Holy Trinity Cathedral, Palayamkottai
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The Holy Trinity Cathedral a big, elegant and beautiful Church was built in 1826 by Rev. C.T.E. Rhenius and opened to public for worship on 26 June 1826.
Bishop Corrie named it as Holy Trinity Church on 30th January 1836. Bishop Stephen Neill raised the status of the Church into a Cathedral.
Many renovations and additions were made to this structure. This church still serves as a nucleus for this massive Cathedral which developed in later years.
Church Missionary Soceity (CMS) (1820-1896) Of the two missions CMS had an early start. On the day its first missionary, Charles Theophilus Ewald Rhenius (5.11. 1790), set foot in Tirunelveli (7th July 1820) The Church in Tirunelveli might be said to have come into its own. Acquiring for CMS the valuable property which Hough had purchased from Vengu Mudaliar in 1818 to the south of the main road in Palayamkottai, Rhenius and his assistant Schmid, soon got entrenched in a strategic complex from where they began to operate their mission. The first CMS congregation in Palayamkottai (Murugankurichi) came into existence on 10th March 1822, and the earlier SPCK congregations gradually got merged with the CMS congregations. Even the ones like Nazareth were entrusted by the SPCK to the care of Rhenius until the SPG could find the manpower to take them over in 1829. In 1824 Rhenius purchased from his Hindu friend and philanthropist, Vengu Mudaliar, for a concessional price of Rs. 750, the valuable property to the north of the High Road in Palayamkottai. Shifting the Seminary across the road to the newly acquired campus, he planned and built on the land so released a church which, with its lofty steeple added by Pettitt in 1845 and its several extensions from time to time, stands today as the Holy Trinity Cathedral, an imposing landmark in the whole district.
Operating from Palayamkottai, Rhenius touched a number of villages all over the district and planted small congregations (Sattankulam 1823, Neduvilai / Megnanapuram 1825, Idayankulam 1827, Asirvathapuram 1828, Nallur 1832, Surandai 1833). Where the early Christians met with persecution, Rhenius helped to colonise them in safe Christian Settlements. Thus he colonized in 1827 the Christians of Puliakurichi in a village he purchased out of money donated by a devout Prussian gentleman, Count Dohna of Scholodin, and named it after him as Dohnavur.
It was just when Rhenius stood at the crest of his missionary career that there burst out an unfortunate schism in the Tirunelveli Mission of the CMS. His health began to fail under the tension and strain caused by it, and on 5th June 1838 at 7:30 pm the Apostle to Tirunelveli quietly entered into the presence of his Lord and Master. By intense and systematic work Rhenius had set up as many as 371 congregations in Tirunelveli all within 15 years, which made Dr. Wolf, the great Jewish missionary - who came and stayed with Rhenius for a week during September 1833 - regard him as the greatest missionary who had appeared since St. Paul. His grave in Adaikalapuram, just a few yards off the national highway, is being treasured as the resting place of the most restless of the missionaries who ever came to India.
The man chosen by the CMS to take the place of Rhenius was Rev. George Pettitt who is best remembered as the builder of the stately steeple on the Holy Trinity Cathedral (1845) besides some solid churches in outstations like Alwartirunagari (1846), Dohnavur (1847) and Pannaivilai (1847). He also founded the renowned Anglo-Vernacular School of Palayamkottai in 1844 with an eminent Eurasian educationist. William Cruikshank (who was blind from the age of ten), as its headmaster. This was the forerunner of the later C.M. High School and College and the model for every Christian boarding school to follow. Rev. Pettitt was also the first to set up a Theological Seminary whose classes were held in an airy room of the newly built tower of the Holy Trinity Cathedral, Palayamkottai.
