1693
Eight years after the thatch went up at Vadakkankulam, he was in irons. On the eve of his death, in the prison at Oriyur, he wrote to his brethren. A straw served him for a pen, and his ink was charcoal moistened with his own spittle. “The only crime I am accused of is, that of having taught the law of Jesus Christ… as this crime is a virtue, the punishment cannot be otherwise than honourable to me.” The next morning he was beheaded, forty-five years old, and two and a half centuries later Rome named him a saint. To the wider Church he is a martyr of the far south. To Vadakkankulam he has always been Arulanandar, the priest it remembers as its founder, whose feast it keeps each February.
What this source establishes
The earliest printed martyrology of de Britto, Antwerp 1697 — four years after his death. Its title alone fixes the date. We do not hold a copy; there is no page to show you.
Nobody here has opened this book. What it is cited for is written above, and no more than that is claimed.