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

Nile River

Part of the European fascination with the Nile River comes from its reputation as one of the four biblical rivers mentioned in Genesis. Along with the Euphrates, Hiddekel (Tigris), P(h)ison (Ganges), there was the Gehon, which due its biblical association with Ethiopia (Genesis 2:13), came to be understood as the Nile (Hamilton, p. 239).

And the name of the second river is Gehon: the same is it that compasseth all the land of Ethiopia.
(Douay-Rheims)

Over the medieval period, the Nile gathered a nearly mythical reputation. It's headwaters were located at the so-called Mountains of the Moon.
And, of course, there was the notion that the Ethiopian negus, often associated with Prester John, could control the flow of the river, with the implied or explicit threat of diverting water from Egypt or flooding the country.

According to Adam Knobler, the association of the Ethiopian negus with the ability to control the Nile River dates back to the reign of the Fatimid sultan al-Mustansir Billah (r. 1036-1094). As Knobler notes (p. 204),

when a flood in Ethiopia failed to have any effect on the Nile. The sultan, in desperation, sent Patriarch Michael of Alexandria to Ethiopia to request a restoration of the river’s flow which, following the breaking of a mound, they did. From this point onward, the Ethiopians often claimed power over the Nile’s flow.

See the list of texts below that comment on Prester John's ability to control the flow of the Nile.

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Carignano Portolan Map
Carignano Portolan Map (1305-1327)

Carignano was known primarily as a cartographer and geographer, but he also wrote a now-lost treatise on Ethiopia based on an alleged meeting in Genoa with the Ethiopian embassy that traveled to Europe in 1306.

A summary of the long-lost commentary to the map can be found in Jacopo Filippo Foresti’s Supplementum Chronicarum.

Carignano's Portolan Map, based in part from the information he gleaned from the Ethiopian embassy, is the first known document to correctly situate the "black Christians" of Abyssinia/Ethiopia between the Blue and White Nile. According to Salvadore, "his was the first map to abandon the copycat style of mapmaking typical of medieval Europe, which simply proposed again and again geographical knowledge that originated in antiquity" (p. 602).

On the map, Carignano describes the land of Prester John thusly (165):
"Prester John is set over that people [Ethiopians] as patriarch; and he says that under him are 127 archbishoprics, each of which has 20 bishops. Those who are to be reborn they baptize in the Roman manner…it is said that their emperor is most Christian, to whom 74 kings and almost innumerable princes pay allegiance, except those kings who observe the laws of Mahomet but submit to the emperor in other things."

Salvadore (p. 3) elegantly captures the significance of the alleged visit that inspired the the map and and on the map itself as a bellwether inaugrating the tropes that come to dominate European discourse over the ensuing three centuries on the potential of a European-African alliance:
[T]here can be no type of conclusive interpretation of the Ethiopian transit through Genoa; yet, it remains extremely significant because it is the first recorded case of an Ethiopian visit to Europe and, if accepted as an embassy, also the first recorded African embasssy to a European sovereign. The few toponyms Carignano included on this map, along with the alleged commentary, documented not only the first timid Ethiopian steps into Europe but also the equally timid European attempts to move past a variety of myths and misconceptions of anicent and medieval derivation as to the existence, identity, and location of Christian communities beyond the Middle East. More generally, the visit adumbrates the emergence of an encounter between the Kingdom of Ethiopia an dvarious polities in Western Mediterranean Europe. It presents tropes that will appear in similar guises time and time again in the ensuing centuries: Ethiopian embassies seeking Christian allies, pious Ethiopian monks defying the odds of early modern travel to find salvation and knowledge at the heart of Western Christendom, European traders seeking commercial opportunities, and lay and ordained intellectuals, chroniclers, and mapmakeres grappling with the notion of a country to be found in the Indies and populated by black Christians.

From Beckingham (199):
"This map, which was in Florence, was destroyed during World War II, but the lower edge, where Ethiopia would have been shown, had already been severely mutilated so that the reproductions published before its disappearance can tell us little that is relevant to the embassy. It was signed Johannes presbyler rector sancti Marci de portu Janue me fecit. Fischer, who first published the map, accepted the identification of Johannes presbyter with Giovanni da Carignano, but contended that the embassy came from Persia and must have been responsible for some information about the western part of the Ilkhanid empire which the map provides.”
From Beckingham (209):
“At least since an Ethiopian embassy had come to Avignon during the papacy of Clement V (1305-14) the ruler of Ethiopia had sometimes been identified with Prester John, perhaps for the first time in the map of Giovanni da Carignano, which was destroyed during World War II. Giovanni was the priest of the harbour church of San Marco at Genoa and had himself met the envoys on their way back to Ethiopia.”
Chronica Boemorum John de' Marignolli's History of Bohemia (c. 1355), commissioned by Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV (r. 1346-1378), is composed in the style of a universal history and includes a lengthy detour to the Orient, which identifies associates Ethiopia as “the land of Prester John” and notes the kingdom’s proximity to the terrestrial paradise with the ability to control the Nile River. The text survives in three manuscripts.

Kurt cites the relevant passage (p. 6):
‘The Gyon River ... surrounds the country of Ethiopia, where are only black men, and which is called the land of Prester John. It is thought that this river is the Nile, which descends to Egypt, across a place called Abasty [Abasia, Abyssinia], where are Christians of the apostle St Matthew.’

From Silverberg (p. 170):
John de' Marignolli wrote an account of his Eastern travels which, in the words of his nineteenth-century translator Henry Yule, is to be found, 'like unexpected fossils in a mud-bank, imbedded in a Chronicle of Bohemia' that he composed about 1355. This lengthy interpolation enters the chronicle on the flimsiest of pretenses: Marignolli chooses to begin his history of Bohemia with the Creation and the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden, and, having got as far as the statement that Eden is located "beyond India," is reminded that he himself once visited India, which leads him to say, "And now to insert some brief passages of what I have seen myself ... " An anecdotal description of the Orient that runs to more than fifty printed pages follows.
Fifth Crusade Called on the heels of three consecutive unsuccessful Crusades (including the disastrous Fourth Crusade), the notion of a Fifth Crusade was a popular topic of discussion at the Fourth Lateran Council. In the end, the beginning of the Fifth Crusade was codified in the council's final canon. Canon 71 designated June 1, 1217 as the start of the Fifth Crusade, though it was omitted from some later collections of Lateran IV Canons.

The Fifth Crusade (1217-1222) struggled to attract the patronage of earlier crusades. Lacking definitive leadership, the Crusaders elected to travel to northern African to capture Egyptian territory of the Ayyubid's for the purposes of negotiating the return of Jerusalem to Christian control. Later, the Seventh Crusade would adopt a very similar strategy. Although the capture of Damietta boded auspiciously, the crusade army was undone by a reliance on prophecy that had them heading west to Cairo. The rising of the Nile River prevented the army from advancing and they summarily captured as they retreated to Damietta.

The story goes something like this:

In 1222, intelligence relayed from Bohemond IV, ruler of the crusader state of Antioch, to Jacques de Vitry, preacher and crusade propagandist, reaches crusaders in Damietta. The intelligence, a report written in Arabic obtained from traveling spice merchants in Antioch, details the westward military progression of a certain King David, purportedly the great-grandson of the famed Prester John, a military leader who, rumor has it, has systematically destroyed Muslim armies in the east.

Jacques has the report translated immediately. 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.

This King David was not Prester John but, in fact, referred to Genghis Khan.
George Abbot's Geography
Description of the Whole Worlde (1599)

A sober view of the geographical knowledge of time, George Abbot's Geography went through nine editions between its publication in 1599 and 1664.

Brooks summarizes (p. 154)
Abbot noted that visitors to the kingdom of Prester John would find the fabled Mountains of the Moon, which he considered to be the source of the Nile River. This belief is typical for the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the search for the Mountains of the Moon would continue into the nineteenth century with the expedition of John Hanning Speke and Richard Burton to reach the southern shores of Lake Victoria. Abbot also claimed that Prester John was able to extort a sizeable tribute through innovative water management techniques; in the following passage Abbot briefly explained the supposed history of Prester John’s manipulation of the flow of the Nile River:
The Princes of Ægipt have paid vnto the gouernor of the Abisines, a great tribute time out of mind: which of late, the great Turke supposing to be a custome needelesse, did deny: till the people of the Abisines by commandment
of their Prince did breake downe their dammes: and drowning Egipt, did intórce the Turke to continue his pay,
and to giue much money for the new making of them very earnestily, to his great charge, desiring a peace.
The works of Abbot and his late sixteenth century contemporaries in the field of geography continued to influence Europeans into the seventeenth century and beyond. Despite the growing body of knowledge from European explorers, merchants, and colonial officials, there continued to exist in the minds of many Europeans a distinct fascination with the fantastic kingdom of a distant Christian priest-king, and even the mounting lack of direct evidence related to Prester John’s kingdom could shake this entrenched belief.

Brooks discusses how Abbot defamiliarizes Prester John and his kingdom from Catholicism (p. 153):

Abbot described Prester John as a “a prince absolute,” and that he also had “a priestlike, or patriarchall functió, & iurisdiction among [the Abyssinians].” In Abbot’s estimation, Prester John was a “verie mightie prince, & reputed to be one of the greatest Emperors of the world.” Ever keen to understand the true religious persuasion of his subjects, the Anglican cleric assured readers that Prester John “in no sorte acknowledge[ed] any supreame prerogatiue of the B. of Rome.” This was bit of information was likely quite important to English readers, given their own recent history of estrangement with the Vatican. (153-154)

In other words, Abbot, the future Archbishop of Canterbury, capitalizes on the long history of failures among Catholics (from missionaries to Popes) to convert Prester John to Catholicism. In this way he is able to skew Prester John's reputation for iconoclasm as a means to frame Prester John as an ally to England and to Anglicanism.

Read the text.
Mercator World Map of 1569 Nova et Aucta Orbis Terrae Descriptio ad Usum Navigantium Emendate Accommodata (1569)

An early attempt to depict a cylindrical model of the globe, Gerardus Mercator's 1569 map depicts an African kingdom of Prester John. Notably Prester John, the only ruler Mercator illustrates on the African continent, is here depicted in the style of a European king.

Brooks describes Mercator's Prester John kingdom on the upper Nile river (p. 201):
Mercator's Prester John is depicted by the mapmaker as seated on a royal throne and holding up a cross, symbolizing his dual role as temporal and spiritual leader of his empire. The inscription readers 'Prete Giam magnus imperator Abbissini'... Mercator imagined the kingdom of Prester John as being centered on the upper Nile River, evoking earlier traditions of the mighty priest-king possessing the power to regulate or shut off the flow of the life-giving Nile.

Mercator's grandson, who shared the name of this grandfather, depicts Prester John in much the same way some half-century later, in 1628.

View the map, courtesy of the National Library of Australia.
Report on the Kingdom of the Congo
Relatione del reame del Congo (1591)

Here Duarte Lopes situates the capital of Prester John's kingdom in Belmalechi (Ethiopia).
Brooks summarizes how Lopes oriented himself in Africa with reference to the kingdom of Prester John (p. 145):
Lopes believed that Prester John's kingdom was separated from that of the Congo by a "well populated country [that] extends for 150 miles" and that the kingdom was bordered by the Congo, the Nile, and "the two lakes." Interestingly, Lopes seemed to be describing the region of modern-day Uganda and Rwanda; perhaps British explorers Speke, Burton, and Stanley possessed the account of Lopes in their planning of expeditions to seek the source of the Nile River.
Lopes describes the kingdom of Prester John thusly (qtd. in Brooks, p. 145):
In round numbers the empire of this Christian king has a circumference of about 4000 miles. The principal city, and where he chiefly resides and holds his Court, is called Belmalechi, and forms the seat of empire of many provinces, which are themselves ruled by kings. The territory is rich, and abounds in gold, silver, precious stones, and every kind of metal...courtiers and nobles are splendidly attired in silk robes, gold, and jewels...these people are to some extent Christians.

Brooks continues (p. 145):
There is a sober and detached quality to the text as it describes the social, economic, and political characteristics of the Kingdom of Congo, and the reader is likely to find this part of the work to be a solid source for early modern African history. The Lopes account becomes much more suspect as an accurate African historical source – although an ideal example of the power of the European desire to link up with an eastern ally - when the author broached the subject of the Kingdom of Prester John, whom he introduced as the “greatest and richest prince in all of Africa.” One might suspect that the author, while possessing relatively solid geographical knowledge of the continent, inserted snippets of folklore and earlier travel narratives in places where his direct knowledge may have been limited. Lopes next delved into a description that had its origin in one of the many versions of the Prester John legend, most likely some combination of Mandeville and one of the Letters of Prester John.

More on the Relatione (in Portuguese)
The Relatione is also available in an English translation.
Pope Nicholas V's Letter to Prester John Pope Nicholas V (1447-1455) entrusted the Franciscan Ludovico da Bologna to organize a mission to deliver a letter to Zar'a Yaqob, understood as Prester John.

As Salvadore (p. 65) explains, "the document, dated 1 December 1456, speaks to the anxieties reigning over the Church and, more generally, the European establishment-- anxieties that also explain the renewed interest in Ethiopia." Here the Pope employs time-honored crusading rhetoric and the familiar call to divert the Nile River in hopes to render the Ethiopian-European connection into something potent and durable:
Immediately after leaving the conclave [8 April 1455], our soul oppressed by the fall and misfortune of Constaninople [1453] we made a vow to embark on a war against the Turks, to those who are iniquitous usurpers of Christian lands. Therefore, given that our funds are not enough, we decided to gather the armies of all the pirnces of the arth who profess the religion of Jesus Crucified-- you among them.... Between Westerners and Easterners, we have organized two good armies of land and sea, of sufficient valor.... we plan to add to the enterprise your important cooperation, with which we will have enough strength no only to defeat the unholy Turk, but to take away from the infidel the holy land of Jerusalem.... Because God wanted you to have, under your sublime rule, a powerful army, the river Nile whose inundations fertilize the land where our enemies feed and you at your own pleasure can take that away from them.
Salvadore (p.66) adds that this letter is particularly notable for being the first explicit "call to arms" sent to the Ethiopian ruler, the presumed Prester John.
La Voyage d'Outremer
The Voyage to Outremer, written in 1457 by Burgundian traveler Bertrandon de la Broquière concerning his travels in 1432-1433 in the Holy Land. In the course of his travels, he overhears (and later records) a story from a Peter of Naples about Prester John's whereabouts in Africa.

The text records that Prester John is "a good Catholic and obedient to the Church of Rome," has an army of four million, and rules over a people who are "neither white nor black, but are of a yellow-brown colour." In this account Prester John also goes to war with the Great Khan.

He also reports the how Prester John has fortified his kingdom in a canyon carved out by the Nile River (qtd. in Brewer, p. 215):
And he said that the river that passes through Cairo, which we call the Nile, they call the Gyon. And he said that it comes from that country, passing in between two mountains, and he says this because one can find it written that it comes from the terrestrial paradise, just like the Tigris and the Euphrates which, saving the grace of those who say it, it is from there that all four [rivers] come. However, he said that the Nile passes between these two mountains and there is only one small river, and part of a great canyon. And near to this passage, Prester John has had two large towers constructed and a large chain from one side to the other, so that no one can see into that cave, because he said that people used to go in and that, after anyone went in, he would never return. The cause of this, he told me, is that once one is inside it, one hears a very sweet song that makes you never want to leave.
...
And he also told me that if it pleased Prester John, he could easily move the river to another course. But he left it be because there are many Christians living on the aforesaid River Nile.

Bertrandon's account is edited and translated in Brewer (pp. 214-216)
Emperor Charles IV Emperor Charles IV was both the recepient of a letter allegedly from the Ethiopian king asking for military alliance as well as the addressee on a fiftteenth-century Letter of Prester John.

In addition, he commissioned John de'Marignolli's History of Bohemia, which discusses the land of Prester John in Ethiopia surrounded by the biblical river Gyon, which has now come to be known, according to the author, as the Nile.
Egyptus Novelo This map, a detailed depiction of the Nile Basin, which features Egypt and Ethiopia, survives in three medieval copies of Ptolemy's Geography.

It is theorized that the map was created in Florence, possibly influenced by the presence of an Ethiopian delegation at the Council of Florence (1431-1449). Its novelty (compared to contemporary maps such as that by Frau Mauro), suggests that it was created with specialized knowledge of the Nile Basin.
A Short Relation of the River Nile Portuguese Jesuit missionary Jerónimo Lobo (1595-1678) turned a correspondence with Henry Oldenberg concerning the source of the Nile River into A Short Relation on the River Nile, published in London in 1669.

The full title of the text is A Short Relation of the River Nile, of its source and current; of its overflowing the campagnia of Ægypt, till it runs into the Mediterranean and of other curiosities: written by an eye-witnesse, who lived many years in the chief kingdoms of the Abyssine Empire. Translated by Sir Peter Wyche.

Lobo's near twenty years of experience as a missionary in Ethiopia lent authority to his claim that Prester John bears no association with the Ethiopian negus. Like so many others who made this argument, Lobo's argument is primarily linguistic:
There have not been wanting some late Authors, who upon small grounds, and lesse truth, would maintain this opinion and report, proving by divers Etymologies and interpretations of the word, that the Abyssine Emperour was properly Prester John: But this affirmation being without any appearance of truth; excuseth me from shewing how little it hath; lonely say, that those who have spent some time in Ethiopia know all reported on this subject to be a meer fable; never any Prince of this Empire had that Title, neither is the word known in the whole extent of those Dominions...

Those of an higher Province, in the heart of this great Empire, (where many ages these Princes kept their Court) when according to this ancient and usual Custome, they present their Petitions, cry 'Jan Coy' (i.e.) my King: (Jan signifying King, and Coy my)...

The Abyssines speaking of their King, undouhtedly gave him the most ancient, most usual and most respectfull title of Jan: neither is it less probable, that for the greater reverence of the Royal person, they to ld them their King was a Priest; thence was he concluded Jan by title, and by office a Priest: All know that among us Sacerdote and Presbytero are the same, which the Latines called Presbyter and the French Prester; this word joyned to Jan begets Prester Jan, which with small addition is corrupted into Prester John, intending the same.
(qtd. in Brewer, pp. 245-246)
Paradise Lost John Milton alludes to Prester John indirectly on two occasions in his Paradise Lost (1667).

In Book IV, the realm of Ethiopia is framed as near the terrestrial paradise and the headwaters of the Nile:
Nor, where Abassin kings their issue guard,
Mount Amara (though this by some suppos'd
True Paradise) under the Ethiop line
By Nilus' head, enclos'd with shining rock,
A whole day's journey high, but wide remote
From this Assyrian garden where the
Fiend Saw undelighted all delight, all kind
Of living creatures, new to sight and strange.
In Book XI, Milton's Adam describes the dissemination of his descendents across the world:
Nor did his eyes not ken
Th'empire of Negus, to his utmost port,
Ercoco, and the less maritime kings,
Mombaza and Quiloa and Melind
This mention of the Ethiopian negus betrays a larger debt Milton paid to Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, argues James H. Sims.

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