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by Wikipedia
"Preste" as the Emperor of Ethiopia,
enthroned on a map of East Africa in an atlas prepared for Queen Mary,
1558. (British Library)
The legends of
Prester John (also Presbyter John), popular in Europe from the 12th
through the 17th centuries, told of a Christian patriarch and king
said to rule over a Christian nation lost amidst the Muslims and pagans
in the Orient. Written accounts of this kingdom are variegated
collections of medieval popular fantasy. Reportedly a descendant of one
of the Three Magi, Prester John was said to be a generous ruler and a
virtuous man, presiding over a realm full of riches and strange
creatures, in which the Patriarch of Saint Thomas resided. His
kingdom contained such marvels as the Gates of Alexander and the
Fountain of Youth, and even bordered the Earthly Paradise. Among
his treasures was a mirror through which every province could be seen,
the fabled original from which derived the "speculum literature" of the
late Middle Ages and Renaissance, in which the prince's realms were
surveyed and his duties laid out. [1]
At first,
Prester John was imagined to be in India; tales 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 legend. After the coming of the
Mongols to the Western world, accounts placed the king in Central Asia,
and eventually Portuguese explorers convinced themselves they had found
him in Ethiopia. Prester John's kingdom was the object of a quest,
firing the imaginations of generations of adventurers, but remaining out
of reach. He was a symbol to European Christians of the Church's
universality, transcending culture and geography to encompass all
humanity, in a time when ethnic and interreligious tension made such a
vision seem distant.
Origin of the
legend
Prester John
from Hartmann Schedel's Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493
The stories of
Saint Thomas proselytizing in India, which date back to at least the 3rd
century, had obvious influence on the legend's development. Distorted
reports of the Assyrian Church of the East's movements in Asia had a
hand as well. This church, called "Nestorian" by Europeans who mistook
it as adhering to the teachings of Nestorius, gained a wide following in
the Eastern nations and engaged the Western imagination as an assemblage
both exotic and familiarly Christian. [2] Additionally, a kernel of
the tradition may have been drawn from Saint Irenaeus's quotes, recorded
by the ecclesiastical historian and bishop Eusebius, [3] on the shadowy
early Christian figure John the Presbyter of Syria, supposed in one
document to be the author of two of the Epistles of John. [4] The
martyr bishop Papias had been Irenaeus' teacher; Papias in turn had
received his apostolic tradition from John the Presbyter. Little links
this figure to the Prester John legend beyond the name, however.[5]
Whatever its
influences, the legend began in earnest in the early 12th century with
two 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 (1119 –
1124).[6] These visits apparently from the Saint Thomas Christians of
India cannot be confirmed, evidence of both being secondhand reports.
Later, the German chronicler Otto of Freising reports in his Chronicon
of 1145 that the previous year he had met a certain Hugh, bishop of
Jabala in Syria, at the court of Pope Eugene III in Viterbo. [7] [8]
Hugh was an emissary of Prince Raymond of Antioch seeking Western aid
against the Saracens after the Siege of Edessa, and his counsel incited
Eugene to call for the Second Crusade. He 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.
Otto's story
appears to be a muddled version of real events. In 1141, the Kara-Khitan
Khanate under Yelü Dashi defeated the Seljuk Turks near Samarkand. The
Seljuks ruled over Persia at the time and were the most powerful force
in the Muslim world, and the defeat at Samarkand weakened them
substantially. The Kara-Khitan were not Christians, however, and there
is no reason to suppose Yelü Dashi was ever called Prester John.
However, several vassals of the Kara-Khitan practiced Nestorian
Christianity, which may have contributed to the legend. [9] The idea
was introduced into the academic mainstream by Lev Gumilev in his
popular book about Prester John, "Searches for an Imaginary Kingdom"
(1970).
Whatever the
case may be, the defeat encouraged the Crusaders and inspired a notion
of deliverance from the East, and 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. [10]
Letter of
Prester John
Depiction of the Kerait ruler Wang
Khan as "Prester John" in "Le Livre des Merveilles", 15th century
No more of the
tale is recorded until about 1165 when copies of the Letter of Prester
John started spreading throughout Europe. An epistolary wonder tale
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 (1143 – 1180) by Prester John,
descendant of one of the Three Magi and King of India. [11] 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, a hundred 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 vastnesses of Central Asia.
The reports were
so far believed that Pope Alexander III sent a letter to Prester John
via his emissary Philip, his physician, on September 27, 1177. Of
Philip, nothing more is recorded, but it is most probable he did not
return with word from Prester John. [12] The Letter continued to
circulate, accruing more embellishments with each copy. In modern times
textual analysis of the letter's variant Hebrew versions have suggested
an origin among the Jews of northern Italy or Languedoc: several Italian
words remained in the Hebrew texts.[13] At any rate, the Letter’s
author was most likely a Westerner, though his or her purpose remains
unclear.
Mongol Empire
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 Khwarezmian Empire's control, and was moving on
towards Baghdad as well. This descendent of the great king who had
defeated the Seljuks in 1141 planned to reconquer and rebuild Jerusalem.
[14] [15]
The bishop of
Acre was right in the fact that a great King was conquering Persia;
however "King David", as it turned out, was no benevolent Nestorian
monarch nor even a Christian, but the pagan warlord Genghis Khan.
His reign took the story of Prester John in a new direction. The Mongol
Empire's rise gave Western Christians the opportunity to visit lands
they had never seen before, and they set out in large numbers along the
Empire's secure roads. Belief that a lost Nestorian kingdom existed
in the east, or that the Crusader states' salvation depended on an
alliance with an Eastern monarch, explains the numerous Christian
ambassadors and missionaries sent to the Mongols. These include the
Franciscan explorers Giovanni da Pian del Carpine in 1245 and William of
Rubruck in 1253.[16]
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 Keraits, given the Jin title Wang Khan Toghrul. Fairly
truthful chroniclers and explorers such as Marco Polo, [17]
Crusader-historian Jean de Joinville, [18] and the Franciscan voyager
Odoric of Pordenone [19] stripped Prester John of much of his
otherworldly veneer, portraying him as a more realistic earthly monarch.
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. [18] William of Rubruck says a
certain "Vut", lord of the Keraits and brother to the Nestorian King
John, was defeated by the Mongols under Genghis. Genghis made off with
Vut's daughter and married her to his son, and their union produced
Möngke, the Khan at the time William wrote.[20]
According to Marco
Polo's Travels, the war between the Prester and Genghis started when
Genghis, 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 triumphed and Prester John perished. [21]
The historical
figure behind these accounts, Toghrul, was in fact a Nestorian Christian
monarch defeated by Genghis. 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' children, the rift between them grew until war
broke out in 1203. Genghis captured Toghrul's daughter Sorghaghtani Beki
and married her to his son Tolui; they had several children, including
Möngke, Kublai, Hulagu, and Ariq Boke.
The major
characteristic of Prester John tales from this period is the kings'
portrayal not as an invincible hero, but merely one of many adversaries
defeated by the Mongols. But as the Mongol Empire collapsed, Europeans
began to shift away from the idea that Prester John had ever really been
a Central Asian king. [22] At any rate they had little hope 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 [23] [24] and Historia Trium Regum by John of Hildesheim,
[25] 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. [26]
Ethiopia
A map of
Prester John's kingdom as Ethiopia
Though Prester
John had been considered the ruler of India since the legend's
beginnings, "India" was a vague concept to the 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 Ethiopia was a powerful Christian nation, but contact
had been sporadic since the rise of Islam. Since no Prester John was to
be found in Asia, European imagination moved him around the blurry
frontiers of "India" until they found an appropriately powerful kingdom
for him in Ethiopia. [27]
Marco Polo had
discussed Ethiopia as a magnificent Christian land [28] and Orthodox
Christians had a legend that the nation would one day rise up and invade
Arabia, [29] but they did not place Prester John there. Then in 1306
thirty 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. [30] The first clear description of an African Prester
John is in the Mirabilia Descripta of Dominican missionary Jordanus,
around 1329. [31] 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; by the time the 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. [32]
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 council prelates insisted on referring to their monarch as
Prester John. They tried to explain that nowhere in Zara Yaqob's list of
regnal names did that title occur. "No matter," says Robert
Silverberg, author of The Realm of Prester John. "Prester John was what
Europe wanted to call the King of Ethiopia, and Prester John is what
Europe called him." [33] Some writers who used the title did
understand it was not an indigenous honorific; for instance Friar
Jordanus seems to use it simply because his readers would have been
familiar with it, not because he thought it authentic. [34]
While Ethiopia has
been claimed for many years as the origin of the Prester John legend,
most modern experts believe the legend was simply adapted to fit that
nation in the same fashion it had been projected upon Wang Khan and
Central Asia during the 13th century. Modern scholars find nothing about
the Prester 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 the story was not widely known there until well after
European contact. When the Czech Franciscan Remedius Prutky asked
Emperor Iyasu II about this identification in 1751, Prutky states the
man was "astonished, and told me that the kings of Abyssinia had never
been accustomed to call themselves by this name." [35] In a footnote to
this passage, Richard Pankhurst opines that this is apparently the first
recorded statement by an Ethiopian monarch about this tale, and they
were likely ignorant of the title until Prutky's inquiry. [36]
End of the
legend
When 17th century
academics like the German orientalist Hiob Ludolf proved that there was
no actual native connection between Prester John and the Ethiopian
monarchs, [37] the fabled king left the maps for good. But the legend
had affected several hundred years of European and world history,
directly and indirectly, by encouraging Europe's explorers,
missionaries, scholars and treasure hunters.
Literary
references
Though the
prospect of finding Prester John had long since vanished, the tales
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, [38] and in 1910 British 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. The book was
popular, and exists as an excellent example of the early 20th century
adventure novel. Perhaps due to Buchan's work, Prester John appeared in
pulp fiction and comics throughout the century. For example, Marvel
Comics has featured "Prester John" in issues of Fantastic Four and Thor.
Charles
Williams, a prominent 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. The Prester and his kingdom also
figure prominently in Umberto Eco's 2000 novel Baudolino, in which the
titular protagonist enlists his friends to write the Letter of Prester
John for his stepfather Frederick Barbarossa, but it is stolen before
they can send it out. Eventually Baudolino and company determine to
visit the priest's wonderful kingdom which turns out to be everything
and nothing like they expected.
Notes
^ See Speculum in
medieval titles like the Speculum maius of Vincent de Beauvais, the
Mirrour of the Blessed Lyf of Iesu Christ (about 1400) and A Mirror for
Magistrates (1559), and other works.
^ Silverberg, p. 20
^ Eusebius. Historia Ecclesiastica, book III, xxxix, 4.
^ According to the 5th century Decretum Gelasianum.
^ Silverberg, pp. 35–39.
^ Silverberg, pp. 29–34.
^ Halsall, Paul (1997). "Otto of Freising: The Legend of Prester John".
Internet Medieval Sourcebook. Retrieved June 20, 2005.
^ Silverberg, pp. 3–7
^ Silverberg, pp. 12–13
^ Silverberg, p. 8
^ Silverberg, pp. 40–73.
^ Silverberg, pp. 58–60
^ Bar-Ilan, Meir (1995). "Prester John: Fiction and History". In History
of European Ideas, volume 20 (1-3), pp. 291-298. Retrieved June 20,
2005.
^ Jacques de Vitry; Huygens, R. B. C. (Ed.) (1970). Lettres de Jacques
de Vitry. Leiden.
^ Silverberg, pp. 71–73.
^ Silverberg, p. 86.
^ Polo, Marco; Latham, Ronald (translator) (1958). The Travels, pp.
93–96. New York: Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-044057-7.
^ a b Jean de Joinville; Geffroy de Villehardouin; and Shaw, Margaret R.
B. (translator) (1963). Chronicles of the Crusades. New York: Penguin.
ISBN 0-14-044124-7.
^ Odoric of Pordenone; Yule, Henry (translator); Chiesa, Paolo
(introduction) (December 15, 2001). The Travels of Friar Odoric. Grand
Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. ISBN
0-8028-4963-6.
^ William of Rubruck; Jackson, Peter; Ruysbroeck, Willem van; Morgan,
David (editors) (1990). The Mission of Friar William of Rubruck. London:
Hakluyt Society. ISBN 0-904180-29-8.
^ Marco Polo, pp. 93–96.
^ Silverberg, p. 139.
^ Halsall, Paul (March 1996). "Mandeville on Prester John". Internet
Medieval Sourcebook. Retrieved June 20, 2005.
^ Mosely, C. W. R. D. (1983). The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, pp.
167–171. New York: Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-044435-1.
^ John of Hildesheim (1997). The Story of the Three Kings. Neumann
Press. ISBN 0-911845-68-2.
^ Wolfram von Eschenbach; Hatto, A. T. (1980). Parzival, p. 408. New
York: Penguin. ISBN 0-14-044361-4.
^ Silverberg, pp. 163–164.
^ Marco Polo, pp. 303–307.
^ Silverberg, pp. 176–177.
^ Silverberg, pp. 164–165.
^ Jordanus, Mirabilia, chapter VI (2).
^ Silverberg, pp. 188–189.
^ Silverberg, p. 189.
^ Silverberg, p. 166–167.
^ Arrowsmith-Brown, p. 115.
^ Arrowsmith-Brown, p. 115 n 24.
^ Ludolf, Hiob (1681). Historia Aethiopica.
^ Shakespeare, William (1600). Much Ado About Nothing, act II, scene 1.
References
Arrowsmith-Brown,
J. H. (translator), Prutky's travels to Ethiopia and other countries.
London: Hakluyt Society, 1991. The section concerning Prester John is
pp. 115-117.
Wilhelm Baum, Die Verwandlungen des Mythos vom Reich des Priesterkönigs
Johannes, Klagenfurt 1999
Charles Beckingham, Prester John, the Mongols and the Ten Lost Tribes,
Aldershot 1996, ISBN 0-86078-553-X — Assembly of the essential source
texts and studies.
Umberto Eco, Baudolino ISBN 0-15-602906-5 — Baudolino and his ragtag
friends engage in typical scholastic debates of the period, trying to
determine the dimensions of Solomon's Temple and the location of the
Earthly Paradise. And when the Emperor needs support for his claims to a
saintly lineage, who but Baudolino can craft the perfect letter of
homage from the legendary Prester John, Holy (and wholly fictitious)
Christian King of the East?
Nicholas Jubber, The Prester Quest, Doubleday, 2005, ISBN 0-385-60702-4
Marco Polo, The Travels of Marco Polo, which tells much of Prester
John's supposed history, written in 1298. See especially Book I,
Chapters 46-50, 59; and Book II, Chapters 38-39.
Robert Silverberg, The Realm of Prester John, Ohio University Press,
1996 (paperback edition) ISBN 1-84212-409-9
Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science: During the
First Thirteen Centuries of Our Era, Volume II, pp. 236-245, Columbia
University Press, 1923, New York and London, Hardcover, 1036 pages ISBN
0-231-08795-0
Michael Uebel, Ecstatic Transformation: On the Uses of Alterity in the
Middle Ages, Palgrave/Macmillan, 2005. ISBN 1-4039-6524-2. Contains
discussion of the Letter of Prester John and full English translation.
Robert Anthony Vitale, editor, Edition and study of the "Letter of
Prester John to the Emperor Manuel of Constantinople": The Anglo-Norman
rhymed version, College Park, Maryland, 1975
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