Newsletter Article: "St. Francis Church of Cochin and its Funerary Monuments".

I thought of sharing a small article I wrote about the funerary monuments of the St Francis Church of Fort Cochin. It has appeared in the recent issue of the Newsletter (see here) from Dodenakkers.nl foundation, a major knowledge centre for Dutch funerary heritage, both in the Netherlands and abroad. The foundation also maintains SharedCemeteries.net a bilingual portal about funerary heritage in former Dutch colonies.

PORTUGUESE TOMBSTONES IN THE GRAVEYARD OF 'THE CHURCH OF OUR LADY OF HEALTH,' SAUDE (SOUTH OF FORT KOCHI)

The Church of Our Lady of Health, Saude

 

So far, I have analyzed 48 Portuguese tombstones in Cochin and neighbouring areas, and they are distributed as follows:

32-St Francis Church, Fort Kochi (see also here)
04-Santa Cruz Cathedral, Fort Kochi
09-of Cochin in Thrissur District Heritage Museum
02-of Kodungallur in Thrissur District Heritage Museum
01-Fort Kochi Beach

Let me wind up this series with 2 more tombstones and with that 50 Portuguese funerary monuments from Cochin area are covered. These two tombstones are preserved in the cemetery of the 'Church of Our Lady of Health' in Saudi, a place south of Fort Kochi. In fact, the name "Saude" for the place is derived from a former 16th-century Portuguese church, "Nossa Senhora de Saude" (Our Lady of Health) which was located in its soil. The Portuguese church was later destroyed by the sea, and a new one at the current location was first established in 1804. The present modern church is however consecrated on December, 2006. If you remember my earlier post, I have discussed about a Jewish settlement and a lost synagogue in Saude.

The tombstones are placed on either sides of the entrance gate of the Saude church cemetery, facing the south direction. The tombstone on the western side is intact and has a 10-lined Portuguese inscription, but it lacks any heraldic designs. The tall eastern tombstone is slender in width, the inscriptions are divided into two sections with a "Coat of Arms" in between. The upper left corner of the tombstone is broken, with a few letters missing from the first two lines, otherwise the overall epitaph is complete. The upper portion of the epitaph consists of  5 lines, whereas the lower section, that is below the "Coat of Arms" has 6 lines, and at the bottom end of the tombstone is a floral design.

The Cemetery of the Church of Our Lady of Health in Saude & the Location of the Tombstones

 

A 16TH CENTURY (1581?) PORTUGUESE TOMBSTONE NEAR THE FORT KOCHI BEACH

1-Marble Plaque Commemorating the Visit of Portuguese President to Cochin (1992); 2-Portuguese Tombstone (1581)

This unusual tombstone came to my notice quite accidentally while I was walking through the streets of Fort Kochi and bumped into a marble plaque with Portuguese writings. The plaque located outside the tall boundary wall of Bastion Bungalow was installed to commemorate the visit of the President of Portuguese, Dr. Mario Soares to Fort Kochi on 29th January, 1992.

PORTUGUESE TOMBSTONES FROM CRANGANORE (KODUNGALLUR) DISPLAYED IN THE MURAL ART MUSEUM, THRISSUR (THRISSUR DISTRICT HERITAGE MUSEUM)

 Two Portuguese tombstones from Kodungallur are on display in the Thrissur Mural Art Museum, one is for a Portuguese priest who married an Indian woman (Tombstone 1), the other supposedly belongs to an Indian priest (Tombstone 2). For the location of these tombstones in the museum, see also the photograph entitled "An Overview of Portuguese tombstones...Thrissur" in the previous post (10 and 11). Similar to the previous post, the paired photographs uploaded below are from September (Left) and December (Right), 2022.

TOMBSTONE 1-Fr. Felippe Perestrelo and his wife Dona Beatris Natover

The most famous funeral monument in the museum is the vertically mounted 16th-century tombstone displayed in the courtyard. This is mainly because the gravestone belongs to a priest from the family of Christopher Columbus' wife. It was Rafael Moreira, a Portuguese historian who deciphered the tombstone in 2012 and noticed this close family connection. Roberts and Chekkutty (Malabar II-Christian Monuments, 2017) believes that due to the vertical posture of the structure, it was funerary monument or a side column to an altar in the Church. The tombstone has a beautiful "Coat of Arms" and a 12-lined inscription. At the upper end of the tombstone is the Latin phrase "Pater Noster" for "the Our Father". The inscription in the main body is fairly legible except for the last line and a few letters at the end of the 11th line. As per the narrative of Roberts and Chekkutty (2017), the tombstone was retrieved from Paranki Mala (Portuguese Mount) at Karuppadanna (a place near Pullut, Kodungallur) and was brought to Thrissur in 1975. There are no burial dates in the tombstone. Prof. Rafael Moreira however dates the epitaph to 1530-40, going by the coat of arms, the style of writing and the abbreviations used. 

PORTUGUESE TOMBSTONES FROM COCHIN DISPLAYED IN THE MURAL ART MUSEUM, THRISSUR (THRISSUR DISTRICT HERITAGE MUSEUM)

In the previous post, I discussed about 4 Portuguese tombstones in the Santa Cruz Cathedral of Fort Cochin. They are not the only tombstones unearthed from seabed in the late 1920s at the time of dredging the backwaters of inner Cochin harbour. According to archaeological reports from the early to mid-1930s, at least 13 tombstones were recovered, out of which 4 are in the Santa Cruz Cathedral today. The remaining were shifted to a museum at Thrissur somewhere around the early 1930s. It should be noted that the museum also has two additional Portuguese tombstones from Kodungallur area, so a total of 11 grave markers are conserved in this site today. Unfortunately, most tombstones lack a date. In fact, there is only one tombstone that has a proper date assigned to the deceased. The grave monuments are arranged in the museum courtyard exposed under open-air conditions. All except one gravestone are placed horizontally on the ground. The only vertically mounted monument in the collection is from Kodungallur, which has gained wide publicity after Rafael Moreira-a historian at the New University of Lisbon deciphered the script in 2012 and proposed a connection to Christopher Columbus.

Thrissur District Heritage Museum (former Kollemkode Palace)The yellow arrowhead marks the position of the tombstones

In this post, I will discuss about the 9 Portuguese tombstones from Cochin that are preserved in the Mural Art Museum, Kollemkode Palace, Thrissur. The 2 Kodungallur tombstones will be covered in the next post. Not all the gravestones are in good condition, some are broken to pieces or heavily overgrown with moss and covered with mud, so that the inscriptions are barely legible. The museum staff are of the opinion that no historical records or studies on the inscriptions have survived, so their identity remain anonymous. This is, however, not the case, as at least two archaeological reports from early to mid-1930s have details of the aforementioned inscriptions. The first report is for the year 1930-31, which has reproduced, in full, the 12 Portuguese epitaphs from Cochin along with their English translations (remember 4 out of them are in Santa Cruz Cathedral). The other report is for 1935-36, which has only a rough translation of 8 Cochin inscriptions, but it graciously provides fine sketches of all the tombstones with their Portuguese inscriptions. More recently, Roberts and Chekkutty (Malabar II Christian Memorials, 2017) have come up with 6 names, of which only 4 are from Cochin, one is from Kodungallur, and the last one whose current location is unknown. Among the lists, Roberts and Chekkutty (2017) is the least detailed and accurate inventory for the Cochin tombstones, but it has the Kodungallur tombstone of Columbus-fame addressed in much detail. In the blog, I will be depending more on the Archaeological Report (1930-31), as the translations given in this document by Fr. Godhinho are more faithful to the original Portuguese inscriptions.