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

Philippe Avril

Phillipe Avril (1654-c.1698) was a French Jesuit professor of philosophy and mathematics who became a renowned traveler and explorer after being sent on the Jesuit missions to China.

His Travels into Diverse Parts of Europe and Asia refutes the Portuguese claim to have found Prester John, resuming instead the earlier narratives of a more eastern placement for the figure and legend.

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Travels into Diverse Parts of Europe and Asia
Voyage en divers etats d'Europe et d'Asie, entrepris pour découvrir un nouveau chemin à la Chine (1693)

Published in 1693, Philippe Avril's Travels document Avril's missionary travels to China with his fellow Jesuits. In the text, Avril refutes the current European narrative of Prester John -- that he had been found in Ethiopia -- and argues instead identifies Preste-Jean with the Dalai Lama.

In order to make his argument reworks the then-familiar argument of linguistic misattribution perpetuated by Pêro da Covilhā and blames the Portuguese for spreading the false link between Prester John and the Ethiopian negus.

Avril then commits his own linguistic errors in linking Prester John instead with the Dalai Lama, Christianizing the latter by suggesting that "Lama" meant "cross" in the language of the Mongols, even though, he argues, these people had long lost their ties to Christianity. In making this "connection," Avril was the first in a century's worth of writers to connect the two figures.

Avril posits that it is “more natural to acknowledge him in this Country of Asia, where he has always been, then to seek him out in Habyssinia, where he never was.”
The linking of Prester John and the Dalai Lama is found in a number of other late 17th and early 18th century texts, and his larger narrative surrounding the priest-king parallels Guerreiro's Relations in its eagerness to dismiss Portuguese claims to have discovered and locate Prester John.
The Antient and Present State of Muscovy Written by Jodocus Crull (1660-1713) and published in 1698, The Antient and Present State of Muscovy follows the argument of Philippe Avril, which suggests that Prester John and the Dalai Lama are the same personage. As Brewer (p. 296) notes, the main difference here is that Crull has a more negative attitude towards the Tibetans.