Mar Thoma VI
| Mar Dionysius I | |
|---|---|
| Malankara Church | |
| Installed | 8 May 1765 |
| Term ended | 8 April 1808 |
| Predecessor | Mar Thoma V |
| Successor | Mar Thoma VII |
| Personal details | |
| Died | 8 April 1808 Niranam |
| Buried | St. Mary's Orthodox Cathedral, Puthencavu |
Mar Dionysius I, also known as Mar Thoma VI (died 8 April 1808), was the Metropolitan of the Malankara Church from 1765 until his death. A member of the Pakalomattom family, he was a shrewd administrator who appealed to outside authorities to assert his position as the sole leader of the Malankara Church and to attempt to reunite all the Saint Thomas Christians.
Mar Thoma VI succeeded Mar Thoma V as Malankara Metropolitan in 1765, and unlike his predecessors, who were claimed by their opponents not to have been properly ordained as bishop, he received orders from Syriac Orthodox bishops in 1772, thus ending any controversy. Other events of his reign include the separation of the Thozhiyoor church (now the Malabar Independent Syrian Church), the arrival of English Protestant missionaries, and the first translation of the Bible from Syriac to Malayam.
The man who would be Mar Dionysius was the nephew of his predecessor as Malankara Metropolitan, Mar Thoma V, and a member of the Pakalomattom family. In 1757, as part of a play to assert his authority and autonomy in the Syriac Orthodox Church, Mar Thoma V consecrated his nephew as coadjutor bishop and named him his successor, in contradiction to the wishes of the Syriac Orthodox hierarchy. Upon Mar Thoma V's death in 1765, the younger Pakalomattom was ordained as Metropolitan on 8 May, taking the name Mar Thoma VI.
As with his predecessors as Metropolitan going back to the first, Mar Thoma I, Mar Thoma VI's critics charged that his succession, and therefor his position, was invalid. To overcome this criticism, in 1772 Mar Thoma VI underwent a second ordination at the hands of the Syriac Orthodox bishop Mar Gregorios in the church in Niranam. He received all the Holy Orders, from the tonsure to the episcopal consecration, and thereafter took the name Mar Dionysius. Syriac Orthodox and other critics of Mar Thoma VI saw this as his only ordination, while his supporters saw it as a "re-ordination", but either way, it ended the controversy over the validity of his position.
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