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The legend of Prester John (also '''Presbyter John'''), popular in Europe from the 12th through the 17th Centuries , told of a mythical Christian Patriarch and King said to rule over a Christian nation lost amidst the Muslim s and Pagan s in the Orient . Written accounts of this kingdom are variegated collections of medieval popular fantasy. Reportedly a descendant of one of the Three Magi , Prester John was said to be a generous ruler and a virtuous man, presiding over a realm full of riches and strange creatures, in which the Patriarch of St. Thomas resided. His kingdom contained such marvels as the Gates Of Alexander and the Fountain Of Youth , and it even bordered the Earthly Paradise . Among his treasures was a mirror through which every province could be seen. At first, Prester John was imagined to be in India ; tales of the " Nestorian " Christians' evangelical success there and of Saint Thomas ' subcontinental travels as documented in works like the '' Acts Of Thomas '' probably provided the first seeds of the myth. After the coming of the Mongols to the Western World accounts placed the king in Central Asia ; eventually Portuguese explorers convinced themselves they had found him in Ethiopia . Prester John's kingdom was the object of a quest, firing the imaginations of generations of adventurers, but remaining out of reach. He was a symbol to European Christians of the Church's universality, transcending culture and geography to encompass all humanity, in a time when ethnic and interreligious tension made such a vision seem distant. Origin of the legend The stories of Saint Thomas proselytizing in India, which date back to at least the 3rd century, had obvious influence on the myth's development. Distorted reports of the Assyrian Church 's movements in Asia had a hand as well. This sect, called "Nestorianism" by Europeans who mistook it as adhering to the teachings of Nestorius , gained a wide following in the Eastern nations and engaged the Western imagination as an assemblage both exotic and familiarly Christian. Additionally, a kernel of the myth may have been drawn from Saint Irenaeus 's quotes, recorded by the ecclesiastical historian and bishop Eusebius , on the shadowy early Christian figure John The Presbyter of Syria , supposedly the author of two of the '' Epistles Of John '' (see the 5th century '' Decretum Gelasianum ''). The martyr bishop Papias had been Irenaeus' teacher; Papias in turn had received his apostolic tradition from John the Presbyter. Little links this figure to the Prester John legend beyond the name, however. Whatever its influences, the legend began in earnest in the early in Viterbo , a certain Hugh , bishop of Jabala , an emissary seeking Western aid against the Saracens in the name of Prince Raymond of Antioch . Hugh told Otto that Prester John, a Nestorian Christian who served in the dual position of priest and king, had regained the city of Ecbatana from the brother monarchs of Media And Persia , the Samiardi, in a great battle "not many years ago". After this battle, Prester John allegedly set out for Jerusalem to rescue the Holy Land, but the swollen waters of the Tigris compelled him to return to his own country. His fabulous wealth was demonstrated by his emerald scepter; his holiness by his descent from the Three Magi . During the Second Crusade , there was hope that Prester John would come to the aid of the holy cities and help recapture Edessa from the Muslims, and it is possible Otto recorded the tale to prevent complacency in the Crusade's European backers; according to his account no help could be expected from the powerful Eastern king. Otto's story appears to be a muddled version of real events. In 1141, the Kara-Khitan Khanate under Yelü Dashi defeated the Seljuk Turks near Samarkand . The Seljuks ruled over Persia at the time and were the most powerful force in the Muslim world; the defeat at Samarkand damaged their strength substantially, and encouraged the Crusaders. The Kara-Khitan were not Christians, however, and there is no reason to suppose Yelü Dashi was ever called Prester John. However, several vassals of the Kara-Khitan practiced Nestorian Christianity , and this may have helped form the basis of the Prester John Legend. The Letter of Prester John No more of the tale is recorded until about 1165 when copies of the ''Letter of Prester John'' started spreading throughout Europe. An epistolary wonder tale with parallels suggesting its author knew the '' Romance Of Alexander '' and the above-mentioned ''Acts of St. Thomas'', the ''Letter'' was supposedly written to the Byzantine Emperor Manuel I Comnenus (1143 – 1180) by Prester John, descendant of one of the Three Magi and King of India. The many marvels of richness and magic it contained captured the imagination of Europeans, and it was translated into numerous languages, including Hebrew. It circulated in ever more embellished form for centuries in manuscripts, a hundred examples of which still exist. The invention of Printing carried on the letter's popularity in printed form; it was still current in Popular Culture during the period of European Exploration . Part of the essence of the letter was that a lost kingdom of Nestorian Christians still existed in the vastnesses of Central Asia. The reports were so far believed that Pope Alexander III sent a letter to Prester John via his emissary Philip, his physician, on September 27, 1177. Of Philip, nothing more is recorded, but it is most probable he did not return with word from Prester John. The ''Letter'' continued to circulate, accruing more embellishments with each copy. In modern times Textual Analysis of the letter's variant Hebrew versions have suggested an origin among the Jew s of northern Italy or Languedoc : several Italian words remained in the Hebrew texts {Link without Title} . At any rate, the ''Letter'''s author was most likely a Westerner, though his or her purpose remains unclear. Prester John and the Mongol Empire In 1221 , then under the Khwarezmid Empire 's control, and was moving on towards Baghdad as well. This descendent of the great king who had defeated the Seljuks in 1141 planned to reconquer and rebuild Jerusalem. "King David", as it turned out, was no benevolent Nestorian monarch nor even a Christian, but Genghis Khan . His reign took the story of Prester John in a new direction. The rise of the Mongol Empire gave western Christians the opportunity to visit lands they had never seen before, and they set out in large numbers along the Empire's secure roads. The belief that a lost Nestorian kingdom existed in the east, or at least that the Crusader States ' salvation depended on an alliance with an Eastern monarch, explains the numerous Christian ambassadors and missionaries sent to Mongols, such as the Franciscan explorers Giovanni Da Pian Del Carpine in 1245 and William Of Rubruck in 1253. The link between Prester John and Genghis Khan was elaborated upon at this time as the Prester became identified with Genghis' foster father, Wang Khan Toghrul of the Kerait s. Fairly truthful chroniclers and explorers such as Marco Polo , Crusader-historian Jean De Joinville , and the Franciscan voyager Odoric Of Pordenone strip Prester John of much of his mythical veneer, portraying him as a more realistic earthly monarch. Joinville describes in his chronicle a "wise man" who unites all the Tartar tribes and leads them to victory against their strongest enemy, Prester John. William of Rubruck says a certain "Vut", lord of the Keraits and brother to the Nestorian ''King'' John, was defeated by the Mongols under Genghis. Genghis made off with Vut's daughter and married her to his son, and their union produced Möngke , the Khan at the time William wrote. According to Marco Polo, the war between the Prester and Genghis started when Genghis, new ruler of the rebellious Tartars, asked for the hand of Prester John's daughter in marriage. Angered that his lowly vassal would make such a request, Prester John denied him in no uncertain terms. In the war that followed, Genghis triumphed and Prester John perished. The historical figure behind these accounts, Toghrul, was in fact a Christian monarch defeated by Genghis. He had fostered the future Khan after the death of his father and was one of his early allies, but the two had a falling out. After Toghrul rejected a proposal to wed his son and daughter to Genghis' children, the rift between them grew until war broke out in 1203. The major characteristic of Prester John tales from this period is the kings' portrayal not as an invincible hero, but merely one of many adversaries defeated by the Mongols. But as the Mongol Empire collapsed, Europeans began to shift away from the idea that Prester John had ever really been a Central Asian king. At any rate they had little hope of finding him there, as travel in the region became dangerous without the security the Empire had provided. In works such as '', Prester John's domain tends to regain its fantastic aspects and finds itself located not on the steppes of Central Asia, but back in India proper, or some other exotic locale. Wolfram Von Eschenbach tied the history of Prester John to the Holy Grail legend in his poem '' Parzival '', in which the Prester is the son of the Grail maiden and the Saracen knight Feirefiz . Prester John and Ethiopia Though Prester John had been considered the ruler of India since the legend's beginnings, "India" was a vague concept to the Europeans. Writers often spoke of the "Three Indias", and lacking any real knowledge of the Indian Ocean , they sometimes considered Ethiopia one of the three. Westerners knew Ethiopia was a mighty Christian nation, but contact had been sporadic since the rise of Islam. Since no Prester John was to be found in Asia, European imagination moved him around the blurry frontiers of "India" until they found an appropriately powerful kingdom for him in Ethiopia. Marco Polo had discussed Ethiopia as a magnificent Christian land and Orthodox Christian s had a legend that Ethiopia would one day rise up and invade Arabia , but they didn't place Prester John there. Then in 1306 thirty Ethiopian ambassadors came to Europe, and Prester John was mentioned as the patriarch of their church in a record of their visit. The first clear description of an African Prester John is in the ''Mirabilia Descripta'' of Dominican missionary Jordanus , around 1329. In discussing the "Third India", Jordanus records a number of fanciful stories about the land and its king, whom he says Europeans call Prester John. After this point, an African location became increasingly popular; by the time the emperor Lebna Dengel and the Portuguese had established diplomatic contact with each other in 1520, Prester John was the name by which Europeans knew the Emperor Of Ethiopia . The Ethiopians, though, had never called their emperor that. When ambassadors from Emperor Zara Yaqob attended the Council Of Florence in 1441, they were confused when council prelates insisted on referring to their monarch as Prester John. They tried to explain that nowhere in Zara Yaqob's list of regnal names did that title occur. "No matter," says Robert Silverberg , author of ''The Realm of Prester John''. "Prester John was what Europe wanted to call the King of Ethiopia, and Prester John is what Europe called him". Some writers who used the title did understand it was not an indigenous honorific; for instance Friar Jordanus seems to use it simply because his readers would have been familiar with it, not because he thought it authentic. It should be noted that while Ethiopia has been argued as the genesis of the Prester John legend for many years, most experts today believe the myth was simply adapted to fit that nation in the same fashion it had been projected upon Wang Khan and Central Asia during the 13th century. Modern scholars find nothing about the Prester or his country in the early material that would make Ethiopia a more suitable indentification than any place else, and furthermore, specialists in Ethiopian history have effectively demonstrated the story was not widely known there until well after European contact. When the Czech Franciscan Remedius Prutky asked Emperor Iyasus II about this identification in 1751, Prutky states the man was "astonished, and told me that the kings of Abyssinia had never been accustomed to call themselves by this name." In a footnote to this passage, Richard Pankhurst opines that this is apparently the first recorded statement by an Ethiopian monarch about this tale, and they were likely ignorant of the title until Prutky's inquiry. The end of the legend When 17th century academics like the German Orientalist Hiob Ludolf proved that there was no actual native connection between Prester John and the Ethiopian monarchs, the fabled king left the maps for good. But the legend had affected several hundred years of European and world history, directly and indirectly, by encouraging Europe's explorers, missionaries, scholars and treasure hunters. Literary references Though the prospect of finding Prester John had long since vanished, the myth continued to inspire through the 20th century. In 1910 British novelist and politician John Buchan used the legend in his sixth book, ''Prester John'', to supplement a plot about a Zulu uprising in South Africa . Though tainted with the common Racial Stereotype s and caricatures of its day, the book was popular, and exists as an excellent example of the early 20th century Adventure Novel . Perhaps due to Buchan's work, Prester John appeared in Pulp Fiction and Comics throughout the century. Charles Williams , a prominent member of the 20th century literary group the Inklings , made Prester John a messianic protector of the Holy Grail in his 1930 novel ''War in Heaven''. The Prester and his kingdom also figure prominently in Umberto Eco 's 2000 novel '' Baudolino '', in which the titular protagonist enlists his friends to write the "Letter of Prester John" for his stepfather Frederick Barbarossa , but it is stolen before they can send it out. Eventually Baudolino and company determine to visit the priest's wonderful kingdom which turns out to be everything and nothing like they expected. Further reading
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