Prester John (Lat. Presbyter Ioannes) was a mythical Christian patriarch, presbyter and king. Popular in Europe in the 12th and 17th centuries told stories about the patriarchy and the Nestorian king who He was to regulation a Christian nation lost among Gentiles and Muslims in the East.
Relations were frequently enriched with various themes of medieval folk fantasy, portraying Prester John as a descendant of the 3 Wise Men, ruling a kingdom full of riches, wonders and unusual creatures.
It was initially imagined that Prester John lived in India. Tales of the success of the evangelical Christian Nestorians there and of the journeys of the Apostle Thomas on the subcontinent, documented in works specified as Thomas' Acts, most likely became the beginning of the legend. As Europeans began to get to know the Mongols and their empire, relations placed the king in Central Asia, and yet Portuguese explorers began to believe that the word refers to Ethiopia, which was then an isolated Christian "exclave" far from another territories ruled by Christians.
The Origin of the Legend
Although its immediate origins are unclear, officially the legend of Prester Jana comes from a letter that Byzantine Emperor Manuel I Komnenos received in 1165. The broadcaster was: "Jan, Christian ruler and gentlemen".
The letter described the very rich lands of this monarch located in Central Asia. The King claimed to live in a immense palace of precious stones and gold, and that he ruled a vast territory extending from Persia to China. For many years Prester John's story was associated with the dream of reaching a wonderful kingdom, where all material pleasures are fulfilled, and people live in splendor.
The legend of Prester John drew powerfully from the earlier accounts of the East and the journeys of Western residents. Especially influential were the stories of the conversion of St Thomas the Apostle in India, described especially in the 3rd century work known as the Acts of Thomas. This text instilled in Western people the image of India as sites of exotic miracles and offered the earliest description of St. Thomas setting up a Christian sect there – themes that were of large importance in later accounts about Prester John. Similarly, distorted reports of East Church movements in Asia (nestorialism) besides influenced legend. This church gained a wide scope of supporters in east countries and active Western imagination as a squad both exotic and universally Christian. Especially inspiring were the missionary successes of the east Church among the Mongols and Turks of Central Asia; French historian René Grousset suggests that John's Prester communicative may have had its roots in the Kerait clan, whose thousands of members joined the east Church shortly after the year 1000. By the 12th century, Kerait rulers continued to follow the customized of bearing Christian names, which could have fueled the legend.
Prester Jan of the Nuremberg Chronicle of Hartmann Schedel, 1493
In addition, tradition could draw from the dark early Christian figure John Presbyter of Syria, whose existence was first suggested by the church historian and Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea on the basis of his reading of the earlier church fathers. This man, described in 1 paper as the author of the 2 letters of John, was to be a teacher of the martyr Bishop Papas, who in turn taught Ireneus. However, there is small link between this figure, allegedly active at the end First century, with John's Prester legend apart from the name.
The title "Prester" is an adaptation of the Greek word "πρεσβύτερος, presbyteros", virtually meaning "older" and utilized as a title of priests holding advanced positions (in fact, the presbyter is the origin of the English word priest).
Later reports on Prester John drew abundantly from literary texts concerning the East, including the vast condition of ancient and medieval geographical and travel literature. Details were frequently drawn from literary and pseudohistoric accounts, specified as the communicative of Sinbad the Sailor. Alexander's affair, a wonderful account of Alexander the Great's conquests, had a peculiar effect in this regard.
The legend of Prester Jana as specified began in the early 12th century, along with accounts of the visits of the Archbishop of India to Constantinople and the patriarch of India in Rome during Pope Kalikstus II. These visits, seemingly from the Christians of St Thomas of India, cannot be confirmed due to the fact that the evidence of both are second-hand reports. It is certain that German chronicler Otto of Freising in his 1145 Chronicon reported that he had met Hugh, bishop of Jabala in Syria, at the court of Pope Eugene III in Viterbo a year earlier
Hugon was an emissary of Prince Rajmund of Antioch, sent for Western aid against the Saracens after the siege of Edessa; his advice inspired Eugenius to call for a second crusade. Hugo told Otto, in the presence of the Pope, that
Prester John, a Nestorian Christian who served as a double priest and king, recovered Ekbatana's city from the brothers of the monarchs of Media and Persia, Samaldi, in a large conflict "a short time ago". Then Prester John allegedly went to Jerusalem to save the Holy Land, but the uplifted waters of the Tiger forced him to return to his own homeland. His wonderful wealth was satisfied by the emerald scepter; his holiness with the ancestry of the 3 Sages.
Controversial russian historian and ethnologist Lew Gumilev speculated that the importantly reduced Crusaden Kingdom of Jerusalem on the Levant revived this legend to rise Christian hopes and convince European monarchs,
During this time, ties between Prester John and Genghis-chan were developed erstwhile Prester was identified with the foster father Genghis-chan, Toghrul, king of the Keraits, received the title Jin Ong Khan Toghrul. rather actual chroniclers and explorers specified as Marco Polo, the crusader-history Jean de Joinville, and the Franciscan traveler Odoric of Pordenone deprived Prester John much of his unearthly facade, portraying him as a more realistic, earthly monarch. Odoric places John's land west of Cathay (China) on his way to Europe and defines its capital as "Cosan", interpreted by translators as different names and places.
Joinville describes Genghis-chan in his chronicle as a "sage" that unites all the Tatar tribes and leads them to triumph over their strongest enemy, Prester John.
William of Rubruck says that a certain "Vut", Mr. Kerait and brother of the Nestorian King John, was defeated by the Mongols under Genghis-chan. Genghis-chan fled with Vut's daughter and gave her up for his son, and their relation gave emergence to Möngke, a then Khan Wilhelm wrote. According to "Mark Polo's Journey" the war between Prester and Genghis Khan began erstwhile Genghis Khan, the fresh ruler of the rebel Tatars, He asked for the hand of Prester's daughter John.
Angry that his low vassal made specified a request, Prester John refused him without hesitation. In the war that followed, Genghis-chan won and Prester Jan died.
The historical figure behind these accounts, Toghrul, was a Nestorian Christian monarch defeated by Genghis-chan. He raised the future Khan after the death of father Yesugei and was 1 of his early allies, but they quarreled. After Toghrul rejected the proposal to release his boy and daughter for Genghis Khan's children, the division between them deepened until the war broke out in 1203. Genghis-chan captured Sorghaghtani Beki, daughter of Toghrul's brother Jaq Gambu, and released her for his boy Tolua. They had respective children, including Möngke, Kublai, Hulag and Ariq Böke.
The main feature of John's Prester tale from this period is the depiction of the King not as an invincible hero, but only as 1 of many opponents defeated by the Mongols. As the Mongol Empire fell, Europeans began to depart from the belief that Prester Jan had always truly been King of Central Asia.
Wolfram von Eschenbach linked Prester's communicative to the legend of the Holy Grail in his poem Parzival, in which Prester is the boy of the virgin Grail and the knight of the Saracen Foirefiz.
Ethiopia
Prester John was considered ruler of India from the beginning of the legend, but "India" was a vague concept for medieval Europeans. Writers frequently spoke of "Three India", and having no real cognition of the Indian Ocean, they sometimes considered Ethiopia to be 1 of the three. Westerners knew Ethiopia was a powerful Christian nation, but contacts have been sporadic since Islam arose. There was no Prester John in Asia, so Europeans began to propose that the legend refers to the Christian kingdom of Ethiopia. Evidence suggests that the location of John's Prester kingdom in Ethiopia entered the collective consciousness around 1250.
Marco Polo described Ethiopia as a wonderful Christian land, and the Orthodox had a legend that the nation would 1 day emergence and run Arabia, but they did not place Prester John there. In 1306, 30 Ethiopian ambassadors of Emperor Wedem Arada arrived in Europe, and prester John was mentioned as the patriarch of their church in recording their visit. Another description of African Prester John is found in Mirabilia Descriptor of the Dominican missionary Jordanus, around 1329. Discussing "Third India", Jordanus cites a series of fancy stories about this land and its king, whom, he says, Europeans call Prester John.
When Emperor Lebna Dengel and the Portuguese established diplomatic contacts with each another in 1520, Prester John was the name of Europeans known to the emperor of Ethiopia. The Ethiopians, however, never called their emperor that. erstwhile Emperor Zara Yaqoba's ambassadors participated in the Florentine Council in 1441, they were confused erstwhile the speakers of counsel led by Roman Catholics insisted that Ethiopians should call themselves representatives of their Prester monarch John. They tried to explain that nowhere on Zara Yaqob's list of names did this title appear. However, their reproofs did small to get Europeans to call Ethiopian King Prester John. any writers utilizing the title understood that it was not indigenous honorific; for example, Jordanus seems to usage it simply due to the fact that readers were acquainted with it alternatively than due to the fact that he considered it authentic.
Ethiopia has for many years been recognized as the origin of the legend of Prester John, but most modern experts believe that the legend was simply adapted to this nation in the same way it was portrayed to Ong Khan and Central Asia in the 13th century.
Modern researchers find nothing in the early materials about Prester John or his homeland, which would make Ethiopia more suitable than any another place, and besides experts in Ethiopia's past have successfully demonstrated that this communicative was not widely known there until the Portuguese started circling Africa, allowing them to scope Ethiopia, through the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea. The Czech Franciscan Remedius Prutky asked Emperor Iyasu II for this recognition in 1751, and Prutky states that the man was "depressed and told me that the kings of Abisinia were never accustomed to calling themselves that name." In a footnote to this passage, Richard Pankhurst states that this is seemingly the first written message by the Ethiopian monarch on the communicative and most likely did not know the title until Prutky's inquiry.
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Myth
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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prester_John
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