"The Portuguese were familiar with the St. Thomas legend long before they arrived in India. They knew Marco Polo’s Il Milione, made popular in Europe in the fourteenth century, and the earlier sixth century Latin romances De Miraculis [Beati] Thomae and Passio Thomae. The Passio Thomae was a redaction of the Acts of Thomas, but both Latin books contained a major diversion from the original story that would, like the seashore tomb in the Milione, permanently alter the course of the St. Thomas legend after the Portuguese had established themselves in Mylapore. The Passio Thomae had St. Thomas killed by a Pagan priest with a sword, and De Miraculis Thomae had him killed by a Pagan priest with a lance. These stories were at odds with the one found in the Acts of Thomas, which had the apostle executed on the orders of a Persian king, by four royal soldiers with spears. The Portuguese preferred the Pagan-priest-with-a-lance story found in De Miraculis Thomae. They added Marco Polo’s seaside tomb to it, and elements from Syrian Christian traditions that they had gathered in Malabar, and concocted a legend, largely European in character, that they identified with various Hindu sites in Malabar and Mylapore. The Portuguese story has not changed very much till today, though it has many variations."