Saint Thomas — in Aramaic Tᵉ'ōmā, in Greek Didymos, both words meaning “the Twin” — is one of the Twelve Apostles of Christ. Christian memory has long reduced him to a single word, “the doubter”, because of his refusal to believe in the Resurrection without touching the wounds of the Risen One.[2] But this nickname is unfair: the same Thomas, just a few weeks earlier, had proposed to die with Jesus, and it was from his lips that came the highest profession of faith in the entire Gospel: “My Lord and my God!”[3]
The fourth Gospel gives him a place that the synoptics, who merely list him among the Twelve, do not hint at. Three scenes in Saint John portray a man who is wholehearted, courageous, and anxious, who does not settle for words and wants to see before believing—then, once he receives the light, goes further than all the others in adoration.[4][5][6]
After Pentecost, an ancient tradition, known to Origen and Eusebius of Caesarea, sends Thomas to evangelize Parthia.[7] Another tradition, even more enduring, leads him all the way to India: the Acts of Thomas have him build a palace for King Gondophares, and the Saint Thomas Christians of Kerala still claim him today as their father in faith.[8][9] He dies pierced by a lance at Mylapore, on the coast of present-day Tamil Nadu, around the year 72.[10]
From the apostle who doubted, the Church has made the patron of all who seek to believe—and, because he is said to have brought the Gospel as far as the subcontinent, the first missionary of Asia. His story thus unites the inner drama of faith with the most far-reaching geographical adventure of the apostolic college.
Who is Saint Thomas the Apostle?
Thomas, “Didymus”: the Twin
The very name of the apostle is a nickname. Thomas transcribes the Aramaic Tᵉ'ōmā (תְּאוֹמָא), which means “twin”; the Gospel of John even gives its Greek translation, Didymos (Δίδυμος), with the same meaning.[11] The apostle’s real first name eludes us: the Syriac tradition, which is very devoted to Thomas, calls him Judas Thomas—“Judas the Twin”—as if to distinguish him from the other Judas and from Judas Iscariot.[12]
Whose twin was he? The sources are silent; the Acts of Thomas, a legendary text, even suggest a resemblance to Christ himself, an idea the Church has never accepted.[13] The essential point lies elsewhere: this nickname of “Twin” has nourished a whole spiritual meditation. Through his doubt and then his faith, Thomas has become the double of every believer—the one in whom the reader of the Gospel recognizes himself when he struggles to believe.
Thomas in the list of the Twelve
The three synoptic Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles say only one thing about Thomas: he is one of the Twelve. He appears in all four apostolic lists, generally associated with Matthew or Philip.[14] This brevity is typical for most of the apostles, of whom the New Testament records little more than the name. Thomas would have remained a silent figure if the fourth Gospel had not given him a voice.
A figure of the Fourth Gospel
It is indeed Saint John who makes Thomas a character. On at least three occasions, the evangelist gives him a speaking role, and each reveals a trait: courage ready for martyrdom (Jn 11), anxiety that asks for the way (Jn 14), demandingness that wants to see before believing (Jn 20).[15][16][17] Thomas appears a fourth time, among the seven disciples at the miraculous catch by the lake, after the Resurrection.[18]
This Johannine prominence is no accident. The Gospel of John is the one that most deeply meditates on the mystery of faith: believing without seeing, recognizing God in the flesh, moving from signs to the assent of the heart. Now Thomas is precisely the man who travels this whole path before the reader’s eyes—from refusal to believe to adoration. In the fourth Gospel, he is the witness to the journey of faith.
Thomas in the Gospels
“Let us also go, that we may die with him”
The first words of Thomas in the Gospel alone refute the legend of the faint-hearted apostle. When Jesus announces that he is going back to Judea for Lazarus—though the Jews had just tried to stone him—the disciples are afraid. Thomas, however, stands out for his uncompromising fidelity:
“Let us also go, that we may die with him!” — Saint Thomas, Gospel according to Saint John 11:16[19]
These are the words of a courageous and wholehearted man, who loves the Master enough to prefer death to separation, even when he does not understand where Jesus is leading him. The Fathers noted the paradox: the one whom posterity would call “the doubter” is also the first to speak of laying down his life for Christ. The doubt that will come later does not arise from cowardice, but from a heart that seeks the truth without pretense.
“How can we know the way?”
The second saying of Thomas arises in the heart of the farewell discourse, on the evening of Holy Thursday. Jesus has just said that he is going to prepare a place and that the disciples know the way. Thomas interrupts him, with disarming frankness:
“Lord, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?” — Saint Thomas, Gospel according to Saint John 14:5[20]
This objection, far from being a flaw, provokes one of the greatest revelations of the Gospel. It is in response to Thomas that Jesus utters the decisive words: “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life; no one comes to the Father except through me.”[21] The apostle’s honest anxiety thus becomes the occasion for a christological summit. Thomas has this singular gift: his questions, because they are sincere, draw luminous answers from Christ.
The Doubt of Thomas
The scene that forever fixed the image of Thomas takes place on the evening of Easter. Absent at the first appearance of the Risen One, Thomas refuses the testimony of the other disciples. His reply has become proverbial:
“Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will not believe!” — Saint Thomas, Gospel according to Saint John 20:25[22]
We should not harden this demand into pure skepticism. Thomas does not deny the possibility of the miracle; he refuses to base his faith on hearsay, even that of his brothers. Eight days later, Jesus returns, doors locked, and addresses him using his own words: “Put your finger here, and see my hands; put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not be unbelieving, but believing.”[23] The Risen One does not despise Thomas’s need: he condescends to it, offering his wounds to the hand that wished to touch them.
“My Lord and my God”: the Highest Confession
Thomas’s response surpasses all he had asked for. Where he had only demanded proof, he utters the highest act of faith in the four Gospels:
“My Lord and my God!” — Saint Thomas, Gospel according to Saint John 20:28[24]
No disciple, in the entire Gospel, had yet called Jesus “God” to his face. Peter had confessed “the Christ, the Son of the living God”; Thomas, for his part, directly adores the divinity of the Risen One.[25] The Fathers saw in this cry the culmination of the journey: the man who wanted to touch the wounds ends up adoring the God hidden in wounded flesh. Doubt, carried through to the end, leads to the highest theology—the recognition that the crucified and risen one is Dominus et Deus, Lord and God.
Jesus then seals the scene with a beatitude addressed to all believers of the centuries to come:
“Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed!” — Jesus, Gospel according to Saint John 20:29[26]
By the Lake of Tiberias
Thomas appears one last time in the Gospel, in chapter 21 of Saint John. He is one of the seven disciples present at the miraculous catch on the Lake of Tiberias, when the Risen One himself prepares the meal on the shore.[27] The evangelist takes care to name him “Thomas, called Didymus”—as if to remind us, at the moment when doubt is definitively dispelled, that this man had been the doubter now become witness to the paschal glory.
From Doubt to Faith: The Spirituality of Saint Thomas
The Doubt That Seeks, Not the Doubt That Refuses
The spirituality of Thomas begins with a distinction the Church has always made: there is a doubt that closes and a doubt that seeks. Thomas’s is not the skepticism of one who wants to avoid having to believe; it is the demand of one who does not want to believe halfway. Benedict XVI emphasized this in his catechesis on the apostle: Thomas helps us not to be afraid of difficulties and objections, because his search, carried out honestly to the end, leads to faith, and not to its opposite.[28]
“The case of the apostle Thomas is important for us for at least three reasons: first, because it comforts us in our uncertainties; then, because it shows us that every doubt can lead to a luminous outcome; and finally, because his words remind us of the true meaning of mature faith.” — Benedict XVI, general audience of September 27, 2006[29]
The Glorious Wounds: Touching to Believe
The heart of the paschal episode is that the Risen One keeps his wounds. The glorious body does not erase the marks of the Passion: it transfigures them. By offering his wounds to the hand of Thomas, Christ teaches that Christian faith does not bypass the Cross, but plunges the finger into it. Saint Gregory the Great drew from this scene a famous formula, taken up by the whole tradition: the doubt of Thomas has served our faith more than the immediate belief of the other apostles, for by touching the wounds, he healed in us the wound of unbelief.[30]
“This unbelief of Thomas has been more useful to our faith than the faith of the disciples who believed.” — Saint Gregory the Great, Homily XXVI on the Gospel[31]
“Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed”
The final beatitude of Jesus (Jn 20:29) reverses the perspective. Thomas saw, and he believed; but Christ declares more blessed those who will believe without seeing—that is, all the Christian generations who will have only the testimony of the apostles to rely on. Thomas thus becomes, paradoxically, the guarantor of our own faith: it is because he insisted on touching that his testimony is valid for those who will never touch. His conquered unbelief has become a foundation of apostolic credibility.
Patron of Those Who Struggle with Doubt
From this story, the Church has made Thomas the spiritual patron of souls struggling with doubt. He is not the saint of easy certainties, but of tormented believers, demanding intellects, all those for whom believing is a struggle. In an age of objections and modern unbelief, his figure is more relevant than ever: it shows that one can begin with doubt and arrive at adoration, provided one seeks with an upright heart and does not refuse the light when it is given.
The Mission of the Apostle: Parthia and India
The Division of Mission Fields: Parthia
After Pentecost, the New Testament falls silent regarding Thomas. However, an ancient tradition, dating before the 3rd century, attributes to him the evangelization of Parthia, the great Iranian empire and rival of Rome. Eusebius of Caesarea, quoting Origen, writes that, in the division of lands among the apostles, Thomas received this distant kingdom:
“Thomas, as tradition relates, [received as his portion] Parthia.” — Origen, quoted by Eusebius of Caesarea, Ecclesiastical History, III, 1[32]
This is the oldest information we possess about Thomas’s mission, situating his apostolic field towards the East, beyond the borders of the Roman Empire. It aligns with the fact that it is the Syriac Church, oriented towards Persia and India, that has most venerated the apostle and preserved his memory.
The Acts of Thomas: An Apocryphon and Its Core of Memory
The main source of Indian traditions is an apocryphal writing from the early 3rd century, the Acts of Thomas (Acta Thomae), composed in Syriac at Edessa.[33] Like other apocryphal Acts, this religious novel blends a core of ancient memory with legendary developments and suspect doctrinal tendencies—here, a marked encratite gnosticism, which explains its exclusion from the canon.[34]
The Church therefore does not accept the Acts of Thomas as a fully historical source. However, historians recognize within it a kernel of genuine tradition: the memory, transmitted in amplified form, of a mission of Thomas to the East and of an Indo-Parthian king named Gundaphar. Catholic discernment here is the same as for the Acts of Andrew or other apocrypha: to set aside fables and deviant doctrine, without discarding the underlying memory these texts convey.
King Gundaphar and the Palace in Heaven
The most famous story from the Acts of Thomas is that of the palace in heaven. Sold as a slave-architect to a merchant, Thomas is brought before King Gundaphar (Gondophares), who entrusts him with the construction of a royal palace and gives him considerable sums of money. The apostle distributes all the money to the poor. When the king, furious, demands his palace, Thomas replies that he has built it—but in heaven, through almsgiving:
The narrative has him answer, in substance, that the king cannot see this palace now, but will see it when he has left this life.[35]
The king’s brother, who dies and is then brought back to life for the duration of a dream, sees the resplendent palace that Thomas has built for Gundaphar through his charity; deeply moved, the king converts and receives baptism.[36] It is from this story that the patronage of Thomas over architects and builders originates, as well as the square he is often depicted with in iconography.
Historical Confirmation: The Coins of Gondophares
For centuries, scholars considered this King Gundaphar to be a purely legendary figure: no secular source mentioned him. Archaeology has overturned this judgment. Around 1834, European explorers—including Charles Masson, agent of the East India Company—unearthed in Afghanistan coins bearing in Greek and Kharosthi the name of Gondophares; the numismatist James Prinsep identified them that same year.[37] An inscription later discovered at Takht-i-Bahi (in present-day Pakistan) precisely dated his reign, which extended from about 20 to 46 AD.[38]
| Element | Before 1834 | After 1834 |
|---|---|---|
| King Gundaphar | Figure considered fictitious from the Acts of Thomas | Historical Indo-Parthian sovereign attested |
| Source | Christian apocryphon only | Coins + Takht-i-Bahi inscription |
| Dating of reign | Unknown | Around 20–46 AD |
| Consequence | Tradition considered legendary | First-century historical context confirmed |
This discovery does not, of course, by itself prove the mission of Thomas; but it does establish that the Acts preserved the exact name of a real king reigning precisely at the apostolic era, in the region that tradition assigns to the apostle. The detail that critics considered the most fanciful has turned out to be the most solidly historical—a serious argument against the reflex to disqualify all ancient memory a priori.
Saint Thomas and the Christians of India
Arrival on the Malabar Coast (year 52)
The most vibrant tradition is not Iranian but Indian. According to the enduring memory of the Christians of Kerala, Saint Thomas is said to have landed on the Malabar Coast, at Maliankara, near the ancient port of Muziris (present-day Kodungallur, formerly Cranganore), around the year 52.[39] There, he is said to have evangelized the Jewish communities established along the coast, baptized Brahmin families, and founded seven Churches (the Ēḻarappaḷḷikaḷ) in as many localities of Kerala — Kodungallur, Palayoor, Kottakavu, Kokkamangalam, Niranam, Nilackal, and Kollam.[40]
The “Saint Thomas Christians” (Mar Thoma Nasrani)
From this preaching descends, even today, one of the oldest Christian communities in the world: the Saint Thomas Christians, or Mar Thoma Nasrani (“Nazarenes of Saint Thomas”).[41] Liturgically attached to the East Syriac tradition, they preserved Aramaic as their liturgical language for centuries and have always regarded themselves as the Church founded by the Apostle himself. Their existence, attested well before the arrival of the Portuguese in the 16th century, gives the Indian tradition a historical depth unmatched by any other apostolic tradition in Asia.
“We are Saint Thomas Christians.” — Constant profession of memory by the Mar Thoma Nasrani of Kerala[42]
The Martyrdom at Mylapore (around 72)
After Malabar, tradition leads Thomas to the Coromandel Coast, in the east, as far as Mylapore (today a district of Chennai, formerly Madras). It is there that he is said to have suffered martyrdom, around the year 72, pierced by a lance on the hill since called St Thomas Mount.[43] The manner of his death — the lance — distinguishes Thomas from the other apostles and has fixed his iconographic attribute. The traditional date, 72, is still retained by the liturgy of the Christians of India, who celebrate this day as the Dukrana, the commemoration of the martyrdom.[44]
The San Thome Basilica, Tomb of the Apostle
On the presumed site of Thomas’s burial in Mylapore stands the San Thome Basilica, rebuilt by the Portuguese and then in the 19th century.[45] Along with Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome and that of Saint James in Compostela, it is one of the very rare sanctuaries built above the tomb of an apostle. Although most of the relics left India in antiquity, the tomb at Mylapore remains the geographical heart of Indian devotion to Saint Thomas and a major Christian pilgrimage site in Asia.
The Cult of Saint Thomas
The Relics: From Mylapore to Edessa
The fate of Thomas’s relics, as with Saint Andrew, tells of centuries of Christian history. According to a tradition reported since antiquity, part of the Apostle’s remains was transferred from India to Edessa (present-day Şanlıurfa, Turkey), the great metropolis of Syriac Christianity, as early as the 3rd century.[46] The tomb of Thomas there was a major sanctuary, attested by several witnesses from the 4th century.
From Edessa to Ortona (1258)
After the decline of Edessa, the relics were transported to the island of Chios, in the Aegean Sea, where a sculpted slab bearing his name and bust covered the tomb. From there, according to the tradition preserved at Ortona, in Abruzzo, a fleet of galleys from the city, under the command of Leone (Leo) degli Acciaiuoli, brought the Apostle’s body to Italy: it landed at Ortona on 6 September 1258[47]. Since that date, the relics of Saint Thomas have rested in the Cathedral of San Tommaso Apostolo in Ortona, where the crypt preserves the body and the tombstone brought from Chios[48].
Early Witnesses: Ephrem, Egeria, Gregory of Tours
The veneration of Thomas is attested very early by first-rate witnesses. Saint Ephrem the Syrian (4th century) dedicated several hymns to the Apostle’s tomb and sang of the return of his bones from India to Edessa.[49] The pilgrim Egeria, around 384, mentions in her Travel Journal her visit to Edessa to venerate the sanctuary of Saint Thomas.[50] In the 6th century, Saint Gregory of Tours recounts in his Book of the Glory of the Martyrs the memory of the Indian tomb and the Edessan sanctuary.[51] These testimonies, independent of the apocryphal Acts, show that the memory of Thomas as a missionary to the East was firmly established from the earliest days of Christianity.
Liturgical Feast and Patronages
The Latin Church formerly celebrated Saint Thomas on 21 December; the reform of the Roman calendar in 1969 fixed his feast on 3 July[52], the date on which the Syriac Church had long commemorated the translation of his relics to Edessa[53]. The Christians of India make this 3 July their great national feast, the “Indian Christians’ Day.”[54]
Thomas is the patron of India, but also — because of the palace built for Gundaphar — of architects, masons, surveyors, and builders; he is also invoked for the blind and for all those who struggle to believe.[55]
Iconography
Christian art represents Saint Thomas in two complementary ways. In the scene of the incredulity, he reaches out his finger toward the wound in the side of the risen Christ: this is the subject of the famous painting by Caravaggio (c. 1602) and of many altarpieces. As an isolated apostle, he bears the lance of his martyrdom and the builder’s square, recalling the heavenly palace of the Acts of Thomas. These two images express the two facets of his figure: the man whose doubt was overcome and the missionary to the ends of the earth.
Further reading
- Saint Andrew the Apostle — the brother of Peter and the first called, another missionary apostle to the farthest reaches of the Christian East.
- Saint Philip the Apostle — often associated with Thomas in the lists of the Twelve, and present with him at the farewell discourse (Jn 14).
- Saint Peter — whose confession (“You are the Christ, the Son of the living God”) precedes the even higher confession of Thomas (“My Lord and my God”).
- Saint John the Baptist — the forerunner, in the same Johannine Gospel that gives Thomas his full prominence.
- Saint Ephrem the Syrian — the great Syriac doctor, singer of the tomb of Saint Thomas in Edessa.
- Saint Gregory the Great — whose homily on the unbelief of Thomas nourished the entire spirituality of fruitful doubt.
Notes and References
Feast of Saint Thomas in the Roman calendar: the Latin Church celebrated the Apostle on 21 December until the reform promulgated by Paul VI, motu proprio Mysterii Paschalis of 14 February 1969, which fixed the feast on 3 July (Calendarium Romanum, 1969). Date confirmed by the Martyrologium Romanum (2004), on 3 July, and by the liturgical calendar in force (3 July: Saint Thomas, Apostle, feast).
1 52Adolphus E. Medlycott, "St. Thomas the Apostle", The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. XIV, Robert Appleton Company, New York, 1912 (full text on New Advent: https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14658b.htm). Reference entry on the name of Thomas (Didymus, “the Twin”), his appearances in the Fourth Gospel, the tradition of his mission in Parthia and then in India, King Gondophares, the martyrdom at Mylapore near Madras and the relics venerated at Edessa in the 4th century. For the liturgical feast after 1912 and the translation to Ortona, see the dedicated notes below. See also A. E. Medlycott, India and the Apostle Thomas, David Nutt, London, 1905.
2 10 11 43 45 46 49 55Gospel according to Saint John 20:24-29: the unbelief of Thomas (“Unless I see… I will not believe”), the appearance eight days later, the invitation to touch the wounds, the confession “My Lord and my God!” and the beatitude “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed!” Translation from the Jerusalem Bible, Cerf.
3 6 17 22 23 24 26Gospel according to Saint John 11:16: at the announcement of the return to Judea, Thomas, “called Didymus”, says to the other disciples: “Let us also go, that we may die with him!” Translation from the Jerusalem Bible, Éditions du Cerf, Paris.
4 15 19Gospel according to Saint John 14:5-6: at the farewell discourse, Thomas asks “Lord, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?”, prompting Jesus’ reply: “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” Translation from the Jerusalem Bible, Cerf.
5 16 20 21Origen, cited by Eusebius of Caesarea, Ecclesiastical History, book III, ch. 1 (around 325): in the division of the apostles’ mission fields, “Thomas received Parthia as his lot.” Reference edition: coll. Sources Chrétiennes no. 31, translation by Gustave Bardy, Éditions du Cerf, Paris, 1952.
7 32Acts of Thomas (Acta Thomae), apocryphal work composed in Syriac at Edessa at the beginning of the 3rd century (before 220 according to Medlycott); account of the “palace in heaven” built by almsgiving for King Gondophares, and the evangelization of India. A text with an encratite gnostic tendency, not received into the canon, but preserving the historical name of a real Indo-Parthian king. Reference edition: A. F. J. Klijn, The Acts of Thomas: Introduction, Text, and Commentary, 2nd ed., coll. Supplements to Novum Testamentum, Brill, Leiden, 2003.
8 12 13 33 34 35 36Saint Thomas Christians (Mar Thoma Nasrani, “Nazarenes of Saint Thomas”) of Kerala: tradition of the apostle’s arrival at Maliankara / Muziris (Kodungallur, ancient Cranganore) around the year 52, founding of seven Churches (Ēḻarappaḷḷikaḷ: Kodungallur, Palayoor, Kottakavu, Kokkamangalam, Niranam, Nilackal, Kollam), then martyrdom at Mylapore around 72, commemorated by the Dukrana on July 3. See "Saint Thomas Christians", Encyclopædia Britannica ("Thomas Christians"), and the entry "Saint Thomas Christians", Wikipedia.
9 39 40 41 42 44 54Lists of the Twelve where Thomas appears: Matthew 10:3; Mark 3:18; Luke 6:15; Acts of the Apostles 1:13. Thomas is named alongside Matthew or Philip, without any words attributed to him by the synoptics.
14Gospel according to Saint John 21:2: Thomas, “called Didymus”, is among the seven disciples present at the miraculous catch on the Sea of Tiberias after the Resurrection. Translation from the Jerusalem Bible, Cerf.
18 27Benedict XVI, catechesis on the apostle Saint Thomas, general audience of 27 September 2006 (text on vatican.va). The pope emphasizes that Thomas confesses in Jesus “my Lord and my God”, the climax of the Easter profession of faith, and that his case “comforts us in our uncertainties” by showing that honest doubt can lead to mature faith.
25 28 29Saint Gregory the Great, Homilies on the Gospels, Homily XXVI (on John 20:19-31): “Plus nobis Thomae infidelitas ad fidem quam fides credentium discipulorum profuit” — “the unbelief of Thomas has benefited our faith more than the faith of the disciples who believed,” for by touching the wounds he healed the wound of our own unbelief. Reference edition: Gregory the Great, Homilies on the Gospel, coll. Sources Chrétiennes, Éditions du Cerf, Paris.
30 31Gondophares (Gundaphar), Indo-Parthian king attested by numismatics: coins bearing his name (Greek and Kharosthi legends) were discovered in Afghanistan around 1834, notably by Charles Masson, and identified by the numismatist James Prinsep (1834); the Takht-i-Bahi inscription dates his reign, placed around 20–46 AD. The discovery established the historicity of a figure long considered fictional in the Acts of Thomas. See the article "Gondophares", Encyclopædia Iranica, and the entry "Gondophares", Wikipedia (section Numismatics).
37 38Translation of the relics of Saint Thomas to Ortona (1258), according to the tradition preserved at Ortona: a naval expedition brought back from Chios the Apostle’s body with the inscribed slab bearing his name and bust that covered it; landing at Ortona on 6 September 1258, under the command of Leo (Leone) Acciaiuoli. Account documented by A. E. Medlycott, India and the Apostle Thomas, London, 1905, pp. 113-118, after F. Ughelli, Italia Sacra, 2nd ed. N. Coleti, Venice, 1720, vol. VI, col. 773 ff., the inscription of the cathedral of Ortona (the relics have rested there since 1258), the monument to the expedition’s commissioner (inscription MCCLVIII) and G. De Lectis, Vita del glorioso Apostolo (Fermo, 1577). This is a local tradition relayed by ecclesiastical historiography, not a contemporary act of 1258: the degree of certainty remains that of a documented tradition, lower than that of the ancient testimonies on Edessa.
47 48Egeria (Itinerarium Egeriae / Peregrinatio Aetheriae), pilgrimage account written around 381–384: the pilgrim visits Edessa to venerate the shrine (martyrium) of Saint Thomas, a sign of the antiquity of the apostle’s cult in Mesopotamia. Reference edition: Egeria, Journal de voyage, coll. Sources Chrétiennes no. 296, translation by Pierre Maraval, Éditions du Cerf, Paris, 1982.
50Gregory of Tours, Liber in gloria martyrum (Book of the Glory of the Martyrs, around 590), ch. 31–32: mention of the tomb of Saint Thomas in India and the martyrium of Edessa where his relics rested. Edition in the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum, vol. I, 2.
51A. E. Medlycott, India and the Apostle Thomas, David Nutt, London, 1905: the ancient Syriac calendar makes 3 July a great feast of Saint Thomas — “His body is at Urhai (Edessa), having been brought there by the merchant Khabin” — and the Hieronymian Martyrology (Epternach codex) distinguishes the natalis (martyrdom in India, 21 December: xii. kal. ian.) from the translatio corporis ejus in Edessa (3 July). It is this Syriac date of the translation to Edessa that the 1969 Roman calendar adopted.
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