When entering Saint Mary's Soonoro Jacobite Syrian Orthodox Cathedral in Angamaly (Ernakulam district, Kerala), one is struck by the presence of an artistic phenomenon that at first glance seemed foreign to the Syriac Christian communities of south-western India (Saint Thomas Christians): the extensive use of murals in the church's décor. At first glance, one might be tempted to see this as simply a contribution of the Portuguese who arrived in the region at the beginning of the 16th century, or the adoption of this very Western form of expression of faith as a direct result of the forced Latinisation of the Pseudo-Synod of Diamper (1599). However, when studying the chronology of the construction of this church, we realise that these paintings, although dating from after the arrival of the Portuguese on the Malabar coast, predate Diamper by several decades and are therefore the result of a deliberate choice by the Indian sponsors of this church.
This paper offers a study of one of these paintings, which alone sums up the complexity of the relationship between the Portuguese and the Saint Thomas Christians at that time. A representation of Mār Beḥnam on horseback, on the altar of the church. This saint, who is highly revered in Syriac churches and originated in Mesopotamia, is depicted in a Western style, but his mere presence indicates a patron of Syriac religious culture. We therefore propose, based on this painting, to examine the processes of adaptation, reception and compromise that the Christians of Saint Thomas applied, developing on the one hand an adoptionist strategy similar to that of the Portuguese Jesuits, while also adapting to the local context traditions, both hagiographic and artistic, from the Mesopotamian, Western European and Indian worlds.