Mar Dionysius I (Mar Thoma VI) (died 8 April 1808), was the 6th Metropolitan of the Malankara Syrian Church from 1765 until his death. A member of the Pakalomattom family (Thazhmon, Ayroor) he 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. Thoma VI succeeded Mar Thoma V as Malankara Metropolitan in 1765, and unlike his predecessors, who were said 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 Malayalam. Life The man who would be 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 Malankara Syrian Church, Thoma V consecrated his nephew as coadjutor bishop and named him his successor, in contradiction to the wishes of the Syriac Orthodox hierarchy. Upon Thoma V's death in 1765, the younger Pakalomattom was ordained as Metropolitan on 8 May, taking the name Thoma VI. As with his predecessors as Metropolitan going back to the first, Mar Thoma I, Thoma VI's critics charged that his succession, and therefore his position, was invalid. To overcome this criticism, in 1772 Thoma VI underwent a second ordination at the hands of the Syriac Orthodox bishop 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 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. This done, Dionysius focused on his second primary aim of securing his place as the sole head of the Malankara Church, a measure opposed by some in the Syriac Orthodox hierarchy. To this end, Dionysius appealed to both the Catholic Church and the British colonial government in India. Several times he contacted the Catholic hierarchy, both locally and in Rome, seeking to have his church, with him as