Prester John

Beginning in the 12th century, European travel writers assured their readers that Prester John, the mythical ruler of a distant country, was the most powerful and wealthiest Christian king on earth.

The first report of Prester (or Presbyter) John reached Europe in 1145. A bishop returning to Europe from the Middle East told the pope of Prester John, whom he identified as the king of India and a descendant of the Magi. The bishop reported that Prester John was fighting his way toward Jerusalem. According to the story, he had already defeated the Medes and the Persians and might be able to join the Crusaders and help them defeat the Muslims. Because medieval Christians believed that the Apostle

Thomas had preached in India and won many converts, they found it easy to believe that a Christian king ruled in distant and little-known India. The idea that a mighty Christian king from the East was willing to help Europeans conquer Jerusalem soon gained popularity and helped motivate Europeans to explore Asia.

Rumors and stories about Prester John spread for centuries. In the 1160s a letter purportedly from Prester John himself circulated in Europe, reaching both the Byzantine emperor and the pope. The pope, Alexander III, even sent an envoy to meet Prester John. This unsuccessful mission was only one of many attempts to find the mythical king. As rumors and stories spread, Europeans heard fantastic tales of the king. According to the 14th-century writings of Sir John Mandeville, Prester John’s land was so far away that the inhabitants “have day when we have night, and night when we have day.” India, in this version, consisted of many islands, and Prester John was emperor over 72 men who were themselves the kings of various peoples. The people of Prester John’s kingdom were Christians and more honest than Europeans. His land was also full of marvels, including a sea of sand that behaved like water but that no boat could sail on. This sea, although it had no water, was somehow full of fish. Prester John’s land also held a river of precious stones, and trees that grew, reached maturity, and returned back into the earth in a single day. His army was so large that he had 110,000 men whose sole duty was to guard his standard—three jewel-encrusted crosses of gold—when he went into battle.

The myth of Prester John proved durable. In the 15th century an expedition sent by King Joao II of Portugal sought Prester John in the Middle East but failed to find him. As explorers failed to find Prester John in Asia and the Middle East, they began to look elsewhere. By the early 14th century one treatise claimed that Prester John’s kingdom was in Ethiopia, which cartographers sometimes placed in Asia, and Portuguese explorers in Africa searched for him. Portuguese emissaries to Ethiopia in 1520 met a wealthy Christian king, Lebna Dengel, and claimed that they had finally found the legendary Prester John.

Further reading: Francisco Alvares, The Prester John of the Indies: A True Relation of the Lands of the Prester John, ed. C. F. Beckingham and G. W. B. Huntingford (Cambridge: Hakluyt Society, 1961); C. F. Beckingham, “The Quest for Prester John,” in The European Opportunity, ed. Felipe Fernandez-Armesto (Aldershot, U. K.: Variorum, 1995); William D. Phillips, Jr., and Carla Rahn Phillips, The Worlds of Christopher Columbus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Vsevolod Slessarev, Prester John: The Letter and the Legend (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1959).

—Martha K. Robinson

Illustration of a printer's press, dated 1528 (Hulton/Archive)