Church of the East in India

According to apocryphal records, Christianity in India and in Pakistan (included prior to the Partition) commenced in 52 AD,[1] with the arrival of Thomas the Apostle in Cranganore (Kodungaloor).

When Archbishop Nestorius of Constantinople was declared a heretic by the Council of Ephesus, the Church of the East refused to acknowledge his deposition because he held the same christological position.

[3] In 1122, Mar John, Metropolitan-designate of India, with his suffragans went to Constantinople, thence to Rome, and received the pallium from Pope Callixtus II.

Historian Meir Bar-Ilan notes that a 20th-century collection of Hebrew Prester John Letters, edited by Ullendorff and Beckingham (1982) "present[s] a Latin text with its Hebrew translation (and an English text where the Latin is missing) as follows":[9] Praete janni invenitur ascendendo in Kalicut in arida ... [In English: 'It is found on the banks of the Janni rising in Calicut in the dry season ...] This is true proof and well-known knowledge about the Jews who are found there near Prester John.Bar-Ilan concludes that evidence from the Hebrew Letters "shows that Prester John lived in India; or to be more precise, in Malabar (southern India)".

[10] In the 1320s, the anonymous biographer of the patriarch Yahballaha III and his friend Rabban Bar Sauma praised the achievement of the Church of the East in converting "the Indians, Chinese and Turks".

Arghun agreed, and Bar Sauma made a historic journey through Europe; meeting with the Pope and many monarchs; and bringing gifts, letters, and European ambassadors with him on his return.

[2] Francis Xavier wrote a letter dated 26 January 1549, from Cochin to king John III of Portugal, in which he declared that: ... a bishop of Armenia (Mesopotamia) by the name of Jacob Abuna has been serving God and Your Highness in these regions for forty-five years.

Y. H. should write a very affectionate letter to him, and one of its paragraphs should include an order recommending him to the governors, to the veadores da fazenda, and to the captains of Cochin so that he may receive the honour and respect which he deserves when he comes to them with a request on behalf of the Christians of St. Thomas.

Simon Rodrigues, giving him the following description:[16][17] Fifteen thousand paces from Cochin there is a fortress owned by the king with the name of Cranganore.

It has a beautiful college, built by Frey [Wente], a companion of the bishop, in which there are easily a hundred students, sons of native Christians, who are named after St. Thomas.

This attitude of St. Francis Xavier, and of the Franciscans before him, does not reflect any of the animosity and intolerance that kept creeping in with the spread of the Tridentine spirit of the Counter-Reformation, which tended to foster a uniformity of belief and practice.

Persian Cross
Prester John from Hartmann Schedel 's Nuremberg Chronicle , 1493
Riccoldo da Monte di Croce was in an audience with Patriarch Yahballaha III . In the 15th century, the Roman Catholic Church considered the Church of the East heretical, so Yahballaha is depicted wearing a jester's hat rather than a turban.
In a letter to king John III of Portugal dated 26 January 1549, Francis Xavier described Jacob Abuna as a virtuous and saintly man.