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• 1 media/Screen Shot 2021-06-03 at 4.28.36 PM.png 2016-03-26T20:53:44-07:00 Prester John and 'Nestorianism' 19 image_header 2024-02-26T19:08:17-08:00 There are three texts predating the "Letter" that mention a distant priest king called John. They are listed below. All three express that this figure was a so-called Nestorian Christian, which would have counted as a heretic in the Catholic West.
  
  Nestorianism referred to the belief, popularized by Patriarch Nestorius, that Christ was of two natures: both human and divine. This belief was condemned as heresy by the European Catholic Church at the Council of Chalcedon in 451, two decades after being condemned at the Council of Ephesus by the Byzantine Church in 431. These condemnations all but ended the influence of Nestorianism in the European west. 
  
  By the time of Prester John's advent in the 12th century, both Nestorianism and its opposite, monophysitism (which declared that Christ was of a single divine nature), had long been considered heretical by the Catholic Church, though it must be said that the Catholic position in which Christ's human nature was "absorbed into" his divine could be understood as uncannily similar (or only slightly semantically differentiable) from Nestorianism. 
  
  Although the Letter itself does not mention John's Nestorianism explicitly, this denominational adherence became part of the lore surrounding John and his kingdom within the century. 
  
  While the influence of Nestorianism in Europe was all but nonexistent by the advent of the Prester John legend, its influence was much more significant in more eastern locales. As early as 635, Nestorian A-lo-pen arrives in China to preach. Although by 1000, the T’ang Dynasty effectively destroyed all of the Nestorian churches in China, its influence grew in Mongolia, Turkestan, and other areas of the Steppe. 
  
  According to Bar Hebreaus, an early influence on the early legend, the Mongol tribe of Keraits (conflated with the army of Prester John by Otto of Freising) were baptized into Nestorian faith and remained Nestorians from the eleventh century through the thirteenth. 
  
  Furthermore, the historically accurate association of Nestorianism with St. Thomas (and India) naturally led many of those invested in the legend to project Prester John's kingdom somewhere in India (a name that at the time of course encompassed basically everything from China to Ethiopia). The following map depicts the locations of Nestorian churches in the Middle Ages:
  
  
  • Anonymous -  On the Arrival of the Partriarch of the Indians to Rome (1122)
  • Odo of Rheims - Letter to "Count Thomas" (1122)
  • Otto of Freising - History of the Two Cities (1143)  
• 1 2016-03-27T18:30:50-07:00 Nestorianism 12 image_header 2024-02-28T08:17:58-08:00 Although more accurately known as the Assyrian Church or the East Syrian Church, the term Nestorian abided in medieval sources to describe a sect of Christianity originating from the Syriac tradition of Eastern Christianity. The name 'Nestorian' refers to the teachings of Nestorius (c. 386-450), who, from his position of Patriarch of Constantinople, taught the doctrine of a two-natured (or dyophysite) Christ. This belief, which professes that Christ had separate human and divine natures, became a distinguishing doctrine for the sect. Nestorius' dyophysitism was formally condemned as heretical as the Council of Ephesus (431) and reiterated at the Council of Chalcedon (451).
  
  Nonetheless, in the Middle Ages, Nestorian Christians could be found as far East as China (see the map below). It should then be unsurprising that Prester John was widely rumored to be of the Nestorian faith. Given the theories surrounding the burial place of the Apostle Thomas, a figure closely associated with the Prester John legend, it is notable that one of the first major centers of Nestorianism was Edessa, where a school of Nestorian theology thrived until 489. 
  
  As a protected minority in the Middle East, Nestorians played a vital role in the cultural development taking place in the Arab world in the ninth and tenth centuries (Silverberg, 22). The story of medieval Nestorianism overlapped with that of the Mongol's beginning in the eleventh century, as Nestorian missionaries traveling eastward had reached Mongol provinces decades before the Mongol's systematic takeover of much of the Asian Steppe and Middle East. This explains the number of Nestorians that European travelers (from William of Rubruck to Marco Polo to Odoric of Pordenone) observed among the Mongols in their travels (even wives of the khan). 
  
  Due to its outlawed teachings and its apparently accelerating popularity across eastern locales, Nestorianism was treated in Catholic Europe as both a feared heresy (perhaps more serious than all "heresies" but that of Islam) as well as a missionary opportunity. Thus it should not be surprising that several missions to Prester John's kingdom were ordered for the ostensible purpose of converting the Nestorian Prester John to Catholicism.