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

The Travels of Marco Polo

Devisement du monde (c. 1298)

The Devisement (or Livres des merveilles du monde) remains one of the most well-known narratives to survive the Middle Ages. Dictated by an imprisoned Marco Polo to fellow inmate and veteran romancer Rustichello da Pisa, the book records– and sometimes embellishes– the travels of Polo (along with his father and uncle) to the court of Kublai Khan in the late-thirteenth century.

Although written in French, the text was quickly translated into Italian and Latin. More than one hundred manuscripts survive, each slightly different from the others. The Travels became a medieval best seller, even though the imaginative flourishes of copyists makes it difficult to determine what the original text might have looked like.

Marco Polo's Travels features the figure of Prester John in a number of chapters (64-68, 74, 109-110, 139, 200). Polo, following the Dominican missionaries that visited the Mongol Empire before him, relates a tale of Prester John that demystifies the legendary qualities of the letter all the while testifying to the historical existence of an eastern Christian prince.

For Marco Polo, Prester John (or Un-khan) was a powerful prince who ruled over the Tartars (Mongols), but was overthrown, in a battle Polo himself describes, by Genghis/Chinggis Khan. Later, in the mid-14th century, the imaginary travels of Sir John Mandeville will crib from Polo's now-canonical observations about the east.

Silverberg (p. 132) puts Marco Polo's reduction of the Prester John legend succinctly:

For Marco, Prester John was a khan of the steppes, and he was dead, and his descendent of the sixth generation, King George, ruled the insignificant principality of Tenduc as Kublai Khan's vassal.

Even if Polo's narrative demystified the legend of Prester John, its romance narrative style, combined with its fascinating insights, some of which related tangentially to the Prester John legend (including visiting the shrine of St. Thomas), did not ultimately do much to diminish European interest in Prester John.

Background on Polo’s expedition.

See Polo’s route.

Brewer edits and translates the Prester John portions of Polo's travels (pp. 171-188).

Silverberg excerpts the three mentions of Prester John in the Travels.
More on the travels and their veracity.

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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.
Ong Khan
Ong Khan, alternately known as Unc Khan, Toghril, Tooril Khan, Unach, King David, and King John was the Khereid ruler in the late 12th/early 13th centuries. The title ong is the Mongol form of the Chinese honorific wang meaning 'universal' (Hamilton, p. 248).

Reportedly a Nestorian Christian– although according to Bar Hebraeus' Chronicon Syriacum, a lapsed one– "Unach" Khan was killed by his blood brother and subordinate, the soon-to-be Genghis Khan, who was acting on rumors that a jealous Unc was planning to kill him.

This is the same figure known in other mid-thirteenth century texts as King David, son of Prester John.

Ong Khan figures in a number of Prester John narratives, including the Historia Tartarum (c. 1246), William of Rubruck's Itinerarium (c. 1253), the Chronicon Syriacum, Marco Polo's Travels,
De Emendatione Temporum Written by Joseph Scaliger (1540-1609) and published in 1583, De Emendatione Temporum ("Of the Correction of Times") is described by Elizabeth Ott of the Chapel Hill Rare Book Blog as an attempt to "formalize the science of chronology," drawing on "Persian, Arab, Greek, Roman, and other ancient traditions, identifying and correcting the errors of his predecessors to synchronize various cultures’ accounts of history."

Under these ambitious auspices, Scaliger authors an influential account of the Prester John legend. Attempting to reconcile the earlier theories of an Asian Prester John with the more contemporary theories of Prester John as Ethiopian negus, Scaliger proposes that Prester John led an exiled group of Mongols in Ethiopia. This group, Scaliger proposes, were sent to Africa in defeat at the hands of Ghengis Khan.

As edited in Brewer (p. 225):
In our recollection, there were in Italy certain churches of the Christian Ethiopians, who they call Abassins or Abissins... Indeed, by the navigations of the Portuguese, and by the splendid book of the journey of the Portuguese priest Francisco Alvarez, who penetrated into the inmost Ethiopia, one may learn many things about those men and their rites. Once, all Africa from the Nile's final mouth, to the Gaditan straits [i.e. the Straits of Gibraltar], and likewise from the Tyrrhenian Sea to beyond the Equinox towards the south, was full of Christian churches and cities, and this great tract of lands was obedient to the one Bishop of Alexandria. But if there are any churches remaining today in those parts, they recognise that patriarch alone, like these Ethiopians, being discussed now, and whom the lonely deserts and difficult routes defend from the general wasteland of Africa... Before the arrival of the Portuguese in Ethiopia, the name of the Ethiopian Christians alone was scarcely known to us, and their falsely named emperor Prestegiani; since that name does not belong to he who reigned in Ethiopia, but he who reigned in Asia three hundred years previously, a long way distant... they falsely call him Prestegiani, and [to say] that this Ethiopian is the same as that Asian man out of the itinerary of Paul the Venetian [i.e. Marco Polo] because they are both Christian is utter nonsense. It is indeed correct that three hundred years previously, certain Ethiopian kings ruled far and wide in Asia, especially in Drangiana, at the ends of Susa, and in India, until the emperors of the Tartars expelled them from all of Asia, and they were the first ones defeated, so they say, by Chingis, King of the Tartars, having killed their emperor Uncam... all those Ethiopians who had been thrown out of the kingdom of the Mongols and Chinese and were driven all the way to furthest Africa.

As Brewer (p. 225) mentions, Scaliger's theory was challenged by Peter Heylyn, who, in his Cosmographie (1652), writes that such a theory was "found in no record but in Scaliger's head." Others texts, such as Samuel Purchas' Purchas His Pilgrimes (1613) and Athanasius Kircher's China Illustrata (1667).
Russia
German scientist and geographer Johann Gottlieb Georgi (1729-1802) discusses earlier failed theories as to the identity of Prester John and offers his own argument: that Prester John and the Dalai Lama are the same person. He documents these ideas in his 1780 Russia, or, a Complete Historical Account of all the Nations which Compose that Empire.

Georgi begins his passage by citing earlier accounts of Prester John that proved incorrect, including those of John of Plano Carpini, William of Rubruck, and Marco Polo. After discussing the failures of the Portuguese to correctly identify Prester John, Georgi offers his theory (qtd. in Brewer, pp. 267-279):
But we must first proceed to give some accounts of Dalai Lama. He lives in a pagoda on the mountain Potala, which, according to the Jesuit Gaubil, is under 290 6' northern latitude, and 250 58' western longitude from Pekin [i.e. Beijing].

His followers explain the nature of his immortality in the following manner: that his soul, afier the death of his body, passes into another human body which is born exactly at that time, and this man is the new Dalai Lama. (Others relate that they keep a young man in the pagoda during the life of the Dalai Lama, who is to succeed him).

Almost all the nations of the East, except the Mohammedans, believe the metempsychosis as the most important article of their faith; especially the Indians, the inhabitants of Tibet, and Ava [?], the Perguans [?], Siamese, Mongouls, all the Kalmucs [Kalmyks], and the greatest part of the Chinese and Japanese. According to the doctrine of the metempsychosis, the soul is always in action, and never at rest· for no soonef does she leave her old habitation but she enters a new one. The Dal~i Lama being a divine person, he can find no bener lodging than the body of his successor; or, properly not the 50u l1 but the Fo residing in the Dalai Lama which passes into his successor...

...The name Pretre Jean, or Juan, was mistakenly heard by the first Europeans that visited tbese regions. And their fancy working upon it, formed many extravagant ideas which were received and cherished in Europe. These travellers perceived a certain resemblance between the sound of a word in the Mongolian and Tibetan languages with that of a French, Italian, and Portuguese word. Unused to the study of languages, they imagined that such words as had a similar sound must have likewise the same signification in the language of Tibet and of the Mongouls which they bore in some of the European. This idea being once received, many fantastical etymologIes and fables naturally arose, as that about a certain Indian Johannes Presbyter, etc.

Now, if we can admit that the missionaries of the Nestorians came into these countries (which almost every competent judge in such matters will allow) then the Nestorian patriarch and Prester John are one person; at least according to the rules of etymology. And this Prester John being a Christian, he must have been the Catholicus of the Nestorians; or perhaps only a bishop sent by the Catholicus, who in these distant regions assumed a greater title than was strictly due to him. In the pursuit of these enquiries we shall find this Prester Jobn, or this Nestorian Catholicus, to be likewise one and the same with the Dalai Lama...

...All these circumstances seem sufficiently to prove that the Catholicus, Preste Gehan, and Dalai, are only one person.
The Garden of Curious Flowers
Spanish writer Antonio de Torquemada (1507-1569) wrote The Garden of Curious Flowers at the end of his life, and the text was published posthumously in 1573. Written in Spanish and translated into English, French, and Italian, the University of Notre Dame Rare Books and Specialty Collections describes the text as a "miscellaneous book in six treatises on general matters, social recommendations, popular science and superstitions." Among those "superstitions" is a treatement of Prester John, in which Torquemada uses the accounts of Marco Polo and John Mandeville to argue against, in the form of a Socratic dialogue, the contemporary habit of situating Prester John in Ethiopia.

Among other arguments, Torquemada uses his character Anthonio to affirm Prester John's real name as "Belulgian," roots Prester John in the St. Thomas apocrypha (here the director successor of the Apostle), and that because of Mandeville and Polo it is known that "Prester lohn is not hee which is in Aethiopia but he who was in the Oriental Indies, and that he name giuen vnto him of Aethiopia, was but through error, & because the people would haue it to be so" (qtd. in Brewer, p. 224).

Miguel de Cervantes criticizes this text in his Don Quixote, including it among the books considered untruthful enough to warrant burning:
"Who is that tub there?" said the curate.
"This," said the barber, "is 'Don Olivante de Laura.'"
"The author of that book," said the curate, "was the same that wrote 'The Garden of Flowers,' and truly there is no deciding which of the two books is the more truthful, or, to put it better, the less lying; all I can say is, send this one into the yard for a
swaggering fool."
Christopher Columbus' Notes At some point before his famous voyage across the Atlantic, Christopher Columbus annotated a copy of Marco Polo's Il Milione, a book that is still extant.

In the margins we find two annotations related to Prester John, which confirm that Columbus had thought of Prester John as the wealthy and powerful "Ongchan." These notes are mentioned in Brewer's (p. 286) list of Prester John texts.

In addition to this circumstantial evidence of Columbus' interest in Prester John, an anonymous crew member's journal makes explicit what Columbus's ownership of the Polo book implies.

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