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

Names for Prester John's Realm

Hulna (De Adventu)
Pantaxore (Mandeville)
Barrar (Il Trattato di Terra Santa e dell’Oriente, 1485)
Bibrith (The Great Magnificence of Prester John, Lord of Greater India and of Ethiopia, c. 1499)
Machda (Tamburlaine)
Lassa (History of the Popes)
Belmalechi (Report on the Kingdom of Congo)
Hamarich (Munster's 1540 map)

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On the Arrival of the Patriarch of the Indians to Rome under Pope Calixtus II De Adventu patriarchae Indorum ad Urbem sub Calixto papa secundo (1122)

Long considered to be an origin point for the legend of Prester John, the anonymous De Adventu appears to be a compilation of lore about India, most notably borrowed from Gregory of Tours. The connection to the Prester John legend involves an anecdote concerning a man called Patriarch John who traveled from India to Rome (by way of Byzantium) in 1122. Reportedly discovered by papal legates in Byzantium, and having arrived for diplomatic reasons, this John had allegedly visited the Byzantine church to be formally recognized as "Patriarch of the Indies" (his predecessor had died).

Upon arriving in Rome to an audience with Pope Calixtus II (r. 1119-1124), Patriarch John described the marvelous land over which he ruled, including India's capital city of Hulna (unknown to geographers), where he resided and was protected by the largest walls in the world.

In addition, this text discusses he reputed miracles performed by the Apostle Thomas, including his magical floating tomb.

Although De Adventu does not invoke the name "Prester John" directly, its linking of a rich Christian patriarch of India and the figure of St. Thomas allows scholars to see it as one of the early, potentially direct influences on the Letter of Prester John. Uebel argues that this text directly influenced the Elyseus Narrative.

The text features descriptions that the Letter of Prester John would later echo, including an emphasis on the magnificent size of the capital city, the realms inclusion of a biblical river (Physon) full of precious gems, the punishment for non-believers in his realm, and the resting place of the Apostle Thomas.

That this anonymous account is corroborated by Odo of Rheims' "Letter to Count Thomas" makes the de Adventu all the more compelling as a potential source text for the Prester John legend.

Michael Uebel provides an English translation of one of the more interesting moments in the text:
A short distance outside the walls of the city [Hulna] is a mountain, surrounded everywhere by the waters of the deepest lake, which extends in height out of the water, at the top of which stands the mother church of St. Thomas the Apostle… During the year the aforementioned mountain, where the church of St. Thomas is located, is not accessible to anyone, nor would anyone without cause dare to approach, but the patriarch who must go there in order to celebrate the sacred mysteries, and in the church people from everywhere are allowed entrance only once a year. 29. For, eight days before and after the approaching feast day, the level of the water surrounding the mountain so greatly diminishes that it is hard to tell there was any water there at all; from this place there, people from everywhere came together [to visit the sanctuary of St Thomas]

Zarncke created his edition of the text from nine manuscripts, one printing, one fragment, and from two chronicles which contained the tale (Brewer, 5)

Slessarev provides a useful overview of the text (pp. 9-11):
“The first Western sources to record the miracles performed by St. Thomas and to announce the victory of Prester John over a Moslem army had one common characteristic… Both accounts contain legendary elements, and while in the case of St. Thomas such a background was regarded as more or less natural, Prester John has been almost exclusively viewed in a historical setting. Yet he too was at least partially clothed in the garb of legend, and the connections between the two traditions want examination."
“The anonymous author called the Indian prelate Patriarch John and let him travel for a year from his home country to Constantinople where he was to be confirmed in his position and invested with a pallium. Here in the imperial city he became acquainted with papal envoys who had come from Rome to negotiate an end to the unfortunate split between the Greek and Roman churches… the Patriarch begged the papal emissaries to take him along on their return so that he might see Rome… and it was at a papal reception in the Lateran palace that the Indian dignitary told the story of St. Thomas’ miracle-working hand."
"The city over which he ruled… was the capital of India and its name was Hulna. In circumference it extended for four days’ journey and its walls were so thick that two Roman chariots set abreast could be driven on them. Through the middle of the city flowed the River Physon on its course from the earthly paradise. Its waters were crystal clear and they were full of gold and precious stones. Hulna’s population consisted exclusively of Christians among whom there were no heretics or unbelievers, because such persons either came to their senses or died."

Brewer's compilation of Prester John sources begins with de Adventu (pp. 30-38) and includes an English translation.

Read Latin text on Google Books (pp. 837-843)
More on St. Thomas and medieval Christianity in India.
Path Five: 1521-1699 AD Prester John and European Modernity

This period of the legend begins with the earnest (and arguably successful) search by a Portuguese Embassy in 1520 to locate Prester John in Ethiopia, features minor appearances in literary texts (many of which reflect the neo-Chivalric revival of the late 1580s through the 1590s), and terminates in an age of skepticism about the legend that closes the 18th century.

During this era, Prester John was mainly identified with Africa-- particularly Ethiopia. Through the sixteenth century, this identification became common for most European world maps. On a 1540 map by Munster, for example, the capital city of the kingdom of Prester John is situated in "Hamarich" (may be present day Hamar).

As Niayesh argues (p. 164), here we see a transformation of the figure of Prester John from belated European savior "into the prototype of the eastern ruler who is to be overcome and no longer sought after as an ally." While Niayesh's comment accurately describes the developments of some of the writing on Prester John (especially in fiction), his kingdom remained for others still a real physical target (or at least a useful rhetorical ally).

Given Portugal's aggressive missions to Africa in general and Ethiopia in particular, the era is dominated by Portuguese thought and writing, but other European countries were still using the figure of Prester John as a means of negotiating their own power and understanding of the world. Several English writers, including George Abbot, found a spiritual ally in Prester John by emphasizing the imaginary rulers resistance to Catholicism. Others, such as Edward Webbe, continued to promote the same story that had been told since Mandeville.

It can be argued that this era ended in the year 1633, when Ethiopia closes its borders to Europeans after the expulsions of the Jesuits by Emperor Fasilides, yet, as Brewer (p. 273) points out, there are hundreds (if not thousands) of texts from the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries that contain some comment associating Prester John with Ethiopia.

While European travel to Ethiopia may have ended in the first half of the seventeenth century, the texts and tales that circulated for the rest of the century almost entirely reflect the narratives that first established this era, most due to Portuguese travel.
The Book of John Mandeville
The Book of John Mandeville (c. 1356-1360)

Compiled in the mid-fourteenth century, the notorious Book of John Mandeville had a lasting effect on European understanding of world geography well into the eighteenth century.

This medieval bestseller was translated into English, Latin, Spanish, German Dutch, Bohemian, Danish, and Gaelic. The oldest surviving copy, written in an Anglicized French, is dated to 1371. As with the Letter of Prester John, the Book of John Mandeville resists easy generic classification, with readers describing the text with terms including 'livre', 'geste', 'romant', 'tractatus', 'itenerarium', 'voiage' and 'trauayle' (Niayesh, 160).

Written from the persona of an almost certainly fictional English knight, "Mandeville" relates a highly imaginative journey from England to the gates of the Earthly Paradise and back (for "Mandeville" understood the world as round). Round as Mandeville's world was, the spiritual and geographical "center" remained in Jerusalem, often quipped to be the "navel" of the world during the European Middle Ages. As Rosemary Tzanaki (p.11) writes, The Book of John Mandeville depicts a "religious geography" with Jerusalem at its center, "stressing the unity of this world through its very diversity."

In his journey to the locales furthest away from Jerusalem, approaching that Earthly Paradise from which "Mandeville" finds himself barred, he journeys through Pantaxore, his name for the realm of Prester John. Referencing the theory of the antipodes, "Mandeville" comments that this land of Pantaxore lies "foot agaynst foot to Englonde."

Mandeville's version of the Prester John legend integrates the European knowledge of the Mongol Empire into the story of Prester John, even inventing a ceremony in which Prester John's daughter is ceremoniusly wed to the "grete Chane" and vice versa.

In the early seventeenth century, Samuel Purchas, an armchair traveler himself, declared Mandeville "the greatest Asian traveler that ever the world had" (qtd. in Silverberg, p. 148). The renowned British geographer Richard Hakluyt, a contemporary of Purchas, referred to Mandeville in his Principall Navigations as "eruditum et insignem Authorem" [erudite and distinguished author] (Brooks, p. 88).

Although a highly dubious travel tale, the influence of Mandeville's geographical lore on European cultural understanding of the wider world is immense: Niayesh, referencing the text's immense influence on later travelers, dubs the Mandeville character as the "knight of transmission" (155). Above all, this text remained impactful for its skillful weaving together of earlier travel narratives and its contention of a global Christendom.

Mandeville casts Prester John as the famed figurehead of an unknowable realm through which the belief he clearly inspired may persist. The book clearly cribs from earlier travel narratives and encyclopedias--including the writings of Vincent of Beauvais, John of Plano Carpini, Ascelin of Lombardia, William of Rubruck, Marco Polo, and Odoric of Pordenone-- but often expands on those accounts through a clear desire to entertain. Though the literary value of Mandeville’s text itself has been debated, its influence on later medieval literary texts cannot be denied.

Mandeville returns Prester John to his former glory, as detailed by Heng (p. 134):
An influential travel romance like Mandeville’s Travels, which strategically prefers to emphasize the older, nostalgically legendary aura of Prester John, also shrewdly prefers to underemphasize the Nestorian character of the Christianity anchored into place by the localization of the Prester John story in preceding thirteenth- and fourteenth-century historical accounts. While allowing for some variation of doctrine and practice from the Latin Church, in Prester John’s empire, the Travels vigorously underscores the ultimately universal principles of Christianity shared in common with John’s people—the most important commonalities of faith and devotion— and celebrates the piety and virtue of John’s folk: “This emperor Prester John is a Christian man, and the most part of his land also, if all be it so that they have not all the articles of our belief so clearly as we have. Nonetheless they believe in God, Father and Son and Holy Ghost; and full devout men they are and true each one to the other, and there is neither with them fraud nor guile.
By emphasizing the devout Christianity of Prester John’s people, and winking at their Nestorian difference, then, the Travels is able to present John’s empire, in its Christian ideality, as a heterotopian mirror for Europe: a mirror in which Europe might see an exotic version of itself, dressed up as a successful Christian empire that happens to be located elsewhere. Simultaneously John’s domain is also conspicuously partnered with the Khan’s imperial domain in such a way as to suggest that John’s realm functions as a kind of Christian threshold to the Khanate, a counterpart-in-empire that mimics the Great Khan’s vast imperial enterprise" (281).
The history of the Mandeville text is complex and, for many, there is no one preferred edition. The most complete edition probably remains Malcolm Letts’ edition and translation of the Egerton text.

For a succinct summary of the publication history of the Travels, see the first footnote in Moseley.

For more on the text, see Kohanski and Benson’s introduction to the TEAMS edition, available here.

Read the Middle English text online.
Read a modernized translation online.
Alternative Forms of Prester John Alternate Names for Prester John: Presbyter Iohannes, Patriarch John, King John, Prete Iane, Prete Ianni, Presto Giovanni, Presta Jani, Preste Juan, Preste-Jean, Prestre Johan, Preste Gian, Preter Johan, Presbytero-Johanides, Tsar-Priest John, Prete Ianne, Prester Cohan, Preste Cuan, Johannes Africanus, Bel Gian, Iohannes Belul, Ioannes Encoe, Praeciosus Iohannes, Preste Ioam, Belul Jan, Jonanam, Presbyter Bedigian, Prestigian, Precious John, Senapo

Alternate Titles: King David, King George, King of the Abexi, King of Tangut, Kofar al-Turak, Keeper of the Grail, Dalai Lama, Emperor of Catayo (China), King Voddomaradeg, King Ogané, Christien de Sentour

See also the list of names of Prester John's realm.
The Great Magnificence of Prester John, Lord of Greater India and of Ethiopia The Great Magnificence of Prester John, Lord of Greater India and of Ethiopia
[Lagran Magnificentia del Preste Ianni Signore dell India Maggiore & della Etiopia]
(ca. 1499)

Also referred to as the Treatise on the Supreme Prester John, Pope and Emperor of India and Ethiopia, this poem by Giuliano Dati was the result of an Italian interest in Dati's omission of Prester John from his rhymed version of the letter sent by Columbus's admiral, detailing their adventures in the Indies.

Consisting of 59 eight-line stanzas, this text was derived from Jacopo Filippo Foresti's Treatise on the Pontificate of Prester John but, as Silverberg (p. 223) claims, before the "chapbook plagiarisms" of Foresti became available. Dati's text also draws from Andrea da Barberino's Guerino il Meschino and another text entitled Treatise on the Ten Nations and Sects of Christians.

In the text, Prester John is referred to as the ruler of the Indians (here designated as one of world's the "ten nations"). Here we see the blending of India and Ethiopia as Dati brings together the conversion of the Ethiopians by St. Matthew and the conversion of the Indians by St. Thomas (whose tomb here rests in Mylapur) into a single story set in a single homogenous-seeming territory.

Much of the text takes up the traditional catalogue of wonders, hearkening back to the Letter of Prester John. The ending of the poem promises a sequel, which has not survived, if it was written.

Rogers (p. 94) explains the story surrounding the poem's origin:
Columbus had disappointed the reading public of Europe, but his interpreter in verse [Dati] determined to make the necessary amends to his Italian reading public. Possibly prompted by suspicious that his rhymed version of Columbus in reality echoed a West Indian song, he projected an Indian cycle of two songs, composed of ingredients which would leave no reader dissatisfied. His first song, undated but of the period 1493-95, bears the traditionally imposing title Treatise on the Supreme Prester John, Pope and Emperor of India and Ethiopia. On his second poem Dati bestowed the simple title of Second Song of India.

The title of the first of this duo instantly recalls the Treatise on the Pontificate of Prester John by Foresti da Bergamo. Perhaps the rhymester-priest saw fit to give equal importance to the imperial aspect in closer accordance with the intent of the original twelfth-century letter from Prester John because he, living in the age of the Renaissance popes, sought to portray an ideal Church-state relation.

Rogers (p. 97-8) continues on the details of this text:
The first song appeared in at least four early editions... Giuliano Dati rhymes his reading in fifty-nine stanzas of ottava rima. He opens with an enumeration of the then nations of Christians, the order of occurrence- Latin, Greeks, Indians, Jacobites, Nestorians, Marionites, Armenians, Georgians, Syrians, and Mozarabs- and the spelling leaving no doubt of the poet's source [Guerino il Meschino]... The treatist on the ten Christian nations was published about 1490 in conjunction with the Joannes de Hese itinerary... Foresti's Treatise on the Pontificate of Prester John first joined the chapbook parade in about 1499... As Dati, writing before August 10, 1495, now resorts to this latter treatise, he obviously employed an edition of the Supplement to the Chronicles. The spelling of Prester John's residential city- Bibrithe in the Supplement, Brichbrich in the chapbook version, the former in Dati- confirms this supposition.

Here, as Brooks (p. 155) details, the frontispiece of the poem "depicts Prester John with decidedly European features, and the setting of the priest-king's court is not unlike those found in Europe at the time."

Brooks continues:
The unknown artist who created the frontispeice illustration provided this Prester John with an impressive crown containing jewels in the shape of the fleur de lis. Prester John in this image appears to be blessing the supplicants who remain seated before him, and he holds up two fingers in much the same manner as does the Roman Catholic Pope. The image is suggestive of a ruler with both religious and secular authority, certainly in keeping with Prester John’s role as king and patriarch.
The people who surround Prester John in the image also bear similarities to depictions of Europeans in the late fifteenth century. Interestingly, Prester John finds himself holding court over twelve individuals, perhaps an apostolic tip of the cap to Christ. Eleven of the visitors to Prester John's court are bearded and wear cloaks and hats not unlike those of fifteenth century Franciscan prelates, while one person directly to the right of Prester John has decidedly feminine features and is wearing what appears to be a nun’s habit. One is tempted to draw parallels between the symbolism in this image and Leonardo da Vinci’s L'Ultima Cena: the timing fits, but there may be additional reasons why this image shares some similarities with the aforementioned Milanese mural of such historical renown. In this illustration to the chapbook’s frontispiece, the artist depicted Prester John’s court above seven steps, each of which contains an admonition to readers to flee (“FVGE”) the seven deadly sins.

A copy of the the printed poem, which was published in Florence, is available at the British Museum: C.20. C.23.
More on Ethiopia's image in World Literature.
Il Trattato di Terra Santa e dell’Oriente Il Trattato di Terra Santa e dell’Oriente (1485)

This text, written around 1485 but unpublished until 1900, narrates the travels of Francesco Suriano, as recorded by Sister Catherine Guarnieri da Osimo. Among the places the group travels to is Ethiopia, in which they find a cosmopolitan court of Prester John populated with a number of nobles from Europe and the Holy Land:
"Having crossed the river [the Nile] we traveled for ten days and reached the court of the great king Prester John, which was in a place called Barrar. In which court we found ten Italians, men of good repute, viz. Master Gabriel, a Neapolitan, Master Jacomo di Garzoni, a Venetian, Master Pietro da Monte from Venice, Master Philyppo, a Burgundian, Master Consalvo, a Catalan, Master Ioane da Fiesco, a Genoese, and Master Lyas of Beirut [?], who went there with papal letters. All these had been there for twenty-five years. But since 1480 there had gone there Master Zuan Darduino, nephew of Nicolo da Ie Carte, a Venetian, my dear friend and an honest man of good repute, Cola di Rosi, a Roman, who had changed his name to Zorzi, Matheo of Piedmont, Nicolò, a Mantuan, Master Nicolò Branchalion, a Venetian, Brother Ioane aforesaid from Calabria and Batista da Imola. I asked these men what they had gone to do in this strange land. They replied saying that their intention was to seek jewels and precious stones. But since the king did not allow them to return they were all ill content, although they were all well rewarded and provided for by the king, each in accordance with his rank." (qtd. in Silverberg, 190)
Silverberg notes that of the many names mentioned above, only painter Nicolò Branchalion (Brancaleone) was confirmed to have been in Ethiopia by other sources, having been commissioned by Emperor Baeda Maryam I (successor to Zara Yakob) to paint several significant, controversial devotional works in local churches.

Suriano's description of Barrar itself not only pales in comparison to the expectations of what a Prester John kingdom might look like but also appears to go out of its way to diminish the architectural and cultural accomplishments of Ethiopia. Suriano claims that the only "buildings" that exist in Barrar are the churches built to memorialize its emperors, and though the text notes that the population is substantial and willing to fight to defend Christendom, he claims that the soldiers lack the weaponry to competitively engage in modern combat.

In chapter 34 of the text, Suriano also mentions the epistle sent Paulo de Chanedo to Prester John (Prete Iane).

Read on Google Books.
Tamburlaine Written in 1598 or 1599, Part Two of Christopher Marlowe's Tamburlaine features a brief mention of Prester John (1.3.186-90):
And I have march'd along the River Nile,
To Machda, where the mighty Christian Priest
Cal'd John the great, sits in a milk-white robe.
Whose triple Myter did I take by force,
And made him sweare obedience to my crowne.
As Niayesh (p. 164) points out, these lines, spoken by Tamburlaine's chief lieutenant Techelles, depict Prester John not as a savior to seek out but as an African sovereign to vanquish.

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Lhasa