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

King David

This page is referenced by:

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.
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.
History of the Three Kings
Historia Trium Regum (b. 1375)

John of Hildesheim's Historia Trium Regum links Prester John, St. Thomas, and the Three Magi in a single text for the first time. It was originally written in Latin– though no extant copies survive. There exists an early English translation from which Brewer excerpts the relevant Prester John material

As Hamilton (p. 181, n. 63) notes, Hildesheim "claimed to have based his work on French translations made at Acre of 'caldayce et hebrayce scriptos' brought there from India." Hamilton also mentions that Hildesheim likely consulted the collected writings concerning the Magi housed in Cologne's cathedral. Numerous manuscripts containing the English translation survive, the earliest which date to the first half of the fifteenth century.

The dating of the original text is difficult, especially because its authorship was ascribed to John of Hildesheim a century after his death by Johannes Trithemius (1462-1516). Hamilton refers to the text as an early thirteenth century text, but it seems safer to date the text as written before the death of John of Hildesheim, which occurred in 1375.

The Historia Trium Regum provides a cohesive story that links the historical Magi with the current political reality in Europe, which includes the legend of Prester John. Hildesheim based his story on the Gospel accounts of the three kings as well as the apocryphal commentary on Matthew known as the Opus Imperfectum (5th century).

Some time after returning to the East after visiting the infant Christ, these kings (Melchior, Balthasar, and 'Jasper') are converted to Christianity by the Apostle Thomas, who served as the. When Thomas died, these Magi then selected an heir to serve as spiritual Patriarch of the Indies. They also elect a secular ruler to act as rex et sacerdos, and they call this leader "Priest John," so-called in reverence to John the Evangelist. In the narrative, Prester John, here called "Preter Johan" the secular ruler of India, rules in tandem with a “Patriarch Thomas":
Than these thre kynges archebysshoppes and other bysshoppes of comyn [common] assent of all the people chose an other man that was dyscrete to be lord and gouerner of all the people in temporalte. And for this cause that yf ony [any] man wolde ryse or tempte agaynst the patryarke Thomas or agaynst that lawe of god yf so were that the patryarke myght not rule hym by the spyrytuall lawe, than sholde this lorde of temporall lawe chastyse hym by his power. So this lorde sholde not be called a kynge or emperour, but he sholde be called Preter Johan. And the cause is this. For the thre kynges were preestes and of theyr possessyons they made hym lorde. For there is no degree so hygh as preesthode is in all the worlde, nor so worthy. Also he is called Preter Johan in worshyp of saynt Johan the euangelyst [the evangelist] that was a preest the moost specyall chosen and loued of god almyghty. Whan all this was done these thre kynges assygned the patryarke Thomas and Preter Johan, that one to be chefe gouernour in spyrytualte, and that other to be chefe lorde in temporalte for euemlore. And so these same lordes and gouemours of Inde ben [are] called unto these dayes. (qtd. in Brewer, p. 209)

Thus Prester John becomes a title, an idea echoed in Parzival and Younger Titurel, and an idea that anticpates the Prester John as Dalai Lama narrative path.

The narrative also extrapolates on the Magi legends, which had circulated around Germany since the time of the original Prester John Letter.

It is also notable that Hildesheim refers to Prester John's son, King David, as an enemy to the Mongols.

For more on the connection between the Prester John and Magi traditions, see Hamilton.

Read an early English translation online.
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."
Ong Khan
Ong Khan, alternately known as Unc Khan, Toghril, Tooril Khan, Unach, King David, and King John was the Khereid ruler in the late 12th/early 13th centuries. The title ong is the Mongol form of the Chinese honorific wang meaning 'universal' (Hamilton, p. 248).

Reportedly a Nestorian Christian– although according to Bar Hebraeus' Chronicon Syriacum, a lapsed one– "Unach" Khan was killed by his blood brother and subordinate, the soon-to-be Genghis Khan, who was acting on rumors that a jealous Unc was planning to kill him.

This is the same figure known in other mid-thirteenth century texts as King David, son of Prester John.

Ong Khan figures in a number of Prester John narratives, including the Historia Tartarum (c. 1246), William of Rubruck's Itinerarium (c. 1253), the Chronicon Syriacum, Marco Polo's Travels,
History of the Tartars
Historia Tartarum (c. 1246)

Most of Ascelin’s journey to the land of the Tartars is lost, but that which remains, recorded by Simon of Saint-Quentin, was kept alive by Vincent of Beauvais in his Speculum Historiale.

As Morgan (p. 164) relates, "Simon had evidently picked up the story of Toghril's defeat at the hands of Chinggis Khan, and his subsequent death. For him, though, Chinggis's defeated enemy remains King David, son of Prester John, king of India."

In the portion of the narrative that survives (that which was transcribed by Vincent of Beauvais), Ascelin also reports that Prester John has integrated his family into the Mongol royal family by betrothing Prester John’s granddaughter to Chinggis Khan.

For more on Simon’s text and journey, see Guzman and Brewer (pp. 155-159).
Historia Tartarorum Ecclesiastica Published in Germany in 1741, Johann Lorenz von Mosheim's Historia Tartarorum Ecclesiastica is very much similar to Ephraim Chambers' Cyclopaedia before him and Patrick Nisbet in his An Abridgment of Ecclesiastical History (1776) after.

Von Mosheim describes the emergence of Prester John in the Mongol era, following the death of "Coiremchan, otherwise called Kencham":
it was invaded, with such uncommon valour and success, by a Nestorian priest, whose name was John, that it fell before his victorious arms, and acknowledged this warlike and enterprising presbyter, as its monarch. This was the famous Prester John, whose territory was, for a long time, considered by the Europeans as a second paradise, as the seat of opulence and complete felicity. As he was a presbyter before his elevation to the royal dignity, many continued to call him presbyter John, even when he was seated on the throne but his kingly name was Ungchan (qtd. in Brewer, p. 261)
He then retells the oft-repeated story of King David, Prester John's son, and the former's defeat at the hands of Genghis Khan.
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.
An Abridgment of Ecclesiastical History Patrick Nisbet's An Abridgment of Ecclesiastical History (1776) retells the story of Prester John presented in Johann Lorenz von Mosheim's Historia Tartarorum Ecclesiastica (1741). The Abridgement is one of a handful of Enlightenment era texts that returns Prester John to the Asian Steppe using a mostly linguistic rationale.

Nisbet writes:
The cause of Christianity gained considerable ground in Asiatic Tartary, by a remarkable revolution that happened there. This was brought about by John a Presbyter, called Prester John. He was a Nestorian priest, a man of vast ambition, formed for enterprise, and distinguished by eminent talents. Upon the death of Kenchan, who reigned in the eastern part of Asia, the famous Prester John invaded his kingdom with surprising magnanmity, and proved successful. From a humble priest, he ascended to a kingly throne; and for a long time swayed a scepter over an opulent and powerful nation, who submitted to his victorious arms. He enlightened his dominions with the knowledge of the gospel, and left them to his son and successor David. But he was deprived of them toward the conclusion of this century, by Genghiz-Kan Emperor of the Tartars, a renowned and successful warrior.
Liber de Rebus Memorabilibus
Written by Henry of Herford

Brewer (p. 283) describes the text:
A derivate account of Prester John, which borrowed from the tmdition of King David being killed in 1202 by the Tartars (the earliest surviving exemplar of which is in the Annates Pegavienses... Another source which the author calls 'Egkardus' (?) repeating the familiar story of Prester John and his family being killed and maimed by the Mongols before they emerged from Asia, as well as excerpts from Otto of Freising and the Prester John Letter: Augustus Potthast (ed.), Liber de Rebus Memorabilioribus sive Chronicon Henrici de Hervordia (Goningen, 1859), pp. 175-6. No translation known.
Chronica Regni Siciliae Acccording to Brewer (p. 277), this chronicle written by Richard of San Germano contains a "notice that the then King of Hungary (Andrew II) sent word to the Pope (Honorius III) informing him of the conquests of Chingis Khan in Russia, but styling him 'rex Dauit, qui presbiter lohannes dicebarur in uulgari ' [King David, who is called Prester John in the common tongue].

Richard also noted that 'Septem anni errant quod de India exiuerat, corpus afferens beati Thome apostoli, et uno die de Ruteis et Plautis occiderant ducenta milia' . [They have journeyed for seven years since they left India, carrying with them the body of blessed Thomas the Apostle, and in one day they killed 200,000 Russians and Cumans]."
Jacques de Vitry's Letter VII Dated April 18th, 1221, this letter sent by Jacques de Vitry in Damietta to crusading leaders back in Europe conveys King David's strong belief in the King David stories that had circulated around the crusader camp.

This letter supplements Jacques initial hopes about eastern Christians led by Prester John by integrating the deeds of the Relatio de Davide to Prester John and the future capture of Acre, Damietta, Cairo, Babylonia, and other regions in Egypt.
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]."
Annales Pegavienses According to Brewer (p. 276) notes that the text contains "a short notice stating that in 1202 the Tartars, under their leader King David, son of Prester John, came forth from the mountains of India to destroy foreign lands" and adds that this story "was copied almost verbatim a number of times in other works, for which see Zarncke, Abh.2, pp. 73- 5."
Eulogium Historiarum Brewer (p. 283) discusses the text:
A chronicle in many hands which describes under the year 1190 that 'Hoc anno, sicut a pluribus traditur, Tartari regnare coeperunt. Hi enim in montibus Indiae latitantes, David regem Indiae filium Presbyteri Johannis occiderunt, et statim ad depopulationem aliarum terrarum processerunt' [In this year, as is related by many, the Tartars began to reign. Indeed, these men, hiding in the mountains of India, killed David, king of India, son of Prester John, and immediately proceeded to the plundering of other lands]: Frank Scon Haydon (ed.) (London, RS, 1858), vol. I, p. 388. No translation known.