CHAPTER X
The Picture of our Lady at the
Shrine
ON the main altar of the shrine, where Holy Mass is celebrated
everyday, there stands an exquisite painting of Our Lady with the
Holy Infant in her arms. This impressive representation of the Holy
Virgin and the Child Jesus is traditionally acknowledged to be one
of the seven portraits painted by St. Luke, the Evangelist. Devotees
have long believed that it was brought to India by St. Thomas. It is
painted on a light wooden plank about a foot and a half square. The
picture is known in some quarters as the ‘Scapular of St. Thomas’,
It is not unusual to hear pilgrims from Malabar, Burma and Ceylon,
ask the guides on the Mount, ‘Where is the Scapular of St Tomas?’
Such a notion of the picture of Our Lady is possibly due to the
belief that St. Thomas suspended it from his neck whenever he
went preaching the Gospel.
About the year 1726, Father Desideri S.J. wrote that ‘not only
the Christians have great devotion to it, but the very idolators
themselves hold it in great veneration’110 It is surprising that
centuries of rough handling and exposure to inclement weather
have taken away precious little from the freshness of the painting.
The colours used are the traditional hues of Our Lady – pink, red,
blue and gold. A very close view of the picture reveals minute
cracks all over and also some smudges on the face. Thereby hangs
a tale.
In the sixteenth century or thereabouts, the neighbouring
Hindu kings were continually at war with each other, with the result
that the churches were robbed of their treasures or razed to the
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ground. The Christians, for fear of losing the precious picture,
buried it at the foot of the hill together with other valuable things.
Hidden underground for a long time, the painting naturally suffered
badly from dampness. In the process of digging up, the pickaxe and
the spade added to the damage. A cruziero now stands on the spot
at the foot of the hill, where the picture lay buried for quite a long
time.
More attempts than one were made to repaint the picture, but
to no purpose. One of the Bishops of Mylapore engaged an artist
to touch it up. So confident was the artist to paint a better picture
than this, that he openly scoffed at it. No sooner had he taken up
his brush and paint to set it right than he was struck blind. Some
forty years ago when the. Sisters were showing the visitors round,
a lady stepped forward and said: ‘Excuse me, Sister, but I can tell
you a story about the old picture, which I saw with my own eyes,
and you can make as much use as you like of what I am going to
relate.’
She stated that when she was young her father was an official
as the Mount. He and some other officials of the place thought it
was a great pity the picture, was damaged. They were anxious to
have just the damaged spots painted over. So they asked the
Bishop's permission and got an artist to do the work. The lady, who
was standing close by, saw the artist apply the paint on one of the
damaged spots, and lo ! the paint rolled off in little balls even as
mercury leaving no mark on the picture. After several attempts the
artist gave up saying: ‘I can get no impression on the picture; let’s
leave it.’ It has been framed with glass and exposed on the altar,
just below the reredos containing the Bleeding Cross. Looking from
a distance at a certain angle, one scarcely notices any flaw in the
picture. The smudges on the face appeared as so many artistic
shades that add to the beauty of the painting. Be it noted that this
picture is one of the oldest, and therefore, one of the most
venerable Christian paintings to be had in India. Until 1955 no one
ever tried to retouch the picture. In this year the Archbishop of
Madras-Mylapore commissioned Margarite Scheideman to touch
the smudges and rectify the cracks in the celebrated painting.
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Time was when this picture along with other relics of St.
Thomas went through a series of adventures. In the heyday of the
Hindu kingdom of Vijayanagar, king Ramaraya, then living at
Chandragiri, decided to bring the Christians of San Thome to book
for past misdemeanours.
A renegade Portuguese had rightly or wrongly informed the
king that these Christians were arch traitors conniving at his
downfall. He, therefore, marched at the head of a mighty force into
Mylapore in 1559, and made prisoners of thirty one leading persons
of the place and carried them off to Chandragiri. To the great
dismay of the Christians of San Thome, the king took away with
him the China casket, in which the relics of St. Thomas were
religiously kept, and the picture of the Madonna from St. Thomas’
Mount. Strangely enough, the very first night after his return to
Chandragiri, his queen had a dream, in which the lady of the picture
intimated to her that the casket and the picture must be restored
forthwith; else, a great misfortune would befall the king and his
house. He lost no time in complying with the queen’s wish. The
very next day the prisoners were released and the picture was
carried with all honour in royal palanquins. As for the China casket
containing relics of St. Thomas, Gil Vaz Palha, one of the prisoners,
was requested to ride back with it, seated on a white ox, all the way
to Mylapore. Thus did the precious relics gloriously enter
Mylapore, to the great satisfaction of the people. The Battle of
Talikota, in 1565, spelt a deathblow to the great Vijayanagar
Empire. Hindus and Christians alike deemed it a punishment for the
king’s crime of trying to desecrate the sacred treasure.
The picture of Our Lady is not associated with any miracle in
the strict sense of the term, as her other pictures and images are in
some of the famous shrines of the world. Though nothing
spectacular has happened to anyone through this picture, there is
evidence that countless favours, both spiritual and temporal, have
been received by people praying before it. Petitions pour in from all
over the country and from abroad to be placed before the picture.
Hundreds of Catholics and non-Catholics take the trouble of
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climbing the Mount to pray before it. Seldom do they return
unanswered in some way or other.
On the 18th of December each year St. Thomas Mount looks
like an undulating sea of heads. The occasion is the Titular feast of
the church on the hill. In the dim past, this feast, locally known as
the ‘Hill Feast’, had a special significance to the Oriental Churches,
and was celebrated throughout Malabar as the ‘Feast of the 18th of
December’. After 1557, the feast came to be known as the ‘Feast
of the Holy Cross of St. Thomas’ Mount’, in remembrance of the
Bleeding Cross. It will be remembered that the Cross used to
‘sweat’ on the day. Father Hosten, S.J., an eminent historian, says111
that the sweating or finding of the Cross of St. Thomas’ Mount or
the Expectation of Our Lady, was commemorated in Malabar on
December 18th in times past.
