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

Duarte Lopes

Born in Lisbon, Duarte Lopes (fl. c. 1583) was a Portuguese priest, merchant, and explorer.

Brooks describes Lopes entry into the Prester John legend (p. 145):

News of the exploits of the Portuguese in contacting the mythical priest-king did not rapidly filter out to Europe, however, and the myth of Prester John continued to tantalize the imaginations of European monarchs and adventurers. One such voyager was who departed in 1578 on an expedition for the Spanish crown along the West and Central African coasts. His destination was the Kingdom of Congo, and he left “in a ship called the S. Antonio, belonging to an uncle of his, which was laden with various merchandise for that king." Part of his account records his dealings with the Congolese king, while other sections of the narrative discuss his fascination with the Prester John myth. The Filippo Pigafetta text relied upon information passed from Lopes to his Italian counterpart, which might have even included an original (lost) text Lopes composed in Portuguese.

Jump to the Report on the Kingdom of the Congo

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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.
Hondius Map (1606) According to Brooks (p. 165),
The map of Prester John’s realm is largely based on the account of Duarte Lopes (1591) and its transcription by Filippo Pigafetta. It is worth noting that Hondius believed that the kingdom of Prester John merited its own page in the atlas, one of the few kingdoms that was so honored.
The map is typical for early-to-mid-seventeenth century maps in its presentation of the kingdom of Prester John. The area reserved to Prester John’s realm is approximately 30 percent of the land mass of the African continent, suggesting the primacy of the legendary priest-king over sub-Saharan Africa. The map’s annotations describe the wealth and power of Prester John, and there is no sense that Hondius does not take at face value the still-prevailing notion that Prester John is an important Christian monarch.
View a copy of the map at the Library of Congress.

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Michael Brooks