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

Cornelis de Zierikzee

Cornelis de Zierikzee (c.1405-1462) was a Dutch Franciscan friar who was selected as the head of a mission of friars to travel from the Netherlands to Scotland, in accordance with the wishes of King James II to bring Franciscans to Scotland. At some point during that time, Cornelis printed the Treatise on the Pontificate of Prester John.

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Treatise on the Pontificate of Prester John Printed in Cologne around 1499, this text represents another of the handful of "chapbook" compendiums of Prester John lore that began to circulate at the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries.

The printer, Cornelis de Zierikzee assembled the Latin Letter of Prester John along with the De adventu, in addition to borrowing without acknowledgement the Prester John narrative contained in Jacopo Filippo Foresti's Supplementum Chronicarum.