The Apostle Who Sailed East — St. Thomas at Muziris

Thomas — the twin, the doubter, the one who touched the wounds — drew, by the casting of lots, the road no other apostle would take: east, past Arabia, to the pepper ports of India.

The Acts of Thomas, a 3rd-century telling, lands him first at the court of a northern king; but the living tradition of Kerala's Christians plants his feet at Muziris in 52 CE, where Roman ships rode at anchor and Jewish merchants already prayed. He preached in the marketplaces, baptised whole households, and raised seven churches — Kodungallur, Kollam, Niranam, Nilackal, Kokkamangalam, Kottakkavu, Palayoor — appointing elders over each before walking on.

Down the Coromandel coast he came at last to Mylapore, where he prayed in a hill cave (St. Thomas Mount) and was speared — tradition says in 72 CE — by a jealous priest's lance. His people buried him where he fell. Nineteen centuries later the tomb is still there, under the second tower of San Thome Basilica, ringed by pilgrims: Catholics, Syrian Christians, and Hindus who call him, simply, a holy man of India.

Marco Polo found the tomb revered in 1292. Ibn Battuta found Hindus honouring it in 1334. The Portuguese built over it in 1523; the British rebuilt it in 1896; a Pope knelt at it in 1986. Empires sail past. The fisherman from Galilee remains.