During the early decades of the twentieth century, the study of ancient records, particularly inscriptions and copper plate grants, gained significant scholarly attention. As a result, numerous studies on the Thomas of Cana Copper Plates were published in journals such as Indian Antiquary, Travancore Archaeological Series, and Kerala Society Papers. T. K. Joseph’s The Four Copper Plates of the Malabar Christians is another important work from this period. The following discussion examines some of the earliest foreign references to the Thomas of Cana Copper Plates.
Fr. Álvaro Penteado (1516)
“An aged Armenian merchant came to Cranganore. Since he had no expectation of returning to his homeland, he purchased from the local king a deserted tract of land together with its revenues and the rights over both land and water. We possess reliable knowledge of this transaction.”
Portuguese missionary Fr. Álvaro Penteado left for India in 1510 and began working among the Syrian Christians in 1516. The above statement appears in a letter he wrote to the King of Portugal after spending four months among the Syrian Christians.
Although Penteado does not mention the merchant by name, he is clearly referring to Thomas of Cana, describing him simply as an “Armenian merchant.” His assertion that they possessed “reliable knowledge” of the land transaction almost certainly points to the existence of the Thomas of Cana Copper Plates, which served as documentary evidence of the grant. Later historical records also confirm that these copper plates were still in existence during that period.
Mar Jacob (1525)
“Long ago, the Christians of Quilon (the Knanaya community) purchased, with their own money, a large tract of land at Cranganore, together with the authority to inflict capital punishment and other privileges that belonged to the ruling king. We possess, as proof of this, a copper plate bearing the royal seal.”
This statement occurs in a letter sent by Mar Jacob, the Chaldean bishop of the St. Thomas Christians, to the King of Portugal. The letter requested Portuguese military assistance to recover the Knanaya settlement at Makothevar Pattinam (the present-day site of the Kodungallur Fort), which had been abandoned after the war between the Zamorin of Calicut and the Raja of Cochin in 1524. During the conflict, the church, houses, and much of the settlement were destroyed, and others subsequently occupied the land.
Mar Jacob explicitly states that the community possessed a copper plate bearing the royal seal, which served as the legal title deed to their property and privileges. Having arrived in Kerala in 1503 and remained there until his death in 1552, Mar Jacob was in a position to know of the existence of the document. Subsequent records also indicate that the copper plates were preserved in his custody.
His reference to a royal seal is particularly significant. None of the comparable copper plate grants that survive today bear such a royal seal. Consequently, it is highly unlikely that the Thomas of Cana Copper Plates were confused with any of the extant Kerala copper plate charters, strengthening the argument that Mar Jacob was referring to a distinct and authentic document.
A Chaldean Bishop (1533)
“A Christian merchant came from the land of Canaan on pilgrimage to Mylapore, where the mortal remains of the Apostle St. Thomas were buried. Finding the place deserted and abandoned, he was unable to accomplish anything there. He then proceeded to Cranganore, where he purchased a tract of land from the local king. The church that he built on that land still stands. His name was Thomas of Cana. He later died of an illness and was buried there.”
Although this account does not explicitly mention the copper plates, it records that Thomas of Cana purchased land from the king, that the property continued to exist, and that Thomas himself was buried there. Other historical records indicate that there were non-Knanaya Christians living in Cranganore and that Thomas of Cana established three churches. However, by the Portuguese period, the church situated at Kottappuram—later known as the site of the Cranganore Fort—was the only surviving church in the area.
Damião de Góis (1566)
One of the most important foreign testimonies regarding the Thomas of Cana Copper Plates is found in the writings of the Portuguese historian Damião de Góis. He records that the two-leaf copper charter, which had long been preserved under the custody of Mar Jacob, Bishop of Cranganore, had been pledged as security for a loan. At Mar Jacob’s request, Pero de Sequeira, the Portuguese feitor (treasurer) at Cochin, redeemed the copper plates in 1543 and placed them in the Portuguese treasury.
Damião de Góis, a distinguished Portuguese nobleman, humanist, historian, and Keeper of the renowned Torre do Tombo Archives in Lisbon, incorporated this account into his celebrated chronicle of King Manuel I. As his description is extensive, the essential points may be summarized as follows.
According to Góis, both Mar Jacob and the Christians of Cranganore regarded the copper plates as an object of exceptional value. Owing to financial hardship, Mar Jacob had been compelled to mortgage them for 20 cruzados, but throughout his life he earnestly desired to recover them before his death. For this purpose, he sought the assistance of Pero de Sequeira, despite the liturgical and ecclesiastical tensions that existed between the Syrian Christians and the Portuguese authorities.
Before Mar Jacob died in 1552, Sequeira redeemed the copper plates and presented them to the bishop. Mar Jacob was greatly delighted to see them restored. After the bishop’s death, Sequeira retained the plates and showed them to the Portuguese Governor. The Governor ordered that someone capable of reading the inscription should be found. However, because of the antiquity of the document and the combination of several languages, no one in the Portuguese administration was able to decipher it.
Eventually, a learned Jewish scholar from Kerala, reputed to possess knowledge of several ancient languages and scripts, was identified. Acting upon the recommendation of the King of Cochin, the copper plates were entrusted to him for decipherment.
The Jewish scholar reported that the inscription was written in Chaldean, Malayalam, and Arabic, employing extremely ancient forms of those languages. The text was especially difficult to interpret because words from different languages appeared together within the same sentence, and only by reading them collectively could the full meaning be understood. After explaining the contents in Malayalam, a Portuguese translation was prepared.
Góis further describes the physical appearance of the document. The charter consisted of two copper plates, each approximately one and a half spans in length and four fingers in width, inscribed on both sides. The two plates were fastened together at the top by a thick copper ring, and the metal itself was of high quality.
According to the Portuguese translation, the document recorded that the reigning Chera king granted Thomas the Apostle a substantial tract of land on an island at Cranganore for the construction of a church. The church was said to have stood on the site later occupied by the Portuguese fort. Christians who built houses on the island were exempted from taxation, and one-fifth of the customs duties on goods imported by Christians through the port of Cranganore was assigned for the maintenance of the church. Góis also states that these privileges continued to be respected in his own day.
He further notes that the copper plates were officially entered into the records of the Portuguese treasury as having been received from Pero de Sequeira, and therefore ought still to have been preserved there. The Portuguese translation prepared by Sequeira was sent to King John III of Portugal, who acknowledged its receipt. Góis laments, however, that he did not know what subsequently became of either the translation or the original charter. He adds that, as an object of immense historical value, it should have been preserved in the Torre do Tombo Archives, but by his own time it was no longer to be found there.
The account of Damião de Góis provides several important historical observations. It confirms that the charter consisted of two copper plates, that it was held in great esteem by Mar Jacob, the Christians of Cranganore, and even the Portuguese authorities, and that it was not written solely in Vattezhuthu. Instead, it contained Chaldean (possibly written in the Pahlavi script), Arabic (perhaps in Kufic script), and the Malabar language, almost certainly Malayalam written in the contemporary Vattezhuthu script.
The fact that the authorities had to locate a Jewish scholar with expertise in multiple ancient languages and scripts, and that this was done upon the recommendation of the King of Cochin, underlines both the linguistic complexity and the antiquity of the document.
Góis mistakenly states that the Chera king granted the land to St. Thomas the Apostle rather than Thomas of Cana. This confusion was most probably introduced either by the Jewish interpreter, Pero de Sequeira, or Góis himself, who failed to distinguish between the Apostle Thomas and Thomas of Cana. Other contemporary sources clearly affirm that the site later occupied by the Portuguese fort at Cranganore had originally been granted to Thomas of Cana, who subsequently built the church there. Moreover, no historical tradition or documentary evidence exists to suggest that the Chera kings ever issued a copper-plate charter to St. Thomas the Apostle. The Jesuit Fr. Antonio Monserrate, writing in 1579, likewise clarifies this distinction in his report.
For these reasons, there are substantial grounds for concluding that the copper plates described by Damião de Góis were indeed the Thomas of Cana Copper Plates. The decipherment and Portuguese translation of the charter most likely took place after the death of Mar Jacob in 1552 but before Pero de Sequeira left his position as treasurer in 1556.
Fr. Francisco Dionysio (1578)
“After this, a Christian merchant from Babylon named Kinai Thomas arrived at Cranganore and engaged in trade. Being both wealthy and influential, he became a close friend of the King of Cranganore. The king granted him 500 square elephant-cubits of land (approximately 6.5 acres) for the construction of a church dedicated to St. Thomas the Apostle. This is the very church now in the possession of the Portuguese. The king also endowed the church with considerable revenues. … These facts are known from what was written on an iron plate discovered by the Portuguese in the possession of these Christians.”
Fr. Francisco Dionysio, Rector of the Jesuit Seminary at Cochin, provides one of the most significant sixteenth-century Portuguese testimonies concerning Thomas of Cana. He appears to be the earliest Portuguese writer to employ the distinctive epithet “Kinai” (Cana) in reference to Thomas, thereby clearly distinguishing him from St. Thomas the Apostle.
Dionysio records that the king granted Thomas of Cana land for the construction of a church and endowed it with substantial revenues. He further observes that these royal privileges contributed significantly to the growth and prosperity of the Christian community in India.
Particularly noteworthy is his statement that this information was derived from an inscribed metal plate found in the possession of the Christians. Although he describes it as an iron plate, historians generally understand this to refer to the celebrated Thomas of Cana Copper Plates, either because of an imprecise description of the metal or a misunderstanding on the part of the author.
Fr. Antonio Monserrate (1579)
“There may well be considerable doubt whether it was the Holy Apostle (St. Thomas) or the above-mentioned Syrian (Thomas of Cana) who built these churches at Cranganore and Quilon. I am inclined to believe that it was the Syrian who erected them in honour of his namesake, the Apostle of India. In fact, when this Syrian arrived at Cranganore there was no church there. The reigning king granted him a very extensive tract of land, known in Latin as an assylum, with clearly defined boundaries, for the settlement of Christians and for the construction of a church. The same was probably true of Quilon, for it seems unlikely that the Apostle himself would have built a church in his own name. Nor is there any evidence that such a church could have remained standing for so many centuries without reconstruction or repair.”
Fr. Antonio Monserrate, the Spanish Jesuit who later became a member of the famous mission to the Mughal Emperor Akbar and served as tutor to Prince Murad, wrote this account after nearly three years of missionary work in Kerala.
His report is of particular historical importance because it clearly distinguishes Thomas the Apostle from Thomas of Cana, addressing a confusion that had already appeared in some earlier Portuguese writings. Monserrate argues that it was Thomas of Cana, rather than the Apostle, who built the churches at Cranganore and Quilon. According to him, Thomas of Cana constructed these churches in honour of his patron saint, St. Thomas the Apostle.
Although Monserrate does not explicitly refer to the Thomas of Cana Copper Plates, he states that the Chera king granted Thomas of Cana a large, clearly demarcated tract of land for the settlement of Christians and the construction of a church. This statement closely corresponds with the traditions preserved in the copper-plate charter and reinforces the historical credibility of the royal land grant.
Monserrate’s testimony is particularly valuable because it represents one of the earliest scholarly attempts by a European observer to distinguish the historical Thomas of Cana from St. Thomas the Apostle, thereby correcting a misunderstanding that had influenced earlier Portuguese accounts.
