Richard Hakluyt
1 2015-07-30T04:26:11-07:00 Christopher Taylor // christopher.eric.taylor@gmail.com 946e2cf6115688379f338b70e5b6f6c039f8ba6f 5281 11 image_header 2016-07-26T18:58:55-07:00 Christopher Taylor // christopher.eric.taylor@gmail.com 946e2cf6115688379f338b70e5b6f6c039f8ba6fRead more about Halkuyt.
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- 1 2015-05-21T10:18:52-07:00 Ece Turnator 29e4049201e5a129c2f4f38633d734d2df4b7e07 Map 5.1 : Author Origin and Travels Christopher Taylor // christopher.eric.taylor@gmail.com 26 Era 5_Author Map plain 2023-11-06T09:56:23-08:00 Christopher Taylor // christopher.eric.taylor@gmail.com 946e2cf6115688379f338b70e5b6f6c039f8ba6f
- 1 media/Ortelius.jpg 2016-07-16T11:07:30-07:00 Christopher Taylor // christopher.eric.taylor@gmail.com 946e2cf6115688379f338b70e5b6f6c039f8ba6f Cartographers of the Prester John Legend Christopher Taylor // christopher.eric.taylor@gmail.com 4 image_header 2016-07-26T18:22:30-07:00 Christopher Taylor // christopher.eric.taylor@gmail.com 946e2cf6115688379f338b70e5b6f6c039f8ba6f
- 1 2015-12-11T20:49:59-08:00 Christopher Taylor // christopher.eric.taylor@gmail.com 946e2cf6115688379f338b70e5b6f6c039f8ba6f English Writers on Prester John Christopher Taylor // christopher.eric.taylor@gmail.com 3 plain 2015-12-12T15:46:08-08:00 Christopher Taylor // christopher.eric.taylor@gmail.com 946e2cf6115688379f338b70e5b6f6c039f8ba6f
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Trauailes of Edward Webbe
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Edward Webbe, Chief Master Gunner, His Trauailes (1590)
Original Title: The Rare & most wonderful thinges which Edward Webbe an Englishman borne hath seene & passed in his troublesome travailes in the Citties of Jerusalem, Dammasko, Bethelem & Gallely; and in the Landes of Jewrie, Egipt, Grecia, Russia, & in the Land of Prester John. Wherein is set foorth his extreame slaverie sustained many yeres togither, in the Gallies & wars of the great Turk against the Landes of Persia, Tartaria, Spaine, and Portugall, with the manner of his releasement, and comming into Englande in May last. London. Printed by Ralph Blower, for Thomas Pavier
In this embellished travel account Edward Webbe describes, among other eastern sights, the Christian land of Prester John. Webbe's account bears a close resemblance to that of Mandeville. It was so popular that in its first year (1590) it went through three separate publications in England.
Even as Portuguese missionaries had repeatedly visited Ethiopia and claimed to meet with Prester John, now the mortal king of that land, writers such as Webbe was delighting readers simply by revisiting the tropes of the Letter of Prester John.
Even as late as 1590, the popularity of the original Prester John myth seemed to enduring, even considering the dozens of circulating texts that identified Prester John as the fallible monarch of Ethiopia. Webbe's book found three publishers in 1590 alone.
Still, as Silverberg (p. 316) points out, the book had its detractors. Richard Hakluyt leaves Webbe's story conspicuously absent in his three-volume collection of significant European voyages in 1598, and Samuel Purchas castigates Webbe as "a mere fabler" in 1625.
In terms of the book's relation to the Prester John legend, Edel Sample relates,[I]t is clear that Webbe relishes the task of describing the magnificence of Prester John’s court and the strange sights in his country. Webbe writes of the customs, political relations, and strange creatures that he witnessed. Three woodcuts are included; the first depicts a bearded “wilde man”, and we learn that one of these men can be found in Prester John’s court and another can be found in Constantinople. The text explains that this savage man is a public spectacle; chained by the neck, he is covered in hair, wears a mantle, and eats the flesh of condemned criminals. The other two woodcuts show a unicorn rampant and an elephant (“three score and seventeen Unicornes and Oliphants” live as tame pets in a park of Prester John’s.) Other texts on Asia and the Middle East may have influenced Webbe’s account of this ruler and his exotic land. For instance, his account of the sixty kings that daily serve Prester John is reminiscent of the multiple tributary kings that serve Bajazeth and Tamburlaine in Marlowe’s play (c.1587); the use of skulls as culinary utensils appears in Solinus’s Polyhistor (1584); while accounts of strange beasts, ‘wild men’, and cannibals were not uncommon and appear in Solinus and in Pliny (1585).
Webbe identifies Prester John’s kingdom with the traditional worldly Paradise, following Mandeville almost completely. However, it can also be surmised that theTravels bears some relation to the Russian theories about Prester John that circulated among the Old Believers, who claimed that Prester John's land was a haven for religious dissenters.
Brewer (pp. 230-31) excerpts the relevant section on the land of Prester John.
Read the full Travailes online.
Read more about Webbe and his Travels. -
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Map 5.1 : Author Origin and Travels
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Please click on the individual points on the map to see detailed information on Author Origins and Author Travel.
Diogo Lopes de Sequeira (1465-1530)
Gerardus Mercator (1512-1594)
Francisco Álvares (1465-1540)
Joao de Castro (1500-1548)
Damião de Góis (1502-1574)
John More (1509-1547)
Abraham Ortelius (1527-1598)William Shakespeare
Christopher MarloweRichard Johnson (1573-1659)
Benedict GoesFather Nicolau Godinho (Nicholas Godigno)
Tirso de Molina (Gabriel Téllez)
Marko of the Topozersky Monastery
If there are any other observations you would like to make, please use the "comment" box below.
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A True Relation of the Lands of Prester John of the Indies
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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 Pope Clement VII, 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.