Bleeding Cross, St.Thomas Mount, Madras

      The  bleeding  cross in St Thomas Mount  which is  believed to be there from the period of  St. Thomas and was found while digging the earth in 16th century for the  construction of the church.  A note on the  inscription around it from a letter written  by German Lutheran missionary  Schultz to  his fellow  missionary at Halle in South Germany on 26th January 1728

   " With this letter  I send a fac-simile of the cross on St . Thomas  Mount. The  letters around it are known to no one here. For  five days  consequitively I sent this inscription  round the town and submitted it to natives  of various countries and languages  to ascertain if any person was acquainted with the language in which it is written or could read it. There was not a single person who could say that such a language exists in India.  This  suggested to me after all that  it might be a " pious fraud " invented to beguile simple people  and to encourage pilgrimage to it. After an investigation of all the circumstances  I am fully convinced that the whole account of this cross is a fiction".

        Schultz was a  Lutheran Protestant missionary and a great animosity was there in 17th 18th century  between Protestants  and Romish Catholics.  It was in 1908 after much disputation the message around the cross was deciphered  as "  Through the cross the messiah brought salvation to the world".