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This sounds like something distinct, an actual answer to my previous questions. I would support the creation of a forum for this.No, the Catholics did not kill them. They were not even able to convert all of them to Catholicism, and those that did convert wound up keeping the East Syriac liturgical rite.
Those that did not sent messengers to the Catholicos of the East, but their communication wound up reaching the Maphrian, the Syriac Orthodox Catholicos of the East, and then his boss, the Patriarch of Antioch rather than the autocephalous Catholicos of the East who was the Patriarch of the Church of the East, of which the Mar Thoma Christians were a part. So most joined the Syriac Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch, but a schism emerged in the late 19th century involving Indians who desired local control, and a very small third Oriental Orthodox Church, this one in full communion with the Protestant Mar Thoma Syrian Church, which is itself a part of the Anglican Communion, came into being in Thoyizoor. Meanwhile, the Assyrian Church of the East launched a mission and many St. Thomas Christians returned to them. The Syriac Orthodox also had a Western Rite mission in Sri Lanka, which was recently revived.
But remember, the Mar Thoma Christians are just one facet of the Syriac Christian community. You also have the Assyrians in the Church of the East and the Ancient Church of the East, and the vaguely related Chaldean Catholic Church (technically, the Chaldeans are in a different tribe than the members of the Assyrian church, and the members of that tribe, which were historically concentrated in Baghdad and its predecessor Seleucia-Cstesipon (the Euphrates changes its alignment, which has caused what amounts to Babylon to have been relocated at least twice in the past 2500 years).
Then you have the West Syriacs: the Syriac Orthodox and Syriac Catholics, and the Aramaic speaking members of the Antiochian Orthodox Church, who historically worshipped using a liturgy similar to that of the Syriac Orthodox, and you have the Maronite Catholics, who were also evangelized by St. Thomas, but broke away from the Syriac Orthodox and settled in the mountains of Lebanon, forming a distinct culture centered around the idea of a Phoenician identity and also with a strong emphasis on military defense against the Muslims, much like the Druze, the third largest religion in Lebanon, which also took advantage of the mountains to prevent the Muslims from killing them.
But all of these Christians use the Peshitta Bible, they were all evangelized originally by St. Thomas and his disciples Addai and Mari, and they all have a shared poetic and hymnographic culture largely defined by the beautiful hymns and metrical homilies of Ephrem the Syrian, who last night I discovered was beloved by John Wesley. So for example, the leading fifth century Syriac Orthodox hymnographer and homilest is James of Sarugh, and the leading Assyrian hymnographer from that time was Mar Narsai, and their respective churches style them “the Flute of the Spirit” because all Syriac Christians venerate Ephrem as “the Harp of the Spirit.”
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