1) THE 54 PORTUGUESE AND DUTCH TOMBSTONES IN ST FRANCIS CSI CHURCH, FORT KOCHI

St Francis CSI Church, Fort Kochi

I have discussed this topic quite elaborately in my blog 'Jewish Monuments of Kerala' under the following headings:

1. THE 32 PORTUGUESE  & 20 DUTCH TOMBSTONES IN ST. FRANCIS CHURCH, FORT KOCHI.

2. TWO MORE TOMBSTONES IDENTIFIED INSIDE THE ST FRANCIS CHURCH, FORT COCHIN

There are 54 tombstones inside St Francis Church at Fort Kochi: 30 Portuguese, 20 Dutch and 4 without inscriptions. Among them, 10 Portuguese tombstones dated to the 16th century are the oldest. This is indeed a remarkable achievement, considering very few 16th century European tombstones have have survived in India. Regarding the position of the tombstones, 48 are mounted vertically to the walls and the remaining 6 are displayed horizontally in the floor of the church. Out of the 4 headstones lacking inscriptions, 3 are horizontal (floor) and one vertical (wall) in position.

Today, the major hurdle is to identify and decipher these grave markers, because several of the epitaphs are heavily worn-out and inscriptions barely visible, This is true especially in the case of Portuguese headstones. The arrangement of grave slabs inside a dim-light church often close to large open windows, make them equally difficult to photograph. Luckily, we have a few early documents from the mid-19th to early-20th centuries that have textual and graphical representation of the tombstones made when the inscriptions were more legible and less damaged. A special mention has to be made about the two rare booklets by Pelioth, M D (1886a and 1886b), in which, he has beautifully drawn 29 Portuguese and 20 Dutch inscriptions in a scale of one foot to one inch. The other work to be considered is the monumental 'List of Inscriptions on Tombs or Monuments in Madras' by Julian James Cotton (1905), where 28 Portuguese and 19 Dutch tombstone inscriptions are recorded. The earliest document that I have come across in this regard is by Joaquim Heliodoro da Cunha Rivara (1866), who has published  the epitaphs of 26 Portuguese tombstones from St Francis Church, in the monthly periodical 'O Chronista de Tissuary', but the Dutch headstones are left out. These documents proved to be very helpful for me in identifying the tombstones, without which many would have remained untraceable.

In this 3-part series, I will be focusing mainly on the photographic documentation of the tombstones in the St Francis Church. Part-I will cover 45 tombstones that are recorded by Cotton (1905), where as, Part-II and III are about the other 9 tombstones that do not appear in his list, but preserved in the church. Part III is specifically about the tombstone of Simeon de Miranda, considered to be the oldest European grave monument in South India, if not the whole country. 

References

Cotton, Julian James (1905)-List of Inscriptions on Tombs or Monuments in Madras

Pelioth, M D (1886a)-Portuguese Inscriptions in St Francis Church Cochin, Copies 29 in Number

Pelioth, M D (1886b)-Dutch Inscriptions in St Francis Church Cochin, Copies 19 in Number

Rivara, Joaquim Heliodoro da Cunha (1866)-Portuguese Inscriptions Existing at Cochin in AD 1863, O Chronista de Tissuary