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

See Letters II and VII in Jacques de Vitry

See Letters II and VII in Jacques de Vitry, Lettres, ed. R.B.C. Huygens (Leiden, 1960), 140-153.

This page is referenced by:

History of the Deeds of David, King of the Indies Historia Gestorum David regis Indorum // Relatio de Davide (1220)

Brewer (p. 107) usefully describes the muddled story behind this text supposedly derived from an Arabic source, but popularized in the West by Jacques de Vitry:
This confused text is a Latin translation of what is thought to be a tract originally written in Arabic by a Christian in Baghdad in 1220-21, but some of the material here was certainly added by its Latin translators. It describes in essence the conquests of Chingis Khan, but instead he is presented as a Christian king named David, great grandson of Prester John, a figure who becomes from this point on a regular feature of the Prester John legend... [A]lthough the text does display some intimate knowledge of the initial movements of the Mongols, the details became so distorted by the time they reached the crusaders that those initial facts became grossly misunderstood.
The text itself attests to how this King David had attacked the King of Persia and conquered several cities along the Asian Steppe, including Bukhara, Samarkand, Khurasan, and Ghazna.

In the first version of the text, King David is identified as "the son of King Israel, the son of King Sarkis, the son of King John, the son of Bulgaboga" (qtd. in Brewer, p. 107). Importantly, King David is not linked to Prester John until the third and final version of the Relatio de Davide begins to circulate.

Silverberg (p. 71) summarizes:
This King David was a Christian, the bishop reported, and was either the son or the grandson of Prester John—although, Bishop Jacques pointed out, “King David was himself commonly called Prester John.” His kingdom was deep in Asia. His involvement in the affair of the Near East had come about because the Caliph of Baghdad had been threatened with war by a fellow Moslem prince, the Shah of Khwarizm; seeing no other ally at hand, the caliph had requested the Nestorian Catholicos—or Patriarch—of Baghdad to summon King David to his aid, and the king had agreed to defend the caliph against the Khwarizmians” (71).

In addition to fueling belief in the kingdom of Prester John, this text had a huge impact on the outcome of the Fifth Crusade. Jacques de Vitry, preacher and crusade propagandist, reaches shared the information contained within the text with crusaders in Damietta. The text promises the dissolution of Islam at a time when King David joins forces with a king in the west. Jacques has the report translated immediately. He then sends letters containing parts of this text to Pope Honorius, King Henry III of England, Duke Leopold of Austria, and to several academics at the University of Paris. Spirits lift within and without the crusader camp, essentially renewing the hope for a Christian recovery of Jerusalem. Buoyed by prophecy and heedless of local conditions, the crusaders at Damietta decide to invade Cairo immediately to fulfill the prophecy, rejecting an agreement with the Sultan Al-Kamil that would have given Jerusalem back to the crusaders in exchange for Damietta. The Nile rises, turning the invasion of Cairo into defeat. The armies of the Fifth Crusade surrender to the Sultan of Egypt, Al-Kamil, Saladin’s nephew, a few weeks later.

Brewer (101-125) collects three versions of this text, all of which tell of a King David prophecied to help the west defeat Islam.

For more on the historical reality animating the Relatio, see Richard.

For a close account of the entire Fifth Crusade, see Powell.
Liber Bellorum Domini Brewer catalogues this text in his textual chronology table at the end his book. He comments,
This appears to be a pedagogical text. It circulated anonymously for a long time, but a case has been put forward for the author as Pierre de la Palu (a .k.a. Petrus de Palude or Peter Paludanus). The date given here is based on de la Palu's date of death, and is therefore tentative. In any case, the section on Prester John is largely based on Jacques de Vitry's Letter VII... Edited in Ignazio Giorgi (ed.), in the Archives de "Orient Lalin. vol. I (Paris, 188 1), pp. 302- 3. For the attribution to Pierre de la Palu, see J.F. Benton, 'Theocratic History in Fourteenth-Century France: The Liber Bellorum Domini by Pierre de la Palu." University 0f Pennsylvania Library Chronicles, vol. 40 (Philadelphia, 1974), p. 43 If. No translation is known.