May 22, 2025 • 43 mins
A mysterious figure ruling at the fringes of the known world, Prester John might be the most famous person you've never heard of. Like a medieval Carmen Sandiego, Prester John was a man people searched the globe for, from Ethiopia, to Tibet, to the New World, never quite catching up to him in the end. So, who was Prester John and why were medieval people so keen to find him? This week, Danièle speaks with Chris Taylor about where the legend comes from, how it may have had a disastrous effect on the fifth crusade, and what Prester John has to do with the Fantastic Four.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Hi, everyone, and welcome to episode two hundred and ninety
one of the Medieval Podcast. I'm Danielle Sebalski, also known
as the five Minute Medievalist. A mysterious figure ruling at
the fringes of the known world. Prestor John might be
the most famous person you may never have heard about.
Like a medieval Carmen san Diego, Prester John was a
(00:36):
man people searched the globe for, from Ethiopia to Tibet
to the New World, never quite catching up to him
in the end. So who was Prester John and why
were medieval people so keen to find him? This week
I spoke with doctor Chris Taylor about the legendary Prester John.
Chris teaches in the Department of Humanities at Western New
(00:57):
Mexico University and is the author of many works on
Prester John and the medieval fascination with the unknown. His
new book is The Global Legend of Prester John. Our
conversation on where the figure of Prester John comes from,
how his legend may have had a disastrous effect on
the Fifth Crusade, and what he has to do with
a fantastic four is coming up right after this Welcome
(01:24):
Chris to talk about Prester John. This is really exciting
for me because as I was reading your book, I
realized just how many areas of medieval history and history
in general Prester John touches. So thank you so much
for being here to talk about him.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Thank you, Danielle. It's my pleasure to be here. I'm
excited to talk about Prester John.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
Yeah, as everyone is right, everyone's always excited. Let's talk
Pressor John.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Yeah. People who know are down to talk. That's true.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Okay, So for people who have never heard of him,
and I have to admit, before I started doing my
undergraduate work, I had never heard of Prester John before.
So in the broadest strokes, who is this guy?
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Yeah? I think that one of the most interesting things
about the Prestor John legend is the frequency with which
people who are even somewhat acquainted with medieval literature medieval
history have not heard that name. I was listening to
your last podcast and you started on Frederick Barbarossa, and
you started by referring to him as one of a
(02:26):
handful of legendary figures that stand out above the rest.
And I think that that's kind of where I would
start with Prester John two, totally larger than life figure
on par with our Frederick's, our Charlemagne's, our Arthurs, but
totally imaginary. So I think that's the most important thing
to start with his realizing that this is not a
(02:49):
real person. I think that there are scholars who have
tried to seek out there are many potential avatars for
Prester John, historical avatars. But Pressor John, in the broadest sense,
is this imaginary Christian priest king that was understood is
both an individual figure and then later as a title
(03:11):
whose ruler, whose authority, whose sovereignty was grounded in this
kind of biblically legitimate authority, as a descendant of the magi.
And what I would argue in this book is that
this imaginary figure, this person who never existed, played this
essential role in Europe's entrance into a globally interconnected world
(03:32):
by serving as this kind of nomadic cultural touchstone. So
wherever Europeans, Catholics in particular, kind of imagine the horizons
of their acumene, their known world, they positioned Prestor John there,
And when they realized that Prestor John wasn't there, Prestor
John gets moved to different places. So he's this priest
(03:53):
king who is a Christian, and it's important that he
rules in an area that we don't think of or
that medieval people didn't think of as Christian. So he
allows there to be this possibility of this epistemological continuity
between like the world that we know and the world
that we don't know. And that's kind of part of
(04:15):
the argument of this book is that you know, this
had a real shaping force in things like colonialism and
things like missionary trips, the spread of Christianity, as well
as real political decisions. So I hope that that captures
some of it. It's you know, we can get into
where it comes from. I think that if you hadn't
heard of Pressor John at this point, you probably have
(04:36):
a lot of questions. But maybe we can get to
that as we go.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Yeah, leave it in my hands. We will get there.
So Pressor John, he's this priest king. He's got a
Christian kingdom somewhere out there. We never know where it is,
Like you say, it migrates as soon as people start
discovering those spots, and he's always going to be ready
to help Christians, especially to eradicate the other religions that
are causing problems for Christians. He's out there. Okay, So
(05:01):
when does this start? What starts this? Because it comes
sort of out of nowhere?
Speaker 2 (05:06):
Yeah, it does come sort of out of nowhere. And also,
and this is not my field of Prestor john studies
like and Pressor John's studies should really be a thing
because you can come at it from all sorts of disciplines,
which is something that I also try to make a
point of in the book. But quickly, I think that
if people are really interested in the nitty gritty of
where this comes out of, listen to that Frederick Barbarossa episode,
(05:29):
because it comes out of that culture that moment. But
kind of more generally, and what I write about I'm
thinking of, you know, I consider myself a literary historian.
I'm not a historian. So I'm thinking of the four
texts that kind of start this. And so the most
important of these is this so called letter of Prester
(05:49):
John that begins to circulate around what becomes the Holy
Roman Empire. The popular date is eleven sixty five. That's
a pretty approximate date, but it gets copied pretty rapidly,
exclusively in Latin until about eleven ninety. There are four
hundred and sixty nine manuscripts of this letter of Prester John,
half Latin, half vernacular. It is an incredibly well traveled text.
(06:15):
And this is a text from this figure who claims
to be Prestor John, this boastful letter originally to the
Byzantine Emperor, but then addressed to other more western sovereigns
and just basically saying I am this king. Well, let's
bookmark that. I can come back to that in a
second of what's in the letter, but that's really important.
But before that, there are a few texts that seem
(06:36):
to kind of add up to this figure. Two narratives
that talk about this eleven twenty two arrival to Rome
of this Indian archbishop of Saint Thomas Christians. So Saint
Thomas becomes a really important touchstone here in the Prester
John legend as this Eastern Christian figure. And so there
(06:58):
are these two texts that were this arrival, and there's
you know, these are the only two texts that attest
to this of this archbishop who presides over the local
miracles at the shrine of Saint Thomas, and so he's
here in one text, because the bishop had died and
he needs a new bishop. But in any case, what's
(07:18):
fascinating and seemed to fascinated people about these texts is
that this idea of this Christian realm, this idea of
these Saint Thomas Christians, and the idea of these miracles
that are performed to the east. So that kind of
set the scene for some of what we see in
the Prester John letter. And then Bishop auto Freising in
(07:41):
eleven forty five records, the uncle of Frederick Barbarossa retells
this story in his chronicle of this so called Nestorian
Christian who had announced intentions to defend the Holy Land
and was headed west to kind of aid in the
project of the Crusades, but was stopped by the Tigris
(08:03):
River and had to turn back, which again sets up
this motif. These weird motifs just recirculate throughout the whole
history of the legend of Rivers, Rivers being really important
to the Prester John story. So those three earlier texts
kind of seem to inform some of what we see
in the letter of Prestor John, which is also totally
(08:24):
grounded in all the kind of classical monster stories, Marvels
of the East, Aristotle's Letter to Alexander, you know, those
sorts of texts. It's kind of a compendium in some
ways of that kind of lore about what the marvelous
East is. The difference being here that we've got this
(08:44):
Christian sovereign figure ruling over all of this and not
with this intent to convert or to change what's going on,
but kind of governing this heterotopic space in a kind
of almost utopian like way where this difference is tolerated.
And yet at the same time he says that, you know,
(09:05):
he's going to defend Jerusalem and defend Christianity against Islam.
So it's an interesting text that itself you could write
a book about, you know, just teasing out all the
things that are happening. But that's where this legend comes from.
And then these manuscripts start to get copied at a
(09:26):
rapid pace. Eighteen languages. By the fifteenth century, we have
copies of the letter of Prester John, and those letters
then inform actual quests of missionaries of explorers, they inform
literature in some ways. Prester John becomes part of the
Arthurian world becomes part of the matter of France, so
(09:47):
on and so forth. It just kind of bleeds into
the world from there. I mean, it's just quite evident that,
for whatever reason, this text, once it started to become disseminated,
it became very popular and very well, very quickly.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
Yeah, it's amazing how quickly this happened. Because, as we've
talked about Frederick Barbarossa, so the people who are listening
to that episode know that he had a famous beef
with the Pope Alexander the third, and Alexander the Third
takes this idea of the letter of Prester John, maybe
somewhat seriously, and that he actually writes back and he
sends this letter to who knows where, because this kingdom
(10:23):
doesn't actually exist, but he's going on faith that it exists.
So why would the pope take something like this so seriously?
Speaker 2 (10:31):
It's such a good question, and there is in the
Prester John world there's quite a disagreement about what the
answer to that is. There is this sense that, okay,
maybe Alexander was actually credulous about the possibility of this
figure called Prester John. But you know, something that's important
(10:54):
to remember is that we don't really know where this
idea came from, but it came out of this beef.
I think in some way it came out of the
culture that created this beef. And having this figure who
is both a secular and a sacred ruler is a
model that someone like Frederick would be interested in as
(11:15):
a kind of way to say, you know, I can
combine these powers. We don't need the papacy in this way.
You know, during this time of the investors struggle, I
can be the one to invest these bishops and whatnot.
So it makes sense that it's kind of a highly
charged situation. So on the one hand, sure Alexander may
have really sent a letter believing that Prester John he's
(11:38):
trying to instruct Prestor John and Catholicism. He's basically like, okay,
I read your letter, but you're a heretic. And this
is another important part here. He's been coded as a Storian,
which at a time when heresy the letter in Council
in twelve fifteen, heresy is on the mind of everyone
there and really rooting out hair. See, the plurality of
(12:01):
heresies becomes just this singular concept of heresy. So Prester
John's kind of heterodox faith is important, so Alexander's writing
to instruct him in Catholicism. But I think that it's
a rhetorical gesture as much as it is a genuine inquiry.
I think that, you know, it's performative to kind of
reinscribe ecclesiastical power in this moment, to say, okay, because
(12:24):
if Prester John is both this priest and the king,
you know, for someone like Frederick, there's like, oh, he's
a king who's a priest, and for someone like Alexander,
he's a priest who's a king. So it's like it's
a model of the combination of this kind of power.
But it's important. I think that Alexander sends off this
letter without an explicit destination. I mean, how do you
(12:46):
actually deliver a letter where you have no idea where
it's going. So I read it as more of this
rhetorical gesture to kind of all the Prestor John project,
as it were, with the project of the papacy, to
see those as compatible rather than seeing it is more
compatible with the kind of secular side of things. And
I think that that's born out historically because Alexander then
(13:08):
becomes one of six popes to write to Prester John.
It's the one that's most famous. It's the one that
sticks with Alexander. It's part of his biography even into
the eighteenth century. But he's only one of six total
popes to write a letter to Prester John.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Yeah, and he's certainly not the only historical figure that
writes a letter. I mean, one of the other people
that you mentioned is Henry the Fourth and this is
like many many years later, he's writing a letter to
Prester John too, being like, oh, hey, can you help
us out in our Christian project?
Speaker 2 (13:40):
And the interesting one about the Henry letter is this
is centuries after the disaster of the Fifth Crusade, in
which Prester John played this role as this figure that
whether literally or kind of prophetically, Crusaders were awaiting to
arrive to complete this prophecy and totally changed the strategy
(14:01):
of that crusade and it ended up being quite a
disaster for the Europeans, as those who know that story
of the Crusade goes. So you'd think that no one
would ever call on Prestor John or believe in this
figure for the project of a military alliance. And here's
Henry a couple hundred years later doing the exact same
thing that similar people in this place were doing two
(14:24):
hundred years prior.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
Yeah, well, let's come back around to the Fifth Crusade,
because there might be people, probably a lot of people
who don't know what actually happened. So what actually happened
was they depended in some form on Press John's showing
up to the Crusade and has actually influenced some of
their military decisions, which, again, when you realize that this
character is wholly made up, is kind of incredible. So
(14:46):
tell us what happened on the Fifth Crusade.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
So, and this is tricky and took me a long
time to tease out, because there's recent scholarship that also
pushes back against the way I see things and the
way I think of a few I've seen things that
Prester John really did matter here and there. Those are
pushing back against this. And it's a pretty complicated story
in terms of how Prester John gets involved. Basically, there
(15:12):
is this kind of crisis of confidence and Jacques de
Vitri who's an important figure in the Fifth Crusade, receives
a series of texts that over time develop well, at
first He is trying to convince the Crusaders that there
are potential Christian allies that can come to their rescue,
(15:38):
but that need to be kind of called upon, and
that there's no you know, it's a certainty that they'll
be able to vanquish their enemies if we can get
these other Christians to join us, these Christians who we
don't know, these Christians from perhaps Ethiopia, we don't, We
don't really know. It's pretty ambiguous. And then this gets
tied to the Prestor John legend, and through this series
(16:01):
of prophecies. I'd really advise people to read my book
on this because it's hard for me to even tease
out the intricacies of this, so I'm trying to do
this in broader strokes. But what basically happens is that
the Christians had taken Damiata, but had because of this
series of prophecies, decided to march to Cairo to create
(16:24):
an even larger military victory. They march to Cairo during
a time when the Nile is flooding and have to
turn back and basically lose all that they have gained.
And they head to Cairo in part because of a
prophecy that a king from the West and a king
from the East are going to meet there and scatter
the bones of Muhammad forever, you know. So there's a
(16:47):
lot of intricate detail that adds up to why this
moment happened. But basically, they just reversed decision based on
faith in a prophecy that they could kind of escalate
the small victory into a larger victory, and it just
became a kind of disastrous end. And again the thing
(17:09):
with the rivers. You know, Prester John had to turn
back because he couldn't cross the Tigris, and then here
we have the Crusaders having to turn back because of
a flooded Nile. And then when Prester John becomes firmly
associated with Ethiopia, and like the late fourteenth and early
fifteenth century, he becomes this figure that is able to
control the Nile, so he doesn't fade away despite the
(17:29):
failures of this. And I'm sorry I didn't do a
very good job of describing everything in the Fifth Crusade
because I hesitate to get into some of these details
and I would have to kind of pour through my
own notes as to how this series of prophecies unfold.
But that's the basic story of what happens.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
Yes, in a nutshell, it's a disaster because they're waiting
for Presto John. It reminds me sort of waiting for
a Goodell. Right, he's supposed to show up, he never
actually shows up. So I do want to get Yeah,
I do want to get to Ethiopia, because I think
that's really important. But earlier than that, people are looking east,
and they tend to look east along the Silk Road.
Maybe they started to look towards the Mongol Empire, imagining
(18:12):
that somewhere beyond it, pressure John is there with his
Christian kingdom, and so presure John starts to get really
tangled up with Genghis Khan. So this happens in a
bunch of different ways. Maybe give us some idea as
to how he gets tangled up with Genghis Khan.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
Well, he gets tangled up with Genghis Khan. That's part
of what these prophecies that we see from Jacques tavitry
in during the Fifth Crusade and even going back to
the Autowa pricing his misunderstanding of this idea of this
Nestorian Christian king. So which is to say, in some ways,
(18:50):
Pressure John gets caught up with the story of the
Mongols because there isn't a connection of Nestorian Christians to
the Mongol Empire. So I think that that's one connection there,
and that this kind of wilful reimagining of these mistranslated
happenings and the Asian step kind of trickling into the
West and mapping this onto this kind of Christian understanding
(19:13):
of the world is kind of like in broad Strokes
how this begins. But it gets weirder from that, because, Okay,
we're after the Fifth Crusade by now, by twelve forty one,
Mongols had ventured as far west as the Danube Valley,
So there's a kind of imminent collision of worlds here,
and so we get these missionary ventures out to learn
(19:37):
about these people and to potentially convert them to Christianity,
and almost all of the missionary encounters Dominican and Franciscan
to the Mongol Empire end up mentioning Prester John in
some way. It's interesting at this point because Prester John
in all of these accounts is dead, right, so this
(19:58):
is pressor John is still a mortal figure Prester John
did not show up for the Fifth Crusade. They go
out there and they're trying to figure out, Okay, what
happened to this dude, Like who is he? What happened?
And Prester John is dead, and in being dead he
gets mapped on to several different personages. He initially kind
(20:20):
of before we get these missionary ventures out east, he
is conflated with Genghis Khan during this time that we
thought that maybe he's going to come west and save Christians.
But by the time that we're getting these narratives from
these Dominicans and Franciscan's coming back, like John of Planocarpini
or William of Rubruk later or Oderic of Portanone, they're
(20:44):
telling a different story. So in an early one John
of Planocarpini, he's this kind of powerful figure that stands
up to Genghis Khan and is able to kind of
trick Genghis Khan through something that we actually see in
Alexander stone Wories of these kind of copper soldiers. But
over time it gets more pessimistic. So by the time
(21:06):
of Oderic of Portanone is writing, he says, not one
hundredth part is true of what is told about Prester
John as if it were undeniable. But basically, Prestor John
becomes anything from a legitimate opponent to Genghis Khan to
kind of a shepherd that historian Christians have kind of
blown up into this mythical figure. But what's important here
(21:30):
is that he's dead. You know that he can't affect
the future anymore. He doesn't belong to this world of
hope and faith and prophecy anymore. And I think how
this gets rescued is through Marco Polo. So Marco Polo
is retelling that Prester John story in a very similar
way as we get from these missionary accounts, and that's
(21:53):
where a lot of what he's saying is grounded. And
he doesn't make Prestor John necessarily more more important. And
he also says that Prestor John is dead. But a
couple of things he does, I think rescue Prestor John
and kind of reanimate Prestor John. I think, especially for
like the literary world, and one is just the way
that the travels of Marco Polar are written, right, So
(22:16):
it is written as a travelogue in a sense. But
what stands out to me as a literature person, is
that there's so much dialogue, you know. So there's this
kind of big episode between Genghis Khan and Prester John
and this emotional dialogue that we get with them, and
so I think that there's something there, And probably more importantly,
Prestor John in Marco Polo's story, becomes an inheritable title.
(22:40):
Prestor John's family's kind of married into the lineage of
Genghis Khan. So we see this in Mandeville also, But
this is also becomes echoed in some of the literary
treatments of Prestor John, where for instance, in Wolfram's Parseval
Prestor John is intermarried into this kind of larger Arthurian
lineage and becomes in the Tituro sequel the Keeper of
(23:03):
the Grail. But in any case, this Mongol era of
Prestor John texts which I want to point out, there
are these different eras of Prester John. We're okay, we
think Prester John's a Mongol. We think Prester John's inn Ethiopia.
We think Prestor John is in India. These eras do
not have a discreet beginning and ending. So in other words,
(23:24):
at a time when Prester John is in Ethiopia, there
are also people who say he's still this Mongol inherited title,
and this becomes later on people will start conflating Pressor
John with the Dalai Lama. So something that's really interesting
about the transmission of this whole legend is that none
of these different points of contact for Prestor John have
(23:45):
these kind of discrete endings. I mentioned before about the Crusades.
It's the same idea like, Okay, Prestor John doesn't show
up for the fifth Crusade, you think no one would
ever call on him again. In two hundred years later,
people are doing the same thing. So there's just this
constant kind of return to these motifs into these identifications,
even after there's there's no rational or logical or even
(24:06):
you know, faith based reason to believe the Pressure John's
going to show up. But with this Mongol path, I
think Marco pol is super important for how Pressure John
survives his death.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
As it were, Yes, an inheritable title, which is very convenient,
but you know it works for everybody because they can
keep this going. And as you say, there's waves that
come and go, and then he's being told in one
way or another. He's sometimes a hero of romance and
sometimes he's a historical hero. You've just ends up everywhere.
But in the interest of you know, doing a single podcast,
(24:42):
the figure he's not a Mongol, probably he's probably Ethiopian.
And so as we've talked about Africa a few times
on this podcast, including recently with Luke Pepra, so the
exploration keeps going towards Africa and there's more contact made,
as I talked with Raina Krebs about a couple of
(25:02):
years ago now in Ethiopia. And so when people come
across these really wealthy, powerful African kings, like is this
the guy, especially because the Ethiopian kingdom is a Christian.
So tell us a little bit about how Prester John
starts to integrate with contact with Ethiopia.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
Yeah, there are several layers here, because on the surface
there like how does he go from being a Mongol
to being an Ethiopian and how does that happen so quickly?
But there are some connections here. So you mentioned the
long standing Christian nature of large parts of Ethiopia and
specifically this kind of somewhat new at the time selfs
tied to this solemn Monic line, right, that not only
(25:43):
are these Ethiopian kings Christian, they are direct descendants of Solomon, right,
who is himself related to King David. And King David
is during the Crusade part I should have mentioned this before.
These texts from Jacques d. Vitry, they're like, Okay, this
guy may or may not be Prestor John, but they
call him King David. He's maybe the grandson or the
(26:05):
son of Prester John, but he's this King David figure.
So another important biblical tie. So Prestor John is already
tied to Biblical history by being a descendant of the Magi,
which is just kind of a crazy thing to think of,
Like what does that mean? A descendant of these three
very different kings, But that's how it's always framed, like
he's a descendant of the Magi, you know, all three,
(26:27):
I guess. But so through that and then through the
King David thing with the Solomonic line, like it kind
of makes sense to put Prester John over there, especially
as Europeans start to realize while they argue over really
the wealth of this Ethiopian Christian kingdom. So that's a
(26:48):
big part of it. Another part of it is why
it's Ethiopia in particular, although there are some other parts
of Sub Saharan Africa that Prestor John gets tied to.
It's it's pretty dominantly Ethiopia. And that's because in this
theory of the three Indias, what counts as India or
the three Indies. This is sometimes called there's Greater India, which
(27:11):
is India Southeast Asia, there's Middle India the kind of
Middle East Asian step, and then there's Lesser India or yeah,
often called Lesser India, which especially by the fourteenth early
fifteenth century, is tied to the Horn of Africa. So
like when Pester John in his letter says that he
governs over India, you know, that's kind of an ambiguous
(27:32):
idea for medieval Europeans. So that could mean several different things.
And the last place to look really is the Horn
of Africa. So it's it also makes sense in that way.
And then with the river stuff, it also makes sense
the Nile River part of things, and the idea of
a potential ally who could control the flow of the
(27:54):
Nile River, which is a power sometimes attributed to Ethiopian
sovereign I forget who it was, but one who's claimed
that he have this power. And so I think that
those things all add up to Prestor John in Ethiopia.
Plus going back to these prophecies from the Fifth Crusade,
another aspect of these prophecies was that this King of Abyssi,
(28:18):
you know, of Abyssinia, is an important figure here. But
really I think Ethiopia started to kind of signify for
Europeans the sociological space beyond Dar al Islam, right, this
area on the other side of Islam, which I think
was really important to crusading strategy from the beginning. And
I've written about that too, of how Prestor John figures
(28:40):
in as like Islam is just a little part of
the world, and it's important to believe in the fact
that there's an other side, there's an east or a
south of wherever Islam is that is already Christian, right,
So that's baked in so that when medieval Europeans are
trying to do, Christians is to surround basically to absorb
(29:02):
almost Islam into this larger Christian world. And we see
that in things like the first Latin translation of the
Quran if you've ever seen that, or like the Kuran,
that the actual text of the Kuran takes up maybe
like fifteen percent of the page and the rest of
it is just commentary along the outside. I think it's
a really similar kind of geographic idea with Prester John
(29:23):
in Ethiopia. It's like to kind of guarantee that the
wider world is already Christian and is surrounding this idea
of Islam and has the potential to help prove that
the world is already Christian, is going to remain Christian,
and that this kind of ideological conflict with Islam is
an impermanent one.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
Yeah, I think that's really important in like it sits
in the idea that the world is already Christian. This
is an anomaly, The Muslim world is an anomaly. The
rest of the world is Christian. And this idea of
integrating all contact with other people within this idea that
it's even further, even further, there's going to be Christians
on the other side because we know that the world
(30:04):
is Christian. It's just kind of an interesting, well it
takes some mental gymnastics to get there, but it is
sort of the worldview that people were talking about, and
this even happens when we're getting sort of out of
the Middle Ages, where the Portuguese starts to send ships
everywhere and they start to go further into Africa, and
they still sort of hold on to this idea that
we're probably going to get to Christians on the other
(30:24):
side of whatever we find out there.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
Right absolutely, you know, this is part of the explicit
goal of Henry the Navigator. So when he's trying to
start to organize this mercantile travel, he says, Okay, our
goals are threefold. We want to gather knowledge of Africa's
western shores to establish trading relationships. Number two, we want
to learn the reach of Islam into Africa, and then
(30:50):
number three, we want to identify any potential Christian allies
against Islams, such as Prester John so Fosco Tagama's looking
for Prestor John, later christianpher Columbus. He's got his annotated
copy of Marco Polo with the Prestor John stuff. We
have those annotations, and there is this expectation, and I
think this expectation has some grounding that is bigger than
(31:15):
the Prestor John thing in terms of like how geography
was understood And something I talk about in the book
is like, how Prestor John is this really important figure
also in this transition of this Old World geography, this
kind of inherited Greek geography, the kind of to map
style understanding of the world, to this kind of more
precise for purposes of navigation understanding of the world. And
(31:40):
part of the problem with this kind of like to
style map is, Okay, so if we have this fourth quadrant,
this fourth space, the Antipodes or the austral Lands or
whatever that is that's populated by monsters or that's populated
by nothing, or we have the torred zone, we have
this place where people can't live, how does that mesh
(32:02):
with the biblical ideas that number one, that this kind
of monogenetic principle that all humans are descended from Adam, right,
So how does that mesh with that on the one hand?
And number two, how does that mesh on this spreading
of the apostles to preach Christianity in all lands of
the world. So I think that part of what Prester
(32:23):
John in this moment of exploration is doing is kind
of offering an easy way to build this bridge between
this Old World understanding of geography and this new world understanding.
First of all, you know something the Portuguese realizes, Oh,
this torred zone, this so called torred zone, there's tons
(32:43):
of people living there. This is actually quite habitable, So
they're wrong about that. And so I think that there's
this kind of excitement and expectation that like, we're going
to find Christians everywhere, because that provided some continuity. So
it's not this total paradigm shift. It's just kind of
a a more accurate reconfiguring of geography. So I think
(33:04):
that Prestor John just becomes really a helpful tool in
kind of imagining how this totally new way of seeing
this world is still somewhat a continuation of these kind
of older modes of knowledge.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
Well, it's interesting thinking about it that way, because I
think when I've always thought about people cutting out in
chips and looking for things, I always sort of conceived
of it without really thinking about it, that they're looking
for other lands, and they find other lands. But what's
interesting about this is sort of that base assumption that
you're going to find other people. And you know, that's
(33:39):
something I had never thought of before as being in
the minds of people who are setting out on these
grand journeys that they are expecting to find other people there.
And when you think about that, that's kind of interesting.
You're expecting contact, that there are going to be people
out there, and of course one of these people is
going to be Prester John. And what's interesting is he
falls out of fashion as being someone that is totally imaginary,
(34:02):
sort of falls into myth, and then sort of disappears,
except for a few cases in the twentieth century, one
of them being Marvel. So bring us to Marvel, as
we come to the end of our podcast, bring Us
to Marvel. How does he appear in Marvel? And why
would he appear in Marvel comics?
Speaker 2 (34:20):
Okay, So it's a good question, and I think that
I have honestly figured it out, okay, kind of accidentally,
because I've been curious about it. I'm not a Marvel person, admittedly,
and I hope that there are listeners who know about
Prester John in the Marvel universe more than I do.
But what we do know is that Prester John shows
(34:41):
up as a character. He has been featured in nineteen
separate Marvel titles, in more than one hundred issues of
different titles, different iterations different storylines. He starts, I think
in The Fantastic Four in nineteen sixty six, but over
one hundred issues between nineteen sixty six and twenty ten.
And so one thing that I think is interesting about
(35:03):
the Marvel Prester John is that in none of those
issues does he make a formal alliance with any other character,
and no version of that is he working for some
larger force, Like he's this kind of independent actor, which
I think is kind of interesting. He doesn't die, He
keeps almost dying, so he's got this ability. He's got,
(35:23):
you know, several abilities, but one is he could sit
on his throne and remain in suspended animation for as
long as possible. How he's initially found is underground, which
is an amazing place to look for him. It's like
that's the last place to it fits so well. It's
like we've looked for Prestor John all over the world.
Where was he? He was underground the whole time. So
(35:44):
he's underground and I'm like, okay, why is he underground?
And I remembered there's this very popular nineteen to ten
adventure novel for boys called Prester John by John Buckan,
very prolific writer of his day, adventure writer of his
novels became films, and in that book Prester John, which
(36:06):
is incredibly weird. Prester John is both this black Scottish
reverend that the main character meets at the beginning of
the book and also this Zulu revolutionary who's trying to
overthrow the colonial shackles in South Africa, and importantly contextually
(36:28):
is the villain, right Like, he's not the hero for
trying to overthrow colonialism. He is very much the villain
of this story. But at the end of that novel,
he's not killed, but he jumps into a giant ravine
and basically ends up underground. You know. So I feel
like the Marvel version of Prester John. Some of that
(36:50):
early Marvel writing I just find so good. I really
do think is really good. And I hope I'm not
over determining this, but I really think that it makes
so much sense that that's how he was left in
this very popular novel Underground, and he's discovered in nineteen
sixty six Underground. You know, he's still there, He's still alive.
He's just been waiting. He's woken up, and he's very powerful,
(37:13):
but The difference here is that in the John Buckan
novel he's a black African man, and in the Marvel
version he's this very pale skinned, redheaded so called crusader.
In this he's one of Richard the Lionheart's warriors. So
it's an interesting continuity, and he plays this interesting role.
(37:34):
And I do wonder, like how he ended up there
in the first place, what larger purpose he serves. But
I think though those questions are at least unanswerable to me,
I think what matters is that he's still around. Despite
the fact that you're not going to find a history
book a textbook that you're going to read in college
or in high school that mentions Prester John, what is
(37:57):
undeniably true for me is that he's in there at
all of these important moments. The shape of European colonialism
would not look the same if there were not a
Prestor John. The understanding of what the wider world looked
like for Europeans from the twelfth to fifteenth century would
not look the same if it weren't for this imaginary
figure pressure John. And whether or not people want to
(38:20):
pay attention to it, whether or not it remains part
of like the conversation about world history. It still shows
up in ways. There's a Pressure John statue in South Africa,
and there's a Prestre John Institute for Portuguese Ethiopian Relationships
in Portugal. You know, there are these ways that it
still shows up. And that marvel thing, I think is
(38:40):
just so beautiful to me that it's just more proof that, like,
you can't kill this idea. It's an unkillable idea that's
kind of baked into the very idea itself, is that
it can die one hundred deaths and is never truly dead.
Speaker 1 (38:57):
Yes, and he also never true shows up and you
can never truly pin him down. He is just an
incredible figure when you think about that. And I mean,
there is a Fantastic four movie that's coming out we
will all have to look and see if Prester John
shows up in it. I don't think so, but you know,
it would be really fabulous for us in medieval studies
if he does show up. Well, thank you so much
(39:19):
Chris for coming on and telling us all about Prestor John.
As we were saying, there is so much more to
be said about it. He crosses Genres, he crosses languages,
and I'm hoping people will check out your book and
learn more about Prester John.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
Yeah, check out the book. It's pretty easy to download
and it's I think only twenty two dollars for the paperback.
So and check out my website as well, the International
Prestor John Project, where all this is archived and navigable.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
Absolutely, thank you, all right, thanks Daniel. To find out
more about Chris's work, you can check out his page
at Academia dot edu. You can also follow the International
Prestor John Project at Global Middleages dot org. Chris's new
book is The Global Legend of Prester John. Before we go,
(40:06):
here's Peter from Medievalist dot net to tell us what's
on the website. Welcome Peter from the House of Kittens
and Cats. Happening there.
Speaker 3 (40:15):
Indeed, indeed, I have one eyeing me right now. But
we had a good week on Medievalist dot net. I
had this great piece sent to me by Joel Rollo
Costa and it's about the fascinating details of what happens
when a pope dies.
Speaker 1 (40:30):
Well, I mean, this is what's on everyone's mind right now.
Speaker 3 (40:32):
Right, that's right, Like we sent Funeral of Pope Francis.
People are wondering a few questions about this, and a
lot of this runs back to medieval times and there
is some detailed information about what they did with the corpse.
Speaker 1 (40:45):
Awesome. I'm sure there is so much that has to
go into making sure everything is prepared properly, so we
can all find out on Medievalist on net. What else
have you got for us?
Speaker 3 (40:53):
Indeed, and thanks to Joel for that piece. And we
also took a look at the work being done by
Mohammed L. Meherr. And he's working on the Seventh Crusade,
and here he's actually looking at the Arabic sources, the
Egyptian side of what was happening, and it totally changes
our understanding of what's happening in the Seventh Crusade. It's
almost as if Louis and the Crusaders are more like
(41:15):
Pond's and this whole thing just being played off by
different factions. So it's a fascinating bit of research that
we covered. If you take a look at your whole
understanding of the Seventh crusade's going to change.
Speaker 1 (41:27):
It's not just hotly glorious for the Christians.
Speaker 3 (41:30):
No, No, it's a very different story for Louis. He's
not quite the hero you get in the Crusader sources, right, okay,
which we're all written by his friends.
Speaker 1 (41:41):
You know, that's fair enough. That's fair enough. I want
my friends to write get stuff about me. What else
have we got up?
Speaker 3 (41:45):
So we have that plus the news about the magnet
Karta that was discovered at Harvard. It's kind of big news,
although it's not really really huge because gamnew is fourteenth
century and now it's just at the very beginning of
the fourteenth century. That's his thing. They're very happy at
Harvard to have that plus a twelve things you didn't
know about the Biotapestry.
Speaker 1 (42:08):
I mean personally, I'm sure there are a lot more,
but twelve things that we did not know about the
Bayou Tapestry.
Speaker 3 (42:15):
Indeed.
Speaker 1 (42:17):
Well, thank you Peter for joining us despite all of
the madness at your place right now. Good to talk
to you. Thanks for stopping bye. Thanks Thank you to
all of you who make it possible for me to
bring you the best in medieval slash marvel contents each week,
whether it's by spreading the word, letting the ads play through,
or becoming patrons on Patreon dot com. Without you, none
(42:39):
of this would be possible, so you always have my
gratitude to find out how to become a patron and
to help me keep the medieval goodness coming. Please visit
patreon dot com slash Medievalists for everything from Prester John
to Knightly Brawn. Follow Medievalist dot net on Instagram at
medievalist net or blue sky at Medievalist. You can find
(43:01):
me Danielle Sebalski across social media at five in Medievalist
or five minute Medievalist, and you can find my books
at all your favorite bookstores. Our music is Beyond the
Warriors by gee Frog. Thanks for listening, and have yourself
a fantastic day.
Hi, everyone, and welcome to episode two hundred and ninety
one of the Medieval Podcast. I'm Danielle Sebalski, also known
as the five Minute Medievalist. A mysterious figure ruling at
the fringes of the known world. Prestor John might be
the most famous person you may never have heard about.
Like a medieval Carmen san Diego, Prester John was a
(00:36):
man people searched the globe for, from Ethiopia to Tibet
to the New World, never quite catching up to him
in the end. So who was Prester John and why
were medieval people so keen to find him? This week
I spoke with doctor Chris Taylor about the legendary Prester John.
Chris teaches in the Department of Humanities at Western New
(00:57):
Mexico University and is the author of many works on
Prester John and the medieval fascination with the unknown. His
new book is The Global Legend of Prester John. Our
conversation on where the figure of Prester John comes from,
how his legend may have had a disastrous effect on
the Fifth Crusade, and what he has to do with
a fantastic four is coming up right after this Welcome
(01:24):
Chris to talk about Prester John. This is really exciting
for me because as I was reading your book, I
realized just how many areas of medieval history and history
in general Prester John touches. So thank you so much
for being here to talk about him.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Thank you, Danielle. It's my pleasure to be here. I'm
excited to talk about Prester John.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
Yeah, as everyone is right, everyone's always excited. Let's talk
Pressor John.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Yeah. People who know are down to talk. That's true.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Okay, So for people who have never heard of him,
and I have to admit, before I started doing my
undergraduate work, I had never heard of Prester John before.
So in the broadest strokes, who is this guy?
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Yeah? I think that one of the most interesting things
about the Prestor John legend is the frequency with which
people who are even somewhat acquainted with medieval literature medieval
history have not heard that name. I was listening to
your last podcast and you started on Frederick Barbarossa, and
you started by referring to him as one of a
(02:26):
handful of legendary figures that stand out above the rest.
And I think that that's kind of where I would
start with Prester John two, totally larger than life figure
on par with our Frederick's, our Charlemagne's, our Arthurs, but
totally imaginary. So I think that's the most important thing
to start with his realizing that this is not a
(02:49):
real person. I think that there are scholars who have
tried to seek out there are many potential avatars for
Prester John, historical avatars. But Pressor John, in the broadest sense,
is this imaginary Christian priest king that was understood is
both an individual figure and then later as a title
(03:11):
whose ruler, whose authority, whose sovereignty was grounded in this
kind of biblically legitimate authority, as a descendant of the magi.
And what I would argue in this book is that
this imaginary figure, this person who never existed, played this
essential role in Europe's entrance into a globally interconnected world
(03:32):
by serving as this kind of nomadic cultural touchstone. So
wherever Europeans, Catholics in particular, kind of imagine the horizons
of their acumene, their known world, they positioned Prestor John there,
And when they realized that Prestor John wasn't there, Prestor
John gets moved to different places. So he's this priest
(03:53):
king who is a Christian, and it's important that he
rules in an area that we don't think of or
that medieval people didn't think of as Christian. So he
allows there to be this possibility of this epistemological continuity
between like the world that we know and the world
that we don't know. And that's kind of part of
(04:15):
the argument of this book is that you know, this
had a real shaping force in things like colonialism and
things like missionary trips, the spread of Christianity, as well
as real political decisions. So I hope that that captures
some of it. It's you know, we can get into
where it comes from. I think that if you hadn't
heard of Pressor John at this point, you probably have
(04:36):
a lot of questions. But maybe we can get to
that as we go.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Yeah, leave it in my hands. We will get there.
So Pressor John, he's this priest king. He's got a
Christian kingdom somewhere out there. We never know where it is,
Like you say, it migrates as soon as people start
discovering those spots, and he's always going to be ready
to help Christians, especially to eradicate the other religions that
are causing problems for Christians. He's out there. Okay, So
(05:01):
when does this start? What starts this? Because it comes
sort of out of nowhere?
Speaker 2 (05:06):
Yeah, it does come sort of out of nowhere. And also,
and this is not my field of Prestor john studies
like and Pressor John's studies should really be a thing
because you can come at it from all sorts of disciplines,
which is something that I also try to make a
point of in the book. But quickly, I think that
if people are really interested in the nitty gritty of
where this comes out of, listen to that Frederick Barbarossa episode,
(05:29):
because it comes out of that culture that moment. But
kind of more generally, and what I write about I'm
thinking of, you know, I consider myself a literary historian.
I'm not a historian. So I'm thinking of the four
texts that kind of start this. And so the most
important of these is this so called letter of Prester
(05:49):
John that begins to circulate around what becomes the Holy
Roman Empire. The popular date is eleven sixty five. That's
a pretty approximate date, but it gets copied pretty rapidly,
exclusively in Latin until about eleven ninety. There are four
hundred and sixty nine manuscripts of this letter of Prester John,
half Latin, half vernacular. It is an incredibly well traveled text.
(06:15):
And this is a text from this figure who claims
to be Prestor John, this boastful letter originally to the
Byzantine Emperor, but then addressed to other more western sovereigns
and just basically saying I am this king. Well, let's
bookmark that. I can come back to that in a
second of what's in the letter, but that's really important.
But before that, there are a few texts that seem
(06:36):
to kind of add up to this figure. Two narratives
that talk about this eleven twenty two arrival to Rome
of this Indian archbishop of Saint Thomas Christians. So Saint
Thomas becomes a really important touchstone here in the Prester
John legend as this Eastern Christian figure. And so there
(06:58):
are these two texts that were this arrival, and there's
you know, these are the only two texts that attest
to this of this archbishop who presides over the local
miracles at the shrine of Saint Thomas, and so he's
here in one text, because the bishop had died and
he needs a new bishop. But in any case, what's
(07:18):
fascinating and seemed to fascinated people about these texts is
that this idea of this Christian realm, this idea of
these Saint Thomas Christians, and the idea of these miracles
that are performed to the east. So that kind of
set the scene for some of what we see in
the Prester John letter. And then Bishop auto Freising in
(07:41):
eleven forty five records, the uncle of Frederick Barbarossa retells
this story in his chronicle of this so called Nestorian
Christian who had announced intentions to defend the Holy Land
and was headed west to kind of aid in the
project of the Crusades, but was stopped by the Tigris
(08:03):
River and had to turn back, which again sets up
this motif. These weird motifs just recirculate throughout the whole
history of the legend of Rivers, Rivers being really important
to the Prester John story. So those three earlier texts
kind of seem to inform some of what we see
in the letter of Prestor John, which is also totally
(08:24):
grounded in all the kind of classical monster stories, Marvels
of the East, Aristotle's Letter to Alexander, you know, those
sorts of texts. It's kind of a compendium in some
ways of that kind of lore about what the marvelous
East is. The difference being here that we've got this
(08:44):
Christian sovereign figure ruling over all of this and not
with this intent to convert or to change what's going on,
but kind of governing this heterotopic space in a kind
of almost utopian like way where this difference is tolerated.
And yet at the same time he says that, you know,
(09:05):
he's going to defend Jerusalem and defend Christianity against Islam.
So it's an interesting text that itself you could write
a book about, you know, just teasing out all the
things that are happening. But that's where this legend comes from.
And then these manuscripts start to get copied at a
(09:26):
rapid pace. Eighteen languages. By the fifteenth century, we have
copies of the letter of Prester John, and those letters
then inform actual quests of missionaries of explorers, they inform
literature in some ways. Prester John becomes part of the
Arthurian world becomes part of the matter of France, so
(09:47):
on and so forth. It just kind of bleeds into
the world from there. I mean, it's just quite evident that,
for whatever reason, this text, once it started to become disseminated,
it became very popular and very well, very quickly.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
Yeah, it's amazing how quickly this happened. Because, as we've
talked about Frederick Barbarossa, so the people who are listening
to that episode know that he had a famous beef
with the Pope Alexander the third, and Alexander the Third
takes this idea of the letter of Prester John, maybe
somewhat seriously, and that he actually writes back and he
sends this letter to who knows where, because this kingdom
(10:23):
doesn't actually exist, but he's going on faith that it exists.
So why would the pope take something like this so seriously?
Speaker 2 (10:31):
It's such a good question, and there is in the
Prester John world there's quite a disagreement about what the
answer to that is. There is this sense that, okay,
maybe Alexander was actually credulous about the possibility of this
figure called Prester John. But you know, something that's important
(10:54):
to remember is that we don't really know where this
idea came from, but it came out of this beef.
I think in some way it came out of the
culture that created this beef. And having this figure who
is both a secular and a sacred ruler is a
model that someone like Frederick would be interested in as
(11:15):
a kind of way to say, you know, I can
combine these powers. We don't need the papacy in this way.
You know, during this time of the investors struggle, I
can be the one to invest these bishops and whatnot.
So it makes sense that it's kind of a highly
charged situation. So on the one hand, sure Alexander may
have really sent a letter believing that Prester John he's
(11:38):
trying to instruct Prestor John and Catholicism. He's basically like, okay,
I read your letter, but you're a heretic. And this
is another important part here. He's been coded as a Storian,
which at a time when heresy the letter in Council
in twelve fifteen, heresy is on the mind of everyone
there and really rooting out hair. See, the plurality of
(12:01):
heresies becomes just this singular concept of heresy. So Prester
John's kind of heterodox faith is important, so Alexander's writing
to instruct him in Catholicism. But I think that it's
a rhetorical gesture as much as it is a genuine inquiry.
I think that, you know, it's performative to kind of
reinscribe ecclesiastical power in this moment, to say, okay, because
(12:24):
if Prester John is both this priest and the king,
you know, for someone like Frederick, there's like, oh, he's
a king who's a priest, and for someone like Alexander,
he's a priest who's a king. So it's like it's
a model of the combination of this kind of power.
But it's important. I think that Alexander sends off this
letter without an explicit destination. I mean, how do you
(12:46):
actually deliver a letter where you have no idea where
it's going. So I read it as more of this
rhetorical gesture to kind of all the Prestor John project,
as it were, with the project of the papacy, to
see those as compatible rather than seeing it is more
compatible with the kind of secular side of things. And
I think that that's born out historically because Alexander then
(13:08):
becomes one of six popes to write to Prester John.
It's the one that's most famous. It's the one that
sticks with Alexander. It's part of his biography even into
the eighteenth century. But he's only one of six total
popes to write a letter to Prester John.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Yeah, and he's certainly not the only historical figure that
writes a letter. I mean, one of the other people
that you mentioned is Henry the Fourth and this is
like many many years later, he's writing a letter to
Prester John too, being like, oh, hey, can you help
us out in our Christian project?
Speaker 2 (13:40):
And the interesting one about the Henry letter is this
is centuries after the disaster of the Fifth Crusade, in
which Prester John played this role as this figure that
whether literally or kind of prophetically, Crusaders were awaiting to
arrive to complete this prophecy and totally changed the strategy
(14:01):
of that crusade and it ended up being quite a
disaster for the Europeans, as those who know that story
of the Crusade goes. So you'd think that no one
would ever call on Prestor John or believe in this
figure for the project of a military alliance. And here's
Henry a couple hundred years later doing the exact same
thing that similar people in this place were doing two
(14:24):
hundred years prior.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
Yeah, well, let's come back around to the Fifth Crusade,
because there might be people, probably a lot of people
who don't know what actually happened. So what actually happened
was they depended in some form on Press John's showing
up to the Crusade and has actually influenced some of
their military decisions, which, again, when you realize that this
character is wholly made up, is kind of incredible. So
(14:46):
tell us what happened on the Fifth Crusade.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
So, and this is tricky and took me a long
time to tease out, because there's recent scholarship that also
pushes back against the way I see things and the
way I think of a few I've seen things that
Prester John really did matter here and there. Those are
pushing back against this. And it's a pretty complicated story
in terms of how Prester John gets involved. Basically, there
(15:12):
is this kind of crisis of confidence and Jacques de
Vitri who's an important figure in the Fifth Crusade, receives
a series of texts that over time develop well, at
first He is trying to convince the Crusaders that there
are potential Christian allies that can come to their rescue,
(15:38):
but that need to be kind of called upon, and
that there's no you know, it's a certainty that they'll
be able to vanquish their enemies if we can get
these other Christians to join us, these Christians who we
don't know, these Christians from perhaps Ethiopia, we don't, We
don't really know. It's pretty ambiguous. And then this gets
tied to the Prestor John legend, and through this series
(16:01):
of prophecies. I'd really advise people to read my book
on this because it's hard for me to even tease
out the intricacies of this, so I'm trying to do
this in broader strokes. But what basically happens is that
the Christians had taken Damiata, but had because of this
series of prophecies, decided to march to Cairo to create
(16:24):
an even larger military victory. They march to Cairo during
a time when the Nile is flooding and have to
turn back and basically lose all that they have gained.
And they head to Cairo in part because of a
prophecy that a king from the West and a king
from the East are going to meet there and scatter
the bones of Muhammad forever, you know. So there's a
(16:47):
lot of intricate detail that adds up to why this
moment happened. But basically, they just reversed decision based on
faith in a prophecy that they could kind of escalate
the small victory into a larger victory, and it just
became a kind of disastrous end. And again the thing
(17:09):
with the rivers. You know, Prester John had to turn
back because he couldn't cross the Tigris, and then here
we have the Crusaders having to turn back because of
a flooded Nile. And then when Prester John becomes firmly
associated with Ethiopia, and like the late fourteenth and early
fifteenth century, he becomes this figure that is able to
control the Nile, so he doesn't fade away despite the
(17:29):
failures of this. And I'm sorry I didn't do a
very good job of describing everything in the Fifth Crusade
because I hesitate to get into some of these details
and I would have to kind of pour through my
own notes as to how this series of prophecies unfold.
But that's the basic story of what happens.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
Yes, in a nutshell, it's a disaster because they're waiting
for Presto John. It reminds me sort of waiting for
a Goodell. Right, he's supposed to show up, he never
actually shows up. So I do want to get Yeah,
I do want to get to Ethiopia, because I think
that's really important. But earlier than that, people are looking east,
and they tend to look east along the Silk Road.
Maybe they started to look towards the Mongol Empire, imagining
(18:12):
that somewhere beyond it, pressure John is there with his
Christian kingdom, and so presure John starts to get really
tangled up with Genghis Khan. So this happens in a
bunch of different ways. Maybe give us some idea as
to how he gets tangled up with Genghis Khan.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
Well, he gets tangled up with Genghis Khan. That's part
of what these prophecies that we see from Jacques tavitry
in during the Fifth Crusade and even going back to
the Autowa pricing his misunderstanding of this idea of this
Nestorian Christian king. So which is to say, in some ways,
(18:50):
Pressure John gets caught up with the story of the
Mongols because there isn't a connection of Nestorian Christians to
the Mongol Empire. So I think that that's one connection there,
and that this kind of wilful reimagining of these mistranslated
happenings and the Asian step kind of trickling into the
West and mapping this onto this kind of Christian understanding
(19:13):
of the world is kind of like in broad Strokes
how this begins. But it gets weirder from that, because, Okay,
we're after the Fifth Crusade by now, by twelve forty one,
Mongols had ventured as far west as the Danube Valley,
So there's a kind of imminent collision of worlds here,
and so we get these missionary ventures out to learn
(19:37):
about these people and to potentially convert them to Christianity,
and almost all of the missionary encounters Dominican and Franciscan
to the Mongol Empire end up mentioning Prester John in
some way. It's interesting at this point because Prester John
in all of these accounts is dead, right, so this
(19:58):
is pressor John is still a mortal figure Prester John
did not show up for the Fifth Crusade. They go
out there and they're trying to figure out, Okay, what
happened to this dude, Like who is he? What happened?
And Prester John is dead, and in being dead he
gets mapped on to several different personages. He initially kind
(20:20):
of before we get these missionary ventures out east, he
is conflated with Genghis Khan during this time that we
thought that maybe he's going to come west and save Christians.
But by the time that we're getting these narratives from
these Dominicans and Franciscan's coming back, like John of Planocarpini
or William of Rubruk later or Oderic of Portanone, they're
(20:44):
telling a different story. So in an early one John
of Planocarpini, he's this kind of powerful figure that stands
up to Genghis Khan and is able to kind of
trick Genghis Khan through something that we actually see in
Alexander stone Wories of these kind of copper soldiers. But
over time it gets more pessimistic. So by the time
(21:06):
of Oderic of Portanone is writing, he says, not one
hundredth part is true of what is told about Prester
John as if it were undeniable. But basically, Prestor John
becomes anything from a legitimate opponent to Genghis Khan to
kind of a shepherd that historian Christians have kind of
blown up into this mythical figure. But what's important here
(21:30):
is that he's dead. You know that he can't affect
the future anymore. He doesn't belong to this world of
hope and faith and prophecy anymore. And I think how
this gets rescued is through Marco Polo. So Marco Polo
is retelling that Prester John story in a very similar
way as we get from these missionary accounts, and that's
(21:53):
where a lot of what he's saying is grounded. And
he doesn't make Prestor John necessarily more more important. And
he also says that Prestor John is dead. But a
couple of things he does, I think rescue Prestor John
and kind of reanimate Prestor John. I think, especially for
like the literary world, and one is just the way
that the travels of Marco Polar are written, right, So
(22:16):
it is written as a travelogue in a sense. But
what stands out to me as a literature person, is
that there's so much dialogue, you know. So there's this
kind of big episode between Genghis Khan and Prester John
and this emotional dialogue that we get with them, and
so I think that there's something there, And probably more importantly,
Prestor John in Marco Polo's story, becomes an inheritable title.
(22:40):
Prestor John's family's kind of married into the lineage of
Genghis Khan. So we see this in Mandeville also, But
this is also becomes echoed in some of the literary
treatments of Prestor John, where for instance, in Wolfram's Parseval
Prestor John is intermarried into this kind of larger Arthurian
lineage and becomes in the Tituro sequel the Keeper of
(23:03):
the Grail. But in any case, this Mongol era of
Prestor John texts which I want to point out, there
are these different eras of Prester John. We're okay, we
think Prester John's a Mongol. We think Prester John's inn Ethiopia.
We think Prestor John is in India. These eras do
not have a discreet beginning and ending. So in other words,
(23:24):
at a time when Prester John is in Ethiopia, there
are also people who say he's still this Mongol inherited title,
and this becomes later on people will start conflating Pressor
John with the Dalai Lama. So something that's really interesting
about the transmission of this whole legend is that none
of these different points of contact for Prestor John have
(23:45):
these kind of discrete endings. I mentioned before about the Crusades.
It's the same idea like, Okay, Prestor John doesn't show
up for the fifth Crusade, you think no one would
ever call on him again. In two hundred years later,
people are doing the same thing. So there's just this
constant kind of return to these motifs into these identifications,
even after there's there's no rational or logical or even
(24:06):
you know, faith based reason to believe the Pressure John's
going to show up. But with this Mongol path, I
think Marco pol is super important for how Pressure John
survives his death.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
As it were, Yes, an inheritable title, which is very convenient,
but you know it works for everybody because they can
keep this going. And as you say, there's waves that
come and go, and then he's being told in one
way or another. He's sometimes a hero of romance and
sometimes he's a historical hero. You've just ends up everywhere.
But in the interest of you know, doing a single podcast,
(24:42):
the figure he's not a Mongol, probably he's probably Ethiopian.
And so as we've talked about Africa a few times
on this podcast, including recently with Luke Pepra, so the
exploration keeps going towards Africa and there's more contact made,
as I talked with Raina Krebs about a couple of
(25:02):
years ago now in Ethiopia. And so when people come
across these really wealthy, powerful African kings, like is this
the guy, especially because the Ethiopian kingdom is a Christian.
So tell us a little bit about how Prester John
starts to integrate with contact with Ethiopia.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
Yeah, there are several layers here, because on the surface
there like how does he go from being a Mongol
to being an Ethiopian and how does that happen so quickly?
But there are some connections here. So you mentioned the
long standing Christian nature of large parts of Ethiopia and
specifically this kind of somewhat new at the time selfs
tied to this solemn Monic line, right, that not only
(25:43):
are these Ethiopian kings Christian, they are direct descendants of Solomon, right,
who is himself related to King David. And King David
is during the Crusade part I should have mentioned this before.
These texts from Jacques d. Vitry, they're like, Okay, this
guy may or may not be Prestor John, but they
call him King David. He's maybe the grandson or the
(26:05):
son of Prester John, but he's this King David figure.
So another important biblical tie. So Prestor John is already
tied to Biblical history by being a descendant of the Magi,
which is just kind of a crazy thing to think of,
Like what does that mean? A descendant of these three
very different kings, But that's how it's always framed, like
he's a descendant of the Magi, you know, all three,
(26:27):
I guess. But so through that and then through the
King David thing with the Solomonic line, like it kind
of makes sense to put Prester John over there, especially
as Europeans start to realize while they argue over really
the wealth of this Ethiopian Christian kingdom. So that's a
(26:48):
big part of it. Another part of it is why
it's Ethiopia in particular, although there are some other parts
of Sub Saharan Africa that Prestor John gets tied to.
It's it's pretty dominantly Ethiopia. And that's because in this
theory of the three Indias, what counts as India or
the three Indies. This is sometimes called there's Greater India, which
(27:11):
is India Southeast Asia, there's Middle India the kind of
Middle East Asian step, and then there's Lesser India or yeah,
often called Lesser India, which especially by the fourteenth early
fifteenth century, is tied to the Horn of Africa. So
like when Pester John in his letter says that he
governs over India, you know, that's kind of an ambiguous
(27:32):
idea for medieval Europeans. So that could mean several different things.
And the last place to look really is the Horn
of Africa. So it's it also makes sense in that way.
And then with the river stuff, it also makes sense
the Nile River part of things, and the idea of
a potential ally who could control the flow of the
(27:54):
Nile River, which is a power sometimes attributed to Ethiopian
sovereign I forget who it was, but one who's claimed
that he have this power. And so I think that
those things all add up to Prestor John in Ethiopia.
Plus going back to these prophecies from the Fifth Crusade,
another aspect of these prophecies was that this King of Abyssi,
(28:18):
you know, of Abyssinia, is an important figure here. But
really I think Ethiopia started to kind of signify for
Europeans the sociological space beyond Dar al Islam, right, this
area on the other side of Islam, which I think
was really important to crusading strategy from the beginning. And
I've written about that too, of how Prestor John figures
(28:40):
in as like Islam is just a little part of
the world, and it's important to believe in the fact
that there's an other side, there's an east or a
south of wherever Islam is that is already Christian, right,
So that's baked in so that when medieval Europeans are
trying to do, Christians is to surround basically to absorb
(29:02):
almost Islam into this larger Christian world. And we see
that in things like the first Latin translation of the
Quran if you've ever seen that, or like the Kuran,
that the actual text of the Kuran takes up maybe
like fifteen percent of the page and the rest of
it is just commentary along the outside. I think it's
a really similar kind of geographic idea with Prester John
(29:23):
in Ethiopia. It's like to kind of guarantee that the
wider world is already Christian and is surrounding this idea
of Islam and has the potential to help prove that
the world is already Christian, is going to remain Christian,
and that this kind of ideological conflict with Islam is
an impermanent one.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
Yeah, I think that's really important in like it sits
in the idea that the world is already Christian. This
is an anomaly, The Muslim world is an anomaly. The
rest of the world is Christian. And this idea of
integrating all contact with other people within this idea that
it's even further, even further, there's going to be Christians
on the other side because we know that the world
(30:04):
is Christian. It's just kind of an interesting, well it
takes some mental gymnastics to get there, but it is
sort of the worldview that people were talking about, and
this even happens when we're getting sort of out of
the Middle Ages, where the Portuguese starts to send ships
everywhere and they start to go further into Africa, and
they still sort of hold on to this idea that
we're probably going to get to Christians on the other
(30:24):
side of whatever we find out there.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
Right absolutely, you know, this is part of the explicit
goal of Henry the Navigator. So when he's trying to
start to organize this mercantile travel, he says, Okay, our
goals are threefold. We want to gather knowledge of Africa's
western shores to establish trading relationships. Number two, we want
to learn the reach of Islam into Africa, and then
(30:50):
number three, we want to identify any potential Christian allies
against Islams, such as Prester John so Fosco Tagama's looking
for Prestor John, later christianpher Columbus. He's got his annotated
copy of Marco Polo with the Prestor John stuff. We
have those annotations, and there is this expectation, and I
think this expectation has some grounding that is bigger than
(31:15):
the Prestor John thing in terms of like how geography
was understood And something I talk about in the book
is like, how Prestor John is this really important figure
also in this transition of this Old World geography, this
kind of inherited Greek geography, the kind of to map
style understanding of the world, to this kind of more
precise for purposes of navigation understanding of the world. And
(31:40):
part of the problem with this kind of like to
style map is, Okay, so if we have this fourth quadrant,
this fourth space, the Antipodes or the austral Lands or
whatever that is that's populated by monsters or that's populated
by nothing, or we have the torred zone, we have
this place where people can't live, how does that mesh
(32:02):
with the biblical ideas that number one, that this kind
of monogenetic principle that all humans are descended from Adam, right,
So how does that mesh with that on the one hand?
And number two, how does that mesh on this spreading
of the apostles to preach Christianity in all lands of
the world. So I think that part of what Prester
(32:23):
John in this moment of exploration is doing is kind
of offering an easy way to build this bridge between
this Old World understanding of geography and this new world understanding.
First of all, you know something the Portuguese realizes, Oh,
this torred zone, this so called torred zone, there's tons
(32:43):
of people living there. This is actually quite habitable, So
they're wrong about that. And so I think that there's
this kind of excitement and expectation that like, we're going
to find Christians everywhere, because that provided some continuity. So
it's not this total paradigm shift. It's just kind of
a a more accurate reconfiguring of geography. So I think
(33:04):
that Prestor John just becomes really a helpful tool in
kind of imagining how this totally new way of seeing
this world is still somewhat a continuation of these kind
of older modes of knowledge.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
Well, it's interesting thinking about it that way, because I
think when I've always thought about people cutting out in
chips and looking for things, I always sort of conceived
of it without really thinking about it, that they're looking
for other lands, and they find other lands. But what's
interesting about this is sort of that base assumption that
you're going to find other people. And you know, that's
(33:39):
something I had never thought of before as being in
the minds of people who are setting out on these
grand journeys that they are expecting to find other people there.
And when you think about that, that's kind of interesting.
You're expecting contact, that there are going to be people
out there, and of course one of these people is
going to be Prester John. And what's interesting is he
falls out of fashion as being someone that is totally imaginary,
(34:02):
sort of falls into myth, and then sort of disappears,
except for a few cases in the twentieth century, one
of them being Marvel. So bring us to Marvel, as
we come to the end of our podcast, bring Us
to Marvel. How does he appear in Marvel? And why
would he appear in Marvel comics?
Speaker 2 (34:20):
Okay, So it's a good question, and I think that
I have honestly figured it out, okay, kind of accidentally,
because I've been curious about it. I'm not a Marvel person, admittedly,
and I hope that there are listeners who know about
Prester John in the Marvel universe more than I do.
But what we do know is that Prester John shows
(34:41):
up as a character. He has been featured in nineteen
separate Marvel titles, in more than one hundred issues of
different titles, different iterations different storylines. He starts, I think
in The Fantastic Four in nineteen sixty six, but over
one hundred issues between nineteen sixty six and twenty ten.
And so one thing that I think is interesting about
(35:03):
the Marvel Prester John is that in none of those
issues does he make a formal alliance with any other character,
and no version of that is he working for some
larger force, Like he's this kind of independent actor, which
I think is kind of interesting. He doesn't die, He
keeps almost dying, so he's got this ability. He's got,
(35:23):
you know, several abilities, but one is he could sit
on his throne and remain in suspended animation for as
long as possible. How he's initially found is underground, which
is an amazing place to look for him. It's like
that's the last place to it fits so well. It's
like we've looked for Prestor John all over the world.
Where was he? He was underground the whole time. So
(35:44):
he's underground and I'm like, okay, why is he underground?
And I remembered there's this very popular nineteen to ten
adventure novel for boys called Prester John by John Buckan,
very prolific writer of his day, adventure writer of his
novels became films, and in that book Prester John, which
(36:06):
is incredibly weird. Prester John is both this black Scottish
reverend that the main character meets at the beginning of
the book and also this Zulu revolutionary who's trying to
overthrow the colonial shackles in South Africa, and importantly contextually
(36:28):
is the villain, right Like, he's not the hero for
trying to overthrow colonialism. He is very much the villain
of this story. But at the end of that novel,
he's not killed, but he jumps into a giant ravine
and basically ends up underground. You know. So I feel
like the Marvel version of Prester John. Some of that
(36:50):
early Marvel writing I just find so good. I really
do think is really good. And I hope I'm not
over determining this, but I really think that it makes
so much sense that that's how he was left in
this very popular novel Underground, and he's discovered in nineteen
sixty six Underground. You know, he's still there, He's still alive.
He's just been waiting. He's woken up, and he's very powerful,
(37:13):
but The difference here is that in the John Buckan
novel he's a black African man, and in the Marvel
version he's this very pale skinned, redheaded so called crusader.
In this he's one of Richard the Lionheart's warriors. So
it's an interesting continuity, and he plays this interesting role.
(37:34):
And I do wonder, like how he ended up there
in the first place, what larger purpose he serves. But
I think though those questions are at least unanswerable to me,
I think what matters is that he's still around. Despite
the fact that you're not going to find a history
book a textbook that you're going to read in college
or in high school that mentions Prester John, what is
(37:57):
undeniably true for me is that he's in there at
all of these important moments. The shape of European colonialism
would not look the same if there were not a
Prestor John. The understanding of what the wider world looked
like for Europeans from the twelfth to fifteenth century would
not look the same if it weren't for this imaginary
figure pressure John. And whether or not people want to
(38:20):
pay attention to it, whether or not it remains part
of like the conversation about world history. It still shows
up in ways. There's a Pressure John statue in South Africa,
and there's a Prestre John Institute for Portuguese Ethiopian Relationships
in Portugal. You know, there are these ways that it
still shows up. And that marvel thing, I think is
(38:40):
just so beautiful to me that it's just more proof that, like,
you can't kill this idea. It's an unkillable idea that's
kind of baked into the very idea itself, is that
it can die one hundred deaths and is never truly dead.
Speaker 1 (38:57):
Yes, and he also never true shows up and you
can never truly pin him down. He is just an
incredible figure when you think about that. And I mean,
there is a Fantastic four movie that's coming out we
will all have to look and see if Prester John
shows up in it. I don't think so, but you know,
it would be really fabulous for us in medieval studies
if he does show up. Well, thank you so much
(39:19):
Chris for coming on and telling us all about Prestor John.
As we were saying, there is so much more to
be said about it. He crosses Genres, he crosses languages,
and I'm hoping people will check out your book and
learn more about Prester John.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
Yeah, check out the book. It's pretty easy to download
and it's I think only twenty two dollars for the paperback.
So and check out my website as well, the International
Prestor John Project, where all this is archived and navigable.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
Absolutely, thank you, all right, thanks Daniel. To find out
more about Chris's work, you can check out his page
at Academia dot edu. You can also follow the International
Prestor John Project at Global Middleages dot org. Chris's new
book is The Global Legend of Prester John. Before we go,
(40:06):
here's Peter from Medievalist dot net to tell us what's
on the website. Welcome Peter from the House of Kittens
and Cats. Happening there.
Speaker 3 (40:15):
Indeed, indeed, I have one eyeing me right now. But
we had a good week on Medievalist dot net. I
had this great piece sent to me by Joel Rollo
Costa and it's about the fascinating details of what happens
when a pope dies.
Speaker 1 (40:30):
Well, I mean, this is what's on everyone's mind right now.
Speaker 3 (40:32):
Right, that's right, Like we sent Funeral of Pope Francis.
People are wondering a few questions about this, and a
lot of this runs back to medieval times and there
is some detailed information about what they did with the corpse.
Speaker 1 (40:45):
Awesome. I'm sure there is so much that has to
go into making sure everything is prepared properly, so we
can all find out on Medievalist on net. What else
have you got for us?
Speaker 3 (40:53):
Indeed, and thanks to Joel for that piece. And we
also took a look at the work being done by
Mohammed L. Meherr. And he's working on the Seventh Crusade,
and here he's actually looking at the Arabic sources, the
Egyptian side of what was happening, and it totally changes
our understanding of what's happening in the Seventh Crusade. It's
almost as if Louis and the Crusaders are more like
(41:15):
Pond's and this whole thing just being played off by
different factions. So it's a fascinating bit of research that
we covered. If you take a look at your whole
understanding of the Seventh crusade's going to change.
Speaker 1 (41:27):
It's not just hotly glorious for the Christians.
Speaker 3 (41:30):
No, No, it's a very different story for Louis. He's
not quite the hero you get in the Crusader sources, right, okay,
which we're all written by his friends.
Speaker 1 (41:41):
You know, that's fair enough. That's fair enough. I want
my friends to write get stuff about me. What else
have we got up?
Speaker 3 (41:45):
So we have that plus the news about the magnet
Karta that was discovered at Harvard. It's kind of big news,
although it's not really really huge because gamnew is fourteenth
century and now it's just at the very beginning of
the fourteenth century. That's his thing. They're very happy at
Harvard to have that plus a twelve things you didn't
know about the Biotapestry.
Speaker 1 (42:08):
I mean personally, I'm sure there are a lot more,
but twelve things that we did not know about the
Bayou Tapestry.
Speaker 3 (42:15):
Indeed.
Speaker 1 (42:17):
Well, thank you Peter for joining us despite all of
the madness at your place right now. Good to talk
to you. Thanks for stopping bye. Thanks Thank you to
all of you who make it possible for me to
bring you the best in medieval slash marvel contents each week,
whether it's by spreading the word, letting the ads play through,
or becoming patrons on Patreon dot com. Without you, none
(42:39):
of this would be possible, so you always have my
gratitude to find out how to become a patron and
to help me keep the medieval goodness coming. Please visit
patreon dot com slash Medievalists for everything from Prester John
to Knightly Brawn. Follow Medievalist dot net on Instagram at
medievalist net or blue sky at Medievalist. You can find
(43:01):
me Danielle Sebalski across social media at five in Medievalist
or five minute Medievalist, and you can find my books
at all your favorite bookstores. Our music is Beyond the
Warriors by gee Frog. Thanks for listening, and have yourself
a fantastic day.
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