Project Overview
Database
The first component of this project consists of a database that attempts to catalogue all non-Letter references to Prester John. The database contains of three tables, which correspond to authors, texts, and locations of Prester John’s kingdom. For all location-specific information latitude and longitude coordinates are provided. The tables are linked through identification numbers (Author ID, MS ID, PJ ID).
The Author Table contains the following information: author name, author century, author birth/death dates (if known), dates of relevant travel (if applicable), city of origin, occupation, location when writing about Prester John, and locale the author visited that is furthest away from city of origin (if applicable).
The Manuscript Table contains the following information: name of text (in English), name of text (original), century, approximate date of composition, terminus ante quem, original manuscript language, number of extant manuscripts of text, and translation languages.
The Prester John Locations Table contains the following information: century, year ascribed to Prester John observation, proposed location of John’s kingdom, name of John’s kingdom (if applicable), names or titles ascribed to the figure other than Prester John (if applicable), and contemporary historical resonances (if applicable).
Taken together, the database is meant to provide insight into the following questions:
-How did the legend spread geographically and linguistically over time?
-Where did people think Prester John’s kingdom was located and how did this change over time?
-Who wrote about Prester John: when, where, and for what purposes?
-As the legend changed over time, by what names did writers identify Prester John and to what degree were these names location-dependent?
-Is there a relationship we can trace between where texts situated Prester John and where these texts were themselves written?
-Is there any correlation between the putatively historical texts mentioning Prester John (travel narrative, chronicle, geographical treatise) and the reflexively fictional accounts of his kingdom?
-What can the spread of the legend in a given century tell us about the global concerns of medieval and early modern Europeans?
