Ephrem de Nevers

Last updated
Ephrem de Nevers
The First Christian Missionary of Madras
Bornbetween 1607-1610
Auxerre , France
Died13 October 1695
(aged between 85 and 88)
Fort St. George, Chennai

Ephrem de Nevers (between 1607 and 1610 - 13 October 1695) was a native of Nevers, France. He was a Capuchin Franciscan priest and the first Christian missionary in Madras (Chennai), Tamil Nadu, India. De Nevers founded the first Christian mission in Madras on June 8, 1642, and was appointed the first Prefect Apostolic of Madras Capuchin Mission. Initially, it was known under the name the Apostolic Prefecture of Fort St. George. He served for 53 years as a missionary and died in Madras on October 13, 1695.

Contents

Birth and mission in the Middle East

Father Ephrem de Nevers was born between 1607-1610 in Auxerre in the Region of Burgundy, France. He was baptized Etinne (Stephen) and his family Leclerc a native of Nevers. He became a Friar Minor Capuchin in the Capuchin province of Touraine and took the name of St. Ephrem. He was a well learned man and particularly in Science and Mathematics. He was first sent as missionary to the Middle East in 1636 and he served in various missions in Lebanon, Syria and Persia. His Superiors always entrusted him with the affairs to look for new foundations for the Capuchin province of Tours, thus he traveled to Sidon, Beirut, Damascus, Aleppo, Diyarbakir, Mosul, Baghdad, Isfahan and Basra. Father Ephrem de Nevers came to India in 1640 to report about the first Indian Capuchin mission in Surat and to take up new mission in Pegu, Burma. Because, in 1639, the French Capuchin Father Zeno de Beauge founded the first mission for the Propaganda Fide in India with a lot of opposition from the Padroado clergy. [1]

The Foundation of The First Christian Mission in Madras

Ephrem de Nevers came to Madras (Chennai) in 1642 to get a boat take him to Pegu. The English who founded the city of Madras in 1639, requested him earnestly to stay there for the spiritual benefits of the Portuguese Catholics. [2] Since, Padroado diocese of Mylpaore was very close to this English settlement, Ephrem de Nevers refused to their appeal but seeing the spiritual desolation of the people accepted to found the first Christian mission in Madras, [3] (This Capuchin mission of Madras was elevated to archdiocese of Madras in 1886 and later amalgamated into Mylapore diocese as Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Madras and Mylapore in 1952). Thus, he was credited to be the first Christian missionary of Madras, he built the first church of Madras dedicated to St. Andrew the apostle in Fort St. George and in the same year 1642, Pope Urban VIII raised this Capuchin mission into Prefecture apostolic and Father Ephrem de Nevers was appointed the first Prefect Apostolic of Madras. [4] He was a man of great intellect and a linguist who was able to converse in French, English, Portuguese, Arabic, Persian and Tamil. He founded the first English school in India in his priestly residence. [5]

The Saint of Madras

The Padroado Portuguese system which resented to the missionary works of Propaganda Fide in India, arrested Ephrem in 1649, under the Portuguese Inquisition and imprisoned him for about two years in Goa. [6] By the grace of Bijapur Sultan, Ephrem was released from the Portuguese Inquisition in 1652. [7] Ephrem de Nevers returned to his mission of Madras and served with a great missionary spirit and brought many souls to the Christian faith. In an Anglican colony, Father Ephrem lade a strong foundation for a Catholic faith in spite of the oppositions from the Anglican clergy. He founded a new church dedicated to Our Lady of Angels for the local converts at Armenian street in 1658, (this Capuchin church of St. Mary's served as the cathedral of Madras archdiocese from 1886-1952,today, St.Mary's Co-Cathedral of Madras-Mylapore archdiocese [8] and a famous shrine of St. Anthony of Padua). He was always acclaimed a holy and saintly priest and lover of all who possessed the real missionary spirit. Having served 53 years as missionary in Madras, Ephrem de Nevers increased his flock from 40 to 8000 [9] and he died on 13 October 1695 and he was buried in the church of St. Andrew in Fort St. George. [10] when the English demolished this first church of Madras in 1752, the tomb of the first Christian missionary disappeared from the soil of Madras.

Notes

  1. Leon Mirot, D'un Capucin Auxerro-Nivernais aux Indes Le Père Ephrem de Nevers, Imprimerie National, Paris, 1951, p. 46-52.
  2. Love H.D, Vestiges of Old Madras, vol., ii, Published for the Government of India, London, 1913, p. 44-45.
  3. Norbert de Bar-le-Duc, Memoires utiles et necessaires, tristes et consolans, sur les missions des Indes Orientales, de l'Imprimerie d' Antoine Rossi, Paris, 1742, p. 93-94
  4. Mgr. P. Thomas, 'The Catholic Mission in Madras', The Madras Tercentenary Commemoration Volume, Asian Educational Services, Madras,Jan 1,1994, p. 375-383.
  5. Glyn Barlow, The Story of madras, London, 1921, p. 87-88.
  6. Niccolao Manucci, Storia Do Mogor or Mogul India 1653-1708, William Irvine (trad.), vol. III, Low Price publications, Delhi, 1996, p. 408-409.
  7. G.Clouzier (ed.), Les Six Voyages de Jean-Baptiste Tavernier,...: qu'il a fait en... Paris, 1676, p. 138-140
  8. Arulappa R, An Outline of The History of the Archdiocese of Madras and Mylapore, San Thome, Madras, 1986, p. 184.
  9. Frank Penny, The Church in Madras Being the History of the Ecclesiastical and Missionary Action of the East India Company in the Presidency of Madras: With. Ill, Volume 2, Murray, 1917, p. 213.
  10. Felix Antrwap, Essays on the Capuchin Mission in India, Lahore 1913, p. 46-47

Related Research Articles

Coonan Cross Oath

The Coonan Cross Oath, also known as the Great Oath of Bent Cross, the Leaning Cross Oath or the Oath of the Slanting Cross, taken on 3 January 1653 in Mattancherry, was a public avowal by members of the Saint Thomas Christians of the Malabar region in India, that they would not submit to the Jesuits and Latin Catholic hierarchy, nor accept Portuguese dominance (Padroado) in ecclesiastical and secular life.

Catholic Church in India

The Catholic Church in India is part of the worldwide Catholic Church under the leadership of the Pope and the Curia in Rome.There are over 20 million Catholics in India, representing around 1.55% of the total population, and the Catholic Church is the largest Christian Church in India. There are 10,701 parishes and 174 dioceses in India, organised into 29 provinces. Of these, 132 are of the Latin Catholic Church; 31 are Syro-Malabar Church and 11 are Malankara Syrian Catholic Church dioceses. Despite the small percentage of the Indian population Catholics represent, India has the second-largest Catholic population in Asia after the Philippines.

Catholic Church in Myanmar

The Catholic Church in Myanmar is part of the worldwide Catholic Church, under the spiritual leadership of the Pope in Rome. There are around 750,000 Catholics in Burma – approximately 1% of the total population. The country is divided into sixteen dioceses including three archdioceses. Each of the archdioceses is also a metropolitan.

Roman Catholic Diocese of Saint Thomas of Mylapore

The Diocese of Saint Thomas of Mylapore, presently in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, was a suffragan Roman Rite Catholic diocese in the ecclesiastical province of the primatial See of Goa in India, under the Portuguese patronage. It was founded at 1606 and abandoned at 1952.

Missionary work of the Catholic Church has often been undertaken outside the geographically defined parishes and dioceses by religious orders who have people and material resources to spare, and some of which specialized in missions. Eventually, parishes and dioceses would be organized worldwide, often after an intermediate phase as an apostolic prefecture or apostolic vicariate. Catholic mission has predominantly been carried out by the Latin Church in practice.

Timeline of the Syro-Malabar Church

This is a timeline of the history of the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church in India.

Malankara Church

The Malankara Church also called the Puthenkoor, refers to the collection of West Syriac Indian churches that branched from the Saint Thomas Christians, who claim ultimate apostolic origins from the missions of Thomas the Apostle in the 1st century according to tradition. The Puthenkoor descends from the faction under the leadership of Marthoma I, that resisted the Padroado Jesuits as well as the Propaganda Carmelites of the Roman Catholic Church, following the historical Coonan Cross Oath of 1653. All the Churches belonging to the Malankara patrimony follow the Antiochian Syriac Rite liturgy. The modern-day descendants of the Puthenkūr Malankara Church are the Jacobite Syrian Christian Church (JSCC), the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church (MOSC), the Malankara Marthoma Syrian Church (MTC), the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church and the Malabar Independent Syrian Church. Among these, the JSCC form an integral part of the Syriac Orthodox Church of Antioch. The autocephalous MOSC, also known as the Indian Orthodox Church is one of the constituent churches of Oriental Orthodox communion. The MTC is an independent Oriental Protestant church that is in communion with the Church of England and its Anglican communion. The Malankara Syrian Catholic Church is the faction that joined with the Holy See of Rome in 1930.

Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Madras and Mylapore

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Madras and Mylapore/Madras and Myliapor is an archdiocese based in the city of Madras, in India. It took also the name of the ancient diocese of Mylapore, now a part of Chennai.

Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Pondicherry and Cuddalore

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Pondicherry and Cuddalore Latin: Pondicherien(sis) et Cuddaloren(sis) is an archdiocese located in the cities of Pondicherry and Cuddalore in India.

Roman Catholic Diocese of Vellore

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Vellore is a diocese located in the city of Vellore in the Ecclesiastical province of Madras and Mylapore in India.

Roman Catholic Diocese of Tuticorin Diocese of the Catholic Church

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Tuticorin is a unit of the Catholic Church in the city of Tuticorin, part of the Ecclesiastical province of Madurai in India.

Roman Catholic Diocese of Salem

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Salem is a diocese located in the city of Salem in the Ecclesiastical province of Pondicherry and Cuddalore in India.

Christianity in Tamil Nadu

Christianity in the state of Tamil Nadu, India is the second largest religion in the state. According to tradition, St. Thomas, one of the twelve apostles, landed in Malabar Coast in AD 52. In the colonial age many Portuguese, Dutch, British and Italian Christians came to Tamil Nadu. Priests accompanied them not only to minister the colonisers but also to spread the Christian faith among the non-Christians in Tamil Nadu. Currently, Christians are a minority community comprising 6% of the total population. Christians are mainly concentrated in the southern districts of Tamil Nadu - Kanyakumari, Thoothukudi and Tirunelveli.

St. Thomas Cathedral, Irinjalakuda Church in Kerala, India

St Thomas Cathedral is the Syro Malabar Catholic cathedral of the eparchy of Irinjalakuda in India got its present existence under the nomenclature and the Canonical Status as Cathedral in the Wake of the Origin of the New Eparchy. This was effected by the amalgamation of the two independent and important parishes of the locality, namely, St. George’s Forane Church and St. Mary’s church, which amicably situated side by side for about a century.

Saint Thomas Christian denominations

The Saint Thomas Christian denominations are traditional Christian denominations from Kerala, India, who trace their origins to the evangelistic activity of Thomas the Apostle in the 1st century. They are also known as "Nasranis" as well. The Syriac term "Nasrani" is still used by St. Thomas Christians in Kerala.

Louis Mathias

Louis Mathias was a priest of the Society of St Francis de Sales, missionary to India, first Catholic bishop of Shillong, and Archbishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Madras and Mylapore (1935-1952).

St Marys Co-Cathedral

St. Mary's Co-Cathedral, is a Catholic church in Armenian Street, Chennai, India. Constructed by Capuchins in 1658, it is one of the oldest churches in the former British India. For a long time Cathedral of the diocese it received the title of co-cathedral when the seat of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Madras and Mylapore was transferred to San Thome Basilica.

Christianity in Puducherry originated with the Capuchins from Madras who began their missionary activity here. By 1689, the Jesuits began their activity. In 1773, the Paris mission Society took up the mission. At that time there were 30,000 Catholics in Pondicherry. However lack of missionaries and opposition from Padroado mutated the mission.

Zeno de Beauge was a French Capuchin missionary, who spent his later life in India.

Pierre Brigot

Pierre Brigot was a missionary of the Paris Foreign Missions Society and was the first Superior of Karnatic Mission headquartered at Pondicherry which later became the Archdiocese of Pondicherry and Cuddalore. He was the Superior from 30 September 1776 until his death. He was formerly the Vicar Apostolic of Siam in Thailand from 8 December 1755. After his death the Karnatic Mission was headed by Bishop Nicolas Champenois.