George Abbot's Geography
Description of the Whole Worlde (1599)
A sober view of the geographical knowledge of time, George Abbot's Geography went through nine editions between its publication in 1599 and 1664.
Brooks summarizes (p. 154)
Abbot noted that visitors to the kingdom of Prester John would find the fabled Mountains of the Moon, which he considered to be the source of the Nile River. This belief is typical for the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the search for the Mountains of the Moon would continue into the nineteenth century with the expedition of John Hanning Speke and Richard Burton to reach the southern shores of Lake Victoria. Abbot also claimed that Prester John was able to extort a sizeable tribute through innovative water management techniques; in the following passage Abbot briefly explained the supposed history of Prester John’s manipulation of the flow of the Nile River:
The Princes of Ægipt have paid vnto the gouernor of the Abisines, a great tribute time out of mind: which of late, the great Turke supposing to be a custome needelesse, did deny: till the people of the Abisines by commandment
of their Prince did breake downe their dammes: and drowning Egipt, did intórce the Turke to continue his pay,
and to giue much money for the new making of them very earnestily, to his great charge, desiring a peace.The works of Abbot and his late sixteenth century contemporaries in the field of geography continued to influence Europeans into the seventeenth century and beyond. Despite the growing body of knowledge from European explorers, merchants, and colonial officials, there continued to exist in the minds of many Europeans a distinct fascination with the fantastic kingdom of a distant Christian priest-king, and even the mounting lack of direct evidence related to Prester John’s kingdom could shake this entrenched belief.
Brooks discusses how Abbot defamiliarizes Prester John and his kingdom from Catholicism (p. 153):
Abbot described Prester John as a “a prince absolute,” and that he also had “a priestlike, or patriarchall functió, & iurisdiction among [the Abyssinians].” In Abbot’s estimation, Prester John was a “verie mightie prince, & reputed to be one of the greatest Emperors of the world.” Ever keen to understand the true religious persuasion of his subjects, the Anglican cleric assured readers that Prester John “in no sorte acknowledge[ed] any supreame prerogatiue of the B. of Rome.” This was bit of information was likely quite important to English readers, given their own recent history of estrangement with the Vatican. (153-154)
In other words, Abbot, the future Archbishop of Canterbury, capitalizes on the long history of failures among Catholics (from missionaries to Popes) to convert Prester John to Catholicism. In this way he is able to skew Prester John's reputation for iconoclasm as a means to frame Prester John as an ally to England and to Anglicanism.
Read the text.
