The term "Christians of St Thomas" is often applied to the members of the ancient Christian churches of Southern India which claim him as their first founder, and honour as their second founder a bishop called Thomas, who is said to have come from Jerusalem to Malabar in 345 A.D. According to local tradition, St Thomas went from Malabar to Mylapur, now a suburb of Madras and the seat of a Roman Catholic bishop. Here still exists the shrine of his martyrdom on Mount St Thomas. A miraculous cross is shown with a Pahlavi inscription which is said to be as old as the end of the seventh century. The old churches of the south were certainly of East Syrian origin. They never wholly lost their sense of connection with their mother church, for it is known that they sent deputies in 1490 to the Nestorian patriarch Simeon, who provided them with bishops. Under Musalmān rule, they suffered severely, and welcomed the advent of the Portuguese to India. They were, however, recalcitrant to Roman influence, and it was with much difficulty that in 1599 they were induced to submit to a formal union with Rome at the synod of Diamper (Udayamperur in Cochin). During the following century and a half the Thomasine churches were under foreign Jesuit rule, but yielded an unwilling and intermittent obedience. In 1653, there was a great schism, and of about 200,000 Christians of St Thomas only 400 remained loyal to Rome, though some of their churches were soon won back by the Carmelites. The remainder fell under the influence of the Jacobite Mar Gregorius, styled patriarch of Jerusalem, who reached Malabar in 1665 as an emissary from Ignatius patriarch of Antioch. From this time, the independent churches of Southern India have been Jacobite. At the present time, they are on friendly terms with the Anglican church in India, and are loosening their dependence on the Jacobite patriarch of Antioch.