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

Letter from Johannes Africanus

Letter from Johannes Africanus (1500)

Olu Oguibe relates the following story about a mysterious "eighth version" of the Letter of Prester John, written in Syriac, discovered in Alexandria. In this version, which Oguibe translates, John refers to himself as Johannes Africanus. Importantly, Brewer (p. 319) claims to have confirmed with the author that the letter is a "fictional invention."

In 1165, a letter from a mysterious and hitherto unknown potentate, Prester John, was received by Pope Alexander III, and the Holy Roman and Byzantine Emperors. Purportedly originating in a remote Christian kingdom, the letter encouraged Europe's crusading spirit, and fueled its drive toward exploration and expansion. Seven versions of the letter are known, each varying on the details but all following a general pattern in which the priestly King from the East and descendant of the Magi introduced his magical realm and promised help to Europe as it engaged the Moslems over the Holy Land. However, there was an eighth version, or indeed an altogether different letter from John, which was not known until it was recently discovered in the archives of the library in Alexandria. In the much shorter and less fantastical letter, which nevertheless retains his at times incoherent style, John refers to himself first as Johannes Africanus, or John the African, lending credence to a late 15th century speculation that his realm might not have been in central Asia where it was thought to be, hut instead in Ethiopia. Also, he addresses not a European king or emperor as in his other letter, hut the "ruler of the New World," leading scholars to helieve that the letter might have been premonitory. Equally significant is the fact that in this letter Prester John no longer uses the boastful tone of his other letter, nor does he emphasize the military might of his kingdom; instead he writes as one "hrought low and redeemed... and now no more than a humble steward in the vineyard of our Lord and Savior," while emphasizing peace and friendly co-existence as the primary virtues of his realm. This is one of the first translations of the letter, the original of which is in Syriac.

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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.