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The International Prester John Project: How A Global Legend Was Created Across Six Centuries

Alternative Forms of Prester John

Alternate Names for Prester John: Presbyter Iohannes, Patriarch John, King John, Prete Iane, Prete Ianni, Presto Giovanni, Presta Jani, Preste Juan, Preste-Jean, Prestre Johan, Preste Gian, Preter Johan, Presbytero-Johanides, Tsar-Priest John, Prete Ianne, Prester Cohan, Preste Cuan, Johannes Africanus, Bel Gian, Iohannes Belul, Ioannes Encoe, Praeciosus Iohannes, Preste Ioam, Belul Jan, Jonanam, Presbyter Bedigian, Prestigian, Precious John, Senapo

Alternate Titles: King David, King George, King of the Abexi, King of Tangut, Kofar al-Turak, Keeper of the Grail, Dalai Lama, Emperor of Catayo (China), King Voddomaradeg, King Ogané, Christien de Sentour

See also the list of names of Prester John's realm.

Contents of this tag:

This page is referenced by:

Avant La Lettre
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.
The Travels of Benjamin of Tudela Masa'ot Binyamin (1164-73)

Benjamin of Tudela, who traveled between 1159 and 1173, ventured as far as Basrah, Iraq. In his Travels, which were recorded in Hebrew, he mentions a powerful Eastern king called Kofar al-Turak whom some readers mistook for the Prester John of the Letter and Otto’s chronicle.

There exist other connections between Benjamin's narrative and the Letter, including a mention of Daniel's tomb while Benjamin of Tudela was in Susa, as well as a mention of the Lighthouse of Alexandria, which Benjamin describes as having a giant mirror similar to that described in Interpolation C of the Letter (Silverberg, 67).

Due perhaps to Benjamin’s narrative, some of the earliest copies of the Letter are in Hebrew, a feature of the legend that has also linked the figure of Prester John to the enigmatic tradition of the Sefer Eldad.

Read Benjamin's Travels online.

For more on Benjamin and the Itinerary

From Baring-Gould (37):
Benjamin of Tudela… traveled in the East between the years of 1159-1173, the last being the date of his death. He wrote an account of his travels, and gives in it some information with regard to a mythical Jew king, who reigned in the utmost splendour over a realm inhabited by Jews alone, situate somewhere in the midst of a desert of vast extent.”
From Silverberg (67):
The third interpolation [of the Letter of Prester John] has Prester John declare that each year he goes into the desert to pay homage to the tomb of Daniel, a figure of some mystical significance with a considerable apocryphal literature of his own. In the late twelfth century the Jewish traveler Benjamin of Tudela had been shown a tomb said to be Danel’s while he was in the Persian city of Susa, and this, possibly, led to the linking of Daniel and Prester John.
Qara Khitai The Kara Khitai (known also as the Black Cathay) was established out of the ruins of the Chinese Liao Dynasty when, in 1124, some 200 followers of the Khitan imperial family escaped into Central Asia with their leader, Yeh-lü Ta-shih, fleeing from the Jurchen who had begun to make war on the Khitan in 1115. Within a few years, Yeh-lü Ta-shih successfully enlisted the support of a number of Turkish tribes in the area and established a formidable army.

The group's victory over the Seljuk Turks in 1141 was misunderstood in the Historia de duabus civitatibus as the deeds of an Eastern Christian potentate capable of uniting all of Christendom. This anecdote turned out not to refer to utopic Christians at all (nor Christians of any stripe), but to the Qara Khitai, led by the Buddhist (not Nestorian) Yeh-lü Ta-shih.

More specifically, Hugh's story refers to Yeh-lü Ta-shi and the Qara Khitai's 1141 defeat of Seljuk king Sanjar and his army at the Battle of Qatwan near Samarkand (not Ecbatana, as Hugh has it). Given the timing and location of this event, combined with the fact that the Qara Khitai were nominally Nestorian, it is reasonable to conclude that this event provided historians with a possible explanation for the beginning of the Prester John legend.

Traces of this historical battle also appear in Benjamin of Tudela's account of Kofar al-Turak, another early influence on the legend of Prester John. According to Brooks (pg. 77):
"Of interest to the discussion of the legend of Prester John is a passage in which Benjamin described a powerful king in the East. According to the narrative, the king’s name was Kofar-al-Turak, and this Asian king successfully destroyed the king of Persia. Benjamin claimed that Kofar-al-Turak’s forces 'slew many of the Persian army, and the king of Persia fled with only a few followers to his own country.' The account seems contemporaneous with the 1141 defeat by the Kara-Khitai of the Kara-Khanids, who were nominally vassals of the Seljuks. The idea that the forces of Islam could be defeated by conquerors from the East – especially if they were fellow Christians – no doubt was welcome news in Europe. The series of twelfth and thirteenth century papal and royal embassies to the Turkic nomads known collectively as the Mongols was in part due to the credence placed in the account of Benjamin of Tudela."
History of the Three Kings
Historia Trium Regum (b. 1375)

John of Hildesheim's Historia Trium Regum links Prester John, St. Thomas, and the Three Magi in a single text for the first time. It was originally written in Latin– though no extant copies survive. There exists an early English translation from which Brewer excerpts the relevant Prester John material

As Hamilton (p. 181, n. 63) notes, Hildesheim "claimed to have based his work on French translations made at Acre of 'caldayce et hebrayce scriptos' brought there from India." Hamilton also mentions that Hildesheim likely consulted the collected writings concerning the Magi housed in Cologne's cathedral. Numerous manuscripts containing the English translation survive, the earliest which date to the first half of the fifteenth century.

The dating of the original text is difficult, especially because its authorship was ascribed to John of Hildesheim a century after his death by Johannes Trithemius (1462-1516). Hamilton refers to the text as an early thirteenth century text, but it seems safer to date the text as written before the death of John of Hildesheim, which occurred in 1375.

The Historia Trium Regum provides a cohesive story that links the historical Magi with the current political reality in Europe, which includes the legend of Prester John. Hildesheim based his story on the Gospel accounts of the three kings as well as the apocryphal commentary on Matthew known as the Opus Imperfectum (5th century).

Some time after returning to the East after visiting the infant Christ, these kings (Melchior, Balthasar, and 'Jasper') are converted to Christianity by the Apostle Thomas, who served as the. When Thomas died, these Magi then selected an heir to serve as spiritual Patriarch of the Indies. They also elect a secular ruler to act as rex et sacerdos, and they call this leader "Priest John," so-called in reverence to John the Evangelist. In the narrative, Prester John, here called "Preter Johan" the secular ruler of India, rules in tandem with a “Patriarch Thomas":
Than these thre kynges archebysshoppes and other bysshoppes of comyn [common] assent of all the people chose an other man that was dyscrete to be lord and gouerner of all the people in temporalte. And for this cause that yf ony [any] man wolde ryse or tempte agaynst the patryarke Thomas or agaynst that lawe of god yf so were that the patryarke myght not rule hym by the spyrytuall lawe, than sholde this lorde of temporall lawe chastyse hym by his power. So this lorde sholde not be called a kynge or emperour, but he sholde be called Preter Johan. And the cause is this. For the thre kynges were preestes and of theyr possessyons they made hym lorde. For there is no degree so hygh as preesthode is in all the worlde, nor so worthy. Also he is called Preter Johan in worshyp of saynt Johan the euangelyst [the evangelist] that was a preest the moost specyall chosen and loued of god almyghty. Whan all this was done these thre kynges assygned the patryarke Thomas and Preter Johan, that one to be chefe gouernour in spyrytualte, and that other to be chefe lorde in temporalte for euemlore. And so these same lordes and gouemours of Inde ben [are] called unto these dayes. (qtd. in Brewer, p. 209)

Thus Prester John becomes a title, an idea echoed in Parzival and Younger Titurel, and an idea that anticpates the Prester John as Dalai Lama narrative path.

The narrative also extrapolates on the Magi legends, which had circulated around Germany since the time of the original Prester John Letter.

It is also notable that Hildesheim refers to Prester John's son, King David, as an enemy to the Mongols.

For more on the connection between the Prester John and Magi traditions, see Hamilton.

Read an early English translation online.
The Travels of Marco Polo
Devisement du monde (c. 1298)

The Devisement (or Livres des merveilles du monde) remains one of the most well-known narratives to survive the Middle Ages. Dictated by an imprisoned Marco Polo to fellow inmate and veteran romancer Rustichello da Pisa, the book records– and sometimes embellishes– the travels of Polo (along with his father and uncle) to the court of Kublai Khan in the late-thirteenth century.

Although written in French, the text was quickly translated into Italian and Latin. More than one hundred manuscripts survive, each slightly different from the others. The Travels became a medieval best seller, even though the imaginative flourishes of copyists makes it difficult to determine what the original text might have looked like.

Marco Polo's Travels features the figure of Prester John in a number of chapters (64-68, 74, 109-110, 139, 200). Polo, following the Dominican missionaries that visited the Mongol Empire before him, relates a tale of Prester John that demystifies the legendary qualities of the letter all the while testifying to the historical existence of an eastern Christian prince.

For Marco Polo, Prester John (or Un-khan) was a powerful prince who ruled over the Tartars (Mongols), but was overthrown, in a battle Polo himself describes, by Genghis/Chinggis Khan. Later, in the mid-14th century, the imaginary travels of Sir John Mandeville will crib from Polo's now-canonical observations about the east.

Silverberg (p. 132) puts Marco Polo's reduction of the Prester John legend succinctly:
For Marco, Prester John was a khan of the steppes, and he was dead, and his descendent of the sixth generation, King George, ruled the insignificant principality of Tenduc as Kublai Khan's vassal.

Even if Polo's narrative demystified the legend of Prester John, its romance narrative style, combined with its fascinating insights, some of which related tangentially to the Prester John legend (including visiting the shrine of St. Thomas), did not ultimately do much to diminish European interest in Prester John.

Background on Polo’s expedition.
See Polo’s route.

Brewer edits and translates the Prester John portions of Polo's travels (pp. 171-188).
Silverberg excerpts the three mentions of Prester John in the Travels.
More on the travels and their veracity.
Orlando Furioso
In Orlando Furioso, first printed in Ferrara in 1516, Ariosto delves into the Matter of France, updating the stories of Charlemagne and his paladins at war with the Saracens with more worldly and whimsical considerations, include a foray to an Ethiopia drawn from the tales of Prester John. In other words, though the text cites as its source the twelfth-century "Song of Roland," Furioso updates the story to suit the imaginiative interests of the time and to satisfy his patron Ippolito Este, Duke of Ferrara. The text has been cited as an influence on the work of Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, and John Milton, among other canonical early modern writers.

Orlando Furioso features an Ethiopian priest-king called Senapo/Senapus (a corrupted translation of Abdes-Salib, the Arabic title for the Ethiopian king) who rules over an immensely wealthy kingdom and controls the flow of the Nile River—the very river that dashed crusader hopes during the Fifth Crusade.

Its story of the English Knight Astolfo (a potential avatar of Mandeville, according to Niayesh) and his journey on a hippogriff across North Africa from west to east and thence to Ethiopia appeared at the appropriate moment to sustain interest in this imaginary land. In Canto XXXIII, Astolfo rescues Senapo, who has been rendered blind after trying to discover the Earthly Paradise by seeking out the source of the Nile River.

Ariosto’s is a highly satirical text, his inclusion of the legend shows how, even in the sixteenth century, writers were still attempting to create a plausible backstory to unite the imaginative interest in the legend with a history from which he may have emerged.

Interestingly, the character of Senapo reemerges in Gerusalemme Liberata, a 1581 epic of the Crusades credited to Torquato Tasso.

An excerpt from the William Stewart Rose translation of the expanded version, first published in 1532, follows:
In Aethiopia’s realm Senapus reigns,
Whose sceptre is the cross; of cities brave,
Of men, of gold possest, and broad domains,
Which the Red Sea’s extremest waters lave.
A faith well nigh like ours that king maintains,
Which man from his primaeval doom may save.
Here, save I err in what their rites require,
The swarthy people are baptized with fire.
Ariosto offers a description of the castle and explains the situation:
The soldan, king of the Egyptian land,
Pays tribute to this sovereign, as his head,
They say, since having Nile at his command
He may divert the stream to other bed.
Hence, with its district upon either hand,
Forthwith might Cairo lack its daily bread.
Senapus him his Nubian tribes proclaim;
We Priest and Prester John the sovereign name.

Rogers (pp. 106-107), on Senapo and his connection to Prester John:
[The story's] astonishing accuracy in detail can only be explained by the supposition of meticulous study on the part of its author. For Astolfo’s route and for the name ‘Senapo,’ Ariosto followed a fourteenth-century Genoese tradition. Senapo, as such competent scholars as Cerulli and Crawford affirm, is a deformation of the regnal name of an emperor whose reign extended from 1314 to 1344: ‘Amda Seyon I. His regnal name of Gabra Masqal (in Arabic ‘Abd al-salib) meant ‘slave of the cross.’ The Arabic version appeared as ‘Senap’ on the Angelino Dulcert world map of 1339. Years after publication of Ariosto’s poem, Tasso in the Gerusalemme Liberata (Jerusalem Delivered) reintroduced Senapo, and Alexander Cunningham Robertson thus presented him to English readers:

Senapo once filled Ethiopia’s throne,
And still, perhaps, endures his prosperous reign:
This potentate the laws of Mary’s Son
Observes, and these observe the swarthy men
He rules…

E-text at Sacred Texts.
Chronicon Syriacum
Makhtbhanuth Zabhne (c. 1258-1286)

Bar-Hebraeus's Chronicle, written in Syriac, aspires to narrate world history from Creation until the current day, in two books (concerning secular and sacred history, respectively).

In the Chronicon Syriacum, which concerns civil and political history, Bar-Hebraeus records an occurrence in the early eleventh century that connects to the legend of Prester John. According to the Chronicon the Mongol Keraits of the East Steppe adopted Nestorian Christianity in 1007. This is significant insofar as the early European legends speaking of a powerful Indian prince John cast this figure too as Nestorian and it was not known at that time whether or not Nestorian Christianity had spread that far east.

Bar-Hebraeus then goes on to mention that it was a King David who, as chief of these same Keraits, was defeated in 1202 by Genghis Khan, who was once King John's vassal. The Syriac documentation of this events matches those of western authors, including the narrative of Marco Polo's journey. There, however, King David/Prester John is known as Ong Khan.

From Silverberg:
How are we to account for William’s [of Rubruck] linking of Togrul and Kuchluk the Naiman (‘King or Presbyter John’)? They were in fact not brothers, nor of the same tribe, nor of the same generation, nor could Togril, who died in 1203, possibly have succeeded to the throne of Kuchluk, who outlived him by sixteen years. A clue to the source of his error can be found in the Chronicon Syriacum of the Syrian cleric Gregory Abulfaraj Bar-Hebraeus, who lived from 1226 to 1286: speaking of the conversion of the Keraits to Christianity, he notes that in the time of the Mongol dominion they were ruled by an ‘Ung Khan who is called Malik Yuhanna,’ that is, ‘King John.’

See Brewer (pp. 169-170) for the English translation of the account of Prester John in the Chronicon.
European Contact with the Mongol Empire On his pilgrimage from Spain to the Holy Land, Benjamin of Tudela (c. 1165) described an encounter with powerful Eastern king, called Kofar-al-Turak, increasing Western interest in the Mongols but hardly shedding light on the Prester John legend. By 1241 groups of Mongol warriors had traveled across the Asian Steppe and entered into Poland, Hungary, and the Danube Valley. Half a decade later, eastbound travelers returned to the Latin West with even more first-hand intelligence about the Mongols whom the crusading advocates of the previous century had fleshed out into the fiction of Prester John.

Already in 1245, Innocent IV had sent Franciscan John of Plano Carpini to the East to deliver letters to the Mongol khan, inviting the khan to embrace Christianity. The resulting journey, the most widely known of all early Western accounts with Mongols, describes “Ethiopians” from the lands of Prester John: here John has already lost his place at the head of Eastern politics.

Prester John plays no part in John's mission to guarantee cooperation from the Great Khan. Later narratives, including those of Ascelin of Lombardia (1245-48) , André de Longjumeau (1249), Joinville’s Chronicle, and John Mandeville allude to a union between these Mongols and Prester John. John of Monte Corvino (c. 1294) brought back a more reliable account of Indian Christians than had been circulating previously in the West but does not explicitly mention Prester John. Other travelers, including William of Rubruck (c. 1253), Marco Polo (c. 1269-99), and Odoric of Pordenone (1320s) attempt to rationalize the assumptions regarding a kingdom of Prester John as fantastical extrapolations of minor Eastern truths.

Even when these writers undercut some of the splendor of John’s kingdom, they keep him alive figuratively and literally. To ally Prester John with the Mongols may seem like a threat to the legend’s persistence, but in fact these travelers were updating the legend of Prester John by integrating John into the genealogy of an Eastern people foremost in the minds of Western leaders since the mid-thirteenth century. Even as some writers describe the legend as an exaggeration, their authority is restricted by the fact that none of these travelers claimed to have met the enigmatic figure.
Il Trattato di Terra Santa e dell’Oriente Il Trattato di Terra Santa e dell’Oriente (1485)

This text, written around 1485 but unpublished until 1900, narrates the travels of Francesco Suriano, as recorded by Sister Catherine Guarnieri da Osimo. Among the places the group travels to is Ethiopia, in which they find a cosmopolitan court of Prester John populated with a number of nobles from Europe and the Holy Land:
"Having crossed the river [the Nile] we traveled for ten days and reached the court of the great king Prester John, which was in a place called Barrar. In which court we found ten Italians, men of good repute, viz. Master Gabriel, a Neapolitan, Master Jacomo di Garzoni, a Venetian, Master Pietro da Monte from Venice, Master Philyppo, a Burgundian, Master Consalvo, a Catalan, Master Ioane da Fiesco, a Genoese, and Master Lyas of Beirut [?], who went there with papal letters. All these had been there for twenty-five years. But since 1480 there had gone there Master Zuan Darduino, nephew of Nicolo da Ie Carte, a Venetian, my dear friend and an honest man of good repute, Cola di Rosi, a Roman, who had changed his name to Zorzi, Matheo of Piedmont, Nicolò, a Mantuan, Master Nicolò Branchalion, a Venetian, Brother Ioane aforesaid from Calabria and Batista da Imola. I asked these men what they had gone to do in this strange land. They replied saying that their intention was to seek jewels and precious stones. But since the king did not allow them to return they were all ill content, although they were all well rewarded and provided for by the king, each in accordance with his rank." (qtd. in Silverberg, 190)
Silverberg notes that of the many names mentioned above, only painter Nicolò Branchalion (Brancaleone) was confirmed to have been in Ethiopia by other sources, having been commissioned by Emperor Baeda Maryam I (successor to Zara Yakob) to paint several significant, controversial devotional works in local churches.

Suriano's description of Barrar itself not only pales in comparison to the expectations of what a Prester John kingdom might look like but also appears to go out of its way to diminish the architectural and cultural accomplishments of Ethiopia. Suriano claims that the only "buildings" that exist in Barrar are the churches built to memorialize its emperors, and though the text notes that the population is substantial and willing to fight to defend Christendom, he claims that the soldiers lack the weaponry to competitively engage in modern combat.

In chapter 34 of the text, Suriano also mentions the epistle sent Paulo de Chanedo to Prester John (Prete Iane).

Read on Google Books.
Letter of Prester John to Emperor Charles IV
Letter of Prester John to Emperor Charles IV (c. 1370)

This letter, apparently produced in the same general era as the alleged 1306 Ethiopian embassy to Europe, exhorts the Holy Roman emperor to join the Ethiopian king in a crusade against Islam. Although it deviates from the standard Letter of Prester John, it is, like its predecessor, almost certainly a forgery.

Published by Leone del Prete in 1857, the Italian text, the manuscript of which is still housed in Florence, has been used as indirect evidence of the historicity of that 1306 embassy. Within the letter, the author makes reference to "other times we sent you an embassy and we did not receive an answer," which scholars have linked to the 1306 embassy. The letter's author signs the text "Re Voddomaradeg figliulo del ecclentissimo Re d'Etiopia, di Saionio, di Tobbia, di Nubbia, di terra di Bettesi e di Moritoro, e Preste Gian Re dell'India maggiore e minore."

Salvadore (pp. 602-3) describes the context surrounding the anonymous letter:
“The only other source relevant for this first Ethiopian expedition to Italy is a letter allegedly sent by Prester John to Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV (1316-1378). The letter was certainly a European forgery; nevertheless, it indirectly confirms that the Ethiopian emperor Wedem Ra’ad, known in Renaissance Europe as the author, signed it as ‘King Voddomaradeg, son of the most excellent King of Ethiopia.’ Voddomaradeg represents quite a syllabic stretch from Wedem Ra’ad, but it confirms that the emperor had made himself known in Europe, most likely through the mission that reached Avignon via Rome and Genoa. What persuaded Wedem Ra’ad to send representatives to Europe? Had he been inspired by the Portuguese reconquista that had been completed in 1249 and whose echoes had reached Jerusalem and ultimately the Ethiopian Highlands? The encounter seems to be the first of a series of attempts that Ethiopian rulers made to establish formal contact with European elites on the basis of a common Christian identity. The quest for distant allies was not an Ethiopian fantasy, but rather the consequence of a desire that was reciprocated on the northern shores of the Mediterranean Sea."

Read the Italian edition of the letter.

See also Kaplan, 51-62.
Ong Khan
Ong Khan, alternately known as Unc Khan, Toghril, Tooril Khan, Unach, King David, and King John was the Khereid ruler in the late 12th/early 13th centuries. The title ong is the Mongol form of the Chinese honorific wang meaning 'universal' (Hamilton, p. 248).

Reportedly a Nestorian Christian– although according to Bar Hebraeus' Chronicon Syriacum, a lapsed one– "Unach" Khan was killed by his blood brother and subordinate, the soon-to-be Genghis Khan, who was acting on rumors that a jealous Unc was planning to kill him.

This is the same figure known in other mid-thirteenth century texts as King David, son of Prester John.

Ong Khan figures in a number of Prester John narratives, including the Historia Tartarum (c. 1246), William of Rubruck's Itinerarium (c. 1253), the Chronicon Syriacum, Marco Polo's Travels,
Mirror of History
Speculum Historiale (1256-1269)

One of the great encyclopedic works of the Middle Ages, Vincent of Beauvais' Speculum contains a large chunk of the otherwise lost 1246 account of Simon of St. Quentin's and Ascelin of Lombardia's mission to the Mongols in 1245.

From Guzman (footnote 11 on pg 233):
"Vincent, copying from Simon of Saint-Quentin, records the popular rumor that Chinggis Khan married the daughter of King David, son of Prester John, and that the mother of Ogodei Khan was thus a Christian. This and the factors mentioned above led to numerous rumors of the Khan’s imminent conversion.”
To read the relevant portion of Vincent's Speculum Historiale in an English translation, see Book 32, chapters 2-52.
André Longjumeau André de Longjumeau was a Dominican missionary who led two missions to Güyük Khan in the mid-thirteenth century. His reports are a mixture of fact and fiction-- though William of Rubruck claimed that everything he heard from André de Longjumeau regarding the east was true.

André recorded his journey, which survives only in fragments collected by Joinville's Life of Saint Louis. There André describes a meeting with a “David,” a Kerait chieftain, whom he concludes has allied with a Mongol general in order to attack Muslims in Syria. For more on this journey, see Silverberg (pp. 105-39).
Path Four : 1461-1520 AD Prester John and the Project of European Colonialism

While Age of Discovery figures such as Henry the Navigator, the Christopher Columbus, and Duarte Lopes allude to John’s kingdom as a guarantor of Eastern riches. A related history of John’s kingdom in Ethiopia/Abyssinia held Western attention through the European exploration of Africa. However, in this era the accounts of Prester John are more varied than of any other era. Here Prester John serves both as historical and literary figure, as both magnificent ruler and overblown myth.

In 1482, Francisco Suriano, in his Iter, mentions arriving at the court of Prester John, a primitive place in which ten Italians were currently living, and paints a picture of mud huts and simple churches; Vasco da Gama’s Roteiro mentions the desire to make contact with Prester John; in 1499, Italian poet Guiliano Dati, composes a pair of poems on on Prester John (“Treatise on the Supreme Prester John, Pope and Emperor of India” and “Ethiopia and Second Song of India”); in 1500, a letter from “Johannes Africanus” materializes, detailing how Prester John, once mighty and powerful, is now a humble steward and laborer (guilty of pride).

In Orlando Furioso, Ariosto features an Ethiopian priest-king called Senapo who rules over an immensely wealthy kingdom and controls the flow of the Nile River—the very river that dashed crusader hopes during the Fifth Crusade. Although Ariosto’s is a highly satirical text, his inclusion of the legend shows how, even in the sixteenth century, writers were still attempting to create a plausible backstory to unite the imaginative interest in the legend with a history from which he may have emerged. John retains his historical place independent of the romance landscape he also inhabits well into the eighteenth century.
Faith, Religion, and Manners of the Ethiopians Published in 1540, the same year as the Jesuit order gained papal approval, serving as an update of Damião de Góis Legatio, this printed text represents Góis's efforts to provide more accurate information about Ethiopian Christianity, especially after the publication of Francisco Álvares' text on the Portuguese embassy to Ethiopia.

Góis had asked Saga za Ab, and Ethiopian monk stranded in Portugal, to compose an accurate depiction of Ethiopian Christianity, given the inaccuracies present in the Legatio, which drew largely on the accounts of Matthew of Armenia who, though an Ethiopian Christian, was non-native and a layperson. Saga za Ab completed his treatise in 1534, after which Góis translated it to Latin.

The text added a note on the etymology of Prester John as a title referring to the Ethiopian king, suggesting that "Prester" did not refer to "priest" but to "pretiosus," meaning "exalted." However, this is not the title that his subjects themselves used: Ethiopians used the Ge'ez or Amharic equivalents of exalted, being "encoe" and "belul," respectively. Accordingly, the text avers that Ethiopians called their king "Ioannes Belul" or Ioannes Encoe."

Although appreciated by the Erasmus-influenced intellectuals of the time, the text was banned by the Cardinal Infante Dom Henrique, Grand Inquisitor of Portugal for "implicitly advocat[ing] a kind of world-wide confederation of Christians" (Silverberg, 300). Instead of disseminating accurate information about the Ethiopian religion, Portuguese Jesuits returned to the earlier Portuguese imperative to convert Prester John, king of the Ethiopians, to Catholicism.

Still, the text was reprinted in Paris in 1541 and again in Louvain in 1544, and found itself translated into English and other languages. It remain banned in Portugal until 1791.
Relations of Guerreiro
Relação anual das coisas que fizeram os padres da companhia nas partes da India oriental (1607-1608)
In the early 17th century, Portuguese Jesuit missionary Father Fernão Guerreiro traveled throughout the East Indies, China, Japan, and Africa. He records this journey in letter and reports, later collected and published in this three volume Relação, which relates the entirety of his missionary endeavors with the Benedict Goes and the Society of Jesus. The sole complete text resides in the British Museum Library, though it has been reprinted.

Of course one of the central missions was to glean information about the kingdom of Prester John. In the text, Guerreiro dismisses Ethiopia as the site of Prester John. He correctly ascribes the misplacement of Prester John in Ethiopia to the eagerness of the Portuguese emissaries sent there, who conflated the site of Christians with their presence in the kingdom of Prester John.

Instead, Guerreiro believes that Prester John was “the Emperor of Catayo [China]." He explained that the conversion of the Catayo to Christianity occurred because of St. Thomas and his disciples (who made it farther east than Thomas himself).
De Emendatione Temporum Written by Joseph Scaliger (1540-1609) and published in 1583, De Emendatione Temporum ("Of the Correction of Times") is described by Elizabeth Ott of the Chapel Hill Rare Book Blog as an attempt to "formalize the science of chronology," drawing on "Persian, Arab, Greek, Roman, and other ancient traditions, identifying and correcting the errors of his predecessors to synchronize various cultures’ accounts of history."

Under these ambitious auspices, Scaliger authors an influential account of the Prester John legend. Attempting to reconcile the earlier theories of an Asian Prester John with the more contemporary theories of Prester John as Ethiopian negus, Scaliger proposes that Prester John led an exiled group of Mongols in Ethiopia. This group, Scaliger proposes, were sent to Africa in defeat at the hands of Ghengis Khan.

As edited in Brewer (p. 225):
In our recollection, there were in Italy certain churches of the Christian Ethiopians, who they call Abassins or Abissins... Indeed, by the navigations of the Portuguese, and by the splendid book of the journey of the Portuguese priest Francisco Alvarez, who penetrated into the inmost Ethiopia, one may learn many things about those men and their rites. Once, all Africa from the Nile's final mouth, to the Gaditan straits [i.e. the Straits of Gibraltar], and likewise from the Tyrrhenian Sea to beyond the Equinox towards the south, was full of Christian churches and cities, and this great tract of lands was obedient to the one Bishop of Alexandria. But if there are any churches remaining today in those parts, they recognise that patriarch alone, like these Ethiopians, being discussed now, and whom the lonely deserts and difficult routes defend from the general wasteland of Africa... Before the arrival of the Portuguese in Ethiopia, the name of the Ethiopian Christians alone was scarcely known to us, and their falsely named emperor Prestegiani; since that name does not belong to he who reigned in Ethiopia, but he who reigned in Asia three hundred years previously, a long way distant... they falsely call him Prestegiani, and [to say] that this Ethiopian is the same as that Asian man out of the itinerary of Paul the Venetian [i.e. Marco Polo] because they are both Christian is utter nonsense. It is indeed correct that three hundred years previously, certain Ethiopian kings ruled far and wide in Asia, especially in Drangiana, at the ends of Susa, and in India, until the emperors of the Tartars expelled them from all of Asia, and they were the first ones defeated, so they say, by Chingis, King of the Tartars, having killed their emperor Uncam... all those Ethiopians who had been thrown out of the kingdom of the Mongols and Chinese and were driven all the way to furthest Africa.

As Brewer (p. 225) mentions, Scaliger's theory was challenged by Peter Heylyn, who, in his Cosmographie (1652), writes that such a theory was "found in no record but in Scaliger's head." Others texts, such as Samuel Purchas' Purchas His Pilgrimes (1613) and Athanasius Kircher's China Illustrata (1667).
Il Novellino/The Hundred Old Tales
Le ciento novelle antike (c. 1290-1300)

Written in Italian at the end of the thirteenth century, this collection of 100 different slightly moralistic stories contains an early literary adaptation of the Prester John legend. Although the purpose of the story is not entirely clear, it should be understood as a departure from the typical Prester John narrative of the time insofar as it eschews attempts at historical or geographical accuracy in favor of an entertaining narrative.

Uebel describes the plot of Il Novellino, in which an embassy from 'Presto Giovanni' arrives at the court of 'Frederick' (Barbarossa? II?):
An emissary from Prester John arrives at the court of a Western potentate to explain the difference of precious stones already possessed, only to vanish with the stones elucidating their virtues. But the Italian story is from its outset a moral tale: ‘the form and intent of the mission was double: a desire to put to the test whether the emperor was learned in speech and in deeds.’ Having received the three stones, the emperor is supposed to indicate ‘what is the best thing in the world.’ The emperor, however, fails to inquire about the stones’ virtues, choosing to praise their beauty instead. The emperor concludes, somewhat ironically given the great opulence of his own court, that the best thing in the world is misura (moderation; the golden mean). After hearing report of the emperor’s words, Presto Giovanni judges the emperor ‘very wise in words, but not in deed, in as much as he had not asked about the virtue of such precious stones.’ Prester John then dispatches his jeweler (lapidaro) to retrieve the stones. Once the jeweler holds all the stones, he becomes invisible, returns to India, and presents the stones to Prester John ‘con grande allegrezza’ [with great happiness]” (p. 265).

Read the short narrative on Prester John in Edward Storer’s translation of Il Novellino.

Read the tale in print in its original Italian.
The Garden of Curious Flowers
Spanish writer Antonio de Torquemada (1507-1569) wrote The Garden of Curious Flowers at the end of his life, and the text was published posthumously in 1573. Written in Spanish and translated into English, French, and Italian, the University of Notre Dame Rare Books and Specialty Collections describes the text as a "miscellaneous book in six treatises on general matters, social recommendations, popular science and superstitions." Among those "superstitions" is a treatement of Prester John, in which Torquemada uses the accounts of Marco Polo and John Mandeville to argue against, in the form of a Socratic dialogue, the contemporary habit of situating Prester John in Ethiopia.

Among other arguments, Torquemada uses his character Anthonio to affirm Prester John's real name as "Belulgian," roots Prester John in the St. Thomas apocrypha (here the director successor of the Apostle), and that because of Mandeville and Polo it is known that "Prester lohn is not hee which is in Aethiopia but he who was in the Oriental Indies, and that he name giuen vnto him of Aethiopia, was but through error, & because the people would haue it to be so" (qtd. in Brewer, p. 224).

Miguel de Cervantes criticizes this text in his Don Quixote, including it among the books considered untruthful enough to warrant burning:
"Who is that tub there?" said the curate.
"This," said the barber, "is 'Don Olivante de Laura.'"
"The author of that book," said the curate, "was the same that wrote 'The Garden of Flowers,' and truly there is no deciding which of the two books is the more truthful, or, to put it better, the less lying; all I can say is, send this one into the yard for a
swaggering fool."
The Late Travels of Giacomo Baratti The late travels of S. Giacomo Baratti, an Italian gentleman, into the remote countries of the Abissins, or of Ethiopia interior wherein you
shall find an exact account of the laws, government, religion, discipline, customs, &c. of the Christian people that do inhabit there with many observations which some may improve to the advantage and increase of Trade with them : together with a confirmation of this relation drawn from the writings of Damianus de Goes and Jo. Scaliger, who agree with the author in many particulars (1670)

Printed in London in 1670, Italian traveler Giacomo Baratti's travel narrative interperses his observations with those of earlier European "authorities" on Ethiopia, including Damião de Góis and Joseph Scaliger.

The travel narrative does not offer much in terms of the Prester John legend. In the section of his narrative entitled "A Description of the country of Precious John, vulgarly called Prester John," Baratti suggests several names for the Ethiopian negus, including "Belul, that is, Precious Giam Or John," "Illustrious Serenus," "Athani Ting∣hib," and "the son of K. David, the son of Solomon, the Son of the King by the hand of Mary, the Son of Naw according to the flesh, & the son of S. Peter, & S. Paul."

Read the full text at EEBO.
Who is Prester John? Prester John (Latin: Presbyter Johannes) was a legendary Christian patriarch and king popular in European chronicles and tradition from the 12th through the 17th century. He was said to rule over a Nestorian Christian nation lost amid the Muslims and pagans of the global East, in which the Patriarch of the Saint Thomas Christians resided. The accounts are variegated collections of medieval popular fantasy, depicting Prester John as a descendant of the Three Magi, ruling a kingdom full of riches, marvels, and strange creatures.

While this priest king claims no actual historical existence, scholars have debated the historical origins of the idea of Prester John.
Embassy of David, King of Ethiopia, to the Most Holy Pope Our lord Clement VII Published in 1533 in Bologna, this short text mainly recounts Francsico Álvares' report about his Ethiopian travels to Pope Clement VII.

In its supplementary material, this text suggests that the Ethiopian king "is not called by them Prester John (as the masses falsely believe) but Gyam, which in their language means 'powerful, for he is in truth most powerful" (qtd. in Silverberg, p. 318).
Titles of Honor Written by John Selden, Titles of Honor is a large work covering peerage law, heraldry and genealogy. Selden discusses the etymology of Prester John.

From EEBO:
Out of Europe wee come into Afrique and Asia where also, the Grand Signior, notwithstanding his Court and residence at Constantinople is fittest to be placed. But first, of that Ethiopian Emperor or Prince of the Abyssins, which is commonly titled Prester John, and, in Latine, Presbyter Ioannes, as if it were Priest John. But, by testimonie of Zaga Zabo an Ethiopian Embassador to the last Emanuel K. of Portugal, the name is corrupted from Precious Gian. For his Ethiopique thus expresses it. *〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 i. Gian Belul, quod sonat (saith the translation publisht by Damian à Goes) Io∣annes Belul, hoc est Ioannes preciosus, siue altus; Et in Page 76 Chaldaica lingua, Ioannes Encoe: id, si interpreteris, etiam Ioannis Preciosi siue alti significatum habet, so that Gian Belul is of their true Ethiopian tongue, which they vse in common speech, not that which is spoken and writen in their Liturgies and holy exercises, and known, mongst them, by the name of Chaldè; but, more specially, stiled *Giaein i. Libertie, quod nimirùm (as the noble Scaliger yeelds the reason) eâ solâ vte∣rentur Arabes illi victores, qui Aethiopiam insiderunt. For he most learnedly (as in all things els) deriues them thither from the Abasens in Arabia, whence Sept. Seue∣rus had his denomination of Arabicus, as in one of his i Coins appears, inscribd with 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉, of whom mention is made by Vranius, an old author of Arabique affairs, placing them in Arabia foelix, which happily salues their deriuing themselues from Melech son to Salomon (as they fable) by lMaqueda the Queen of the South. For, where *Saba is, were those Abassenes, whence the Latines haue their Sabaei and Tura Sabaea. Thus, mee thinks, those things concurre as it were to make vp on both sides that truth, at which learned men haue been very purblind. And, by likelyhood how should they fitter haue a speciall tongue for their wri∣tings and holy ceremonies vtterly differing from their vulgar, then by being transplanted out of some other Nation, and bringing it thither with them? there bee∣ing in it also a mixture of Ebrew, Chaldê, & Arabique; but it is, by them, calld Chaldè, whereupon Zaga Za∣bo saith that Helen one of their Empresses wrote two books of Diuinitie in Chaldé, and tells vs furthermore that their Prince is not properly stiled Emperor of the Abassins but of the Ethiopians. The Arabians cal them mElhabasen from the same reason, as we Abassins; but they are known to themselues only by the name of Ithiopiawians. Of this Belul Gian, is made that Beldigi∣an, by which, Luis de Vretta a Spanish Frier saies, they Page 77 call their Emperor. But Bodin notes in his margine to his 1. de Rep. cap. IX. that his name is Iochabellul i. gem∣ma pretiosa, as he saies. I cannot but preferre the testi∣mony of Zaga Zabo an Ethiopian Priest, which in this could not deceiue. But plainly as the name of Pres∣byter Ioannes is idly applied to him, so it had its cause vpon another mistaking. For, in the trauails of such as first discouerd to any purpose those Eastern States (as they were of later time) is mention n made of one Vncham or Vnchan a great Monarch in those parts where now the G•eat Cham or Chan of Cathay hath his Dominion; and him, they call Presbyter Ioan∣nes; and write that one Cinchis, whom they fained to haue been begotten on a poore widow by the Sunne beames, as chosen King among the Tartars rebelling a∣gainst this Vncham, ouercame him; and, from this Cin∣chis the Tartarian Monarchie hath its originall. And some more particulars of it you haue in the life of S. Lewes of France, written by De Ionuille, a noble Baron of France, that was with him in the holy warres. Hee calls him in his French Prebstre Iehan. This relation is of about M. C. XC. and hath made the readers con∣found the corrupted names of both Princes, twixt whom, too great distance was to haue the one deriud from the other. And some o trauellers into those parts, haue expressely deliuerd them both as one. But the Diuine Scaliger teaches, that, the Asiatique Vncham and his predecessors were calld 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉Prestigiani, that is, in Persian, Apostolique, and so had the name of Padescha Prestigiani, i. Apostolique King, because of his Religion (being a Kind of Christian, as Beldigian is al∣so) which, in Ethiopique-Chaldé must be exprest by Ne∣gush Chawariawi. Doubtles the community of sound twixt Prestigiani, Presbyter, and Precious Gian was a great cause of this error, which, vntill the Portugalls further acquaintance with the Ethiopians, alwayes pos∣sest Page 88 Europe. But I wonder how the learned Mun∣ster was so much in this matter deceiud, that hee sup∣poses the Ebrew Epistle printed in his Cosmographie, beginning 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 i. Ego Pristijuan, to be as sent from the Ethiopian Emperor; especially sith hee took notice of both the Asiatique and African Prince abusd in the name of Presbyter Ioannes. The Prestigians affirming in it, that Thomas the Apostle was buried in his country, makes plain enough that it came from the Eastern parts, if not counterfeited. The title likewise is much differing from what the Beldigian vses I will onely adde one example out of Beldigian Dauid his Letters to p Pope Clement VII. in Latine thus: In Nomine Dei &c. Has literas is ego Rex mitto, cuius nomen Leones Venerantur & Dei gratia vo∣cor Athani Tinghil (that is, the Frankincense of the Virgin) Filius Regis Dauid, filius Solemonis, filius de ma∣nu Mariae, Filius Nau per carnem, filius Sanctorum Pe∣tri & Pauli per gratiam, Pax sit tibi iuste Domine, &c. The like is in diuers Letters thence to the Kings of Portugall. But, for that name of Cham in the Tartari∣an Empire, it signifies Lord or Prince, and that Cinchis, or Cangius, Cingis, or Tzingis (for by these names he is known) was calld Cinchis Cham his sonne and succes∣sor Hoccota Cham, or rather Chahan or Chan; although a q Polonian, which seemd to haue much knowledge in that his neighboring country, long since deliuerd thus: Imperator eorum (Tartarorum)
Joshua Lorki A Jewish physician to Pope Benedict XIII, Joshua Lorki writes that a large community of Jews lives in the kingdom of Prester John (qtd. in Vitale, p. 14):
It is evident both from the letters of Rambam (Maimonides), whose memory be blessed, and from the narration of merchants who have visited the ends of the earth, that at this time the root of our faith is to be found in the lands of Babel and Teman, where long ago Jerusalem was an exile; not reckoning with those who live in the land of Paras (Persia) and Madai (Media), of the exiles of Schromrom, the number of which people is as the sand: of these, some are still under the yoke of Paras, who is called the Great Chief Sultan by the Arabs; others live in a place under the yoke of a strange people... governed by a Christian chief, Preste Cuan, by name.

This page references:

Names for Prester John's Realm