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• 1 2015-06-12T10:37:25-07:00 Book of Eldad 30 plain 2024-01-18T20:12:46-08:00
  Written in the late 9th century, The Sefer Eldad  [Book of Eldad], authored by the Arabian Jewish author Eldad ha-Dani [the Danite], is a sometimes imaginative account of Eldad's travels through Egypt, Mesopotamia, North Africa, and Spain. It is a text that the author of the Prester John Letter appears to be familiar with, which tells us something of this author's learning, since the Sefer Eldad was not translated into Latin until the sixteenth century. 
  
  The Letter's allusions to the Ten Lost Tribes and the River Sambatyon (dry, sandy sea), along with the early translations of the Letter into Hebrew, link the Prester John Letter with the tradition of the Sefer Eldad. 
   
  Hamilton summarizes this tradition in his article "Prester John and the Three Kings of  Cologne":

   

  “In the late ninth century a certain Eldad ha-Dani, claiming to belong to the lost tribe of Dan, visited by the Jews of Kairouan and gave them news of their compatriots. They were, he said, settled in various parts of Asia, some in independent states, but the Levites were cut off from the rest by the river Sambayton, which was unnavigable, being composed not of water, but of sand and stones. In obedience to the Torah it ceased to flow on the Sabbath day, but that was no help to Jews who wished to cross it since they were similarly immobilised by the precepts of the law. In this way the Ten Lost Tribes were added to the list of the marvels of Asia” (172).

   
  Ten Lost Tribes: Babylonian Exile
  
   
   
  Beckingham and Hamilton summarize the relationship between Prester John and the Sefer Eldad tradition in the  "Editors Preface" of their edition of the Hebrew Letters of Prester John. 
   

  “Among the inhabitants of Prester John’s Empire were the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, who lived beyond the stony river Sambatyon which does not flow on the sabbath. The Jews were naturally interested in his story, and versions of the Letter of Prester John were circulated in Hebrew probably from the late twelfth or early thirteenth centuries. These have been edited with an English translation by Edward Ullendorff and C.F. Beckingham, The Hebrew Letters of Prester John, Oxford, 1982. In their introduction the authors considered the relation of the Prester John Letter to the narrative of Eldad ha-Dani, a Jew who visited Qayrawan in 883, claiming to be a member of one of the Ten Lost Tribes. The narrative of his discourse, the Sefer Eldad, was available only in Hebrew in the Middle Ages, and is almost 300 years older than the earliest extant version of the Prester John Letter, yet it contains material common to them both but found in no other source” (xiii).

  
  More on the Sefer Eldad tradition.
• 1 media/Map_of_Angelino_Dulcert_cropped.jpg 2015-06-12T11:00:17-07:00 Letter to Prester John 15 image_header 2024-01-27T19:32:59-08:00
  Letter To Prester John (1177)
  
  In 1177, Pope Alexander composed a letter to Prester John, "the illustrious and magnificent John King of the Indies," and sent Master Phillip, his personal physician, as envoy to petition for John’s instruction in Catholicism. We never hear back from Master Phillip. While Alexander’s letter is typically read at face-value as a genuine attempt to reach out to an eastern Christian priest-king, it also has the effect of re-inscribing ecclesiastical power, in that Alexander establishes himself as the custodian of doctrinal Catholicism, the adherence to which should be considered the most important feature of any imperial project.
   
  Brewer (pp. 94-6) provides an English translation of Alexander's letter. Although most critics understand this letter as a response to the Letter of Prester John, Brewer maintains "that is emphatically not the case." He sees the letter instead as a "curious anomaly."
   
  For the Latin text of the letter, see Zarncke. Read Latin version online at Google Books (pp. 935-946).
   
  Bernard Hamilton reads the letter as a kind of public rhetorical performance, a stance he supports by noting that Alexander made several copies of his letter (184). Although scholars, including Hamilton, have tried to explain the legend as a hoax perpetuated by Frederick’s inner circle that spiraled out of control, this explanation fails to account for the survival of the legend beyond the political intrigues of the twelfth century.
   
  From Hamilton, "Prester John and the Three Kings of Cologne":     

  “[T]he aim of the author of this letter is to show that Frederick’s concept of church-state relations, unlike that of Alexander III, produced harmony in the Christian world, and enabled Christians to unite against the enemies of the faith” (180).

  “That Alexander III took the letter seriously is evident from the reply which he wrote to it from Venice on 27 September 1177. Significantly he omits the title ‘Priest’ and addresses John as ‘illustrious and magnificent king of the Indies.’ Alexander states uncompromisingly that he is the head of the church on earth, and then explains his reasons for writing. Philip, his physician, had been sent on a mission to John and had met some of his subjects who, he discovered, held heretical opinions about some points of doctrine. They had asked to be given a church in Rome and an altar at the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, to which their clergy might come to be instructed in the Catholic faith. The pope is therefore sending Philip back to John to give him Catholic instruction and to discover what his true wishes are” (183).

  “It is often supposed that this letter gives a factual account of Alexander III’s attempts to make contact with Prester John… It is, however, possible that the pope’s letter was written for a quite different reason. When Prester John’s letter began to circulate Alexander III was on excellent terms with Manuel Comnenus and would have been able to verify that he had not sent the letter to Frederick I. He may therefore have inferred, just as modern scholars have done, that it was a western forgery. It clearly originated in Barbarossa’s circle and implicitly defended the kind of Christian society which the emperor was trying to implement. The timing of the pope’s reply is significant: he waited for twelve years after the publication of the letter until the Peace of Venice had been concluded… On 27 September, after the practical details of the Peace had been arranged, Alexander wrote to Prester John, emphasizing that the emperor of the Indies… had now agreed to be instructed in the truths of the Catholic religion by the only competent authority, St. Peter’s vicar. Arguably this letter was not written to an eastern Christian prince whom the pope had wrongly identified as Prester John, but to the faithful west who had read and been misled by Prester John’s letter” (183).

   
  Nicholas Jubber, eight hundred years later, attempts to re-trace the emissary’s route and deliver Alexander’s reply (despite the obvious facts standing in the way of this feat).