The Jesuits and Dhyana Ashram

by Dr. Anand Amaladss

The old Madre-de-Deus Church.

Jesuit history in Madras began in 1545. But who are the ­Jesuits? The Jesuits are the members of the Society of Jesus, founded by St. Ignatius of Loyola, in Spain, in 1540. Ignatius, a soldier was wounded fighting the French. It is said that when he was convalescing he read a book The Golden Legend in Spanish (Aurea Legenda or Legenda Sanctorum), a christianised version of the Buddhist legend. Now parallels are being drawn between Buddhist and Ignatian spirituality.

The first Jesuit to arrive in India was Francis Xavier and the Jesuit connection with Madras begins in 1545, when Francis Xavier visited Madras and stayed in San Thomé for four months with Fr. Gaspar Coelho, a Portuguese priest. As Xavier himself says, he came here to pray at the tomb of St. Thomas to get guidance for his further course of action, as to where he should proceed next. His biographer Schurhammer records details of his stay in San Thomé and the conversation he had with the Portuguese priest.

At the request of the local people, Francis Xavier sent Fr. Alphonso Cyprian, a Jesuit, to Mylapore in 1547. He stayed at the San Thomé Church with another priest working for the Portuguese community. Then, when the new church was built within the walls of San Thome fort in 1575, two Jesuits well-versed in Tamil and Telugu served the local community.

As the Christian population grew, a new church was built by the Portuguese outside the Fort. This church was dedicated to Madre-de-Deus (Mother of God) and was blessed by Fr. Alessandro Valignano s.j. on September 8, 1576.

The Church of Madre de Deus was rebuilt and extended to reach the Periya Palli Street, on the eastern side. There is a tradition that Roberto de Nobili came and spent his last days here (1648-1656) and lies buried “somewhere in the area.” A college was also started by the Jesuits under the patronage of the King of Vijayanagar. This was probably located at the present site of Bon Secours Convent in San Thomé’.

* * *

A major event in the history of the Jesuits was their suppression in 1773 by Pope Clement XIV under political pressure. The Order was restored in 1814 by Pope Pius VII. It survived during the period in Russia, since Catherine the Great refused to promulgate the edict of the Pope in Russia.

These events took place in Europe, but the Madras Government records mention the event. Frank Penny in his book The Church in Madras records: “In 1764 the Jesuits were expelled from France and their property was confiscated. By the same law it became illegal equally to exist in Pondicherry. It was well-known on the coast that the Jesuits had deposited 20,000 pagodas with the Fort St. George Government for the benefit of their China Mission. That was confiscated. The Madras Council appealed to the directors at Pondicherry what they should do with them. The French Ministry put aside this question.” But when the Pope abolished the Society of Jesus, the Madras Government had to deal with the property of the Jesuits in their territory.

There were two aged priests living in the Church of Madre de Deus, outside the walls of the St. Thomas Shrine. The Bishop of Mylapore (Frey Bernard) wrote to the Governor on May 15, 1775, “If your Honour should judge that the above-mentioned French fathers should remain with the administration of the Parish house, the Garden and also that I should not read in the Church to anyone of my flock the Bull which I have received of the Total extinction of the Religious Order ­denominated of the Society of Jesus, I should readily thereby comply…” The Portuguese priests took over the Madre de Deus Chur­ch.

At the time, the chapel of Our Lady of Guidance (now known as the St. Lazarus Church situated opposite Foreshore Estate) as well as the Chapel of Visitation (situated on St. Mary’s Road) were ­attached to the Madre de Deus Church as its sub-stations. There are three inscriptions on the wall of the Church of our Lady of Guidance. One of them reads as follows: “Our Lady of Guidance Church speaks:

“I was formerly known as the church of St. Lazarus. I was built by the Jesuits (Cf. Fr. Rebeiro). I was built up as a chapel in 1581. Manuel Madra and his mother extended me. Bishop A.X. Texeira dug the foundation to rebuild me and I was renovated in 1928. Sacred Congregation of Rites by its Rescript dated 26.2.1954 decreed that I should in future be known as “Nossa Senhora de Guia”, (Our Lady of Guidance).

“I have a sister Church in Shibpur (Bengal) known as Our Lady of Guidance Church.”

It has been said that the site occupied by the East India Company had been colonised by fisherfolk from the Parish of Madre de Deus and the emigrant fisherfolk called their village by the name of their Parish. The name was eventually corrupted to ‘Madras’. Glyn Bar­low in his book The Story of Madras comments. “The origin of the name Madras is uncertain and the explanation is at any rate interesting and not unlikely to be true.”

* * *

Fr. Henry Hosten (1873-1935), who wrote Antiquities from San Thomé and Mylapore (1924, 1936) writes, “Madre de Deus having been for two centuries under the management of the Jesuits, I made a special study in 1921 of its three oldest Baptism Registers… By means of these Registers I determined the incumbents and the time of their incumbency from January 1789 to May 1853. The oldest marriage register goes from Nov. 27, 1819 to Nov.7, 1883; the oldest register of ­burials from July 12, 1818 to December 28, 1885.

“These registers contained also some valuable historical notes by Padre Mariano Luis Ribeiro, who styles himself repeatedly a Jesuit, though apparently he was not a Jesuit. They contained likewise autobiographical musings and instructions about cocoanut-gardening, by the same Padre, who was in charge of Madre de Deus from February 1839 to May 1853, when he died”.

Fr. Hosten investigated practically every inscription on the tombstones of the Mylapore area (386 in all), in the churches and on the statues. At the end of the chapter on the inscriptions he says that “not to swell unduly the size and ­expense of this volume we [with]hold over about 200 ­comparatively modern inscriptions, mostly in English, from the General Cemetery of Quib­ble Island”. The inscriptions are in Arabic, Armenian, Latin, Greek, Portuguese, Sanskrit and Tamil.

* * *

In 1952, when the two dioceses were amalgamated as the Madras-Mylapore Diocese, Archbishop Louis Mathias, a Salesian, SDB, invited the Jesuits to look after the spiritual welfare of the diocese giving the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. This was the beginning of the Dhyana Ashram community (25, Madha Church Road, San Thomé) developed around the Madre de Deus church. Some of the better known Jesuits who worked in this centre were Frs. Albert Muthumalai, Claude Krishnamurthy, and Lawrence Sundaram.

In the place of the old church, a new church was built and blessed on February 11, 1999. What was rescued from the old church were the altar piece in wood and an old statue of Mother Mary in stone which is kept outside, which looks like the Black Madonna, but it is not, since the Black Madonna usually is presented together with the Child Jesus. It must be of local origin, if you observe the head crown, which is unusual in the Western tradition of Mother Mary.

(To be concluded)

Please follow and like us: