Tranquebar Mission

In 1620, the village of Tranquebar was acquired for the Danish Crown, by the Danish Admiral Ove Gjedde, by signing an agreement with the Raghunatha Nayak of the Tanjore Nayak Kingdom on behalf of the King of Denmark.

King Frederick IV of Denmark was very keen to spread Christianity among his non-European subjects and called from Royal missionaries. However, there was a lack of interest to his call among his Danish subjects. Hence, the king gave the task of finding the right people to his court chaplain Franz J Lütkens. After a search in German universities, Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg and Heinrich Plütschau were selected. After being ordained in Copenhagen, they sailed to Tranquebar with a royal charter on the ship Sophia Hedewig on 29 November 1705, arriving on 9 July 1706.

At this point around 15,000 people lived in Tranquebar and its surroundings, with the population consisting of Hindus, Muslims, Indian Catholics, as well as Europeans working for the East India Company. After initial conflicts with the Danish East India Company, which even lead to a four month incarceration of Ziegenbalg, he established the Tranquebar Mission in 1706. They baptised their first convert after 10 months of establishing the mission. The mission faced opposition from the authorities of Danish settlement, in spite of the royal charter, as it was felt that by encouraging conversion, Ziegenbalg was encouraging dis-order and rebellion at Tranquebar. Under Ziegenbalg, the mission set up the very first Tamil press in India at Tranquebar, and set about the task of translating the Bible into Tamil. In 1716, a seminary for training native clergy was established by the mission. When Ziegenbalg died in 1719, he had finished translating the New Testament and chapters Genesis to Ruth of the Old Testament, and the mission had 2 church buildings, a seminary and a native congregation of 250 people.

Another notable missionary was Christian Friedrich Schwarz (born 1726), who served the Tranquebar Mission for 48 years.