churches of Kodungallur built by Knai Thoma: ..."I found written at the end how the said book was made and written at Cranganore, where it says there were three churches, one of St. Thomas, another of Our Lady, and another of St. Cyriac" - Francisco Ros (1604), MS. ADD. 9853. British Museum Library Northist and Southist A number of Portuguese authors noted the existing ethnic division of the Syrian Christians of Kerala as the majority St. Thomas Christians or Vadakkumbhagar (Northist) and the minority Knanaya or Thekkumbhagar (Southist). These designations traditionally associate the Northist as early converts of St. Thomas the Apostle in India and the Southist as the migrants who arrived with Thomas of Cana. Additionally, the designations are in reference to the Chera Empire's capital city of Kodungallur: the Thomas Christians having initially lived on its northern side and the Knanaya having arrived and settled on its southern side. The Oxford History of the Christian Church states the following about the division: "In time, Jewish Christians of the most exclusive communities descended from settlers who accompanied Knayil Thomma (Kanayi) became known as ‘Southists’ (Tekkumbha ̄gar)...They distinguished between themselves and ‘Northists’ (Vatakkumbha ̄gar). The ‘Northists’, on the other hand, claimed direct descent from the very oldest Christians of the country, those who had been won to Christ by the Apostle Thomas himself. They had already long inhabited northern parts of Kodungallur. They had been there even before various waves of newcomers had arrived from the Babylonian or Mesopotamian provinces of Sassanian Persia." - Historian of South Asian Studies Dr. Robert E. Frykenberg (2010) Some Portuguese authors also associated the division of Northist and Southist to the two wives of Thomas of Cana. These versions generally present the Southern wife as a Syrian woman and the Northern as a native St. Thomas Christian woman. Additionally they portray one wife as superior and the other inferior and their children as legitimate or illegitimate. In 1579, Fr. Antonio Monserratte, a missionary in Kerala wrote that the stories associated with the two-wives legend were the “lie of the land”. In 1611, Archbishop Francisco Ros, a Latin Catholic clergymen in Kerala, called the two-wives legend a "fable" and instead accounts the division to some Christians descending from the missionary work of St. Thomas the Apostle and others from Knai Thoma. Syrian Christian scholars generally view the two-wives stories as odious, stating that they emerged