South Canara before the 16th century. It was only after the advent of the Portuguese in the region that Christianity began to spread. In 1498 the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama landed on a group of islands in South Canara on his voyage from Portugal to India. He named the islands El Padron de Santa Maria; they later came to be known as St Mary's Islands. In 1500 Portuguese explorer Pedro Álvares Cabral arrived at Anjediva in North Canara with eight Franciscan missionaries. Under the leadership of Frei Henrique Soares de Coimbra, the missionaries converted 22 or 23 natives to Christianity in the Mangalore region. During the early part of the 16th century, Krishnadevaraya (1509–1529), the ruler of the Vijayanagara Empire of Deccan, granted commercial privileges to the Portuguese on the Canara coast. There was complete freedom of worship, belief, and propagation of religious tenets in the Vijaynagara Empire. In 1526, under the viceroyship of Lopo Vaz de Sampaio, the Portuguese took possession of Mangalore. The Portuguese Franciscans slowly started propagating Christianity in Mangalore. The most prominent local convert was the Brahmin mahant Shankarayya, who in 1751 travelled with his wife from Kallianpur to Goa and was baptised, with the Portuguese viceroy assuming the role of his godfather. The honoured mahant took the name of Francisco de Távora, after the Viceroy Marques de Távora. Their properties were subsequently taken over by their Hindu relatives, but the viceroy instructed his factor of Mangalore to get their property restored. In 1534 Canara was placed under the ecclesiastic jurisdiction of the Bishop of Goa, where the Portuguese had a strong presence. Missionaries soon arrived and gained converts. The number of local converts in South Canara continually increased until 1546. During the mid-16th century, the Portuguese faced resistance from Abbakka Rani of Ullal, the Queen of the Bednore dynasty. This put a halt to conversions. The first battle between Abbakka Rani and the Portuguese was fought in 1546; she emerged victorious and drove the Portuguese out of South Canara. Migration era In 1510, a Portuguese fleet under Afonso de Albuquerque, sent by King Manuel I of Portugal, wrested the region of Goa from Sultan Yusuf Adil Shah of Bijapur. In 1534, the Diocese of Goa was established. Soon missionaries were sent to Goa, which led to conversion of a sizeable population to Roman Catholicism. The bulk of Christian settlers came in three major migration