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1. 1 media/new_presterjohnlogo.jpg 2015-05-15T13:51:18-07:00 Ece Turnator 29e4049201e5a129c2f4f38633d734d2df4b7e07 Era 1 Ece Turnator 4 1122-1220 AD (Beginning of Legend to the Fifth Crusade) split 2015-05-15T14:41:16-07:00

   Era 1 – 1122-1220 (Beginning of Legend to the Fifth Crusade)

   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 anonymous texts, both composed in 1122, give an account of a certain “Patriarch John,” hailing from India, who travels to the Pope in 1122.  Each of these texts (MS ID 1 and 2) gives 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 1143, Otto’s Historia deduabus civitatibus (1145) fur shes an anecdote a colleague had recently heard about a Nestorian Christian prince, Iohannes. This Iohannes, hailing from the distant East of the Magi, 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. Although this rumor 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 fall of Edessa (1144), the unsuccessful Second Crusade that resulted therefrom (1145). Otto was also uncle to Frederick Barbarossa, the emperor (1150-90) who, at the time of Prester John’s advent, was engaged in a sovereignty battle with Pope Alexander III (1159-81)

   Otto describes Prester John as a morally pure, militaristically capable Eastern (Nestorian) Christian king claiming descent from the Magi. Otto’s Prester John anecdote was likely generated from the political fallout subtending the loss of Edessa and 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.

   Ece Turnator 29e4049201e5a129c2f4f38633d734d2df4b7e07