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The International Prester John Project: How A Global Legend Was Created Across Six Centuries Main Menu Orientation to Project Path One: 1122-1235 Path Two: 1236-1310 AD Path Three : 1311-1460 AD Path Four : 1461-1520 AD Path Five: 1521-1699 AD Path Six: 1700-1800 AD Global Middle Ages

Pietro Ranzano

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Pietro Ranzano (1428-1492) was a Dominican friar, bishop, historian, humanist, and traveler based in Sicily. His Annales Omnium Temporum touches on the Prester John legend.

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Dominicans Christopher Taylor // christopher.eric.taylor@gmail.com
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Catholic Bishops on Prester John Christopher Taylor // christopher.eric.taylor@gmail.com
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Annales Omnium Temporum In a chronicle (w. 1407-1450) attributed to Pietro Ranzano, the author describes meeting a fellow Italian, Pietro Rombulo, who claimed to have spent 37 years at the courts of two Ethiopian neguses: Yeshaq and Zara Yaqob.

In relating his history there, Rombulo claims that Prester John is associated with the rulers of China. Brewer (p. 284) mentions this narrative in his table of Prester John texts.

Of the text, Verena Krebs writes (p. 113):
While Pietro Ranzano had interrogated the Ethoiopian ambassador Pietro Rombulo about Ethiopia in 1450 and included much factual information on Ethiopia in his Annales omnium temporum, he also could not resist the urge to embellish the account with descriptions of immense wealth, precious stones, gold, many tributary kings, exotic partially fictitious animals, and an all-powerful Christian army of a massive size, clearly drawing on contemporary views of Prester John.