaries, in which the Chaida^an \a.ngua.^e was taught 

 to the young clergy ; and, above ail, by translating 

 the Missal and Roman Catechism into the same lan- 

 guage, and distributing them amongst the Syrian 

 Christians. Still they would not have succeeded, so 

 stedfast did the St. Thome Christians adhere to their 

 heresy, had not at last open force been employed. 



The then Archbishop of Angamalee was a Syrian 

 priest of the name of Mar Joseph ; and as neither 

 bribes nor menaces could induce him to acknowledge 

 the supremacy of the Pope, the Archbishop of Goa 

 and the Viceroy at last arrested hiiu, and sent him 

 prisoner to Portugal: but he had the art to ingra- 

 tiate himself with the Queen Donna Catharina, 

 and the rest of the Ptoyal Family, whom he had made 

 to believe, that he had since been convinced of the 

 truth of the Catholic religion ; and that on his return 

 he would bring about a re-union of his flock with the 

 see of Rome ; so that in the 3^ear 1564 he was per- 

 initted to leturn, with orders to the Viceroy Ko- 



B B RON MA 



