It was Pope Gregory IX who first turned his attention to the East, caused by the incursion of the Mongols into Christian Europe. The Pope had, in 1241, charged the Cistercians, the Dominicans and the Franciscans to preach against the Mongols. But the Pope died that very year.

It is the relations of the Holy See with China that are of greater moments for us from the point of view of the history of Latin Christianity in India. For, lying as it is on the route of the missionaries who made their journeys to China, India drew the attention of these missionaries to its own religious needs.

The first Catholic missionary to go to China was a Franciscan, John Monte Corvino, appointed by Pope Nicholas IV as Papal legate in 1291. He started for his destination accompanied by Nicholas of Pistoia, a Dominican.²⁴

This fact has been attested by Yan kejia in the following Source:http://219.238.219.74:81/zgtzj/english/PDF/english.pdf

“John of Monte Corvino (1247-1328), a Franciscan was sent to China in 1291 by Pope Nicholas IV. As the ﬁrst Roman Catholic missionary to China, John came to China in 1294

Rome named him as the archbishop of Han Ba Li (Beijing) and also sent another seven missionaries to China as his assistants. Archbishop John managed the Diocese of Beijing for over 30 years and claimed to have baptized more than 6,000 people. He died in 1328 at the age of 81.

“Upon hearing of his death ﬁve years later, Pope John XXII(1316-1334) sent Nicholas

to Beijing to be the bishop, but he unfortunately died on the journey.

“Ten years later, in 1338, Pope Pius XII sent Giovani de Marignoli to China. Because of the unstable political situation of the Yuan Empire, however, he quickly returned to Rome”.²⁵

John Monte Corvino chose the route to China through India. Arriving in India, the two missionaries (Monte Corvino and Nicholas Pistoia) landed at Mylapore which was a midway station to China. For some reason, their departure to China was delayed by thirteen months. He went about the country, studying the character of the people. Monte Corvino must have visited during these thirteen months (of 1292) the Southern Pandian Kingdom where St. Thomas had built his first Church at Kanakkankudiyiruppu. There was no trace of the church built by St. Thomas or by his followers at that time except a small shed with Palmira leaves with a cross and the statue of Our Lady of Assumption left as the monuments of St. Thomas the Apostle.

“John of Monte Corvino was impressed by the simplicity and the friendly disposition of our people”, says George Moraes, He had also been impressed by the security and peace reigning in the country which is a necessary condition for the success of the apostolate at all times. In different places round about Mylapore, he himself had baptized a hundred persons. Encouraged by his success he decided to leave behind at this place his Dominican companion-in-arms Friar Nicholas of Pistoia to continue his work.

“At the nick of time, however, when John of Monte Corvino was about to set sail, happy in the thought of bright prospects for the mission he had founded at Mylapore, Friar Nicholas fell ill and died. And it must have been with a heavy heart that Monte Corvino took leave of his neophytes (1292).”²⁶

Arriving in China, Monte Corvino worked single handed for seven years. The Holy See made him Archbishop at Peking with Patriarchal authority and sent more missionaries in order to work under him.

But in the midst of his labours in China, he did not forget his Christians in Mylapore. In 1306 he appealed to his fellow –monks in Persia to go and minister in the mission field he had opened in India. And thus it was left to Friar-Preacher (Dominican) Jordan of Severac who followed Monte Corvino, to establish the Catholic Church in India.²⁷

JORDAN OF SEVERAC (1320 – 1328)

In 1318 Pope John XXII assigned India to the Dominicans. Jordan therefore decided to leave for India at the earliest opportunity. He offered to fill the place left vacant by the death of Nicholas of Pistoia at Mylapore. He asked and received permission from his superiors to depart to India with some Franciscan Friars, going to China by the sea-route.

Towards the end of 1320 the missionaries embarked with a view to proceed to Quilon on the Malabar Coast. But the vessel wended its course to Thana near Bombay. Having arrived at Thana in April, they could resume their voyage to Malabar and Mylapore only in October at the end of the monsoon.

At that time Thana was in the hands of the Muslims belonging to the Delhi Sultanate. The Muslims caught hold of the companions of Jordan, persecuted and killed them. Jordan had the bodies of these Martyrs and buried them; and sometime later these relics were taken to China. The Missionary Journey to south India could be resumed only in 1324 with five more Dominican friars.

This time they were dispersed among various mission stations in Karnataka, Mysore, Malabar and Travancore. Within four years they baptized more than ten thousand people.²⁸

Thus between 1324 and 1328 Friar Jordan who came to Travancore, visited all the places where St. Thomas the Apostle had formed Christian communities, including the South Pandian Kingdom. One evidence to prove his preaching Christianity in the Pandian kingdom is the building of a church in Kurumbur Azhagappapuram in honour of St. Vincent Ferror (Visenthiyppar), a Dominican. In that church we can find a statue of St. Vincent Ferror placed by Friar Jordan. At that time the Christians of kankkankuduyiruppu had migrated to the fertile land north of Maanaveeranaadu and south of Thaamirabarani River. That is why Friar Jordan had to build the church of St. Vincent Ferror in Kurumbur.

In the year 1328 Jordan left India for Europe to place before the Soverign Pontiff John XXII, the affairs of the Indian mission. He convinced Pope of the need of establishing in India regular ecclesiastical government, with a bishop at its head. The Pope hearing the zealous apostle responsible for the establishment of the Catholic Church in India, unhesitatingly offered the office to Friar Jordan himself, and appointed him bishop of Quilon.

The pope’s letter of appointment was to the Christians of Molephatam (Mylapore) that is of greater interest, reviving as it does the memory of the ancient Christianity of south India. Bishop Jordan enlisted a large number of Friar Preachers for his mission and, accompanied by Brother Telaimonot, returned to India.

Bishop Jordan founded several houses of the Dominican order in this country, including the one in Mylapore with a monastery attached to the church of St. Thomas the Apostle.

But the will of God was different in the growth of the Indian mission. The Muslims could not bear to see the conversions, and so they stoned the bishop of Quilon at Thana. After the martyrdom of Blessed Jordan, the Catholic missions languished in India.²⁹

THE APPARITION OF OUR LADY

In the mean time, there was a land lord who was serving as an officer to the petit king of Maanaveera Naadu, living in Thopuvilai near Jesupuram the capital of that petit kingdom. He was a pious Christian, the follower of St. Thomas and a great devotee of Our Lady. His name was Agathu Marian.

On a Saturday in 1325 Our Lady of Assumption appeared to him and indicating the exact location where St. Thomas had first built his church in Her honour, asked him to build a church on that spot. The original church built by St. Thomas was now twenty feet below the earth covered by the red sands. Agathu Marian gathered a group of Christians spread about that place and went to the spot Our Lady indicated, and they all were wonder struck by awe at the sight of a spring of clean water in front of a shed containing the cross and statues. When they dug the foundation they could find, a few feet below the earth, the debris of a church built above the original church, most probably by George the Nestorian in the 7^th century.³⁰

As a result, Agathu Marian, according to the size of his resources and by the contribution of the people around, finished building a small and beautiful church and enthroned the statues on the altar in the year 1326. Hearing about the apparition and the new church at Kanakkankudiyiruppu, the new generations of the St. Thomas Christians scattered here and there came and settled there, and began to worship in that church by practicing Christianity in their own way.

The above fact has been confirmed by Thambi Nayagam who was quoted by Chevalier V. C. George (of Kottayam, Kerala) in his research book as follows: “When St. Francis Xavier came to the region of south India in 1542, there lived in the sea shore of the bay of Bengal a population of twenty thousand fisher men; and in the adjacent in land region St. Thomas Christians were living.”³¹

Actually both these groups of the coastal fishermen and of the in land region were called St. Thomas Christians, and were the subjects of the same Southern Pandian kingdom. At the time of St. Francis Xavier, Kanakkankudiyiruppu was called Pandagasaalai meaning the royal store house of the kingdom known as Maanaveera Naadu.