User:Pakalomattam/Koonan Cross Oath

കൂനന്‍ കുരിശു സത്യം
Koonan/Coonan Cross Oath in English. The Oath was taken in 1653, by a group of Saint Thomas Christians, enraged by the persecution of their Church by the Portuguese colonials and Jesuit missionaries who sought to bring it under papal authority, swore the Coonan Cross Oath, vowing that neither they or their descendants to come would have anything to do with the Roman Catholic Church or the Pope; and that they would stop obeying the Jesuit missionaries.

The Saint Thomas Christians who gathered at Mattancherry near Fort Kochi under the leadership of the archdeacon to receive a bishop from Iran took the Oath. After the Oath twelve priests laid hands on the head of the archdeacon, who was connected to the Koonan Cross by a rope and ordained him Bishop. The several thousand other people who were there also took hold of the rope to signify their participation in the Oath. The families/households represented by all these people and others later accepted the Antiochean tradition. They now form the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church or the autocephalous Indian Orthodox Church, and via later movements of reformation or other means The Mar Thoma Church, The Jacobite Church, The St. Thomas Evenglical Church, The CSI Church (The three Kerala Diocese composed of Syrian Christians), The St. Thomas Brethern Church, etc.

Those Saint Thomas Christians who chose to accept papal authority were formed into the Syro-Malabar Church.