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• 1 2015-05-21T11:48:30-07:00 Early Literary and Political Reverberations 16 Wolfram through the Fifth Crusade plain 2021-09-08T10:47:57-07:00
  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. 
• 1 media/Map_of_Angelino_Dulcert_cropped.jpg 2015-06-12T11:00:17-07:00 Letter to Prester John 15 image_header 2024-01-27T19:32:59-08:00
  Letter To Prester John (1177)
  
  In 1177, Pope Alexander composed a letter to Prester John, "the illustrious and magnificent John King of the Indies," and sent Master Phillip, his personal physician, as envoy to petition for John’s instruction in Catholicism. We never hear back from Master Phillip. While Alexander’s letter is typically read at face-value as a genuine attempt to reach out to an eastern Christian priest-king, it also has the effect of re-inscribing ecclesiastical power, in that Alexander establishes himself as the custodian of doctrinal Catholicism, the adherence to which should be considered the most important feature of any imperial project.
   
  Brewer (pp. 94-6) provides an English translation of Alexander's letter. Although most critics understand this letter as a response to the Letter of Prester John, Brewer maintains "that is emphatically not the case." He sees the letter instead as a "curious anomaly."
   
  For the Latin text of the letter, see Zarncke. Read Latin version online at Google Books (pp. 935-946).
   
  Bernard 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 (184). Although scholars, including Hamilton, have tried to explain the legend as a hoax perpetuated by Frederick’s inner circle that spiraled out of control, this explanation fails to account for the survival of the legend beyond the political intrigues of the twelfth century.
   
  From Hamilton, "Prester John and the Three Kings of Cologne":     

  “[T]he aim of the author of this letter is to show that Frederick’s concept of church-state relations, unlike that of Alexander III, produced harmony in the Christian world, and enabled Christians to unite against the enemies of the faith” (180).

  “That Alexander III took the letter seriously is evident from the reply which he wrote to it from Venice on 27 September 1177. Significantly he omits the title ‘Priest’ and addresses John as ‘illustrious and magnificent king of the Indies.’ Alexander states uncompromisingly that he is the head of the church on earth, and then explains his reasons for writing. Philip, his physician, had been sent on a mission to John and had met some of his subjects who, he discovered, held heretical opinions about some points of doctrine. They had asked to be given a church in Rome and an altar at the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, to which their clergy might come to be instructed in the Catholic faith. The pope is therefore sending Philip back to John to give him Catholic instruction and to discover what his true wishes are” (183).

  “It is often supposed that this letter gives a factual account of Alexander III’s attempts to make contact with Prester John… It is, however, possible that the pope’s letter was written for a quite different reason. When Prester John’s letter began to circulate Alexander III was on excellent terms with Manuel Comnenus and would have been able to verify that he had not sent the letter to Frederick I. He may therefore have inferred, just as modern scholars have done, that it was a western forgery. It clearly originated in Barbarossa’s circle and implicitly defended the kind of Christian society which the emperor was trying to implement. The timing of the pope’s reply is significant: he waited for twelve years after the publication of the letter until the Peace of Venice had been concluded… On 27 September, after the practical details of the Peace had been arranged, Alexander wrote to Prester John, emphasizing that the emperor of the Indies… had now agreed to be instructed in the truths of the Catholic religion by the only competent authority, St. Peter’s vicar. Arguably this letter was not written to an eastern Christian prince whom the pope had wrongly identified as Prester John, but to the faithful west who had read and been misled by Prester John’s letter” (183).

   
  Nicholas Jubber, eight hundred years later, attempts to re-trace the emissary’s route and deliver Alexander’s reply (despite the obvious facts standing in the way of this feat).
• 1 media/Map_of_Angelino_Dulcert_cropped.jpg 2015-06-12T10:59:57-07:00 Pope Alexander III 11 image_header 2023-11-25T14:54:53-08:00 Born Roland of Siena, Pope Alexander III (c. 1100-1181) served as Pope from 1159 to 1181 after serving as professor of theology at Bologna, cardinal, and then papal chancellor. 
  
  His papacy was marked, in part, by a longstanding power struggle with Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, the man who added sacrum (holy) to the title of Roman emperor. Frederick eventually acquiesced to Alexander in the Peace of Venice, "the most thorough surrender of civil power to clerical authority since Henry IV's submission at Canossa exactly one hundred years earlier" (Silverberg, 60).
  
  That same year (1177), Alexander allegedly penned his own letter to Prester John in which he urges the priest-king to be instructed in Catholicism by Alexander's personal physician, Master Phillip.