Pages from History: Strange But True! Lightning kills Mar Thoma II (Head of the Malankara Church) (1686)
14 April 1686: Pakalomattom Parampil Thomas Kathanar was consecrated as Mar Thoma I on 22 nd May 1653 at the Alangattu Church. He ably guided the Malankara Church till his death on 25 th April 1670. He was buried in the Marthomman Church Angamaly.
His brother/ nephew was consecrated as the Mar Thoma II in 1670. Mar Thoma II was killed by lightning on 14 April 1686 while he was taking rest in the Pally Meda (guest Room) of the St. Mary’s church in Niranam. He was buried in the same church cemetery.
This may be the only incident in the history of the Christian Church where a head of a church died due to a lightning strike.
Night Lightning by Sebastien D’ARCO
Niranam St.Mary’s Orthodox Church
Pages from History: Birth of The Rev. C.V.John – Defender of Faith (1909)
10 April, 1909: Birth of Rev. C. V. John, Chirapurathu, Thottakkad (d.2 Sep 1979). After his theological training from Theological College in Serampore he became a priest in 1938.
He started as a teacher at the M.T. Seminary High School, Kottayam and then became a teacher at Mar Thoma Theological Seminary. He was the Vicar of the Jerusalem MTC, Kottayam, St. Peter’s MTC, Manganam, and the secretary of the North Division of the Church. For two years, from 1956, he served as a student chaplain in USA. In 1963, he became the Principal of the M. T. Seminary.
Through his hard work the seminary was upgraded to B.D. Level in 1974. Achen was the second defendant in the Daniel Case
(Dr. Juhanon Mar Thoma was the first defendant) and was examined by the court for many days. His statements during the trial regarding the faith and practices of the Church are commendable. Achen was a gifted orator and writer.
Rev. C. V. John
Pages from History: Formation of the Church Missionary Society (1799)
12 April, 1799: Formation of the Church Missionary Society. Founded in 1799, CMS has attracted more than nine thousand men and women to serve as mission partners during its 200-year history.
The Society was founded in Aldersgate Street in the City of London on 12 April 1799. The founders of CMS were committed to three great enterprises: abolition of the slave trade, social reform at home and world evangelisation.
“The contribution made by the society in creating and maintaining educational institutions in Kerala, the most literate state in India, is significant. Many colleges and schools in Kerala and Tamil Nadu still have CMS in their names. The CMS College in Kottayam may be one of the pioneers in popularising secondary education in southern India.”
“Benjamin Bailey was appointed to the Kottayam CMS mission in the Indian state of Kerala. Benjamin Bailey translated the complete Bible to Malayalam language. Also Authored the first printed Malayalam-English dictionary and the first Malayalam-English Dictionary. He is considered as the father of Malayalam Printing.”
Today there are about 150 mission partners in 26 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East. A budget of £7.02 million a year is needed to maintain and expand this work.
Pages from History: Birth of Alexander Mar Thoma Valiya Metropolitan (1913)
10 April, 1913: Birth of Alexander Mar Thoma Valiya Metropolitan. Alexander Mar Thoma was born in 1913 as the son of Rev. M. C. George (17 Apr.1874-23 Oct.1923), Maliyekkal, Kuriannoor.
Before his ordination, he was a teacher at Kottayam C M S High School for 12 years. He took his Ph.D. on the Bhagavad-Gita (Holy Book of the Hindus) from the Kennedy School of Mission of the Hartford Seminary Foundation, Hartford, Connecticut, USA.
He was ordained in 1945 and became bishop on 23 May, 1953. He became the Metropolitan of the Mar Thoma Syrian Church in 1976 and passed away on 11 January 2000.
Alexander Mar Thoma Valiya Metropolitan
Pages from History: Council of Trent adopts Jerome’s Latin Bible translation (1546)
8 April, 1546: At its fourth session, the Council of Trent adopts Jerome’s Latin translation of the Bible (called the Vulgate), completed in 405, as the only authentic Latin text of the Scriptures. It became the official Bible of the Roman Catholic Church.
The Vulgate is an early Fifth Century version of the Bible in Latin, and largely the result of the labours of Jerome, who was commissioned by Pope Damasus I in 382 to make a revision of old Latin translations.
Its Old Testament is the first Latin version translated directly from the Hebrew Tanakh, rather than the Greek Septuagint. It became the definitive and officially promulgated Latin version of the Bible of the Roman Catholic Church, and ultimately took the name ‘versio vulgata, which means “the published translation”.
There are 76 books in the Clementine edition of the Vulgate Bible: 46 in the Old Testament, 27 in the New Testament, and three in the Apocrypha.
Saint Jerome in his Study, by Domenico Ghirlandaio
Pages from History: Strange But True – Malpan ex-communicates his cousin
6 April, 1839: Abraham Malpan ex-communicated his cousin brother for plucking vegetables (Colocasia) on Sunday. Sunday was regarded as a day of rest for the Syrian Christians and no one was allowed to work on that day.
Abraham Malpan, as vicar of the Maramon Mar Thoma parish ex-communicated his cousin brother because he uprooted a Chembu- Colocasia (a vegetable similar to potato) on a Sunday morning to make vegetable curry. He was taken back only after a proper written apology.
Abraham Malpan
Pages from History: Panditha Ramabhai passes away (1922)
5 April, 1922: Panditha Ramabhai (b.23Apr.1858) was an eminent Indian Christian social reformer and activist. She was a poet, scholar, and a champion of improvement in the plight of Indian women. As a social reformer, she championed the cause of emancipation of Indian women.
A widely travelled lady, she visited most parts of India, and even went to England and the U.S. Her father was Anant Shastri Dongre, a scholar of Sanskrit, and her mother was Lakshmibai. They were a Chitpawan Brahmin couple. Her father taught her Puranic Sanskrit and she made quite a name for herself as a scholar in Puranic circles. She acquired great reputation as a Sanskrit Scholar. Fluent in seven languages, she translated the Bible into Marathi, her mother tongue.
Deeply impressed with her knowledge and ability, Sanskrit scholars, at the Calcutta University, conferred on her the titles “Saraswati” and “Pandita”. Although she was a Brahmin, she married (13th Nov.1880) Babu Bipin Behari Madhavi, a Bengali lawyer at Bankipore (Patna, Bihar), who was not a Brahmin, and this created a stir in the orthodox circles of Hindu society. Bereft after her husband’s death shortly thereafter, she found herself unable to play the role traditionally reserved for upper-caste Hindu widows, and converted to Christianity, an action which created a scandal even in liberal Calcutta society.
She was given a scholarship to study medicine in England; when she arrived there, she found that her hearing was defective and so she could not participate in lectures. While in England, she wrote the feminist classic “The High Caste Hindu Woman”, a scathing attack on traditional practices including widowhood, polygamy and child marriage.
She established the Mukti Mission in 1889 as a refuge for young widows who were abused by their families. In Marathi, her native tongue, the word ‘mukti’ means liberation. The Pandita Ramabai Mukti Mission is still active today, providing housing, education, vocational training, and medical services, for many needy groups including widows, orphans, and the blind. Mukti Mission is located near the city of Pune (Poona) and receives support from several foreign countries including the United States and Australia.
In 1919, the King of England conferred on her the Kaiser-i-Hind award, one of the highest awards an Indian could receive during the period of the British Raj. Her contributions as a builder of modern India were recognized by the Government of India by issuing a commemorative postal stamp on 26th Oct 1989 in honour of her. The work of Pandita Ramabai continues today as a tribute to the Saviour whom she faithfully followed, Jesus Christ.
26 October 1989, in recognition of Pandita Ramabai’s contribution to the advancement of Indian women, the Government of India issued a commemorative stamp.
Pages from History: Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated in Memphis (1968)
4 April, 1968: Civil rights leader and Baptist minister Martin Luther King, Jr., is assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. He was born Michael Luther King, Jr. (b.15 Jan 1929), but later had his name changed to Martin.
His grandfather began the family’s long tenure as pastors of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, serving from 1914 to 1931; his father served from then on, and from 1960 until his death Martin Luther acted as co-pastor.
On October 14, 1964, King received the Nobel Peace Prize for combating racial inequality through non-violence.
On the evening of April 4, 1968, while standing on the balcony of his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was to lead a protest march in sympathy with striking garbage workers of that city, he was assassinated.
Martin Luther King Jr. addressing the March on Washington (1963)
Pages from History: Bishop Reginald Heber dies at Thiruchirappalli (1826)
3 April, 1826: Bishop Heber (b.21 Apr.1783) was the second Anglican Bishop of Calcutta. He is known for his hymn Holy, Holy, Holy sung on Trinity Sunday.
He was on his way to the Southern Kingdom of Travancore to visit the Syrian Christian Church Leaders as part of a visit to the churches in South India to look into issues of caste plaguing the church. He baptized 42 people the day before he died. “On 3 April, after attending an early-morning service at which he gave a blessing in the Tamil language, Heber returned to his bungalow for a cold bath. Immediately after plunging into the water he died, possibly from the shock of the cold water in the intense heat.”
Heber died at the age of 42 on 2 April, 1826 of a cerebral hemorrhage at Thiruchirappalli. He is buried at St. John’s Church, Thiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu, India (north side of the altar)
Portrait of Reginald Heber at the British Library
Pages from History: Parliament orders the publication of the Book of Common Prayer (1548)
1 April, 1548: The British Parliament orders the publication of the Book of Common Prayer (BCP). Though Thomas Cranmer is rightly credited with the final form of the BCP, he worked with a committee of scholars, including Reformer Martin Bucer, to shape his famous liturgy.
The Book of Common Prayer is the common title of a number of prayer books of the Church of England and used throughout the Anglican Communion. The first book, published in 1549, in the reign of Edward VI, was a product of the English Reformation following the breach with Rome.
Prayer books, unlike books of prayers, contain the words of structured (or liturgical) services of worship. The work of 1549 was the first prayer book to contain the forms of service for daily and Sunday worship in English and to do so within a single volume; it included Morning Prayer, evening prayer, the Litany, and Holy Communion. The book included the other occasional services in full: the orders for baptism, confirmation, marriage, ‘prayers to be said with the sick’ and a funeral service.
Title page of the 1662 Prayer Book, printed by John Baskerville in 1762
Nalloor Library 