Strolling through the streets of Fort Kochi, the passing centuries are clearly visible. The quaint, historic homes and buildings will amaze. At the heart of this town, nestled between charming buildings at one end of Parade Ground, stands St. Francis Church. The edifice was and still remains the chief landmark in Fort Kochi.
The date of construction of the church is not known. But from inscriptions still legible on the pavement we find it existed before 1546 and knowing for a fact that Vasco da Gama, the Portuguese navigator-soldier-, was interred in the chancel of the church in 1525, it is hence the oldest European church in India.
Before it was built there stood a small church dedicated to St. Bartholomew. It was a wooden structure built by the five friars who accompanied Francisco de Albuquerque to Cochin in 1503. A. Sreedhara Menon, State Editor, Kerala Gazeteers , records that on May 3, 1506, the Portuguese Viceroy Almeida was permitted by the Maharaja of Cochin to create a new city of mortar and stone and ‘above all roofed with tiles – a privilege hitherto exclusively confined to the local prince and the temples in which he did puja.’
The mendicant order of the Franciscans raised the present edifice and completed it about the year 1516 and dedicated it to St. Anthony. The change of patron saints is due to the Anglicans, notes Sreedhara Menon.
The church was the most venerable relic of Portuguese power to be seen outside Europe. Until the Dutch captured Cochin, the Roman Catholic form of worship was conducted in its spacious nave with all possible pomp and glitter, writes Charles Allen Lawson in his work British And Native Cochin .
T.W. Venn in his St. Francis Church, Cochin , says this about the church, “It is the masonry cradle of Roman Catholicism in this country (India) as by historical repercussions it is the earliest casket of Protestantism. From this choir for the first time in Hindustan resounded the sonorous chants of Rome, as also from the pulpit was thundered out the grim gospel of Calvinism – total depravity, particular redemption, irresistible grave.”
From 1510-1662 the church was officially called the Conventional Church of the Order of St. Francis of Assisi by the Portuguese. The Dutch who professed the Reformed Religion made some changes in the name and structure of the church and also did some restoration work in 1779. After the advent of the British it was the Government Protestant Church from 1819-46. However, it was only after the substantial restoration and renovation carried out by the British in 1886-87 that this edifice became known as St. Francis Church.
Undoubtedly the most magnificent pageant enacted within the church was the burial, with all pomp and fanfare of Vasco da Gama, who on his third visit to India, died in Fort Cochin on Christmas Eve, 1524. His mortal remains were interred in the capella mor or chancel of the church. But it remained only a temporary resting place, for in 1540 it was moved to Portugal by his son Pedro da Silva da Gama.
The church is not an architectural wonder; it is a tall gable towards the west with arched windows and porch, columns and pinnacles of a very ancient style. The exteriors are not marked by flamboyant decorations. “Buttresses, almost six feet square at the base, support the walls, which appear to be at least four feet thick. The nave, or the main body of the church that provides the central approach to the high altar, is high, airy, bright and simple. Long benches are arranged right and left of the reading desk and pulpit. A broad-spanned arch separates the nave from the Chancel, extending across which, behind the communion table, is a handsomely carved screen, with tablets, gold on blue, let into alternate panels,” notes Charles Allen Lawson. Hand-pulled cloth fans provided relief during the hot summer days.
K.L. Bernard in his Flashes of Kerala History records some of the momentous events in this church. “The body of St. Francis Xavier was brought from Malacca to Cochin in December 1553 and was laid in state here for public veneration for three days, before it was taken to Goa,” he writes
In 1548, the Raja of Thanur made solemn promise in this church to become a Christian. He was taken to Goa where he and his family were converted in the presence of the Viceroy by Fr. Antonio Gomes. It was in this church, says noted historian C. Achutha Menon, that Rama Varma, one of the four princes of the Thanur royal family adopted by Rani Gangadhara Lakshmi, was crowned king by the Portuguese Governor in 1658. And it was again here that Ravi Varma was secretly baptized and named Constantine Ravi Varma on April 5, 1830, according to the British register preserved in the church.
The church has also been the venue for many weddings and during the British rule the viceroys who visited the church made it a point to attend services here.
Some cadjan leaf manuscripts preserved in the church commemorate some of the important incidents in the life of the Portuguese and Dutch settlers. The cemetery attached to the church contains tombstones with names of many European military officers who lay buried here. A war memorial, a more recent addition, stands in front of the church. It stands in memory of 10 British officers and an Indian, Lieutenant K.H. Bhat who lost their lives in battle.
The vandalism of the Dutch and the British spared very few historical monuments in and around Fort Cochin. Records reveal that barrels of gunpowder were placed inside the St. Francis Church and everything ready for its demolition when at the eleventh hour the officer in command relented and spared the church.
Today, the church is under the control of the Archaeological Survey of India. Though it may pale in comparison to some of the grand, historic churches in the country, its historic importance and its links with the eventful and romantic past, have made Kochiites highly proud of their Vasco da Gama church.
