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• 1 2016-03-26T20:49:08-07:00 Manuel, Governor of the Romans 6 plain 2022-08-17T09:42:05-07:00 The Letter here alludes to Manuel I Komnenus, the Byzantine Emperor. Calling him "governor" (Romeon gubernator) rather than "emperor" (Basileus ton Romeon) appears to be an insult.
  
  Yet Silverberg (p. 47) points out that the term "governor" may have originated in one of the source texts for the Letter, Leo the Archpriest's work on Alexander the great, Historia de Proeliis, in which Alexander writes to his teacher Aristotle that declares to the latter that Ptolemy will be his "governor" upon the former's death. 
  
  The curious constituency the Letter names, "Romans," may allude to the Byzantines as the sole cultural inheritors of Rome or may refer to the manner in which Arab-speaking peoples of the twelfth century referred to all Christians as the "Rûm" during the Crusades.
  
   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
   
• 1 2016-03-26T20:50:46-07:00 Manuel I Komnenos 6 image_header 2016-03-27T17:42:31-07:00 Byzantine Emperor from 1143 to 1180, Manuel Komnenos (or Comnenus) helped renew communication between the Eastern and Western Christian empires in an attempt to restore the Byzantine Empire to its former status as world superpower. Renown for his ambitious political plans, Komnenos oversaw a crucial time in the History of the Byzantine Empire. 
  
  
  
  
  Brooks (p. 18) cites Karl Helleiner (p. 56), who posits:

  I believe Prester John's letter was written, in part, as a piece of anti-Byzantine

  propaganda, perhaps by a man who served the political interests of the Norman

  princes of Sicily, or by a German... who resented the monopolistic claims of the Greeks to the Imperial

  dignity, claims, be it remembered, that were very stoutly maintained by Manuel Comnenus.