An Introduction With English Translation of A Latin-Syriac Treatise From Early Modern Malabar

Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu
vol. XCI, fasc. 181 (2022-I)
Research Notes
On the Errors of the East Syrians (by Francisco Ros SJ, 1586):
An Introduction with English Translation of a
Latin-Syriac Treatise from Early Modern Malabar
Antony Mecherry SJ*

Pontifical Oriental Institute, Rome
This article provides an extended introductory essay and critical

English translation of the 1586 manuscript preserved at ARSI, De
Syrorum orientalium erroribus. This treatise was recently uncovered
during the ordering of the Fondo Tacchi Venturi at ARSI. It has been
identified by the current author as having been written by the Jesuit
missionary in India, Francisco Ros. Some background explanation
of this manuscript, its authorship, and its historical context are pro-
vided in the introduction in three parts, followed by the presentation
of the translation of the text itself.
On the Errors of the East Syrians: Historical and Interpretive Back-

ground
Joseph Anton Schwane († 1892), a pioneer of the theological schol-
arship in the Catholic Church, who inaugurated a systematic disci-
pline of the History of Dogma, introduced a method for the
classification of key periods in the Christian era. He arranged these
periods under four headings: the age of apologies (up to the I Coun-
cil of Nicaea: 325 AD), the age of heresies (up to the II Council of Ni-
caea: 787 AD), the age of theologians (up to the Council of Trent:
1545–63 AD) and the contemporary period of the reciprocal relations
between Church(es) and individual(s), between Church(es) and so-
* Antony Mecherry SJ is Professor of Oriental Church History at the Pontifical

Oriental Institute in Rome, and received his PhD in Church History in 2016 from
the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. His recent publications include Test-
ing Ground for Jesuit Accommodation in Early Modern India and the edition of De
Syrorum orientalium erroribus Auctore P. Francisco Ros S.I. All translations into Eng-
lish – including the treatise presented in this article – are by the author unless
otherwise stated.
188 Research Notes
ciety(ies) – up to the nineteenth century.1 The first three periods are

particularly relevant with respect to the text under consideration,
On the Errors of the East Syrians. Within the Catholic Church’s tradi-
tion, according the Schwane schema, in each period, apologists,
polemicists and theologians ardently defended, first, the real and
eternal divinity of the Second Person of the Trinity against the sub-
ordinationist and adoptionist teachings; second, they defended the
true humanity of the Second Person of the Trinity against the mono-
physitic and monothelitic positions; third, they defended the unity
of the personal identity of the Second Person of the Trinity against
classical ‘Nestorianism’2 and its generally attributed dyophysitic
tendencies – constituting the distant origins, it might be said, of the
“errors” – and those who held them – to which the sixteenth-century
treatise in question objected.3
Historically, these origins lie with the independent emergence of
the Church of the East located in the Mesopotamian plain and its
extensive mission undertaken in the early centuries. For its part, in
today’s South India, the Saint Thomas Christians welcomed into
their Church Syriac-speaking prelates from the East; through these
prelates, furthermore, the East Syrian liturgical rite and the Syriac
language were introduced and incorporated into Christianity in
India, evolving to become integral parts of the ecclesial identity of
the ancient Malabar Church in South India.4
During the first decades of the sixteenth century, the Iberian
missionaries, who began to function in the region under the aegis
1 Schwane, Dogmengeschichte der Vornicänischen Zeit, 18–19.

2 In this work, I place the terms related to Nestorianism within inverted commas
responding to the methodological, historical and theological caveats pointed out
by Brock in “The ‘Nestorian’ Church”, 23–35.
3 In common parlance, these theological conflicts could be generally expressed as
follows: while the Trinitarians (Catholics) tended to defend the threefold nature
(consubstantial) of God as Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, the Unitarians re-
portedly opposed an equality or identification of this threefold nature in their
theological exposition regarding the Holy Trinity. And ultimately these theologi-
cal debates revolved around the nature of the Christological Union of the divine
and human natures in the Second Person, the Son.
4 For a general understanding of the history and traditions of the Thomas Chris-
tians, see Mundadan, History of Christianity in India. The other names given to
the Church of the East are the Church of Mesopotamia, Church of Seleucia-Ctesi-
phon, Persian Church, Babylonian Church, Assyrian Church (of the East), Nes-
torian Church, and Chaldean Church. The adjectives Mesopotamian, Persian,
Babylonian, Chaldean and Assyrian are in reference to the geographical plain of
Mesopotamia (the parts of today’s Iraq and western Iran), the cradle of the
Church of the East. The term “Nestorian” is employed in reference to the alleged
Antony Mecherry SJ, On the Errors of the East Syrians 189
of the Portuguese Padroado, gradually got to know about the Tho-

mas Christians, from whom the Europeans discovered – despite
their resistance to accepting – that Thomas Christians held in high
esteem the Syriac language, their bequeathed East Syrian liturgical
traditions and the Malabar customs. Syriac was their liturgical lan-
guage, while their ecclesial customs were flavoured both with the
local cultural milieu and the East Syrian elements traditionally be-
longing to the ‘Babylonian’ Church and the ‘Nestorian’ Church, as
the missionaries preferred to call the Church of the East.5
Centuries before, and following Schwane’s chronological schema,
in the ages of ‘heresies’ and ‘theologians’, the Church in the West had
invested great energy in addressing the ‘Nestorian’ question by de-
fending in dogmatic terms the unity of Christ, God and man. We find
the heated zenith of this defence in the first Council of Ephesus (431
AD) held during ‘the age of heresies’, in which St. Cyril, the Patriarch
of Alexandria (ca. 376–444), successfully deposed Nestorius, the
Patriarch of Constantinople (ca. 386–ca. 450), who stood at the oppo-
site Antiochian camp of the theological battle of the century.6
theological identity attributed to the Church of the East. The name Chaldean,
geographically speaking Lower Mesopotamia, is used in reference to the entire
Mesopotamian plain, although this southern portion lies chiefly on the right
bank of the Euphrates. In 1553, a branch of the Church of the East entered into
Catholic communion, and the name Chaldean Church was widely employed
from then on in reference to the newly born Catholic patriarchate and to a later
offshoot of the Church of the East, the present branch of the Catholic Church in
full communion with Rome. From 1553 onwards, the Catholic East Syrians under
the banner of the Chaldean Church claimed ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the
Malabar Church, leading in turn to an underlying jurisdictional conflict in India
between the agents of the Church of the East and the Chaldean Church. Al-
though Mar Abraham of Angamaly, the early modern metropolitan of the Tho-
mas Christians, initially represented the traditional Church of the East (1556–65),
technically speaking a ‘Nestorian’, he became a Catholic in 1565 primarily with
a view to ensuring his undivided jurisdiction over the Malabar Church, which
was found to be at stake given the Padroado administration of the Indian
mission. For a short exposition of these jurisdictional complexities, see Mecherry,
ed., De Syrorum orientalium erroribus, 3–6. For a general understanding of the
wider context and consequences of this shift of ecclesial allegiances, see Parker,
“The Ambiguities of Belief and Belonging”, 1420–45.
5 For an understanding of the starting point of the rite conflicts which emerged in
the first decades of the sixteenth century out of the encounter between the West-
ern missionaries and the East Syrian bishops governing the Thomas Christians,
see Mundadan, The Arrival of the Portuguese in India, 82–116. For the history of
the Malabar Church from the arrival of the Jesuits in India until the third decade
of the seventeenth century, see Mecherry, Testing Ground for Jesuit Accommodation
in Early Modern India.
6 For a critical exposition of this theological conflict, see Bevan, The New Judas.
190 Research Notes
As a consequence, the classical forms of ‘Nestorianism’ and its tex-

tual testimonies that persisted in the Church of the East – and which
later were incorporated into the Christian environment of India –
had over time developed into an apparently polemical doctrine. This
was facilitated by the ecclesial and hierarchical separation of the
Church of the East from the rest of the Western and Latin ecclesi-
astical world. In reference to the Antiochian traditions of the Syriac
West, this separation meant that over the centuries two distinct theo-
logical streams developed that entailed parallel and hermeneutically
different Syriac literatures – monophysitic on the one hand and
‘Nestorian’ on the other hand,7 characterised by variant meanings
attributable to the same Syriac terms by their respective exponents.8
The attributability of abstract and concrete senses to those Syriac
terms, depending on the context in which they were employed, in-
directly contributed to heated theological polemics inaugurated by
the Latin Church of the West, which later impacted the Christian re-
ligious and mission environment of early modern India, where On
the Errors of the East Syrians was produced.
Well before the treatise was written, and in response to the ter-
minological intricacies that the Syriac language had acquired over
time in their theological usages, the Latin Church began to attribute
definite meanings to the crucial terms of the Syriac theological ma-
trix. Its attributions were in line with those established during the
‘age of heresies’ – through the Chalcedonian formula of faith,9 con-
cerning terms such as kyānā, qnōmā, parṣōpā, ’itutā, ’ityā and usiā.
These attributions led to the production of crucial interpretational
variants of the Syriac theological terminology and these variants
were in turn employed by the Latin West to respond to its under-
standing of the question of classical ‘Nestorianism’.10
7 In describing the general theological thrust attributed to classical ‘Nestorianism’

the term Dyophisitism is commonly employed with a view to bringing out the
question of the two Persons in Christ, a position allegedly held by the Church of
the East.
8 For the terminological confusions and clarifications revolving around crucial Sy-
riac terminologies, see Brock, “The ‘Nestorian’ Church”, 23–35.
9 Against the reported heresies related to the (Unitarian) Monophysitism, the
Council of Chalcedon (451 AD), the fourth Ecumenical Council, decreed its
teachings on the consubstantial Union of the Person of Christ. Despite the Chal-
cedonian condemnation of Monophysitism, it prevailed in Egypt and in Syria,
the cradles of the Jacobite Church of the Antiochian tradition.
10 For example, the Latins generally employed Person for both Prosopon and for Hy-
postasis. For the complexities in understanding the crucial terms prevailing in
the Syriac theological matrix, see Chediath, “The Three Crucial Terms in Syriac
In addition, it is worth noting that in the course of the different

‘ages’ identified by Schwane’s schema, the Western understanding
of Christology underwent its own phases of evolution, leading to a
number of consequences for its interactions with different Christian
traditions. The confusing interpretational variants of the crucial
theological term like physis is one such example. Along with a cer-
tain ambiguity, it is possible to trace first a Cyrillian approach (fo-
cusing on the divine nature of Christ and named after St. Cyril’s
defeat of the ‘Nestorians’ at the Council of Ephesus), and then the
Chalcedonian approach (focusing on the true humanity of the Sec-
ond Person of the Trinity (Christ), affirmed at the Council of Chal-
cedon). In later centuries, the medieval scholastic method took up
the Chalcedonian approach, which in turn was adopted by the Latin
missionaries as they set out for the Orient for their evangelization
mission in the sixteenth century.
European missionaries and the Malabar Church of Sixteenth-Cen-

tury India: The Case of Francisco Ros SJ
Against the backdrop of the doctrinal disputes of earlier centuries
and the subsequent thrust for theological and liturgical uniformity
promoted by the Council of Trent (itself fuelled by the events of Ref-
ormation in Europe), the Iberian missionaries who worked in India
in the first half of the sixteenth century generally looked down on
every tradition that the Thomas Christians in Malabar had inherited
from the Church of the East. It was only after the arrival in India, in
1584, of Francisco Ros SJ,11 a Catalonian from the Jesuit province of
Aragón, that the missionaries, especially the Jesuits in India, came
to know in detail that Syriac books produced in abundance in Meso-
potamia had been integrated into the religious patrimony and prac-
tice of the Malabar Church. In his capacity as the official consultor
to Mar Abraham of Angamaly, the Chaldean Metropolitan of the
Thomas Christians, Ros found that the Malabar Church had long
held in high esteem the Syriac books containing the theological ex-
pressions promoted by Theodore of Mopsuestia (d. 428 AD), Dio-
dore of Tarsus (d. ca. 390 AD) and Nestorius. Following the Council
of Chalcedon (451 AD) the Western Church had already labelled
Theology,” 59–65; Brock, “The ‘Nestorian’ Church”, 26–28; Dickens, “PRO: Nes-
torius did not intend to argue that Christ had a dual nature”, vol. 1, 145–62.
11 Francisco Ros, * 1557 Girona (Spain), SJ V.1575 Aragón, †18.II.1624 Cranganore
(Malabar, India) (DHCJ IV, 3410).
192 Research Notes
these theological exponents honoured by the Church of the East as

reprehensible heresiarchs.
The traces of allegedly condemnable and foreign theological posi-
tions found in the Syriac books owned by the early modern Malabar
Church naturally stirred the theological sensibility of the Latin
missionaries, who tended to act on the spirit of uniformity nurtured
by the Council of Trent.12 Such a general spirit of dogmatic defence
revealed the legacy of the ‘age of theologians’ beyond the age’s chro-
nological end-point (the Council of Trent) and beyond its traditional
geographical borders (in India, where Latin Christianity was arriv-
ing for the first time in history in a systematic way).
The persistent thrust for dogmatic purge on the part of mission-
aries from Europe partly explains the rationale of two versions of
extant treatises presented in Latin-Syriac on the question of ‘Nes-
torianism’. Composed by Ros, they are: De Syrorum orientalium er-
roribus, written in 1586 (the treatise under consideration here) and
De erroribus Nestorianorum qui in hac India orientali versantur (=On the
errors of the Nestorians who dwell in this Oriental India), completed in
1587 and sent in 1588. Equipped with an exclusively Western forma-
tion based on medieval scholastic theology, through these texts Ros
endeavoured to objurgate the theological positions and expressions
promoted by the Church of the East that were present in their textual
and liturgical forms in the Malabar Christianity of India.
At the same time, the Rosian treatises echoed an immediate and
political function that he was called to fulfil: to end the age-old East
Syrian (Chaldean) jurisdiction in India,13 and to introduce the Pa-
droado administration over the Church of the Thomas Christians.
This aim to end Chaldean jurisdiction was despite the fact that, ear-
lier, in 1553, the Chaldean Church had united with Rome. With the
aim to dissolve this arrangement and replace it with direct oversight
12 On the question of the thrust of uniformity brought about by the Council of

Trent, see Emminghaus, The Eucharist, 83–88.
13 “During the Jesuit mission in the Malabar Church, its faithful exclusively com-
prised the Thomas Christians of the East Syrian rite, who held in high esteem
the spiritual care of their Syriac-speaking bishops hailing from the Chaldean
Church, a [C]hurch born in 1553 from the ecumenical rapprochement of a branch
of the Church of the East with the Catholic Church. From that year onwards, the
Chaldean patriarch claimed legitimate jurisdiction over the Malabar Church, be-
cause of his ecclesial communion with the Roman Church.” Mecherry, Testing
Ground for Jesuit Accommodation in Early Modern India, xi. However, the Padroado
missionaries in general portrayed the East Syrian bishops in India as “Chaldeos
incognitos”. See Wicki, ed., Documenta Indica [hereafter D.I.], vol. XIV, 455.
from the Padroado (by papal delegation, according to the arrange-

ment in Portuguese territories), Ros sent the two polemical treatises
to Europe, the first in 1586 and the second in 1588. Specifically, the
treatises were part of a plan to oust from his role and from India Mar
Abraham,14 at the time the Chaldean (Catholic) metropolitan of the
Thomas Christians († 1597), and the last to hold the role in the ca-
pacity as metropolitan, or ecclesiastical leader, of the Malabar
Church. Yet after preparing, writing and sending his treatises, Ros
began to observe that a few of the East Syrian and Malabar com-
ponents, including liturgical, social and linguistic, that had already
become an integral part of the Malabar Church over the centuries,
were in fact cultural and nonessential in terms of Catholic faith (and
therefore in his view might be retained); these, he reasoned, did not
pertain to essential theological questions over which there could be
no compromise according to the European mindset.
Ros’s view that distinguished cultural practice (which was per-
missible) from theological dogma (which was not if it was judged
to be in error) prompted him to promote, from 1588 onwards, the
Jesuit mission praxis of accommodatio among the Thomas Christians.
This approach identified that a few important but nonessential el-
ements of the Malabar Church, in contrast to dogma and theology,
were not to be prima facie condemned, including the Syriac language,
liturgical and ecclesial customs like rigorous fasting, and culturally
transmitted components like the participation of the Thomas Chris-
tians in the social mores of Malabar. Ros rightly understood that the
Christians were not ready to submit to a direct dogmatic disciplining
and reduction at the expense of their ecclesial identity. The oppo-
nents of Ros on the other hand argued that all these nonessential el-
ements constituted the very doors of heresy. Serious disagreement
ensued among the Jesuits in India that lasted for more than a decade
over the role and place of accommodatio of the nonessential elements
in the early modern Church of the Thomas Christians.15
The diocesan Synod of Diamper, which was convoked in 1599 by
Aleixo de Menezes OSA, the Latin Archbishop of Goa, did not ad-
dress this dilemma of accommodatio, instead it primarily aimed at
bringing the Malabar Church politically under the Padroado jurisdic-
14 On Mar Abraham’s mission in Malabar, see Thevarmannil, “Mar Abraham”; Me-

cherry, Testing Ground for Jesuit Accommodation in Early Modern India, 19–168.
15 For the complexities regarding the dilemma of accommodatio faced by the Jesuits
in Malabar, Mecherry, Testing Ground for Jesuit Accommodation in Early Modern
India, 110–15, 412–26.
194 Research Notes
tion and ecclesiastically under the Latin Church. Several aspects of

the social matrix and ecclesial identity of the Malabar Church were
seriously thwarted by the Synod, although through the efforts of Ros,
the Synod established that at the very least the status quo ante was ca-
nonically possible regarding the nonessential element of Syriac, the
liturgical language of the Malabar Church.16 It is true that Ros played
a central role in the formulation of the synodal decrees that insisted
on upholding all theological expressions and teachings of the Catholic
Faith in the scholastic terminology of the Latin Church (against the
perceived ‘Nestorian errors’ of the East Syrians); yet immediately after
the Synod he objected to the exaggerated stipulations about what he
saw as the synod’s efforts to suppress regional and nonessential cus-
toms prevailing in the Malabar Church, which he considered detri-
mental to the souls of local Christians unwilling to adhere to those
stipulations at the expense of their ecclesial identity. For this reason,
he attempted to soften the Synod’s final rulings and language by suc-
cessfully convoking the Synod of Angamaly in 1603.17
However, despite the temporary acceptance of the Syriac language
for the sake of an effective mission and final ‘reduction’ of the Ma-
labar Church, for the most part, missionaries in India continued to
portray the East Syrian traditions as ‘Babylonian weeds’ to be stra-
tegically removed in the end phase of accommodatio, a praxis which
was widely understood and accepted after 1599 as a mission method
whose anticipated end was envisaged as full incorporation of the
Malabar Church into the Latin Church and its rites18. In this project,
“[t]he mission praxis of accommodation in the Malabar Church
aimed at achieving a distant reduction of the Thomas Christians
within their own Chaldean garb and Syriac trimmings”.19 In this
understanding of accommodatio, methodologically limited to the ac-
cidental and nonessential elements of a mission field, Ros expressed
his awareness of the psychological rationale behind the playful ten-
dency of human nature that “always tend[s] towards forbidden
16 In 1601, Alberto Laerzio, the Jesuit provincial of Malabar, agreed with the mission
praxis of Ros and wrote to Rome that it was impossible to remove Syriac and in-
troduce Latin among the Thomas Christians: “è impossibile, havendola [lingua
Caldea] loro sempre usata, et è tanta l’affettione che portano, che questa seria
causa di gran rumori tra di loro, et si esporria à pericolo evidenti da perderli
tutti”. See Rome. Archivum Sacrae Congregationis de Propaganda Fide, Miscel-
lanea Diverse, vol. 21, f. 25.
17 Mecherry, Testing Ground for Jesuit Accommodation in Early Modern India, 216–23.
18 Rome. Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu [hereafter ARSI], Goa. 15, f. 23.
19 Mecherry, De Syrorum orientalium erroribus, 8.
things and look[s] forward to obtaining what we are denied”.20 The

method of accommodatio primarily aimed at working at the level of
long-standing customs and traditions, which made its methodologi-
cal applicability universally possible irrespective of the nature of the
potential converts, whether they were Christians or non-Christians.
From this methodological perspective derived the popular and clas-
sical definition of accommodatio among missionaries: “entering
through their door and then coming out through ours”.21
After his episcopal consecration in 1601, held in Goa on the Mem-
orial Day of St. Cyril of Alexandria (famed as having theologically
defeated the ‘Nestorians’, celebrated on 28 January),22 Ros began to
govern Angamaly, the ecclesiastical See of the Thomas Christians,
as their first Latin bishop. Soon afterwards, Ros witnessed a growing
opposition led by a group among the Thomas Christians against the
surreptitious reduction of their ancient See into a suffragan diocese
of the primatial Latin see of Goa governed at the time by Archbishop
Aleixo de Menezes OSA (r. 1595–1612), the organizer of the Synod
of Diamper (1599).23 Ros perceived that the dissident group wanted
to restore Chaldean jurisdiction to the See of Angamaly – where that
jurisdiction had been forcibly severed in favour of the Latin one –
to which he responded by identifying the opponents’ behaviour
with a Scriptural passage describing the dormant tendency in them
to return to the “garlic and onions of Egypt”.24 By this he was refer-
ring to the Chaldean vestiges of the prior jurisdictional affiliation
that he considered unacceptable in early modern Malabar.
20 Here Ros cited the often-quoted words of Publius Ovidius Naso (43 BC–17 or 18
AD), Roman poet, from his Amores, III, 4, 17; “Nitimur in vetitum semper, cupi-
musque negata” in ARSI, Goa. 17, f. 249. For understanding the specific context
to which Ros applied this aphoristic verse from Ovidius, see Mecherry, Testing
Ground for Jesuit Accommodation in Early Modern India, 312.
21 Ignatius of Loyola’s notable instructions given to the Jesuit papal legates to Ire-
land, Salmeron and Broët, alluded to the mission praxis of accommodatio. See Ig-
natius of Loyola, Letters of St. Ignatius of Loyola, 51–52.
22 For the polemical implications behind the choice of this day for the consecration
of Ros, see Mecherry, ed., De Syrorum orientalium erroribus, viii–xii.
23 Archbishop Menezes mostly acted in his own interest during his Malabar
mission held in 1599, see Mecherry, “Archbishop Aleixo de Menezes OSA”, 8–
34. Menezes took the initiative to suppress the metropolitan status of Angamaly,
the most ancient Church in India, primarily with a view to safeguarding his own
primacy in the Orient. For a critical evaluation of this question analysed against
the backdrop of archival sources, see Mecherry, Testing Ground for Jesuit Accom-
modation in Early Modern India, 236–37.
24 ARSI, Goa. 15, f. 95. For the scriptural reference to the “garlic and onions of
Egypt.” Cf. Numbers 11:5.
196 Research Notes
Such a view was already reflected in Ros’s earlier theological treat-

ises that aimed at abolishing the Chaldean/East Syrian ecclesiastical
jurisdiction over the Malabar Church. In addition, the Synod of
Diamper had practically abolished this age-old jurisdiction in India.
However, within this adversarial approach towards the East Syrians
in general, Ros did advocate retaining traditions that did not pertain
to jurisdictional matters and essentials of faith according to the prin-
ciple of accommodatio. He set out an unprecedented and clear-cut dif-
ference between the role of long-standing ecclesial traditions and
customs, which Ros considered acceptable, and jurisdictional and
religious vestiges of a ‘Nestorian’ past, which Ros and his contem-
poraries viewed as completely intolerable to the Catholic Church’s
aims for the region, especially in its newly forged ecclesiastical set-
ting of early modern India. In its applied form, one can trace the
quite original and subtle differentiation that Ros identified between
essentials and nonessentials of mission in the works both of Ros
himself and of Ros’s fellow Jesuit promoters of accommodatio; for
example, Roberto de Nobili SJ similarly made a clear distinction be-
tween civil rites and religion in his accommodatio among the Brah-
mins of Madurai.25
Enlisting the biblical analogy reminiscent of the liberating mission
of Moses and the murmuring Israelites,26 Ros depicted the end of the
Chaldean jurisdiction over the Thomas Christians as their freedom
from the slavery of the ‘Babylonian Church’,27 which had been tainted,
in his eye, by the heresy of ‘Nestorianism’. Ros viewed the efforts of
the small group among the Thomas Christians to restore the Chaldean
jurisdiction over their Church as the plight of the murmuring Israe-
lites who wanted to return, even after their miraculous escape, to the
secure pleasures they enjoyed during their slavery in Egypt.
25 Roberto de Nobili, * IX.1577 Rome (Italy), SJ.1596 Naples, †16.I.1656 Madras

(Tamil Nadu, India) (DHCJ II, 1059). On the crucial importance of the need of
distinguishing the concepts like Church, rite, customs and traditions, see Ne-
dungatt, “Forward” (unpaged, in Thazhath, The Quest for Identity). According to
Ros, the Church of St. Thomas in Malabar and the Church of the “Nestorians”
in Mesopotamia were two different realities, without excluding the possibility
of sharing some common elements of these two Churches at the level of customs.
For a comparative understanding of the mission approaches of Ros and Nobili
that primarily worked at the level of customs and traditions, see Chapter 5 of
Mecherry, Testing Ground for Jesuit Accommodation in Early Modern India, 351–437.
26 Cf. Numbers 11:5.
27 For a subtle and underlying motive behind the upright condemnation of the
‘Babylonian’ Church on the part of the early modern Jesuits, see Mecherry, Test-
ing Ground for Jesuit Accommodation in Early Modern India, xxviii–xxix.
In response, Ros styled himself the new Moses in Malabar des-

tined to guide the temporarily disturbed Thomas Christians to a
promised future. By contrast, according to the protesters in An-
gamaly, the newly imposed Latin hierarchy over the Thomas Chris-
tians was their ‘desert experience’ devoid of their Chaldean bishops,
the traditional metropolitan heads of their Church in India. For his
part, Ros viewed the protestors in Angamaly as disobedient schis-
matics who troubled their leader for liberating them from serving
the Chaldeans during their ‘Babylonian captivity’. Ros’s principles
of accommodatio never tolerated the East Syrian jurisdiction over the
Malabar Church, although at the peak of the conflicts, in 1597 and
in 1609, he had recommended to bring to the Malabar Church a
Chaldean or Maronite archbishop trained in Rome, with a view to
placating the Thomas Christians.28
In 1611, Ros was faced with a further serious threat to the Jesuit
mission among the Thomas Christians, this time apparently from
the non-Jesuit missionary bishops of Malacca, Mylapore and Cochin.
In his capacity as archbishop of Angamaly-Cranganore, Ros wrote
to the superior general in Rome justifying the mission praxis of ac-
commodatio. He argued that the praxis required a deep involvement
in the languages and customs of the mission territories on the part
of the missionaries. On this occasion he depicted accommodatio as an
exclusive patrimony of the Jesuits, and as a necessary practice on
account of the particular characteristics of the Christians to whom
they were ministering in India. Specifically, he identified the Mala-
bar Church within the broad group of the Oriental Churches, which,
according to his judgement commonly shared a sort of “disturbed
disposition”.29 In other words, in Ros’s view, the Jesuit accommodatio
and its modo soave aimed at taming an unyielding and disturbed
ground of mission that was already Christian, with a view to ‘re-
ducing’ them to ‘correct’ doctrine and jurisdiction through retaining
their own cultural, ecclesial and social garb and trimmings.30 In his
approach towards the mission among the Thomas Christians, Ros’s
Chalcedonian and scholastic grounding as a Latin missionary thus
continued to play a crucial role in maintaining a defensive approach
28 ARSI, Goa. 14, f. 357v. In 1609, Ros had asked the Jesuit General to send a few
Maronite Jesuits to the Malabar Church. ARSI, Goa. 16, f. 228.
29 ARSI, Goa. 17, f. 62v.
30 The term reduce, etymologically from the Latin roots re (“back”) + dūcō (“lead”)
was employed by the Jesuits in Malabar in the sense of “leading/bringing back
(the potential converts) to the Catholic fold”.
198 Research Notes
towards the Oriental Churches in general, especially the Church of

the East, which enjoyed its long-standing jurisdiction over the Church
in India.
While Ros limited his judgement to the case of the Oriental
Churches in particular, Francisco de Sousa, an eighteenth-century
Jesuit historian writing in support of the Jesuit praxis of accommoda-
tio in the Malabar Church, extended this judgement over the oriental
nations in general. He wrote: “These oriental nations are inor-
dinately passionate about their customs. The efforts to impose our
[customs] on these nations as if they are the commandments of God
or as the precepts of the Church is tantamount to making the yoke
of the Gospel very heavy to them and to adding difficulties in the
conversion of the pagans”.31 Two centuries prior, Bishop Ros had
sensed this problem and wrote about its possible solution to the
Jesuit curia in Rome. In his letter, he was attempting to convince his
superiors that the decrees of the Synod of Diamper should not reach
the pope’s hand:
[I]f His Holiness confirmed the above-said synod he would be placing

all these Christians in a state of mortal sin, as they would not keep it; if
His Holiness approved, I say, what has to do with practices (costumbres)
in such a way as to make a law[?] As great evils would follow from such
procedure, I request Your Paternity for the love of our Lord, on receiv-
ing this information, to use your influence in the court of Rome so that
this step, ruinous to souls, may be averted and let the Holy Father be
informed of it; let not these Christians say that we have duped them.32
This letter illustrates clearly Ros’s position: he accepted the Diamperi-

tan decrees that dealt with the Catholic Faith (Session III) and the sac-
raments of the Church, but he openly rejected the exaggerated
stipulations laid down by the synod on the regional customs (cos-
tumbres) of the Thomas Christians. At the same time, in the devel-
opment of Session III of the Synod of Diamper, Ros’s pro-Chalcedonian
positions on the errors of the ‘Nestorians’ played a central role.
As we have noted, on his arrival in India in 1584, Ros began his
mission deeply equipped with the theological matrix of the Council
of Trent (1545–63); he subsequently went to Malabar in 1585 armed
with Jesuit Visitor Alessandro Valignano’s prejudicial stances
31 Francisco de Sousa, Oriente Conquistado, vol. 2, 72 (trans. mine).

32 ARSI, Goa. 15, ff. 155–55v. (trans. Thaliath, The Synod of Diamper, 130–31).
against the East Syrians and the Oriental Churches in general.33 At

the very start of his Indian mission, Ros thus found himself as a pol-
emicist in the making. During his crucial sojourn that lasted for a
year (from December 1584 to December 1585) in the Jesuit professed
house in Goa, away from the Malabar Church, he was reported to
have sufficiently mastered Syriac, the liturgical language of the East
Syrians and the Thomas Christians, with “exceptional calibre and
remarkable application and inquisitiveness” and “without the help
of a teacher”.34 During Mar Abraham’s stay in Goa from the first
week of April 1585 as an invited participant to the third provincial
council scheduled for June that year, Ros was able to read, albeit
with a Chalcedonian theological lens, and translate into Latin an im-
portant East Syrian theological treatise on Incarnation owned by
Mar Abraham and reportedly written by Bar Kaldun Yohanan.35
As expected of Ros, then, his translation and interpretation of the
East Syrian texts and theological terms exclusively relied on the
Chalcedonian formula of the dogma of Incarnation, as explicitly
demonstrated by his later treatises on the errors of the ‘East Syrians’
and the ‘Nestorians’. This crucial academic exercise undertaken by
the young Ros represented the first phase of his formation as a pol-
emicist. Making use of his newly acquired skill in Syriac, he polemi-
cally identified the reportedly incongruous but strategic theological
conclusions and textual testimonies upheld by the ‘Nestorian’
Church, with a view to employing them specifically against Metro-
politan Mar Abraham. The metropolitan was generally looked down
on by the Portuguese missionaries as a dispensable leader of the
age-old East Syrian jurisdiction over the Malabar Church.36 Yet there
was an obstacle to be overcome first: earlier, Pope Pius IV (r. 1559–
65) and the Chaldean patriarch Audishu IV Yukhannan (r. 1555–70),
had sent Mar Abraham to India in 1565, canonically naming him the
metropolitan of Angamaly. From the Roman perspective, therefore,
Mar Abraham was a legitimate leader of the Church there. Thus, in
order to legitimately claim Portuguese jurisdiction over the Thomas
33 Alessandro Valignano, * 7.II.1539 Chieti (Italy), SJ 29.V.1566 Rome, † 20.I.1606

Macao (China) (DHCJ IV, 3877).
34 D.I., vol. XV, 206–07 (trans. mine).
35 Bar Kaldun Yohanan (sec. X). Ros in his polemical treatises often referred to the
work of Kaldun, who is thought to have been influenced by the writings of Evag-
rius of Pontus (345 AD–99 AD) who is condemned as as origenist.
36 For the political interests behind the Portuguese rejection of Mar Abraham’s ec-
clesiastical jurisdiction in India, see Mecherry, ed., De Syrorum orientalium errori-
bus, 4–7.
200 Research Notes
Christians, as accorded and understood by the rights enjoyed by the

Portuguese Padroado, it was necessary first for the missionaries to
reverse the prior arrangement and orchestrate that “the Supreme
Pontiff [in Rome] deprive [Mar Abraham] of his ecclesiastical posi-
tion [as the Metropolitan of Angamaly] and the See of the arch-
bishop”.37
Given this complex circumstance created by two possible and
legitimate jurisdictions (Roman-Chaldean and Padroado) over the
Malabar Church, the Portuguese project of ousting Mar Abraham
from his role and from India needed a well-grounded reason. A tex-
tual approach seemed to be the most effective way: to achieve the
desired ends, it was deemed expedient to identify Mar Abraham as
a representative in India of the same line of the alleged heresiarchs
of ‘Nestorianism’, depicting him in turn as a disguised promoter
(‘lupus’) of heresy in the Church of the Thomas Christians (‘oves’).38
This strategic position constitutes the general context of the Rosian
treatise, On the Errors of the East Syrians (referring here to those Chris-
tians in Mesopotamia and their representative leaders who had
settled in East India).
Two Rosian Treatises: De Syrorum orientalium erroribus (1586) and

De erroribus Nestorianorum (1587)
Until recently, scholars of the field had maintained that Ros had
written only one Latin-Syriac treatise on the question of the heresy
allegedly upheld by the Church of the East. The second treatise, De
erroribus Nestorianorum qui in hac India orientali versantur, was com-
missioned by Ros’s regional superiors; it was composed and com-
pleted by Ros in haste, in 1587, and sent to Europe in January 1588.
Jean Castets SJ (1858–1936), a missionary in South India, discovered
a copy of it and Irénée Hausherr SJ (1881–1978), a specialist in Greek
patristic and monastic spirituality and a professor at the Pontifical
Oriental Institute in Rome, edited and published the text with es-
sential annotations, in 1928.39
37 These are Ros’s words from his De erroribus Nestorianorum, sent to Europe in
1588. ARSI, Goa. 50, 214r.
38 ARSI, Goa. 50, 214r. Ros defined the Malabar Church and the Thomas Christians
as “the faithful of St. Thomas”, “the sheep”, “the Church of St. Thomas”, and
“the witnesses against the wolf”. See Mecherry, ed., De Syrorum orientalium er-
roribus, 19.
39 Francisco Roz, “De Erroribus Nestorianorum”, 1–35 [hereafter H]. For the orig-
inal manuscript, see ARSI, Goa. 50, 198r–214v [hereafter G]. The title in English is
On the errors of the Nestorians who dwell in this Oriental India.
However, a set of sixteenth-century manuscript folios recently sur-

faced at ARSI in the Fondo Tacchi Venturi. After a careful identifica-
tion process, the manuscript was found to be an earlier work on the
same theme, but with some notable differences. Since its composi-
tion four hundred and thirty-four years ago, this version of the
Latin-Syriac treatise, entitled De Syrorum orientalium erroribus (=On
the errors of the East Syrians) has finally been confirmed as having
been written by Ros, and that it was completed by him and sent to
Rome in 1586.40
Unlike his second treatise sent in 1588, Ros’s earlier treatise on the
reported errors of the East Syrians did not entirely fulfil its immedi-
ate polemical purpose of ousting Mar Abraham from India. How-
ever, De Syrorum orientalium erroribus clearly reflected Ros’s
academic enterprise and difficulties as a fresh learner of Syriac to
understand the complex system of the East Syrian theological matrix
and its terminology. Yet in the title of the treatise, he introduced the
faithful of the Church of the East and its representative leaders living
in India as ‘East Syrians’ in today’s terminology and not as ‘Nes-
torians’, as with the second treatise. A relatively open approach in
the earlier work towards understanding a theological tradition un-
familiar to him apparently urged Ros to explore different possibil-
ities of meanings in Latin that could be ascribed to crucial
theological terms employed in his Syriac sources found in India. At
the same time, De Syrorum orientalium erroribus clearly reflected his
intensive year of preparation at Goa in 1584–85. Notwithstanding
his attempt in this earlier treatise to employ variant possibilities of
meanings attributable to the crucial East Syrian theological terms,
Ros generally read the dogmatic positions and sources of the Church
of the East through a Chalcedonian lens, of course being faithful to
the immediate polemical motive behind the treatise, as expected of
him by his religious superiors.
40 This newly identified document is catalogued as ARSI, Fondo Tacchi Venturi, Serie
Miscellanea, Sottoserie Collectio Historica, b. 26 fasc. 27, ff. 10r–19v [hereafter T]. My
sincere thanks are due to Brian Mac Cuarta SJ, the former Academic Director of
ARSI, who provided me with the digital copies of the newly-discovered docu-
ment in the process of its identification and permission on the part of the Society
of Jesus to publish it for the first time since it was composed in the sixteenth cen-
tury. Thanks also to ARSI Archivist Sergio Palagiano who played an important
role in recovering this historically relevant document. For the first critical edition
and summary of this original manuscript along with a detailed contextual setting
presented as a historiographical critique, see Mecherry, ed., De Syrorum orienta-
lium erroribus. I am grateful to IHSI Publications Editor Camilla Russell for the
careful editing work that has gone into the study’s publication here.
202 Research Notes
By contrast, De erroribus Nestorianorum, sent to Rome two years later

in 1588, did not allow room for wider possibilities in interpreting the
theological positions held by the East Syrians, with respect to those
taught in the West. Specifically, the treatise does not countenance in-
terpretations of theological terminology traditionally employed by
the East Syrians to explain the incarnational Union of the divine and
human natures in the Second Person, the Son.41 Accordingly, while
parṣōpā is consistently rendered as person (and figure) in the first treat-
ise of 1586, that is, in its explicit sense, the second treatise ascribed a
definite and theologically strategic meaning to parṣōpā, that is, repre-
sentation.42 The strategic attribution of meanings in the second treatise
polemically functioned according to the Chalcedonian reinterpre-
tation of the Syriac term qnōmā as person (qnōmā = persons, divine sup-
positum and human suppositum), in turn opening the possibility of
blaming the ‘Nestorians’ for dividing Christ into two persons.43 Ro-
sian treatises rendered the word qnōmā in Latin as suppositum and hy-
postasis with the same polemical rationale explained above.44
Another notable feature of the earlier treatise is its title, On the Er-
rors of the East Syrians, in which Ros employed the term East Syrians
(conspicuously avoiding ‘Nestorians’): interestingly, this is today’s
terminology employed to represent the ecclesial families of the
Church of the East and the Chaldean Church, and in hindsight an
insightful choice on the part of Ros. Instead, the second treatise, in
its title strategically defined the Chaldeans – despite having united
with Rome in 1553 – pejoratively as “the Nestorians who dwell in this
Oriental India”. By means of this calculated shift in rendering the title
of the second treatise, Ros wanted to place the Chaldean Catholics,
represented in India by Mar Abraham of Angamaly, in the same line
of the ‘Nestorians’, in terms of their allegedly shared theological
identity, which for Ros was heretical.
41 For a compact explanation of the underlying theological conflicts, see Weinandy,

“The Doctrinal Significance of the Councils of Nicaea, Ephesus and Chalcedon”,
549–67, especially the pages 556–66.
42 For an exposition of the translation strategies employed by Ros in his polemical
treatises, see Chapter 2 of Mecherry, ed., De Syrorum orientalium erroribus, 29–54.
For understanding the general background of the Syriac terminological tradi-
tions in reference to the Western Church, see Chediath, “The Three Crucial Terms
in Syriac Theology”, 59–65; Brock, “The ‘Nestorian’ Church”, 26–28; Dickens,
“PRO: Nestorius did not intend to argue that Christ had a dual nature”, 145–62.
43 See text 10 of the edited document.
44 It is worth noting that the East Syrians attributed wide range of meanings to the
theological terms like qnōmā (but generally understood as the Syriac equivalent
to hypostasis) and parṣōpā (Syriac equivalent to Greek prosopon).
The allegations raised in the Rosian treatises were replicated in 1594

in the Information about the Bishop [Mar Abraham] of the Serra, a docu-
ment redacted by Ros’s superiors in India with a view to turning Mar
Abraham over to an inquisitorial inquiry.45 Again, a secret judicial and
preliminary inquiry held in Malabar (1596) under the aegis of the In-
quisition of Goa into the faith and life of Mar Abraham brought to-
gether in the form of thirty interrogatories the crucial allegations found
in the Rosian treatises against Mar Abraham and the East Syrians.46
Subsequently, despite the Rosian treatises having lost their im-
mediate contextual relevance in India after the death of Mar Abra-
ham in 1597, the third Session of the Synod of Diamper (1599) –
concerning true Faith – appropriated the theological and polemical
content of both works, updating their content by avoiding the per-
sonal references made in the texts to the late Mar Abraham. The
third Session condemned the reported ‘Nestorian’ precepts in gen-
eral and outlined how they must be replaced with Catholic dogma.47
Whatever Ros’s personal views and opinions regarding missionary
approaches stated in his correspondence and writings sent before
and after the synod of 1599, his earlier treatises from the 1580s were
influential sources in discrediting the theological foundations of Mar
Abraham and the East Syrians in general and in ending the Chal-
dean jurisdiction in India.
Concluding Comments about the De Syrorum orientalium erroribus

(1586)
In approaching the earlier of Ros’s two known versions of polemical
treatises, it is important to note that most of his theological positions
articulated in 1586 clearly reflect his lack of adequate formation in
the basic eastern way of presenting theological formulations, a field
now being extensively explored by scholars in the field today.
45 The report redacted in 1594 is generally attributed to Ros. See Ros, “Information
about Mar Abraham”, 283–94; for the edited and annotated Portuguese original,
D.I., XVI, 1029–39. For a critical analysis of this report in its contextual setting, see
Mecherry, Testing Ground for Jesuit Accommodation in Early Modern India, 140–45.
46 For the original document, Lisbon. ANNT, Tribunal do Santo Ofício, Inquisição de
Lisboa, proc. 4941, ff. 28r–37r, for its contextual setting, Mecherry, Testing Ground
for Jesuit Accommodation in Early Modern India, 150–55, and for a summary of the
interrogatories, see Mecherry, ed. De Syrorum orientalium erroribus, 102–09.
47 The elaborate project of the Synod of Diamper [hereafter S.D.] consisted of nine
elaborate sessions divided into several decrees. See Hough, ed., “A Diocesan
Synod of the Church” (reproduced from the edition of Geddes, The History of the
Church of Malabar, 511–683). For the Session III on the Catholic Faith presented
against the backdrop of the ‘Nestorian’ question, see 525–57.
204 Research Notes
Against the backdrop of this contextual setting, below this intro-

ductory essay is the text of the manuscript, which has been trans-
lated into English for the first time. This recently-identified earlier
version of Ros’s two known Latin-Syriac works on the errors of the
East Syrians, is presented here under four headings. The translation
does not reproduce the Syriac texts of the manuscript, since of rel-
evance here is the translation of their Latin renditions provided by
Ros for understanding the features of the Rosian hermeneutics con-
cerning the ‘Nestorian’ sources.48 The information given within
square brackets is not in the original manuscript, and it is placed as
part of the present translation of the work, to facilitate reading. It is
to be noted that an uncertain number of folios are missing at the end
of the original manuscript, although this limitation does not affect
the structure of the entire treatise. The aim of presenting here the
translation of this newly identified treatise is to offer a key for under-
standing Ros, his works, and his contexts: the manuscript shows
how an early modern Latin missionary in India polemically ap-
proached the question of ‘Nestorianism’, textually represented in
the Syriac books produced in the Church of the East and found in
sixteenth century Malabar.
Summary
This documentary exposition features a recently uncovered and ident-
ified treatise from the early modern period. Translated into English
here in full for the first time, the work was written in Latin and Syriac
by Francisco Ros SJ with the title, De Syrorum orientalium erroribus.
Principally of a theological nature, the manuscript is preserved at
ARSI under Fondo Tacchi Venturi. Written and dispatched from India
in 1586 by the Catalonian missionary from the Jesuit province of Ara-
gón, the work and its author represent a crucial transitional juncture
in the history of Latin Catholic mission, at the time directly managed
under the aegis of Iberian monarchies. In an age of Catholic Reforma-
tion and the dogmatic priorities nourished by the Council of Trent, in
general missionaries from the Latin West did not promote awareness
of the potential for legitimate coexistence between different rites and
theological expressions within the Catholic Church. In the Indian con-
text, this meant that Latin missionaries focused on eradicating the ‘er-
48 For the edited document in its entirety with essential annotations, see Mecherry,
ed. De Syrorum orientalium erroribus, 55–93, and for the internal features and
translation strategies employed by Ros, see 21–54.
rors’ of the Chaldean Church in the early modern Malabar Christian-

ity of the Thomas Christians. They did this with a thrust for dogmatic,
linguistic, liturgical, hierarchical and sacramental purge and uniform-
ity, operating primarily in the face of the jurisdictional upper hand
held in India by the East Syrian representative leaders of local Chris-
tians. A long-standing definition given by the Latin West to the ques-
tion of classical ‘Nestorianism’ played a major role in this missionary
endeavour. This study and the translation of the original document
outline the underlying dynamics of these conflicts against a wider
backdrop of the history of dogma and of the linguistic and cultural
sensibilities of different Churches, without losing sight of the political
motives that worked behind the scenes.
Sommario
Questo contributo presenta un trattato della prima età moderna sol-
tanto recentemente scoperto e identificato. Tradotto qui interamente
per la prima volta in inglese, il De Syrorum orientalium erroribus è stato
scritto in latino e siriaco da Francisco Ros SJ. Il manoscritto è conser-
vato presso l’ARSI nel Fondo Tacchi Venturi, e ha natura eminente-
mente teologica. Il missionario catalano, originario della provincia
gesuita di Aragona, lo scrisse in India nel 1586. L’opera e il suo au-
tore rappresentano un momento cruciale di transizione nella storia
della missione cattolica latina, all’epoca sotto l’egida delle monarchie
iberiche. Durante la Riforma cattolica e con le priorità dogmatiche
proclamate dal Concilio di Trento, i missionari dell’Occidente latino
non erano soliti sostenere la legittimità della convivenza tra i diversi
riti e le espressioni teologiche all’interno della Chiesa cattolica. Ciò
faceva sì che i missionari latini, nel contesto indiano, si concentras-
sero sull’eliminazione degli “errori” della Chiesa caldea nel cristia-
nesimo malabarico dei cristiani di S. Tommaso. Questa spinta
all’epurazione e all’uniformità dogmatica, linguistica, liturgica, ge-
rarchica e sacramentale, poteva avere luogo grazie alla preminenza
giurisdizionale goduta in India dai capi rappresentativi e siro-orien-
tali dei cristiani locali. In questo sforzo missionario ha svolto un ruolo
importante la definizione di lunga durata fornita dall’Occidente la-
tino alla questione del “nestorianesimo” classico. Il presente saggio
e la traduzione del trattato di Ros delineano le dinamiche di questi
conflitti in uno sfondo più ampio della storia del dogma e delle sen-
sibilità linguistiche e culturali delle diverse Chiese, senza perdere di
vista le motivazioni politiche ad esse sempre legate.
206 Research Notes
IHS
On the Errors of the East Syrians
[A. Preamble to the treatise]49

The Saint Thomas Christians who dwell in Oriental India perpe-
tually use Syriac in matters concerning divine worship. Since the
Syrians have been the pastors here and they have drunk in their zeal
the destructive heresy, the great poison, they have lost their pristine
faith50 in such a way and they have ended in unbelievable wreck in
spiritual matters and divine worship. Nevertheless, it brought about
by divine mercy in this manner that they have finally recovered their
senses and subjected themselves to the Supreme Pontiff.51 Despite
this, they are not so good in the knowledge of divine matters. From
this came forth their own ignorance, and their pastor’s negligence,52
and even dissembling souls, just as until now their books keep on
the old heresies and indeed, they have held them back entirely
unimpaired and chant them publicly. Moreover, it led to the corrup-
tion of faith and even up to the corruption of the sacred scriptures.53
It is said that when the Council of Chalcedon54 was celebrated, and in
it, Nestorius had taken away the verses from the first Letter of John,
which were openly tearing down his heresies.55 They are the following:
49 The treatise begins on T. f. 10r.

50 Ros here strategically maintains that the Thomas Christians, the faithful of the
Church of St. Thomas, were led astray by the errant East Syrian prelates.
51 Ros does not specify here whether he is speaking about the Catholic profession
of the Chaldean patriarchate separated from the traditional Church of the East in
1553. From the very beginning of the Catholic communion of the Chaldeans, the
patriarchs of the new Church successfully claimed direct ecclesiastical jurisdiction
over the Malabar Church. The Thomas Christians and their metropolitan, Mar
Abraham, officially expressed their allegiance to the Roman Church for the first
time in the first Synod of Angamaly (1583) organized by the Jesuit missionaries.
In that synod Mar Abraham accepted some of the Catholic traditions and the
canons of the Council of Trent. See D.I., XIII, 499. For the major decisions made
in the synod of 1583, see Mecherry, Testing Ground for Jesuit Accommodation in Early
Modern India, 77. Ros reached India a year after the first Synod of Angamaly.
52 By mentioning the negligence of the Chaldean prelate, Ros is aiming at portray-
ing Mar Abraham as the culpable person for the alleged degradation of the Ma-
labar Church.
53 The preamble in T blames the Syrian bishops in general without specifically men-
tioning the name of Mar Abraham for allegedly leading the Malabar Church to
a deplorable state. This generalized approach is one of the features of T.
54 Chalcedon [sic] (pro.) Ephesus.
55 The S.D. held the view that the ‘Nestorians’ rejected 1 John on the assumption
that its author was not the Apostle John. See S.D. Sess. III, dec. 14.
[B. Five scriptural passages falsified in a Nestorian sense]

[Text 1]: That is: [1 John 4:3 of L.V:]56 Every spirit which dissolves57 Jesus
is not the one from God, but he is Antichrist. And in its place, these are
substituted, and it is available from the Syriac version:
[follows P version in Syriac]58
[1 John 4:3: Latin Translation of P:] That is: And every spirit who con-
fesses not that Jesus has come in the flesh, is not from God.
[Commentary:] In addition, the Nestorian sects consider that attribu-
ting death to God is a great scandal. And also, in line with this position,
they were able to falsify these [verses], as their scriptures demonstrate
[f. 10v]. For indeed, it is said in the Letter of John mentioned above:
[Text 2: I John 3:16 of L.V:] In this we know God’s love, because he has
laid down his life for us. In Syriac, we in fact read in this way:
[follows P version in Syriac]
[I John 3:16: Latin Translation of P:] That is: In this we know his love
for us, that he gave up his life for our sake.
[Commentary:] Behold, in the place of God they put his, and they
speak of the death of Christ, but not of God. Indeed, they hold
this view and say that it cannot be spoken of the death of God
but [only] of Christ.59 And in this way, in the Acts of the Apostles
we read:
[Text 3: Acts 20:28 of L.V:] Take heed therefore to yourselves and to the
whole flock, over which the Holy Spirit has placed you as bishops to rule
the Church of God, which he has purchased with his blood. In Syriac it is
written as follows:
[Acts 20: 28: Latin Translation of P:] That is: Keep watch over yourselves
and over all the flock over which the Holy Spirit has placed you as bishops
to shepherd the Church of Christ which he gained by his own blood.
[Commentary:] Thus, they place Christ in the place of God. Moreo-
ver, for them Christ means two supposita:60 one is divine, the Word
of God, and the other is human, Jesus and Emmanuel, and of the
human they say that it is the temple of the Word of God, and who is
56 In T, Ros quotes first from Latin Vulgate [hereafter L.V.] and then from the Syriac
Peshitta [hereafter P].
57 “Solvit Iesum” (T. f. 10r).
58 The Syriac sources cited by Ros are excluded from this translation.
59 Regarding the respective scriptural verse, S.D blamed the ‘Nestorians’ for re-
placing God with Christ and for denying that “God to have died for us” (S.D.
Sess. III, dec. 3).
60 Ros translates the Syriac term qnōmē as supposita but understands the term as
persons in Chalcedonian sense.
208 Research Notes
worshipped with God, and the Son is not kyānāyt by nature,61 but b-
ṭaybūtāh by grace and love.62 [f. 11r] In this regard, among us, we read
of Christ in Paul’s Letter to the Philippines:
[Text 4: Phil 2: 6 of L.V:] did not consider it robbery to be equal with God.
The same [verse] they read in this way:
[Phil 2: 6: Latin Translation of P:]
That is: did not deem it robbery that he was similar to God.
[Commentary:] I really do not know in which sense the interpreter
translates pḥmā as equal in the Syriac translation, because the word
pḥm does not mean equal or to be equal but to compare and to be
similar.63 However, the word šwā means to be equal and the interpre-
ter mentioned above employs the same in the Gospel of John.64 Stric-
tly speaking, therefore, pḥmā means similar, not equal.65 The Letter to
the Hebrews also most clearly and explicitly mentions of the two sup-
posita, as if they want of Paul to confirm it. In fact, we read there:
[Text 5: Heb 2: 9 (L.V):] But we see Jesus, for the suffering of death, crow-
ned with glory and honour, that, through the grace of God he might taste
death for all. The families of the Syrian Nestorians (with whose way
we are occupied with) read as follows:
[Heb 2:9: Latin Translation of P:] That is: We see Jesus himself crowned
with glory and honour because of the death he suffered; for he tasted death
for everyone except God.66
[Commentary:] The one who may not see something Nestorian in
the words of Paul himself have pleased to construct their opinion
or rather heresy.
[C. Theological formulas tainted with Nestorianism] [f. 11v]
And they seem to assert that there are two sons, as held by the he-
resies mentioned above: two are the supposita, Word and Jesus uni-
ted in one person. Moreover, they maintain that all the actions of
Christ are to be of the one person and life of Christ, in whom are
united the human and divine supposita by his will and power, just
as explicitly stated by the doctor of the heretics in his treatise on the
61 Kyānāyt rendered in Syriac.

62 b-ṭaybūtāh rendered in Syriac.
63 pḥmā and pḥm are rendered in Syriac.
64 John 5:18. Šwā rendered in Syriac.
65 The word pḥmā could mean also equal, similar, like etc. See Payne Smith, A Com-
pendious Syriac Dictionary, 441.
66 For an exposition of the problem represented in this verse, see Brock, “Hebrews
2:9B in Syriac Tradition”, 236–44.
Incarnation of the Word,67 and it will be exposed below. I have in-

deed read and understood the entire book, from which I have selec-
ted the passages that I shall write below. And may the followers of
the Roman Church know that the Syrians, the Nestorian sects, have
not fully submitted to the Catholic faith.68 Instead, as we hear, if it
be genuine that their pastors truly understand the faith of the
Roman Church which they professed, why did they not at all judge
the heresies, their pest, which is to be abolished from the books of
the Church? At the same time, it is true that none of these [in Mala-
bar], who are called the Christians of St. Thomas, may want to men-
tion the heretics directly, Nestorius and the rest. Until now,
nevertheless, the vestiges of those pestilent doctrine are persisting
in their books. I hold my tongue of those books which are from Ba-
bylon and of Simon Sulaqa, who is their head and about whom I
know nothing of certain.69 I merely affirm that they may have the
same books and the same doctors who are not at all esteemed ac-
cording to the norms of the Catholic faith. Adhering to the former
errors is obviously gross ignorance whether it is by affection or by
understanding. I write below a few things that I could select from
their books. [f. 12r] From the writing of certain authors:
[Text 6: Syriac text and Latin translation:]70 [f. 12v]
That is: Which Apostle said that God died? No one can perfectly demon-
strate this. For this reason, we do not affirm that the Blessed Mary gave
birth to God, lest the Jews and the pagans say that if she gave birth to God,
then God died also; for one who is born, dies. But we assert that she gave
birth to Christ, who is God and died in the body but lives in the spirit.
Thus, too, the angel at the time of the Annunciation, accosted her: Behold,
you shall conceive and bring forth a son, and you shall name him Jesus.71
And John says:72 there was a feast, in Cana of Galilee, and the Mother of
Jesus was there. He does not say: the Mother of God was found there. Paul
67 Ros implies the treatise on Incarnation by Bar Kaldun Yohanan that he read and
translated while he was in Goa in 1585.
68 The treatise here explicitly speaks about the Catholic profession of the Chaldeans
held in 1553. Although the title of the treatise calls the Chaldeans East Syrians,
Ros makes a subtle shift here in the definition of the Chaldeans as the Syrians,
the Nestorian sects.
69 Ros mistakenly thinks that Simon (Shimun VIII) Yohannan Sulaqa (d. 1555) was
the patriarch of the Chaldean Church. In fact, Shimun IX Denkha (r. 1580–1600)
was the ruling Chaldean patriarch in 1586, when Ros completed his first treatise.
70 The 20th (penultimate) line of the Syriac text begins on f. 12v.
71 Lk 1:31
72 Jn 2:1
210 Research Notes
also says that God sent His Son, born of a woman;73 he does not say that
God sent God. For God did not send His Word, because the suppositum
[qnōmā] of the Word is not sent, and therefore, he is equal to the Father in
essence [usiā], and fills heaven and earth. On account of these reasons, we
see none of the holy Apostles who has called the Virgin, the Mother of God.
We too do not challenge this apostolic position by any means.74
[Commentary:] In the writing by a certain person, you find this writ-
ten after the authority of the sacred scripture, with which it is per-
ceived to argue that the suppositum of Jesus is human, not the real
suppositum of the Word of God; in Christ the two [supposita] are
indeed mingled, the one, suppositum of man, and the other, of the
true Word of God. On the alleged authority of the scriptures, they
hold the view that the suppositum of Jesus is human and not the
suppositum of the Word of God. Here and [f. 13r] in a certain hymn
of the first Sunday of Advent, it has the following [verses]:
[Text 7: Syriac text and Latin translation:]
That is: Without relationship, Mary brought forth Emmanuel, the Son of
God, and from her the Holy Spirit formed a body united, as it is written,
in such a way that it might become the dwelling place and adorable temple
for the splendour of the Father in one Filiation. From the moment of his
admirable conception, he united it (body) with himself in one honour. And
again: In the one person [parṣōpā] of one Filiation, the natures[kyānē] are
preserved in their supposita [qnōmē].
[Commentary:] However, they address the one person of Filiation
[as if] of a certain accidental matter just as expressly exposed from
the treatise of a certain John75 from whom the Nestorians draw on
their opinion on the Union of Incarnation:
That is: The entire life of Christ is in one person and figure [parṣōpā]. [f. 13v]
[Commentary:] And he speaks of the Word of God and Jesus. These are
two supposita, in each the works [will] of Christ are always concurred.
For that reason, person among the Syrians is not understood in a sub-
stantial sense, but in accidental, as said by their well-known doctor:76
73 Gal 4:4
74 This final verse is only in T. In the case of the texts common to both the version
of the Rosian treatises, like T text 6, I have consulted and made use of C. M.
George’s translation of De erroribus Nestorianorum: Ros, ‘“De Erroribus Nestori-
anorum’”, 143–62 [hereafter C.M.G.].
75 Bar Kaldun Yohanan.
76 It seems that Ros refers to the writings of Theodore of Mopsuestia. For an under-
standing of the widely misrepresented understanding of Theodore’s position on
the Union in Incarnation, see Küng, The Incarnation of God, 515–18.

That is: And Person [parṣōpā] is not fixed as suppositum (qnōmā). It is
given and taken, like seal in the wax and like the image of the king in the
coin.
[Commentary:] Accordingly, in the mystery of Incarnation they do
not maintain substantial union, but accidental. And in this way, they
call Christ or Jesus, infant or the Son by will and the clothing of di-
vinity, as follows:
That is: The Angels called you Lord; [the shepherds] called you Child (or
Son) (or by will) (or of favour); the clothing of king, we adore your myste-
ries of hidden sanctity, Christ God, above everything, two natures [kyānā],
and two hypostases [qnōmē] and one person (parṣōpā).77
[Commentary:] [f. 14r] Furthermore, they claim that Jesus is not God
by nature, but b-ṭaybūtāh78 by grace. And [he is] to be the temple of
the total divinity and of the three persons, and the union of Incar-
nation [is] to be common. So, they falsely affirm that it is not possible
to assume nature. For this reason, a certain Syrian doctor says:
That is: The nature [kyānā], however, is not given and assumed, not even,
in the same way, the suppositum [qnōmā].
[Commentary:] Thus, they teach these things that the human sup-
positum to be the temple and the dwelling of the entire Trinity, and
so the union of incarnation is to be common to the Father, to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit. Nevertheless, they maintain peculiar notion
of the union of the Word:
That is: neither let there be no mingling
[Commentary:] Just as said by the John mentioned above, by means
of whom diffused all these impious devises. In line with these cu-
stomary teachings, the Syrians sing, on the day of the Nativity of
the Lord, saying:
That is: [It is] not like this, the impious! You err, because you do not un-
derstand the Scriptures nor the power of God. [f. 14v] God [’ityā] is not
77 A variant reading of this text in the De erroribus Nestorianorum of 1587: “The An-
gels called Thee Lord; the shepherds named Thee Child; the Persians called Thee
King; we adore the mysteries of your hidden Sanctity, Christ God, above every-
thing, two natures, and two qnome [hypostases]in one Parsopa [person]”. See
text 11 in C.M.G. 149.
78 This is the transliteration of the Syriac original found in the manuscript.
212 Research Notes
made flesh in the womb of the Mother as you think wandering in corrup-
tion. It is a dwelling place that he chose for himself and he was concealing
his splendour lest the whole human race may not perish by his sight. And
again:
That is: The daughter of David brought forth the wonderful child, Christ,
the Holy of Holies, the power of the Most High, and the temple, and he
founded the temple, the dwelling place, and he lives in it, and is one person
[parṣōpā]. And afterwards:
That is: With great glory Mary carried in her womb the temple of the Word
of God and became the Mother of Jesus, the Saviour of all. And again, the
book of the Petition of the Ninevites has this:
That is: That he is the temple of God and the glorious dwelling of the (Di-
vine) substance [itūtā]. And again:
That is: He who assumed from us the temple built it [f. 15r] and perfected
it in every justice. And again:
That is: (translated word by word) If your dominion had made him
(Christ) the Lord above everything created, who will not subdue his soul
at the servitude of his life? And if your wisdom has designated (him), you
have confirmed him in sublime position, who will not confess that his grade
is true and his power is great? And if your mystery has revealed to your
servants by his apparition, who will not recall his freedom from everyone,
and will surrender to his bond? And if by him you [f. 15v] spread the great
mystery of the Son and the Holy Spirit, who will not approach wisdom that
is concealed in his own name? And if Word itself begets out of you, dwells
in you by love, who will not invoke him holding the end of the heavens and
the abysses? And if by him it is about to come the judgement of the earth
at the end of the time, who will not be afraid of the trial that has been in his
hand? And in another place, it is like this:
That is: I have seen the name of your substance (’itutā) in him (Christ) as
in a temple. Besides, it is written elsewhere:
[Text 20: Syriac text and Latin translation:]79
That is: Lazarus from Bethany heard the voice of the Son, and he responded
79 The final part of this text (“then the will taught…”) is present in the later treatise.
See H Text 22.
and said: here I am, [f. 16r] and the graves of the dead were dismayed, and
the dead howled. And the foundations of the hell were shaken, every crea-
ture was astonished by remarkable admiration. What has indeed been done?
Behold, the living one calls the dead, and look, the dead responds alive, then
the will taught them that it is JESUS Son of David whom the Word from
the Father put on and made him (Jesus) Lord and Judge in the high and in
the abyss.
[Commentary:] And in this way they always speak of JESUS and the
Word and as if there were two supposita, and they recognize no
Union except that of honour, virtue and power.
That is: O Lord, your people (your diocese) give thanks to You, since you
have showered your mercy upon them, and you assumed from our race the
Prince [f. 16v] (pearl, expectation) of peace (he is expected of peace) because
of your love and made him for you a chosen home for the will of your con-
versation [economy], and the glorious image of your invisible nature
[kyānā] and the beautiful mark of your divinity and the mediator of your
love before your Son, and the high pontifex, in whom are dispensed of our
sins by his grace.
[Commentary:] Below the week of the Prayer of the Ninevites has
this way:
That is: He who sanctified our nature by the holy first fruit (it is in singu-
lar) (that is, Christ) which he took from us (Jesus) and joined with himself
in the glorious union, of power, and of his filiation, and of domination. And
thereafter:82 He who lighted up the lamp of his human suppositum
[qnōmā] in the glorious splendour of his own divine suppositum [qnōmā].
[Commentary:] (Petition of the Ninevites).
Elsewhere in a certain book, the followers of Nestorius specifically
claim that Christ is to be called God or Jesus is to be called God [f.
17r] just as once Moses was called God of Pharaoh.83 There it is said of
Christ:
That is: Just as Moses is honoured.
[Commentary:] Besides, in a certain hymn on the departure of Adam
from Paradise, it has a discourse of JESUS the Lord as if He be the
other suppositum from the Word.
80 The first part of this verse is present in the later treatise. See H Text 15.
81 Cf. H text 19.
82 Follows Latin rendition of H Text 12.
83 Cf. Ex: 7:1
214 Research Notes

That is: You clothe the light of my substance [’itutā] by the image that
came from you at the end of time. And in him I will pay off your sins, he
will endure suffering, he will carry the cross, he will taste death, he will
descend to the grave, I dwelling in him. A certain Syrian doctor has the
following impious verses:
That is: It is the one who descended, and it is another who ascended in hea-
ven. And elsewhere [we read] the similar way:84
[Latin translation of a Syriac text:]
The glorious Son about whom the Archangel announced showed forth his
glory in the four regions of the world and among all the people. The legions
of the Angels [f. 17v] cry out without ceasing: Holy, Holy, Holy is the Fa-
ther who sent You, and the Holy Spirit who anointed you, and the Son who
dwelt in you and made you the Lord of all [things] created, and placed your
enemies a footstool for your feet.85
[Commentary:] These [verses] are in a certain book of prayers that I
saw earlier86 and from itself I had, to some extent, made a selection
translating them in Latin in the right manner. The book is not with
me [at the moment] and for that reason, I am not able to transcribe
the same in Syriac.87
Likewise, [when] these same texts are found written, I fai-
thfully translated them last year word by word. Thus, it is said
there: 88
Blessed are you, O Mary, who marvellously brought forth Christ, the Son
of God, adored by all, whom the Holy Spirit formed in you, and the Word
dwelt in him by a union without mingling, the natures are preserved wi-
84 Follows H text 26 Latin.

85 Cf. Psalm 110:1
86 In 1585, Ros was able to read a few Syriac books of Mar Abraham, when the
Metropolitan was staying in the professed house of the Jesuits in Goa.
87 In the margin of the manuscript, Ros mentions a Syriac codex, possibly owned
by Mar Abraham, of a book of prayer that he secretly consulted while he was in
Goa, from which he selected the verses which seemed to him problematic in
terms of his theological positions. Ros translated those verses into Latin and in-
cluded the Latin rendition in his first treatise sent in 1586. However, after sending
the first treatise, Mar Abraham handed over his personal books to Ros for mak-
ing correction, as ordered by the third Provincial Council of Goa (1585), and ac-
cordingly Ros could add also the Syriac verses of the text 25 in his De erroribus
Nestorianorum, sent in 1588. For the corresponding verse in this later work, see
H text 26.
88 Cf. the texts following H text 29.
thout confounding, and their supposita, in one person of filiation, of divi-

nity and of humanity, one Lord, one virtue, one power. And again:89
[He] dwelt in the Virgin and formed out of her a man, whom [he] united to
his hidden will. And again:
In the Mother whom he chose from our race, he founded his dwelling temple
and dwelt in it by will, and in itself is adored.
[f. 18r] [Commentary:] In this way, who will not see [that] these
[texts] bring forward two sons, and indeed two anointed. With two
they declare that in Christ to be two supposita, united by will, love
and power; not true hypostatical. They truly maintain, [it would
have been] necessary to be asserted that [God] suffered, had they
acknowledged the suppositum of the Word as God. [There is] a cer-
tain prayer in which they say:
[Latin translation of a Syriac text:]90
Brought about the Word from the Father and the man from us; proclaimed
the truthful, Diodore and Theodore and Nestorius, who kept up their own
Christ from insults. In the terrible judgement of your justice, their venge-
ance was exercised over those who ascribed suffering to your suppositum
and Theodore and Diodore and Nestorius are to be the winners who raised
your suppositum above suffering. These [words] are there.
[Commentary:] Along with these all, they call the Blessed Virgin not
as God’s mother but to be Christ’s. Last year,91 I heard certain priests
singing these [lines] in the churches, in praise of the Virgin:
[Latin translation of a Syriac text:]92
Mary did not give birth to the cause (God) as the accursed heretics claim;
nor did she give birth to a man as Arius said; but she brought forth Christ.
These I found written in a certain book of prayer, and I translated it
afterwards. However, I remember a place in which it is said: Mary
did not give birth to God, in the place of God, to be another name of
God [f. 18v] ’ityā, means cause, which often usurping the place of
alāhā God. But I think it is done among the heretics towards catching
the attention of the ignorant and truly offending the ears of the pious
men. They explicitly mention that Mary not to have given birth to
God. Thus, they employ the word which means both cause and God.
Not true essence from the word hwā, which means to be [to exist]. Be-
cause ’ityā itself agrees with the Greek word αἰτία [aitíā] or cause and
89 H text 28.
90 The final part of this verse is available in H text 39.
91 Ros started his mission in the Malabar Church in December 1585.
92 Follows H text 17.
216 Research Notes
is not deduced from the word hwā. Furthermore, the Syrians do not
call essence ’ityā but ’it and ’itutā.93 Moreover, on the day of the Sun-
day of Ascension, at the end of a certain collect they cry out saying:
Let our race be rejoiced in the Son of our race who is honoured with God.
To end, nowhere you will find JESUS as God and Mary as the
Mother of God; but the Mother of Christ or of JESUS, otherwise they
call the Blessed Mother.
[D. Commemorations dedicated to heresiarchs]
With great honour the followers of the Nestorian Syrians describe
their doctors. Along with Theodore of Mopsuestia and Diodore of
Tarsus and among the other they mix up the praise of their honour
to those who are most famous among them, and of the praise of
many saints.
[Text 26: Syriac text [f. 19r]94 and Latin translation:]95
That is: Mighty towers and strong walls to the Church and her children
were my96 Lord Diodore who destroyed fears and my Lord Theodore who
interpreted the scriptures, with my Lord Nestorius, a zealous person of
truth as well as a living martyr who suffered persecution by the envy of
the followers of Cyril, of the agent of Satan. Let us praise Christ who offered
them victory; they kept him up from insults, and he exalted the horn of his
Church through their hands, glory to him.
[Comments]: It is not enough for them to have praised the impious
men, rather with the other saints, they have called Saint Cyril, ‘the
operator of Satan.’ At the same time, they may count the other holi-
est men with the notorious ones. In fact, after the words mentioned
above, they may add:
[Text 27: Syriac text (f. 19v)97 and Latin translation:]
93 ‘Essence’ and ‘Being’, the equivalent Syriac terms derived from the particle of
existence (’it), do not have corresponding terminology in the Greek philosophical
(and theological) system, of course, the only system with which Ros was familiar.
While the later Syriac tradition used ’ityā as an epithet for God, some authors
maintain that ’itutā is the later form synonymous with ’ityā. At the same time,
while ’ityā gives room for a plural form (’ityē), ’itutā, a singular term, does not
have a plural form, possibly reserved accordingly to denote the Essence of God.
For these explanations, see Possekel, Evidence of Greek Philosophical Concepts, 55–
57. These terms are rendered in Syriac and Greek original respectively in the
manuscript.
94 The third line of the Syriac text begins on f. 19r.
95 Latin rendition of this text is available in H following the text 40.
96 The corresponding word to my is not in the Syriac text. This note is also appli-
cable to the other instances of my in this text.
97 The fourth line of the Syriac text begins on f. 19v.
That is: May we eagerly honour the days of commemorations of the holy
priests and doctors of truth, Ephrem98 and Barçauma99 and Narsay and
Abraham, with my100 Lord John101 and Job and Michael, who followed the
footprints of the family of Diodore,101 who revealed the mysteries. And they
have walked according to the work of the family of Theodore,103 who ex-
plained the scriptures.
[Commentary:] Behold, they count the holiest Ephrem with the he-
retics.104 About the others, whom they commemorate in this place,105
I do not know. I know that the Christians of Saint Thomas honour
[a certain] bishop and bishops as saints, who were living during the
time when the dogma of Nestorius was flourishing.106 And we know
that until the present time Diodore and Theodore, the associates of
Nestorius, were publicly honoured as saints. No one has retained
the mention of Nestorius, whose mention they had formerly aban-
doned.107 It could be, and some of them, who are enumerated above
will be from the family of Nestorius, as they themselves affirm.
These [pages] I have secretly ripped off from their public books; ho-
wever, I have not seen their private books, with the exception of
those [books] the archbishop showed me at Goa.108 If these are found
out in the public books then what is to be thought of the private
ones? Among these, I read one that as […]
98 Mar Ephrem the Syrian (ca. 306–73). Cf. G. f. 211r; H. 32.

99 Barçauma of Nisibis (Rabban Bar Ṣawma, ca. 1250–94).
100 The corresponding word to my is absent in the Syriac text cited by Ros.
101 Ros mistakenly translates nwḥ (Noah) as John.
102 Diodore of Tarsus (d. 392 AD).
103 Theodore of Mopsuestia (d. 428 AD).
104 H. 32; G. f. 211r.
105 In Malabar.
106 The same allegation is found in G. f. 213r.
107 Ros placed this information also in his later 1587 treatise and rendered it as fol-
lows: “And indeed when they recite the Divine Office, while they slur over the
names of these heretics, they merely read, sing and recite the above mentioned
commemoration, without any mention of Nestorius and his friends” (C.M.G. 160).
108 Mar Abraham stayed (from the first week of April 1585) in the Jesuit professed
house in Goa, in the same community to which Ros was assigned at the end
of 1584.
218 Research Notes
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ARSI, Fondo Tacchi Venturi, Serie Miscellanea, Sottoserie Collectio Historica, b. 26

fasc. 27, f. 10r.

An Introduction With English Translation of A Latin-Syriac Treatise From Early Modern Malabar

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Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu

vol. XCI, fasc. 181 (2022-I)

Antony Mecherry SJ*

This article provides an extended introductory essay and critical

On the Errors of the East Syrians: Historical and Interpretive Back-

* Antony Mecherry SJ is Professor of Oriental Church History at the Pontifical

ciety(ies) – up to the nineteenth century.1 The first three periods are

1 Schwane, Dogmengeschichte der Vornicänischen Zeit, 18–19.

of the Portuguese Padroado, gradually got to know about the Tho-

As a consequence, the classical forms of ‘Nestorianism’ and its tex-

7 In describing the general theological thrust attributed to classical ‘Nestorianism’

In addition, it is worth noting that in the course of the different

European missionaries and the Malabar Church of Sixteenth-Cen-

these theological exponents honoured by the Church of the East as

12 On the question of the thrust of uniformity brought about by the Council of

from the Padroado (by papal delegation, according to the arrange-

14 On Mar Abraham’s mission in Malabar, see Thevarmannil, “Mar Abraham”; Me-

tion and ecclesiastically under the Latin Church. Several aspects of

things and look[s] forward to obtaining what we are denied”.20 The

Such a view was already reflected in Ros’s earlier theological treat-

25 Roberto de Nobili, * IX.1577 Rome (Italy), SJ.1596 Naples, †16.I.1656 Madras

In response, Ros styled himself the new Moses in Malabar des-

towards the Oriental Churches in general, especially the Church of

[I]f His Holiness confirmed the above-said synod he would be placing

This letter illustrates clearly Ros’s position: he accepted the Diamperi-

31 Francisco de Sousa, Oriente Conquistado, vol. 2, 72 (trans. mine).

against the East Syrians and the Oriental Churches in general.33 At

33 Alessandro Valignano, * 7.II.1539 Chieti (Italy), SJ 29.V.1566 Rome, † 20.I.1606

Christians, as accorded and understood by the rights enjoyed by the

Two Rosian Treatises: De Syrorum orientalium erroribus (1586) and

However, a set of sixteenth-century manuscript folios recently sur-

By contrast, De erroribus Nestorianorum, sent to Rome two years later

41 For a compact explanation of the underlying theological conflicts, see Weinandy,

The allegations raised in the Rosian treatises were replicated in 1594

Concluding Comments about the De Syrorum orientalium erroribus

Against the backdrop of this contextual setting, below this intro-

rors’ of the Chaldean Church in the early modern Malabar Christian-

On the Errors of the East Syrians

[A. Preamble to the treatise]49

49 The treatise begins on T. f. 10r.

[B. Five scriptural passages falsified in a Nestorian sense]

61 Kyānāyt rendered in Syriac.

Incarnation of the Word,67 and it will be exposed below. I have in-

[Text 9: Syriac text and Latin translation:]

[Text 24: Syriac text and Latin translation:]

84 Follows H text 26 Latin.

thout confounding, and their supposita, in one person of filiation, of divi-

98 Mar Ephrem the Syrian (ca. 306–73). Cf. G. f. 211r; H. 32.

Rome. Archivum Sacrae Congregationis de Propaganda Fide (APF)

Wicki, Joseph, ed. Documenta Indica, vols. 14–16, in Monumenta

Payne Smith, Jessie (Mrs. Margoliouth). A Compendious Syriac Dic-

ARSI, Fondo Tacchi Venturi, Serie Miscellanea, Sottoserie Collectio Historica, b. 26

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