Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Prester John

Episode Date: July 2, 2021

In the middle ages, a legend persisted among Europeans that there was a Christian ruler in Asia, or Africa, who would come to join with European Christians to help fight Moslems. The only problem was, the distant Christian ruler didn’t exist. Yet, while the ruler was a fable, the story was actually based on some facts. Learn more about the legendary Prester John, and how Europeans pinned their hopes on him, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the Middle Ages, a legend persisted among Europeans that there was a Christian ruler in Asia, or Africa, who would come and join with European Christians to help fight the Muslims during the Crusades. The only problem was that this distant Christian ruler didn't exist. Yet while the ruler was a fable, the story was actually based on some facts. Learn more about the legendary Prestor John and how Europeans pin their hopes on him on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night and how it shaped the world now.

Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. This episode is sponsored by the Athletic Brewing Company. Athletic Brewing brews delicious craft beers that just happened to be non-alcoholic. Athletic Brewing founders Bill and John are craft beer lovers who wanted to cut back on alcohol without compromising on flavor. But the interesting flavors that they loved in other craft beers just weren't available in non-alcoholic beer. So they brewed the beer that they wanted to drink. It turns out there are a lot of others looking to moderate or abstain but are still thirsty for great beer.

order their amazing beers at athletic brewing.com. You can get free shipping on every order of two six-packs or more, and you can save 15% by using the code Everything15 at checkout. Once again, that's Athleticbrewing.com coupon code Everything15. The origins of the Prestor-John's story go back well over a thousand years. As Christianity spread across Europe, there were rumors of other Christian kingdoms far away in Asia. Europeans certainly knew about Asia, but they didn't really know much about Asia. Good information from the East traveled slowly and went past through many hands. If you remember way back to my episode on if the ancient Romans and Chinese knew about each other,

what they knew was very vague at best and there was really no direct contact. This situation didn't change after the fall of the Roman Empire. If anything, the breakdown of a central government made trade harder and decreased what little information these parts of the world knew about each other. The first confirmed mention of Prestor John that we know of comes from the Chronica of Otto van Friesingen from the year 1145. He recounted how the Christian Emperor in the East was going to assist the Europeans in the Crusades, but he was unable to cross the Tigris River in modern-day Iraq.

Just a few years later in 1165, the fabricated letter of Prestor John became a meme that spread throughout Europe. It was this letter that really turbocharged the myth of Prester John. It was addressed to the Byzantine Emperor Manuel commonness and was sent from the supreme ruler of the three Indies. The writer, who identified himself by the title Prester John, claimed to rule a massive kingdom with 72 kings below him. He listed all the exotic animals in his kingdom, which today is sort of a giveaway for the letter being fake, because it was a hodgepodge of some animals found

in Asia, like tigers, and others found in Africa, like giraffes. The letter goes further on to say how rich and powerful his kingdom is, and one day he would like to visit the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. This was really exciting stuff for European Christians. In 1177, Pope Alexander III sent Prestor John a reply, but of course he never heard anything back. Over the years, this legend didn't disappear. It actually grew over time. Prestor John, as the name would imply, was both a king and a priest. According to the legend, he was descended from one of the three wise men in the Bible. The initial location of Prestor John was originally somewhere in India, as is indicated by the Supreme Ruler of the Three Indies line in the letter.

Much of the reason why the legend kept growing over time was due to the ignorance of geography most people of the time had. There were references to Asia and Africa mashed together, and most people had no clue that was a problem because both Asia and Africa were just faraway places to them, and they had no clue what was really there. In 1221, the Bishop of Ocker, a city in modern day Israel, returned to Europe after the Fifth Crusade, which did not go so well, with great news. King David of India, the grandson of Prestor John, was working his way west,

conquering the Muslim armies along the way. This was mostly wishful thinking, as the Christians in the Levant were getting beaten badly by the Muslims at this point. As it turns out, the King David he was referring to was none other than Gingas Khan, who was indeed working his way west conquering kingdoms, but he wasn't a distant Christian ruler. It was at this time that the legend of Prestor John began to change. More Europeans than ever were now traveling to Asia since much of it had been unified under one Mongol Empire. Many ambassadors and members of the clergy were sent to the court of Genghis Khan to try to work for an alliance. The new story was that Prester John was the stepfather of Gingus Khan, Togruel.

However, changing the story really didn't help. Europeans traveling in the Mongol Empire eventually figured out that there was no Prestor John to be found in Asia. Anywhere. Surprisingly, this didn't kill the legend of Prong. Prestor John. The oldest map in existence that shows the lands of Preser John dates back to 1339. A map by an Italian mapmaker shows the lands of Prester John to be in Ethiopia and extend into much of central and southern Africa. Ethiopia was a much better known entity to the Europeans. There were regular contacts between Rome and Ethiopia, and it's believed that many of the

animals which came from Africa to Rome did so via the Nile River and Ethiopia. However, since the spread of Islam, contact with Ethiopia had all been cut off. In 1306, a group of 30 ambassadors from Ethiopia were sent to Europe. In the documents from the visit, it's recorded that Prestor John was the patriarch of Ethiopia. And where they got this idea from and why they wrote it down is completely unknown. In the 14th and 15th centuries, the whole Prescher John's story shifted from Asia to Africa. In 1428, the King of Aragon actually held talks with the Emperor of Ethiopia about, but a marriage between their two kingdoms, but nothing ever happened.

The generic name in Europe at this time for the Ethiopian emperor was simply Preser John. Ethiopian sent representatives to the 1441 Council of Florence, and were deeply confused as to why everyone kept calling their leader Prestor John. As with Asia, eventually increased knowledge about Ethiopia put a damper on the Preser John myth, and that and the Ethiopians continually saying, We don't know who Prester John is. However, that still didn't totally kill off the legend. When the first explorers from Europe sailed to the Americas,

they were keeping a lookout for Prestor John, just in case he might pop up somewhere in the Western Hemisphere. In hindsight, the Preser John story does seem a bit far-fetched. However, there is a small kernel of truth from which the rumors and legends all began. For example, when the first stories appeared about Prestor John being in India, there actually was a Christian population in India on the West Coast near the Mottes modern-day city of Koshi. Christianity arrived there by at least the third century and perhaps even sooner. There were some trade between India and the Middle East, so this knowledge probably got around.

Likewise, the stepfather of Gingas Khan was in fact a Christian as well. He was an historian Christian, as were several other members of Gingas Khan's court. Ethiopia was, and still is, a predominantly Christian country. In fact, it was one of the first countries to ever become Christian. This fact would have also been known early on, especially before the rise of Islam. The Prestor John myth can be thought of as mostly a mix of a small bit of truth, with a lot of wishful thinking, and a profound ignorance of geography. The hope for a distant king who would come and save the day was so great that it kept the story alive for centuries. The legend of Prescher John keeps appearing in comic books and other works of fiction, including getting a mention

in Shakespeare's Much ado about nothing. The lasting legacy of Prester John, however, is simply that of a king who never was. The associate producer of Everything Everywhere daily is Thor Thompson. If you'd like to support the show, please donate over at patreon.com. There is content only available to supporters, merchandise, and even opportunities for a show producer credit. If you know someone you think would enjoy the show, please share it with them.

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