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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, Preste Juan, Preste-Jean, Prestre Johan, Presbytero-Johanides, Tsar-Priest John, Prete Ianne, Prester Cohan, Johannes Africanus, Bel Gian, Praeciosus Iohannes, Preste Ioam, Belul Jan, Jonanam, Presbyter Bedigian, Prestigian, Precious John

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, Senapo, King Ogané, Christien de Sentour

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The Letter of Prester John 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. Undated and bearing no location, this letter greatly expands on Otto’s account of the Eastern prince, though 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.

Read the interpolated Latin letter.
Read an English translation of the uninterpolated Letter.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 particular, 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.

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

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.
Travels into Diverse Parts of Europe and Asia
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.
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.
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).
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.
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).