Angamaly Episcopal See

Angamaly, in the Malabar hinterland behind Kochi, was the ecclesiastical heart of the Saint Thomas Christians. They hold that the Apostle Thomas landed at Muziris in 52 and founded seven churches along the Kerala coast before his martyrdom.

Under Patriarch Timothy I around 800 the community became the Province of India of the Church of the East, governed by bishops from Mesopotamia and a hereditary archdeacon. Their seat came to rest at Angamaly, which in 1565 gave its name to the renewed Archdiocese of India.

Mar Abraham, who died in 1597, was the last East Syriac prelate to rule the undivided community. Two years later the Portuguese-run Synod of Diamper suppressed his see and imposed the Latin rite. The reforms provoked the Coonan Cross Oath of 1653, after which the Saint Thomas Christians split between East and West Syriac traditions.