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

Fifth Crusade

Called on the heels of three consecutive unsuccessful Crusades (including the disastrous Fourth Crusade), the notion of a Fifth Crusade was a popular topic of discussion at the Fourth Lateran Council. In the end, the beginning of the Fifth Crusade was codified in the council's final canon. Canon 71 designated June 1, 1217 as the start of the Fifth Crusade, though it was omitted from some later collections of Lateran IV Canons.

The Fifth Crusade (1217-1222) struggled to attract the patronage of earlier crusades. Lacking definitive leadership, the Crusaders elected to travel to northern African to capture Egyptian territory of the Ayyubid's for the purposes of negotiating the return of Jerusalem to Christian control. Later, the Seventh Crusade would adopt a very similar strategy. Although the capture of Damietta boded auspiciously, the crusade army was undone by a reliance on prophecy that had them heading west to Cairo. The rising of the Nile River prevented the army from advancing and they summarily captured as they retreated to Damietta.

The story goes something like this:

In 1222, intelligence relayed from Bohemond IV, ruler of the crusader state of Antioch, to Jacques de Vitry, preacher and crusade propagandist, reaches crusaders in Damietta. The intelligence, a report written in Arabic obtained from traveling spice merchants in Antioch, details the westward military progression of a certain King David, purportedly the great-grandson of the famed Prester John, a military leader who, rumor has it, has systematically destroyed Muslim armies in the east.

Jacques has the report translated immediately. Buoyed by prophecy and heedless of local conditions, the crusaders at Damietta decide to invade Cairo immediately to fulfill the prophecy, rejecting an agreement with the Sultan Al-Kamil that would have given Jerusalem back to the crusaders in exchange for Damietta. The Nile rises, turning the invasion of Cairo into defeat. The armies of the Fifth Crusade surrender to the Sultan of Egypt, Al-Kamil, Saladin’s nephew, a few weeks later.

This King David was not Prester John but, in fact, referred to Genghis Khan.

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Map 1.1: Author Origins and Travels; Textual Imaginings Map 1.1 plots the beginnings of the legend of Prester John. This first era is defined as the period that begins the legend through the events of the Fifth Crusade, an event which solidified the real historical repercussions engendered by the belief in the western arrival of Prester John.

Even within the first fifty years of the legend one can see the beginnings of a global phenomenon. Although a product of German political tensions, the legend spread within Europe and into the Levant by the first quarter of the thirteenth century.

On this page, readers are encouraged to explore the beginnings of the Prester John legend. By clicking on the points on the map, the reader can learn more about that particular author or text. For an overview of how to use the maps, click here.

Below is a list of all authors and texts featured on this map.

Click to learn more about an author or click on any text read relevant excerpts and to learn more about how these narratives contribute to the legend of Prester John.

Anonymous - On the Arrival of the Partriarch of the Indians to Rome under Pope Calixtus II (1122)

Odo of Rheims - Letter to "Count Thomas" (1120s)

Otto of Freising - The Two Cities, A Chronicle of Universal History to 1146 (1157)

Benjamin of Tudela - The Travels of Benjamin of Tudela  (c. 1164-1173)

Anonymous - The Letter of Prester John (c. 1165-1170)

Richard of Poitiers, Chronica Richardi Pictauiensis (1171)*

Pope Alexander III - Letter to Prester John (1177)

Geoffrey of Breuil - Chronica (c. 1181)*

Roger of Howden - Gesta Regis Henrici II et Ricardi I  (late 12th century)*

Gerald of Wales - De Vita Galfridi Archiepiscopi Eboracensis (late 12th century)*

Anonymous - Annales Colonienses Maximi  (late 12th century)*

Anonymous - Flores Historiarum (late 12th century)*

Anonymous - The Elyseus Narrative (late 12th century)*

Anonymous - Continuatio Admontensis (late 12th / early 13th century)*

Wolfram von Eschenbach - Parzival (early 13th century)

Jacques de Vitry - Letter II (1217)*

Jacques de Vitry - History of the deeds of David, King of the Indies (1220/1221)

Book of Clement ( )*

Pope Honorius III - Epistola (1221)*

Jacques de Vitry - Letter VII (1221)*

Annales de Dunstaplia (c. 1221)*

Ralph of Coggeshall - Chronicon Anglicanum (before 1224)*

Anonymous - Chronicon Sancti Martini Turonensis (1225)*

Anonymous - Annales Pegavienses (before 1227)*

Oliver of Paderborn - History of Damietta (late 1220s)*

Richard of San Germano - Chronica (before 1235)*

*not yet on map

If there are any other observations you would like to make, please use the "comment" box below.
Path One: 1122-1235
Origins through the Fifth Crusade

This first era covers the legend of Prester John from its inception in the twelfth century through John's prophesied arrival in Egypt during the Fifth Crusade. The narrative portion of the path can be found in the following pages. This section includes a page on the legend prior to the Letter of Prester John, a page on the Letter itself, and a page on the most immediate adaptations of the Letter. The last two pages of the path feature interactive maps and links to pages on the texts and authors featured on those maps.

Follow the path below for the full treatment of this period. Click here to skip to the text/author map and here to move to the map depicting postulated locations of John's kingdom in Era One.
Path Two: 1236-1310 AD
European Contact with the Mongol Empire
It would be reasonable to assume that interest in a historical Prester John would diminish after the disappointing ending of the Fifth Crusade. This was not the case, however. In fact, belief in the eastern priest-king flourished.

Not surprisingly, the appearance of the Letter led to dozens of Eastern incursions motivated, in part, by the prospect of an immense Christian kingdom. Although these travelers occasionally discovered small Christians communities (which were sometimes taken as traces of Prester John’s Eastern influence), they found neither John nor any of the splendor promised in his Letter. Instead of casting Islam as the producer of antichrist, authors began to argue that the two faiths shared affinities indicated a prospective ease of conversion.

Moreover, by the mid-thirteenth century, eastbound travelers returned to the Latin West with even more first-hand intelligence about a new group of others: Mongols. As a result, at the 1245 Council of Lyons, Pope Innocent IV recognizes that Prester John is not Genghis Khan and opens negotiations with the Mongols.

Even when these writers undercut some of the splendor of John’s kingdom by subsuming the Prester John legend into a larger narrative of Mongol history, they keep him alive, both figuratively and literally. To ally Prester John with the Mongols may seem like a threat to the legend’s persistence, but in fact these travelers were updating the legend of Prester John by integrating John into the genealogy of an Eastern people foremost in the minds of Western leaders since the mid-thirteenth century. Even as some writers describe the legend as an exaggeration, their authority is restricted by the fact that none of these travelers claimed to have met the enigmatic figure. Moreover, copies of the original Letter continued to circulate.
History of the Deeds of David, King of the Indies Historia Gestorum David regis Indorum // Relatio de Davide (1220)

Brewer (p. 107) usefully describes the muddled story behind this text supposedly derived from an Arabic source, but popularized in the West by Jacques de Vitry:
This confused text is a Latin translation of what is thought to be a tract originally written in Arabic by a Christian in Baghdad in 1220-21, but some of the material here was certainly added by its Latin translators. It describes in essence the conquests of Chingis Khan, but instead he is presented as a Christian king named David, great grandson of Prester John, a figure who becomes from this point on a regular feature of the Prester John legend... [A]lthough the text does display some intimate knowledge of the initial movements of the Mongols, the details became so distorted by the time they reached the crusaders that those initial facts became grossly misunderstood.
The text itself attests to how this King David had attacked the King of Persia and conquered several cities along the Asian Steppe, including Bukhara, Samarkand, Khurasan, and Ghazna.

In the first version of the text, King David is identified as "the son of King Israel, the son of King Sarkis, the son of King John, the son of Bulgaboga" (qtd. in Brewer, p. 107). Importantly, King David is not linked to Prester John until the third and final version of the Relatio de Davide begins to circulate.

Silverberg (p. 71) summarizes:
This King David was a Christian, the bishop reported, and was either the son or the grandson of Prester John—although, Bishop Jacques pointed out, “King David was himself commonly called Prester John.” His kingdom was deep in Asia. His involvement in the affair of the Near East had come about because the Caliph of Baghdad had been threatened with war by a fellow Moslem prince, the Shah of Khwarizm; seeing no other ally at hand, the caliph had requested the Nestorian Catholicos—or Patriarch—of Baghdad to summon King David to his aid, and the king had agreed to defend the caliph against the Khwarizmians” (71).

In addition to fueling belief in the kingdom of Prester John, this text had a huge impact on the outcome of the Fifth Crusade. Jacques de Vitry, preacher and crusade propagandist, reaches shared the information contained within the text with crusaders in Damietta. The text promises the dissolution of Islam at a time when King David joins forces with a king in the west. Jacques has the report translated immediately. He then sends letters containing parts of this text to Pope Honorius, King Henry III of England, Duke Leopold of Austria, and to several academics at the University of Paris. Spirits lift within and without the crusader camp, essentially renewing the hope for a Christian recovery of Jerusalem. Buoyed by prophecy and heedless of local conditions, the crusaders at Damietta decide to invade Cairo immediately to fulfill the prophecy, rejecting an agreement with the Sultan Al-Kamil that would have given Jerusalem back to the crusaders in exchange for Damietta. The Nile rises, turning the invasion of Cairo into defeat. The armies of the Fifth Crusade surrender to the Sultan of Egypt, Al-Kamil, Saladin’s nephew, a few weeks later.

Brewer (101-125) collects three versions of this text, all of which tell of a King David prophecied to help the west defeat Islam.

For more on the historical reality animating the Relatio, see Richard.

For a close account of the entire Fifth Crusade, see Powell.
Jacques de Vitry Born in central France, Jacques de Vitry (c. 1160-1240) served as bishop of Acre from 1214 and then cardinal from 1229 until his death. He was one of the foremost crusade historians and propagandists in Latin Europe during the thirteenth century and campaigned vigorously for the Albigensian Crusade and, later, the Fifth (or Egyptian) Crusade.

In addition to his histories of the Holy Land (Historia Orientalis / Historia Hierosolymitana) and the West (Historia Occidentalis), Jacques was well known for his sermons.

Jacques was interested in prophecy and apocalyptic history and produced/collected two texts in particular that were important to the early spread of the Prester John legend, a 1217 Letter sent from Acre to western ecclesiastics and a 1221 Letter relating the story of the History of the Deeds of David.
Early Literary and Political Reverberations
In the half-century that followed the appearance of the letter, interest in Prester John increased steadily, most visibly through the transmission and translation of the Letter, which was translated into the vernacular by the end of the twelfth century.

Several chronicles composed before 1200, including Geoffrey of Breuil's Chronica, Roger of Howden's Gesta Regis Henrici II et Ricardi I, and Annales Colonienses Maximi, along with other "historical" texts such as Gerald of Wales' De Vita Galfridi contain some mention of either the figure or letter of Prester John, suggesting that this text was quickly transmitted and taken literally.

This is not the say that the Letter's early readers understood the figure of Prester John the same way. While Geoffrey of Breuil comments that Prester John was given his name due to his humility, Gerald of Wales relates an argument in which one party was accused of being "so prideful and arrogant he was like Prester John" (Brewer, 274). Even from its beginnings, it seems, this legend meant everything to everyone.

This first wave of popularity evidently reached Pope Alexander III, who crafted a reply to the eastern priest-king. Evidently, Pope Alexander sent his personal physician, Master Phillip, as envoy to seek Prester John's kingdom and to deliver this reply, which urged John's instruction in Catholicism. We never hear back from Master Phillip.
While Alexander’s letter is typically read at face-value, it also has the effect of re-inscribing ecclesiastical power, in the form of doctrinal Catholicism, as the most important feature of any imperial project. Hamilton reads the letter as a kind of public rhetorical performance, a stance he supports by noting that Alexander made several copies of his letter.

This rhetorical reflexivity became a trademark feature found in a number of adaptations of the legend Wolfram von Eschenbach provides the first fully literary account of Prester John when he integrates the legendary ruler into the genealogy of Arthurian romance.
Among the early adaptations of the legend, the most impactful was John's role as prophesied savior for the Fifth Crusade. Although the legend was birthed through a letter addressed to Western rulers written between the Second and Third Crusades, there were no attempts to invoke John during the third or fourth crusades.

During the Fifth Crusade, Prester John returns. The figure of Prester John becomes entangled with that of a figure called "King David" and the epistolary genre that birthed the legend gives way to the genre of prophecy. Leaders of the crusade, including Jacques of Vitry, predict the arrival of a Prester John figure who would help defeat Islam once and for all. These prophecies found their way into several chronicles before and after the Crusade, the pertinent details of which are recorded on the following pages.

Of course, Prester John did not arrive, and the Europeans ceded their advantage and were summarily defeated. The disastrous end to the Fifth Crusade illustrates the imprint the legend of Prester John had made on Europe, even within the first fifty years of the letter's circulation.

The following two pages provide a visualization of this early spread of the legend.
Jacques de Vitry's Letter from Acre (Letter Two) In March of 1217, Jacques de Vitry writes from Acre back west in order to garner more support for what would eventually become the Fifth Crusade.

In his letter, he writes of the "Prester John Christians" of the east as likely allies in the fight against Islam. Specifically Jacques refers to a figure called King David— either the son or grandson of Prester John— a figure who was himself "commonly called Prester John." This is perhaps the first moment of Prester John as a title observed within the legend's lore.

Brewer edits and translates the letter (pp. 98-100):
But now in the city of Acre, I... await the arrival of pilgrims with great longing. Indeed, I believe that if we had 4,000 men of arms, through God's favour we would not be able to find anyone strong enough to resist us. Indeed, there is a great discord amongst the Saracens, and many of them, knowing their error for certain, if they dared to and had the help of Christians, they would be converted to the Lord. I also believe that the Christians living amongst the Saracens are greater in number than the Saracens [themselves]. Also, many Christian kings living in the Easter regions up to the land of Prester John, hearing of the arrival of the crusaders, would come to their help and go to war with the Saracens.

Later in the letter, Jacques explains that these "Prester John Christians" are Jacobites, or monophysites, an interesting contrast to the general trend of identify Prester John's people as Nestorians, who practice a dyophysite belief about Christ.

A few years later, Jacques expands on this faith by integrating the figure of King David, borrowed from a report called the Relatio de Davide that Jacques assimilated into the framework of the Prester John legend, as demonstrated in this so-called "Letter VII."
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.
History of Damietta Oliver of Paderborn was in attendance of and wrote a theologically-tinged chronicle of the Fifth Crusade sometime in the late 1220s. Like Jacques of Vitry, he tells of the mysterious King David, here the son of Prester John, prophesied to help the West vanquish Islam. Brewer (pp. 135-39) edits and translates the portion of the chronicle concerned with Prester John:
Before the capture of Damietta, a book written in Arabic became known to us... It also added that Damietta would be captured by the Christians... In addition, it foretold that a certain king of the Nubian Christians would destroy the city of Mecca and cast out the scattered bones of Muhammad the false prophet...

I have found David, My servant; with My holy oil have I anointed him King of the Indians, whom I have ordered to avenge My wrongs, to rise up agains the many-headed beast. To him I have brought victory against the King of the Persians... King David, who they call the son of Prester John, won the first fruits against him [King of the Persians] then he subjugated to himself other kings and kingdoms, and as we have learned from a report that has reached far and wide, there is no power on earth strong enough to resist him. He is believed to be the executor of divine vengeance, the hammer of Asia.
Oliver of Paderborn Oliver of Paderborn (d. 1227) was a preacher for, historian of, and participant in the Fifth Crusade. Oliver was trained in Paris and became head of the cathedral school in Cologne in 1203. In 1207, he began a career preaching for crusade, first for the Albigensian and later for the Fifth. His History of Damietta contains another anecdote linking the events of the Fifth Crusade with the legend of Prester John.

Oliver of Paderborn is also a character in the PBS film The Sultan and the Saint.
Chronicon Sancti Martini Turonensis Brewer (p. 276) relates that this anonymous chronicle, dated to 1225, contains "a short mention of King David and the armies of the Fifth Crusade at Damietta. It also mentions that Jacques de Vitry 'publice predicabat, quod David rex utriusque lndie ad christianorum auxilium festinabat, adducens secum ferocissimos populos, qui more beluini Sarracenos sacrilegos devorarent ' [publicly predicted that David, King of both indias, was hurrying to the aid of the Christians, bringing with him the most ferocious peoples, who were devouring the impious Sarracens like beasts]."

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