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= Prester_John_ =
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Introduction
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Prester John () was a postulated Christian patriarch, presbyter, and
king. Stories popular in Europe in the 12th to the 17th centuries told
of a Nestorian patriarch and king who was said to rule over a
Christian nation lost amid the pagans and Muslims in the Orient. The
accounts were often embellished with various tropes of medieval
popular literature, depicting Prester John as a descendant of the
Three Magi, ruling a kingdom full of riches, marvels, and strange
creatures.
At first, Prester John was thought to reside in India. Reports of the
Nestorian Christians' evangelistic success there and of Thomas the
Apostle's subcontinental travels as documented in works like the 'Acts
of Thomas' probably provided the first seeds of the narrative. As
Europeans became aware of the Mongols and their empire, accounts
placed the king in Central Asia, and eventually Portuguese explorers
came to assume that the term was a reference to Ethiopia, which at
that time was an isolated Christian "exclave" distant from any other
Christian-ruled territory.
Origin of the legend
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Though its immediate genesis is unclear, officially the origin of the
idea of Prester John originates from a letter that the Byzantine
emperor Manuel I Komnenos received in 1165. The sender was: "'John,
Christian Sovereign and Lord of Lords'".
The letter described the very rich lands of this monarch located in
central Asia. The king said he lived in an immense palace made of gems
and gold and said he governed a huge territory extending from Persia
to China. For many years the idea of Prester John was associated with
the dream of reaching a sumptuous kingdom, where all material
pleasures were fulfilled and people lived in opulence.
The legend of Prester John drew strongly from earlier accounts of the
Orient and of Westerners' travels there. Particularly influential were
the reports of Saint Thomas the Apostle's proselytizing in India,
recorded especially in the third-century work known as the 'Acts of
Thomas'. This text inculcated in Westerners an image of India as a
place of exotic wonders and offered the earliest description of Saint
Thomas establishing a Christian sect there, motifs that loomed large
over later accounts of Prester John.
Similarly, embellished reports of movements in Asia of the Church of
the East (Nestorianism) informed the narratives as well. This church
had gained a wide following in the Eastern nations and engaged the
Western imagination as an assemblage both exotic and familiarly
Christian. Particularly inspiring were the Church of the East's
missionary successes among the Mongols and Turks of Central Asia;
French historian René Grousset suggests that the Prester John story
may have had its origins in the Kerait clan, which had thousands of
its members join the Church of the East shortly after the year 1000.
By the 12th century, the Kerait rulers were still following a custom
of bearing Christian names, which may have fueled the narrative.
Additionally, the tradition may have drawn from the shadowy early
Christian figure John the Presbyter of Syria, whose existence is first
inferred by the ecclesiastical historian and bishop Eusebius of
Caesarea based on his reading of earlier church fathers. This man,
said in one document to be the author of two of the Epistles of John,
was supposed to have been the teacher of the martyr bishop Papias, who
had in turn taught Irenaeus. However, little links this figure,
supposedly active in the late first century, to the Prester John
narrative beyond the name. The title "Prester" is an adaptation of the
Greek word "πρεσβύτερος, presbyteros", literally meaning "elder" and
used as a title of priests holding a high office (indeed, 'presbyter'
is the origin of the English word 'priest').
Later accounts of Prester John borrowed heavily from literary texts
concerning the East, including the great body of ancient and medieval
geographical and travel literature. Details were often lifted from
literary and pseudohistorical accounts, such as the tale of Sinbad the
Sailor. The 'Alexander Romance', a fabulous account of Alexander the
Great's conquests, was especially influential in this regard.
The Prester John narrative as such began in the early 12th century,
with reports of visits of an archbishop of India to Constantinople,
and of a Patriarch of India to Rome at the time of Pope Callixtus II.
These visits, apparently from the Saint Thomas Christians of India,
are of dubious veracity, evidence of both being secondhand reports.
What is certain is that German chronicler Otto of Freising reported in
his 'Chronicon' of 1145 that the previous year he had met Hugh, bishop
of Jabala in Syria, at the court of Pope Eugene III in Viterbo.
Hugh was an emissary of Prince Raymond of Antioch, sent to seek
Western aid against the Saracens after the Siege of Edessa; his
counsel inspired Eugene to call for the Second Crusade. Hugh told
Otto, in the presence of the pope, that Prester John, a Nestorian
Christian who served in the dual position of priest and king, had
regained the city of Ecbatana from the brother monarchs of Media and
Persia, the Samiardi, in a great battle "not many years ago".
Afterwards Prester John allegedly set out for Jerusalem to rescue the
Holy Land, but the swollen waters of the Tigris compelled him to
return to his own country. His fabulous wealth was demonstrated by his
emerald scepter; his holiness by his descent from the Three Magi.
Robert Silverberg connects this account with historic events of 1141,
when the Qara Khitai khanate under Yelü Dashi defeated the Seljuk
Turks in the Battle of Qatwan, near Samarkand. The Seljuks ruled over
Persia at the time and were the most powerful force in the Muslim
world; the defeat at Samarkand weakened them substantially. The Qara
Khitai at the time were Buddhists, not Christians, and there is no
reason to suppose Yelü Dashi was ever called Prester John. However,
several vassals of the Qara Khitai practiced Nestorian Christianity,
which may have contributed to the narrative. It is also possible that
the Europeans, who were unfamiliar with Buddhism, assumed that if the
leader was not Muslim, he must be Christian. The defeat encouraged the
Crusaders and inspired a notion of deliverance from the East. It is
possible Otto recorded Hugh's confused report to prevent complacency
in the Crusade's European backers - according to his account, no help
could be expected from a powerful Eastern king.
Letter of Prester John
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No more of the narrative is recorded until about 1165, when copies of
what was likely a forged 'Letter of Prester John' started spreading
throughout Europe. An epistolary wonder epic with parallels suggesting
its author knew the 'Romance of Alexander' and the above-mentioned
'Acts of Thomas', the 'Letter' was supposedly written to the Byzantine
emperor Manuel I Comnenus by Prester John, descendant of one of the
Three Magi and King of India. The many marvels of richness and magic
it contained captured the imagination of Europeans, and it was
translated into numerous languages, including Hebrew. It circulated in
ever more embellished form for centuries in manuscripts, examples of
which still exist. The invention of printing perpetuated the letter's
popularity in printed form; it was still current in popular culture
during the period of European exploration. Part of the letter's
essence was that a lost kingdom of Nestorian Christians still existed
in the vastness of Central Asia.
The credence given to the reports was such that Pope Alexander III
sent a letter to Prester John via his physician Philip on September
27, 1177. Nothing more is recorded of Philip, but it is most probable
that he did not return with word from Prester John. The 'Letter'
continued to circulate, accruing more embellishments with each copy.
In modern times, textual analysis of the letter's variant Hebrew
versions has suggested an origin among the Jews of northern Italy or
Languedoc: several Italian words remained in the Hebrew texts. At any
rate, the 'Letter''s author was most likely a Westerner.
Mongol Empire
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In 1221, Jacques de Vitry, Bishop of Acre, returned from the
disastrous Fifth Crusade with good news: King David of India, the son
or grandson of Prester John, had mobilized his armies against the
Saracens. He had already conquered Persia, then under the Khwarazmian
Empire's control, and was moving on towards Baghdad as well. This
descendant of the great king who had defeated the Seljuks in 1141
planned to reconquer and rebuild Jerusalem.
Controversial Soviet historian and ethnologist Lev Gumilev speculated
that the much reduced crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem in the Levant
resuscitated this legend in order to raise Christian aspirations and
to persuade European monarchs who had lost interest by that time in
getting involved in costly crusades, in a distant region that was far
removed from their own states and affairs. The bishop of Acre was
correct in thinking that a great king had conquered Persia; however
"King David", as it turned out, was the Tengrist Mongol ruler, Genghis
Khan.
The Mongol Empire's rise gave Western Christians the opportunity to
visit lands that they had never seen before, and they set out in large
numbers along the empire's secure roads. Presumptions that a lost
Nestorian kingdom existed in the east, or that the Crusader states'
salvation depended on an alliance with an Eastern monarch, was one
reason for the numerous Christian ambassadors and missionaries sent to
the Mongols. These include Franciscan explorers Giovanni da Pian del
Carpine in 1245 and William of Rubruck in 1253.
The link between Prester John and Genghis Khan was elaborated upon at
this time, as the Prester became identified with Genghis' foster
father, Toghrul, king of the Keraites, given the Jin title Ong Khan
Toghrul. Fairly truthful chroniclers and explorers such as Marco Polo,
Crusader-historian Jean de Joinville, and the Franciscan voyager
Odoric of Pordenone stripped Prester John of much of his otherworldly
veneer, portraying him as a more realistic earthly monarch. Odoric
places John's land to the west of Cathay en route to Europe, and
identifies its capital as "Cosan", variously interpreted by
translators as a number of names and locations. Joinville describes
Genghis Khan in his chronicle as a "wise man" who unites all the
Tartar tribes and leads them to victory against their strongest enemy,
Prester John.
William of Rubruck says a certain "Vut", lord of the Keraites and
brother to the Nestorian 'King' John, was defeated by the Mongols
under Genghis Khan. Genghis Khan made off with Vut's daughter and
married her to his son, and their union produced Möngke, the Khan at
the time William wrote. According to Marco Polo's 'Travels', the war
between the Prester and Genghis Khan started when Genghis Khan, new
ruler of the rebellious Tartars, asked for the hand of Prester John's
daughter in marriage. Angered that his lowly vassal would make such a
request, Prester John denied him in no uncertain terms. In the war
that followed, Genghis Khan triumphed, and Prester John perished.
The historical figure behind these accounts, Toghrul, was a Nestorian
Christian monarch defeated by Genghis Khan. He had fostered the future
Khan after the death of his father Yesugei and was one of his early
allies, but the two had a falling-out. After Toghrul rejected a
proposal to wed his son and daughter to Genghis Khan's children, the
rift between them grew, until war broke out in 1203. Genghis Khan
captured Sorghaghtani Beki, daughter of Toghrul's brother Jaqa Gambu,
and married her to his son Tolui. They had several children, including
Möngke, Kublai, Hulagu, and Ariq Böke.
The major characteristic of Prester John literature from this period
is the king's portrayal not as an invincible hero, but merely one of
many adversaries defeated by the Mongols. As the Mongol Empire
collapsed, Europeans began to shift away from the idea that Prester
John had ever really been a Central Asian king. At any rate they had
little prospects of finding him there, as travel in the region became
dangerous without the security the empire had provided. In works such
as 'The Travels of Sir John Mandeville' and 'Historia Trium Regum' by
John of Hildesheim, Prester John's domain tends to regain its
fantastic aspects and finds itself located not on the steppes of
Central Asia, but back in India proper, or some other exotic locale.
Wolfram von Eschenbach tied the history of Prester John to the Holy
Grail legend in his poem 'Parzival', in which the Prester is the son
of the Grail maiden and the Saracen knight Feirefiz.
A theory was put forward by the Russian scholar Ph. Bruun in 1876, who
suggested that Prester John might be found among the kings of Georgia,
which, at the time of Crusades, experienced military resurgence
challenging the Muslim power. However, this theory, though regarded
with certain indulgence by Henry Yule and some modern Georgian
historians, was summarily dismissed by Friedrich Zarncke. The
connection with Georgia is unlikely, considering that country was
Orthodox, rather than Nestorian, and due to the fact that it and its
predecessor states Colchis/Lazica and Iberia were well known and
documented at the time, with Episcopoi of Kartli having regular
epistolary conversions with Bishops of Rome.
Ethiopia
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Prester John had been considered the ruler of India since the legend's
beginnings, but "India" was a vague concept to the medieval Europeans.
Writers often spoke of the "Three Indias", and lacking any real
knowledge of the Indian Ocean they sometimes considered Ethiopia one
of the three. Westerners knew that Ethiopia was a powerful Christian
nation, but contact had been sporadic since the rise of Islam. No
Prester John was to be found in Asia, so Europeans began to suggest
that the narrative was a reference to the Christian kingdom of
Ethiopia. Evidence has suggested that locating Prester John's kingdom
in Ethiopia entered the collective consciousness around 1250.
Marco Polo had discussed Ethiopia as a magnificent Christian land and
Orthodox Christians had a legend that the nation would one day rise up
and invade Arabia, but they did not place Prester John there. In 1306,
30 Ethiopian ambassadors from Emperor Wedem Arad came to Europe, and
Prester John was mentioned as the patriarch of their church in a
record of their visit. Another description of an African Prester John
is in the 'Mirabilia Descripta' of Dominican missionary Jordanus,
around 1329. In discussing the "Third India", Jordanus records a
number of fanciful stories about the land and its king, whom he says
Europeans call Prester John.
After this point, an African location became increasingly popular.
This may have resulted from increasing ties between Europe and Africa
as 1428 saw the Kings of Aragon and Ethiopia actively negotiating the
possibility of a strategic marriage between the two kingdoms. On 7 May
1487, two Portuguese envoys, Pêro da Covilhã and Afonso de Paiva, were
sent traveling secretly overland to gather information on a possible
sea route to India, but also to inquire about Prester John. Covilhã
managed to reach Ethiopia. Although well received, he was forbidden to
depart. Contact for the purpose of finding allies, such as with
Prester John increasingly fueled early European exploration and
colonialism.
More envoys were sent in 1507, after the island of Socotra was taken
by the Portuguese. As a result of this mission, and facing Muslim
expansion, regent queen Eleni of Ethiopia sent ambassador Mateus to
king Manuel I of Portugal and to the pope, in search of a coalition.
Mateus reached Portugal via Goa, having returned with a Portuguese
embassy, along with priest Francisco Álvares in 1520. Francisco
Álvares's book, which included the testimony of Covilhã, the
'Verdadeira Informação das Terras do Preste João das Indias' ("A True
Relation of the Lands of Prester John of the Indies") was the first
direct account of Ethiopia, greatly increasing European knowledge at
the time, as it was presented to the pope, published and quoted by
Giovanni Battista Ramusio.
By the time Emperor Lebna Dengel and the Portuguese had established
diplomatic contact with each other in 1520, Prester John was the name
by which Europeans knew the Emperor of Ethiopia. The Ethiopians,
though, had never called their emperor that. When ambassadors from
Emperor Zara Yaqob attended the Council of Florence in 1441, they were
confused when Roman Catholic-led council prelates insisted that the
Ethiopians should refer to themselves as representatives of their
monarch Prester John. They tried to explain that nowhere in Zara
Yaqob's list of regnal names did that title occur. However, their
admonitions did little to stop Europeans from calling the King of
Ethiopia Prester John. Some writers who used the title did understand
it was not an indigenous honorific; for instance Jordanus seems to use
it simply because his readers would have been familiar with it, not
because he thought it authentic.
Ethiopia has been claimed for many years as the origin of the Prester
John narrative, but most modern experts assert that the narrative was
simply adapted to fit that nation in the same fashion that it had been
projected upon Ong Khan and Central Asia during the 13th century.
Modern scholars find nothing about Prester John or his country in the
early material that would make Ethiopia a more suitable identification
than any place else, and furthermore, specialists in Ethiopian history
have effectively demonstrated that the story was not widely known
there until the Portuguese began to circumnavigate around Africa,
which is how they reached Ethiopia, via the Gulf of Aden and the Red
Sea. Czech Franciscan Remedius Prutky asked Emperor Iyasu II about
this identification in 1751, and Prutky states that the man was
"astonished, and told me that the kings of Abyssinia had never been
accustomed to call themselves by this name." In a footnote to this
passage, Richard Pankhurst states that this is apparently the first
recorded statement by an Ethiopian monarch about this tale, and they
were likely unaware of the title until Prutky's inquiry.
The Americas
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The Italian historian Peter Martyr d'Anghiera identified the land of
Prester John with Chicora in his 'Decades of the New World'.
Francisco de Chicora, a native of what is now South Carolina, who was
captured by Spaniards and taken to Spain by Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón,
had told Anghiera that his land was ruled by priests.
End of the narrative and cultural legacy
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Seventeenth-century academics like German orientalist Hiob Ludolf
demonstrated that there was no actual native connection between
Prester John and the Ethiopian monarchs, and search for the fabled
king gradually ceased. But the narrative had affected several hundred
years of European and world history, directly and indirectly, by
encouraging Europe's explorers, missionaries, scholars, and treasure
hunters.
The prospect of finding Prester John had long since vanished, but the
works about him continued to inspire through the 20th century. William
Shakespeare's 1600 play 'Much Ado About Nothing' contains an early
modern reference to the legendary king, as does Tirso de Molina's 'El
Burlador de Sevilla'. In 1910, Scottish novelist and politician John
Buchan used the legend in his sixth book, 'Prester John', to
supplement a plot about a Zulu uprising in South Africa. This book is
an archetypal example of the early 20th-century adventure novel, and
proved very popular in its day.
Throughout the rest of the century, Prester John appeared sporadically
in pulp fiction and comics. For example, Marvel Comics has featured
"Prester John" in issues of 'Fantastic Four' and 'Thor'. He was a
significant supporting character in several issues of the DC Comics
fantasy series 'Arak: Son of Thunder'. Charles Williams, a member of
the 20th-century literary group the Inklings, made Prester John a
messianic protector of the Holy Grail in his 1930 novel 'War in
Heaven'. Prester John and his kingdom feature in two works by Umberto
Eco. The first is the 2000 novel 'Baudolino', in which the titular
protagonist enlists his friends to write the 'Letter of Prester John'
for his adoptive father Frederick Barbarossa, but it is stolen before
they can send it out. The second is in 'Serendipities: Language and
Lunacy' (1998) on the chapter 'The Force of Falsity' where Eco claims,
regardless of scholarly consensus, that the letter from Prester John
"... served as an alibi for the expansion of the Christian world..."
In July 1986 issues, Avram Davidson published both a nonfiction essay,
"Postscript on Prester John" in Asimov's Science Fiction (part of his
"Adventures in Unhistory" series, and later republished in his 1993
book of that title), and a fantasy short story featuring Prester
John's realm secretly still ruled by his descendant, "The King Across
the Mountains" in Amazing Stories (later republished in 'The
Adventures of Doctor Eszterhazy', 1990).
Heraldry
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Various attributed arms have been given to Prester John. The nave of
Canterbury Cathedral, which is adorned with heraldic bosses,
represents Prester John with 'Azure, the Saviour on the Cross or'. In
the 16th century, cartographer Abraham Ortelius produced a speculative
map of John's empire in Africa, featuring 'A lion rampant facing to
the sinister holding in its paws a quasi-Tau cross of full height'.
See also
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* Eldad ha-Dani
* Wandering Jew
Nonfiction
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* Assembly of the essential source texts and studies.
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External links
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*
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* [
https://scalar.usc.edu/works/prester-john/index The International
Prester John Project: How A Global Legend Was Created Across Six
Centuries]
* The Letter of Prester John
:*
[
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044035012046&view=1up&seq=91
Latin (interpolated)]
:*
[
https://scalar.usc.edu/works/prester-john/the-letter-of-prester-john
English (unabridged, interpolated)]
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prester_John_
