Prester John[Wiki]

Prester John (Latin: Presbyter Johannes) was a legendary Christian patriarch, presbyter (elder) and king who was popular in European chronicles and tradition from the 12th through the 17th centuries. He was said to rule over a Nestorian (Church of the East) Christian nation lost amid the Muslims and pagans of the Orient, in which the Patriarch of the Saint Thomas Christians resided. The accounts are varied collections of medieval popular fantasy, depicting Prester John as a descendant of the Three Magi, ruling a kingdom full of riches, marvels, and strange creatures.

Thomas the Apostle - Acts of Thomas (3세기 경 인도 인들을 개종시킨 이야기) : 나중에 Prester John으로 바뀜 

몽골의 침략 이후 - 중앙 아시아 왕국

포르투갈 인 - 에티오피아에서 그를 발견했다고 주장

Origin of the legend

- Thomas the Apostle - Acts of Thomas (3세기 경 인도 인들을 개종시킨 이야기) : 나중에 Prester John으로 바뀜 

- Church of the East - the Nestorian church(431-544) and centered in Persia (몽고인과 터키인을 개종시키는데 성공)

- Kerait clan : 1000년 경 수천 명이 기독교로 개종  (이런 것들이 전설을 부추김)

- John the Presbyter of Syria [presbyter - priest - elder]

- 이후 : 동방과 관련된 문헌에서 빌려온 것 [신드바드, 알렉산더 대왕 이야기]

- Otto of Freising [연대기 기록자]의 이야기

Letter of Prester John

- Prester John, descendant of one of the Three Magi and King of India 이 쓴 편지. 풍요와 마법의 땅으로 묘사. 

(Part of the letter's essence was that a lost kingdom of Nestorian Christians still existed in the vastnesses of Central Asia.) 

[실제 편지의 저자는 유럽인으로 추정]

Mongol Empire

In 1221, Jacques de Vitry, Bishop of Acre, returned from the disastrous Fifth Crusade with good news: King David of India, the son or grandson of Prester John, had mobilized his armies against the Saracens.

[유럽 왕들의 후원을 이끌어 내기 위한 방책] [여기서 데이비드 왕은 실제로는 징기스칸이었음]

- 징기스칸은 세( Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism )종교로부터 배움을 얻으려 노력

the first East Asian ruler to invite clerics from three major religions (Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism) to a symposium so that he might learn more about their beliefs.^[

- According to Marco Polo's Travels, the war between the Prester and Genghis Khan started when Genghis Khan, new ruler of the rebellious Tartars, asked for the hand of Prester John's daughter in marriage. Angered that his lowly vassal would make such a request, Prester John denied him in no uncertain terms. In the war that followed, Genghis Khan triumphed, and Prester John perished.

(Prester John - Toghrul. a Nestorian Christian monarch) 

Ethiopia

에티오피아를 Prester John의 왕국으로 생각하기 시작 - 1250년 경

- 이후 Prester John을 아프리카에 위치시키는 것이 유행

-  the testimony of Covilhã, the Verdadeira Informação das Terras do Preste João das Indias ("A True Relation of the Lands of Prester John of the Indies") was the first direct account of Ethiopia (1520)

(이후 Prester John은 에티오피아의 황제를 가리키는 말)

End of the legend and cultural legacy

- 17th-century academics like German orientalist Hiob Ludolf demonstrated that there was no actual native connection between Prester John and the Ethiopian monarchs,^[53] and search for the fabled king gradually ceased. But the legend had affected several hundred years of European and world history, directly and indirectly, by encouraging Europe's explorers, missionaries, scholars, and treasure hunters

- William Shakespeare's 1600 play Much Ado About Nothing contains an early modern reference to the legendary king

- In 1910 Scottish novelist and politician John Buchan used the legend in his sixth book, Prester John, to supplement a plot about a Zulu uprising in South Africa. This book is an archetypal example of the early 20th-century adventure novel, and proved very popular in its day. Perhaps because of Buchan's work, Prester John appeared in pulp fiction and comics throughout the century.

- Charles Williams, a member of the 20th-century literary group the Inklings, made Prester John a messianic protector of the Holy Grail in his 1930 novel War in Heaven.

- Prester John and his kingdom also figure prominently in Umberto Eco's 2000 novel Baudolino, in which the titular protagonist enlists his friends to write the Letter of Prester John for his adoptive father Frederick Barbarossa, but it is stolen before they can send it out.