Mar Yaqob Abuna was one of the legendary metropolitan of the Church of Malabar of st Thomas Christians.In 1503, Mar Elias, the Catholicos Patriarch of the Church of the East consecrated three Bishops from the Monastery of Saint Eugene: Rabban David as Mar Yaballaha, Rabban George as Mar Denha, Rabban Masud as Mar Yaqob. The Patriarch sent these three new Bishops together with Mar Thomas to the lands of the Indians, and to the islands of the seas, which are within Dabag, and to Sin and Masin- Java, China and Maha china- Great China.
At the end of the fifteenth century the Church of the East responded to a request by the Saint Thomas Christians for bishops to be sent out to them. In 1490, two Christians from Malabar arrived in Gazarta to petition the East Syrian patriarch to consecrate a bishop for their church. Two monks of the monastery of Mar Awgin were consecrated bishops and were sent to India. The patriarch Eliya V consecrated three more bishops for India in April 1503. These bishops sent a report to the patriarch from India in 1504, describing the condition of the church in malabar and reporting the recent arrival of the Portuguese. Eliya had already died by the time this letter arrived in Mesopotamia, and it was received by his successor, Shemʿon VI.
The arrival of the Bishops on the Malabar
On reaching India the bishops put in first at Cragnaoor, and introduced themselves as Christians to the twenty or so Portuguese who were living there. They were most kindly received, and helped with clothes and money. They stayed for about two and a half months. Before they left, they were invited to celebrate the holy mysteries after their own fashion: ‘They prepared for it a beautiful place fit for prayer, where there was a kind of oratory. on the Sunday Nosardel,after their priests had celebrated, The Bishops were admitted and celebrated the Holy Sacriiiee, and it was pleasing for the foreign missionaries.
Accounts of foreign missionaries
wrote a letter from Cochin to king John III of Portugal on 26 January 1549, in which he declared "A bishop of Armenia.
Later years and death
It seems that about the year 1543 Mar Yaqob, feeling the weight of years, withdrew from active direction of the affairs of the Serra and settled in the Franciscan convent of St Antony in Cochin; he had a long-standing friendship with the friars of that convent. Though not an outstanding leader, Mar Yaqob was at man of great integrity highly respected by all who knew him. In a letter dated 26 January 1549, Xavier urges the king of Portugal to show him special favour. One touching occurrence is related in connection with the death of Mar Yaqob. On his death bed he asked his friend Pero Sequeira to redeem for him the Knai Thomacopper plate grant recording the privileges of the Knanaya community, about which he had written to the king of Portugal in 1523, but which he had later given in pledge to a man in the interior for twenty cruzados. Before his death, he had the happiness of knowing that this had been done. The first half century of relations between the Portuguese and the Thomas Christians were, in spite of misunderstandings, on the whole marked by cordiality and good will. Mar Yaqob had maintained good relations with the Westerners throughout the long period of his episcopate, and was rewarded by the good opinions expressed by many concerning him.
