Alternative Forms of Prester John
1 2015-07-16T12:48:06-07:00 Christopher Taylor // christopher.eric.taylor@gmail.com 946e2cf6115688379f338b70e5b6f6c039f8ba6f 5281 7 plain 2021-07-16T12:42:33-07:00 Christopher Taylor // christopher.eric.taylor@gmail.com 946e2cf6115688379f338b70e5b6f6c039f8ba6fAlternate 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, Senapo, King Ogané, Christien de Sentour
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The Letter of Prester John
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Letter Description
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Some twenty years after Otto's anecdote began to inspire belief in an eastern Christian king, a letter began to circulate (c. 1165) purportedly sent from a king who called himself Prester John (Presbyter Iohannes). In what came to be known as the "Letter of Prester John," the whispers from twenty years prior grow into the boastful musings a devout Christian king of an immense, militarily powerful kingdom who promises to help fight the enemies of Christendom. While this letter greatly expands on Otto’s account of the Eastern prince, it does not very much increase its audience’s knowledge of the elusive figure to which both accounts seem to allude. Readers learn little of the actual location of John's lands and even less about his intentions. Instead, the Letter borrows from an impressive array of travel lore, especially as concerns the territory understood in the Middle Ages as India.In other words, the anonymous "Letter of Prester John" fleshes out the rumors of the eastern priest king not with plausible detail, but with imaginative flourish. Throughout the short document an attentive reader encounters echoes of biblical lore, the Alexander legends, the Sefer Eldad tradition, bestiaries, lapidaries, and other classical and medieval geographical texts.The letter begins with an invitation to visit John's kingdom and a promise to fight the enemies of Christendom. The tone is unequivocally boastful. Such diplomacy makes up only a small fraction of the document, however. The majority of the letter is dedicated to a description of the eastern territory over which Prester John reigns. Within the letter, John models a form of rule that domesticates even the most heterogeneous lands. This eastern warrior priest-king possesses the richest kingdom on earth, replete not only with a vast store of jewels, spices, and Christian soldiers, but also home to Muslims, pagans, the ten lost tribes of Israel, along with fantastic creatures such as phoenixes, satyrs, dog-headed men, one-eyed men, giants, and more. All who recognize John's sovereignty are welcome to his realm.Although the Letter was addressed to the Greek Emperor Manuel Comnenus, its twelfth-century circulation was confined exclusively to the territories of Latin Europe. No Greek “original” has ever been discovered or mentioned by contemporaries, prompting an almost near-consensus among scholars that the Letter was always intended for a Latin Christian audience, and was likely created to suit a political purpose.
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Avant La Lettre
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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. -
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Chronicon Syriacum
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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. -
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Qara Khitai
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The Historia de duabus civitatibus spawned centuries of expectations regarding an Eastern potentate capable of uniting all of Christendom, modern historians have determined that this anecdote refers not to utopic Christians at all, but to the Qara Khitai, a nomadic Chinese tribe descending from Manchuria.
In 1141, Yeh-lu Tashi of the Qara Khitai defeats Persian army of Seljuk king Sanjar at the Battle of Qatwan near Samarkand. 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.
As Michael Brooks (77) explains, 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:"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." -
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Il Trattato di Terra Santa e dell’Oriente
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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:
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."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)
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. -
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Travels into Diverse Parts of Europe and Asia
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Voyage en divers etats d'Europe et d'Asie, entrepris pour découvrir un nouveau chemin à la Chine (1693)
Published in 1693, Philippe Avril's Travels document Avril's missionary travels to China with his fellow Jesuits. In the text, Avril refutes the current European narrative of Prester John -- that he had been found in Ethiopia -- and argues instead identifies Preste-Jean with the Dalai Lama.
Avril posits that it is “more natural to acknowledge him in this Country of Asia, where he has always been, then to seek him out in Habyssinia, where he never was.”Although the linking of Prester John and the Dalai Lama appears to be unique to Avril, his larger narrative surrounding the priest-king parallels Guerreiro's Relations in its eagerness to dismiss Portuguese claims to have discovered and locate Prester John.
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Orlando Furioso
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In Orlando Furioso, first printed in Ferrara in 1516, 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.
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, Astolpho rescues Senapo, who has been rendered blind after trying to discover the Earthly Paradise by seeking out the source of the Nile River.
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.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.
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Path Four : 1461-1520 AD
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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.
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Relations of Guerreiro
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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). - 1 media/Screen Shot 2021-07-03 at 11.36.54 AM.png 2021-07-03T09:40:54-07:00 History of the Popes 5 image_header 2021-07-03T10:43:15-07:00 Published in seven volumes, Archibald Bower's History of the Popes (1748-1766) unsurprisingly touches on the Prester John legend. Here, Prester John is referred to as the King of Tangut (inhabitants of Western Xia in China), called Lassa [Lhasa] by its inhabitants.
- 1 media/Screen Shot 2021-06-30 at 2.48.22 PM.png 2021-06-30T13:33:29-07:00 Chaldaica Grammatica 3 image_header 2021-06-30T13:49:16-07:00 Written by Pierre Guarin in 1726, the Chaldaica Grammatica situates "Prester Cohan" in southern India, which is to say in Africa.
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Who is Prester John?
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Who is Prester John?
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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.