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

Pêro da Covilhã

Pêro was sent by the king of Portugal (John II) to look for Prester John.

Jump to the Letters from Pêro da Covilhã

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A True Relation of the Lands of Prester John of the Indies
Verdadeira Informação das Terras do Preste João das Indias (1527-1540)

This account of the journey of Portuguese missionary and explorer Francisco Álvares (1465-1541) to Ethiopia beginning in 1520, finished in 1527 and published in Lisbon by Luís Rodrigues in 1540, became one of the most widely read Prester John texts. By the end of the sixteenth century, was translated into Italian, French, German, and Spanish.

Here Prester John is treated as the very historical and very mortal king of Abyssinia. Very little of the mythological character of the legend infiltrates the account of Father Álvares. In this rather dry treatise, Álvares narrates the travels of Diogo Lopes de Sequeira and his retinue to present-day Ethiopia. He also includes the then-authoritative account of the travels of Pêro da Covilhã whom Álvares met in Ethiopia.

Interestingly, the text does not describe Prester John as a figure to be discovered, but rather presumes that the partiarch they meet is Prester John. In other words, there is little mystery surrounding Prester John here: he is simply (and obviously) the patriarch of a land that these travelers intended purposefully to visit.

Nonetheless, this contact between Portugal and Abyssinia was very important diplomatically, politically, and religiously for the involved parties. Later, Álvares discusses his desire to present the letters from Prester John to the Pope, to whom he describes the Ethiopian king as "the most serene and powerful lord David, king of the great and high Ethiopia, by the masses called Prester John" (qtd. in Silverberg, 316).

This account influenced later writers interested in Prester John, including Damião de Góis, Richard Hakluyt, and Samuel Purchas. It is also recorded that Samuel Johnson used Álvares (through the translation of Samuel Purchas) to create his Rasselas.

The account was translated into English for the Hakluyt Society in 1876 by Lord Stanley of Alderley as Narrative of the Portuguese Embassy to Abyssinia During the Years 1520-1527.
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.
Map 4.1 : Author Origins and Travel

Francesco Suriano

Sister Catherine Guarnieri da Osimo

Paulo de Chanedo

Giacomo Filippo Foresti da Bergamo

Joao Afonso de Aveiro (Afonso de Paiva)

Pêro da Covilhã

Joseph of Lamego

Abraham of Beja

Hartmann Schedel

Cornelis de Zierikzee

Guiliano Dati

Vasco da Gama

Queen Helena of Ethiopia

Afonso de Albuquerque

Gómez de Santisteban

Ludovico Ariosto

Johann Boemus

If there are any other observations you would like to make, please use the "comment" box below.
History of Ethiopia Historia de Etiopía a Alta ou Abassia

German historian Hiob Ludolf was an academic authority on the Ethiopia of his day, having befriended an Ethiopian Christian in Rome who became the main source for his understanding of the country. Published in 1681, Ludolf's History of Ethiopia (1681) argued that Prester John was not the Ethiopian negus; instead, Ludolf reasoned, Prester John must have been the Asian monarch he was considered centuries before. Here, following Balthazar Téllez's theory, Ludolf argues that Covilhā was responsible for the misattribution of Prester John to Ethiopia:

[Covilhā, traveling] in some of the Ports of the Red Sea, heard much talk of a most Potent Christian King of the Abessines, that us'd to carry a Cross in his Hands; as also of his Subjects, who were great Favourers if not Followers of the Christian Religion. Believing it therefore to be of little moment whether this famous Monarch liv'd in Asia or in Africa, he certainly persuades himself, as being Ignorant both in History and Geography that this was the Prince so much sought after.... These glad Tidings the Portugals sooner believ'd, than consider'd, and so spread the News all over Europe for real Truth; Credulaity gaining easily upon those that are ignorant of Foreign Affairs and Kingdoms.

(qtd. in Silverberg, p. 317)

This argument became popular in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, even as the link between Prester John and the Ethiopian monarch predates Covilhā's expedition.
Purchas His Pilgrimes Hakluytus Posthumus, or Purchas his Pilgrimes Contayning a History of the World in Sea Voyages and Lande Travells by Englishmen and others (1613)

Published in four volumes, Samuel Purchas' Purchas His Pilgrimes attempted to provide a full, Anglican overview of the world as it was known at the time. In it, he retells many of the most famous European travel narratives that highlight the diversity of Earth's inhabitants.

Although Purchas never traveled himself, he certainly familiarized himself with the theories about Prester John. He identified Prester John with the Ethiopian monarch, averring that this figure "was called Priest John, by error of Covilhā, follwed by other Portugals in the first discoverie, applying by mis-coinceit through some like occurrents in the Relations in M. Polo and others touching Presbyter John, in the North-east parts of Asia" (qtd. in Silverberg, p. 317).

As Brewer writes,
Purchas, with scholarly acuity...reviews the various hypotheses as to the location of Prester John and the origin of his name, eventually concluding that he was once an Asian monarch whose name was mistakenly applied to the emperor of Ethiopia. (236)
In discussing the Prester John legend, Purchas argues that his kingdom stretched from Nubia in the north to “that part where the Kingdome and Land of Manicongo lyeth,” cutting across the African continent “behind the Springs and Lakes of Nilus, going through the fierie and unknowne Countries.” He includes a detailed map of these boundaries, which encompass nearly a third of the African continent.

Purchas' synthesis of contemporaneous travel lore recalls Mandeville. Like its predecessor, Purchas His Pilgrimes was well-received in its time and remained influential for another century, most famously inspiring the landscape and opening lines of Coleridge's "Kubla Khan." As he mentions in the well-known preface to Sybilline Leaves (1816), he fell asleep while reading Purchas, though the phrase ‘In Xanadu did Cublai Can build a stately palace" remained in his mind.
The Travel of the Jesuits in Ethiopia
Historia Geral de Ethiopia a Alta ou Abassia do Preste Ioam (1660)

Portuguese writer Balthazar Téllez's The Travel of the Jesuits in Ethiopia (1660) is an academic compilation of the journeys reflected in the book's title. A major source for the text was Manuel de Almeida's history of Ethiopia, which was never published in its original Portuguese. Brewer (p. 294) goes so far as to call Téllez's work "an abridgement and revision" of Almeida's that also accounts for the observations of other Portuguese travelers to Africa. Téllez also drew on the account of Jerónimo Lobo.

In the text, Téllez argues that Prester John was an Asian monarch, not an Ethiopian king, and he blames Covilhā for perpetuating the misunderstanding that Prester John was in Africa. This account and rationale influenced Hiob Ludolf's History of Ethiopia (1681) and a dozen later writers.
China Illustrata Jesuit scholar and "Master of a Hundred Arts" Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680) compiled contemporary knowledge about China in his China Illustrata (1667).

Kircher, writing in Latin from Rome, affirms that Prester John was an Asian monarch, not an Ethiopian king, citing the then-popular theory that Pêro da Covilhã and susbequent Portuguese writers had relied on faulty linguistic link to identify Prester John with the Ethiopian negus.

Curiously, he places Prester John's kingdom not in what was understood as China but in the desert-and-mountains land stretching from Tibet to Mongolia. He cites as his authorities on this matter texts including Joseph Scaliger's "Of the Correction of Times" (1583).
Asia Portuguesa Portuguese humanist historian and poet Manuel de Faria e Sousa (1590-1649) penned Asia Portuguesa in Castilian, published in Lisbon in three volumes after his death (1667). The book served as a reference book on Portuguese expansion. It initially associates Prester John with Ethiopia but mentions later that his kingdom might actually be found in Tibet.

Faria e Sousa's text also includes summaries of the missions of Pêro da Covilhā and Francisco Alvares.

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