This page is referenced by:

• 1 2015-07-16T09:28:20-07:00 Avant La Lettre 21 plain 2021-07-18T14:55:37-07:00
  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. 
• 1 media/Map_of_Angelino_Dulcert_cropped.jpg 2015-06-12T10:59:57-07:00 Pope Alexander III 11 image_header 2023-11-25T14:54:53-08:00 Born Roland of Siena, Pope Alexander III (c. 1100-1181) served as Pope from 1159 to 1181 after serving as professor of theology at Bologna, cardinal, and then papal chancellor. 
  
  His papacy was marked, in part, by a longstanding power struggle with Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, the man who added sacrum (holy) to the title of Roman emperor. Frederick eventually acquiesced to Alexander in the Peace of Venice, "the most thorough surrender of civil power to clerical authority since Henry IV's submission at Canossa exactly one hundred years earlier" (Silverberg, 60).
  
  That same year (1177), Alexander allegedly penned his own letter to Prester John in which he urges the priest-king to be instructed in Catholicism by Alexander's personal physician, Master Phillip. 
• 1 2015-06-12T10:55:04-07:00 Otto of Freising 9 image_header 2021-06-11T12:59:53-07:00 One of the great historians of the Middle Ages, Otto of Freising (c.a. 1114-1158) was a German bishop who chronicled world history from the lofty position of German royalty.
  
  Uncle to Frederick Barbarossa, Otto is the man most responsible for creating the legend of Prester John. It is perhaps no coincidence that Otto writes of a distant priest-king at the very time Otto's uncle Frederick was embroiled in a power struggle against papal authority. 
  
  Otto’s account provides some of the basic “facts” about the legend and, while the Letter greatly expands on Otto’s account, it does not very much increase its audience’s knowledge of the elusive figure. 
  
  Jump to his Historia de Duabus Civitatibus. 
• 1 2015-06-18T14:52:28-07:00 Fragmentary Scottish Letter of Prester John 6 image_header 2023-12-13T15:41:55-08:00

  Fragmentary Scottish Letter of Prester John, found in Andrew of Wyntoun, Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland (c. 1420-1425)
  
  In his Chronicle of Scotland (c. 1420-1425) Andrew of Wyntoun included a fragment of the Letter of Prester John (ff. 310-311v of British Library MS Royal 17 D XX). This partial text, addressed to Emperor Frederick, furnishes the only example of the Letter in Middle Scots. It also survives as the earliest inclusion of the LOPJ in a vernacular chronicle. 
  
  According to Malcolm Letts, the Middle Scots version came through the French and Italian translations of the LOPJ. 

   
• 1 2015-06-15T15:08:35-07:00 Chronica Albrici Monachi Trium Fontium 5 image_header 2023-12-31T11:11:25-08:00 Chronica Albrici Monachi Trium Fontium (1232-1253)
  
  Written over ten years in his home monastery of Trois-Fontaines, Alberic of Trois-Fontaines' Chronicle treats world events up to the current time.
  
  The conventional dating of the Letter of Prester John to 1165 derives from Alberic, who explains that the letter was initially sent out to several European kings, but most especially to Frederick Barbarossa and Emperor Manuel. 
  
  As Brewer (p. 11) explains, Alberic's Chronicle, along with scribal addition, dated to 1170, in one thirteenth-century copy of the Letter, comprise the only extant evidence regarding the original date of composition of the letter of Prester John.
  
  Alberic's chronicle also contains summaries of the mid-thirteenth century Dominican missions to the Mongols, and he was the first author to point out that the Mongols might be "neither Christians nor Saracens" (qtd. in Brewer, p.  146). 
  
  Alberic narrates the death of Prester John as follows (qtd. in Brewer, p. 149):

  Indeed, at that time there arose the Tartars, a certain barbarian people under Ihe power of Prester John. When Prester John was in battle against the Medes and Persians, he called them to his aid, and placed them in forts and fortifications; they, seeing they were stronger [than him], killed him and occupied his land for the most part, setting a king above them, as though he was Prester John; and from that time on they did many evils in the land, such that this year they killed 42 bishops in Greater Armenia.