Bishop Adolph Medlycott
1838–1918
First Vicar Apostolic of Thrissur (1887–1896), founder of St. Thomas College, Thrissur
Adolph Edwin Medlycott, born in 1838, was the first Vicar Apostolic of Thrissur. In practice he was the first bishop of the new Catholic territory created for the Syrian Christians of the Thrissur region.
A divided town
In the late nineteenth century the Syrian Christians of Thrissur were split. Bishop Mellus, who had come from the Chaldean Church in Mesopotamia, had drawn many people away from Rome. The book tells a lively story from those years. The Aranattukara Tharakan, it says, helped another bishop escape from Thrissur, hidden under the seat of his horse carriage. Mellus left Kerala in 1882, but the quarrel went on without him.
In 1887 Pope Leo XIII created two new vicariates for the Syrian Catholics, one for Thrissur and one for Kottayam, and put Medlycott in charge of Thrissur. When he arrived, the book says, the town’s main church, Our Lady of Dolours, was still in the hands of the opposing group. So at first he lived at the Carmelite monastery at Elthuruth, at the western edge of Aranattukara parish. Parish tradition remembers with pride that the Tharakan family sent its horse carriage to bring him there.
Later years
Medlycott led the vicariate until 1896, when it passed to Mar John Menachery, a bishop born in Kerala. He is remembered as the founder of St. Thomas College, Thrissur. He was also a scholar. His book India and the Apostle Thomas (1905) looked closely at the tradition that St. Thomas came to India. He died in 1918.
For Aranattukara, his story shows how close the parish was to the Church affairs of the whole region in those years. Its monastery and its leading family helped the new vicariate through its first difficult days.
Related
Elthuruth Ashram
The Carmelite monastery founded in 1858 by St. Kuriakose Elias Chavara on an islet at the western edge of Aranattukara parish.
The Tharakan House
The ancestral home of the Chiramel Tharakan family near the old landing, with its thick walls, palm-leaf medical manuscripts and a remarkable collection of heirlooms.
Christian Heritage
How a riverside trading village became a Christian parish, split into two rival churches for almost seventy years, and came back together in 1964 under one roof, the St. Thomas Church we know today.