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• 1 2015-07-16T09:28:20-07:00 Avant La Lettre 21 plain 2021-07-18T14:55:37-07:00
  The well-rehearsed beginnings of Prester John ground the legend in rumor, hope, and prophecy. As Vsevolod Slessarev has shown, the legend can be traced to the earliest written accounts describing an Indian Christian visiting medieval Europe. Two Latin texts, both describing an event taking place in 1122, give an account of a certain “Patriarch John,” hailing from India, who travels to the Pope early that year. Both texts (the anonymous De adventu and a letter from Odo of Rheims) give an account of the vast wealth and power of Christians who guarded the shrine of St. Thomas.
  
  Although these early twelfth century texts create the expectation of a powerful eastern Christian king, it is with Otto of Friesing that the legend truly begins. Inspired by civil unrest in Germany and written shortly after the fall of Edessa in 1144, Otto’s Historia de duabus civitatibus (1146) furnishes an anecdote a colleague had recently heard about a Nestorian Christian prince, Iohannes. 
  
  Otto describes this figure as a morally pure, militaristically capable Eastern (Nestorian) Christian king claiming descent from the Magi. This Iohannes had recently conquered Persia and headed West to assist crusaders in their defense of the Holy Land. Unfortunately, Otto relates, a flooded Tigris River prevented him from aiding his Latin Christian brethren.
  
  In addition to expanding the account offered by the two earlier twelfth-century texts, Otto's account corroborates a tradition of Eastern Christian potentates echoed in early medieval texts like the Historia Ecclesiastica of Eusebius of Caesarea. Although the anecdote Otto records spawned the centuries-long belief in an Eastern potentate capable of uniting Christendom, the initial account of an Eastern anti-Islamic leader was later revealed to refer to the deeds of the Qara Khitai, a nomadic Chinese tribe descending from Manchuria.
  
  This early account of the legend can be viewed as a reflection of the era that produced it: unstable leadership (four popes in the decade), the ascendancy of the Cistercians, the first Latin translation of the Qur'an (1143), the fall of Edessa (1144), the unsuccessful Second Crusade that resulted therefrom (1145).
  
  The cultural context surrounding Otto's text reflects much of this. After all, Otto was also uncle to Frederick Barbarossa, the emperor (1150-90) who, at the time of Prester John’s advent, was engaged in a power struggle with Pope Alexander III (1159-81). In 1160, Frederick chose to recognize "antipope" Victor IV over Alexander III; as a result, Alexander excommunicated the Emperor. 
  
  The crusading support Prester John voiced likely helped assuage fears that the West might require outside assistance in order to maintain the recovered sites of Christian history.

   

  These early references set the stage for the Letter of Prester John, the subject of the page that follows. 
• 1 2016-07-25T20:22:32-07:00 Three Magi 12 image_header 2024-01-19T16:21:11-08:00 Prester John models a form of leadership that the West lacked, but his connection to the Magi offers a direct connection to the court of Frederick I and represents one of the legend’s key moments of literary invention.
  
  In 1158, one year after Otto completed his Historia, Frederick Barbarossa “found” three bodies in Milan, which were verified to be those of the Magi. Prior to this moment, little was known about these peripheral figures. Prior to the twelfth century, interest in the Magi was primarily restricted to the iconography of the Nativity. Little was known about these Eastern figures. 
  
  

  Since their original appearance in the New Testament's various accounts of Jesus' birth, the Magi had subsequently undergone an imaginative transformation. In Matthew and Luke, the three wise men appear to be no more than Persian astrologers, but because the Old Testament books of Isaiah and the Psalms speak of foreign kings paying homage to the Messiah, by as early as the sixth century both popular and learned Christian traditions had promoted the Magi to the status of kings.   
                                                      (Baldridge, 9)
                                                                   

  
  Just as a competent Eastern Christian priest-king helped strengthen Frederick’s own position in the West, so too did a materially verifiable trace of the Magi enhance the Emperor’s claim to authority. The relics of these Magi were transferred to Cologne in 1164 and Barbarossa’s anti-pope canonized Charlemagne at Aachen one year later. Thus, in a period of two years, the Emperor helped create a cult of Christian kingship by creating two separate shrines to secular power. When, during such chaos, the Prester John Letter appears, it is quite curious that John’s existence is described in terms of his genealogical relation to the very same Magi whose Western significance was actively being codified in Germany.
  
  Through Biblical commentaries (and a shared, misunderstood geography), the Magi had also become associated with the Apostle Thomas. As Bernard Hamilton ​​​​​​​notes (p. 237), "[m]ost educated people in twelfth-century western Europe believed that the Apostles had literally carried out the Lord’s command and preached the Gospel to all nations," with Thomas, that figure most tethered to Prester John, charged with India and other parts East. Later John of Hildesheim makes this connection between the Magi and the Apostle Thomas explicit, noting that the former were converted by the latter, and when the Magi died they selected a "Prester John" to rule over their lands.