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

Zar'a Yaqob

One of the most powerful rulers of the late Middle Ages, Zar'a Yaqob (1399-1468) served as Emperor of Ethiopia from 1434-1468. Brooks describes the gradual process that brought awareness of Zara Yaqob to Europe (p. 73):

Accounts of the material wealth, spiritual piety, and political strength of Zar’a Yaqob must certainly have spread northward up the Nile River and along established trading routes with merchants and travelers. Fifteenth-century accounts demonstrated an increasing tendency toward locating Prester John in Abyssinia, and this was especially the case with the Portuguese.

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Pope Nicholas V's Letter to Prester John Pope Nicholas V (1447-1455) entrusted the Franciscan Ludovico da Bologna to organize a mission to deliver a letter to Zar'a Yaqob, understood as Prester John.

As Salvadore (p. 65) explains, "the document, dated 1 December 1456, speaks to the anxieties reigning over the Church and, more generally, the European establishment-- anxieties that also explain the renewed interest in Ethiopia." Here the Pope employs time-honored crusading rhetoric and the familiar call to divert the Nile River in hopes to render the Ethiopian-European connection into something potent and durable:
Immediately after leaving the conclave [8 April 1455], our soul oppressed by the fall and misfortune of Constaninople [1453] we made a vow to embark on a war against the Turks, to those who are iniquitous usurpers of Christian lands. Therefore, given that our funds are not enough, we decided to gather the armies of all the pirnces of the arth who profess the religion of Jesus Crucified-- you among them.... Between Westerners and Easterners, we have organized two good armies of land and sea, of sufficient valor.... we plan to add to the enterprise your important cooperation, with which we will have enough strength no only to defeat the unholy Turk, but to take away from the infidel the holy land of Jerusalem.... Because God wanted you to have, under your sublime rule, a powerful army, the river Nile whose inundations fertilize the land where our enemies feed and you at your own pleasure can take that away from them.
Salvadore (p.66) adds that this letter is particularly notable for being the first explicit "call to arms" sent to the Ethiopian ruler, the presumed Prester John.

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Michael Brooks