Medieval mythical Christian king of an eastern nation
For other uses, see Prester John (disambiguation).
"Preste" as the Emperor of Ethiopia, enthroned on a map of East Africa. From an atlas by the Portuguese cartographer Diogo Homem for Queen Mary, c. 1555–1559. (British Library)
Prester John (Latin: Presbyter Ioannes) was a legendary Christian patriarch, presbyter, and king. Stories popular in Europe in the 12th to the 17th centuries told of a Church of the East patriarch and king who was said to rule over a Christian nation lost amid the pagans and Muslims in the Orient.[1]: 28 The accounts were often embellished with various tropes of medieval popular fantasy, depicting Prester John as a descendant of the Three Magi, ruling a kingdom full of riches, marvels, and strange creatures.
At first, Prester John was imagined to reside in India. Tales of Church of the East Christians' evangelistic success there and of Thomas the Apostle's subcontinental travels as documented in works like the Acts of Thomas probably provided the first seeds of the legend. After the coming of the Mongols to the Western world, accounts placed the king in Central Asia, and eventually Portuguese explorers came to believe that the term was a reference to Ethiopia, by which time it had been an isolated Christian "exclave" distant from any other Christian-ruled territory.
^Delaney, Carol (2012). Columbus and the Quest for Jerusalem: How Religion Drove the Voyages that Led to America. New York: Free Press. ISBN 978-1439102374.
PresterJohn (Latin: Presbyter Ioannes) was a legendary Christian patriarch, presbyter, and king. Stories popular in Europe in the 12th to the 17th centuries...
distant Eastern rulers who was sometimes associated with the legend of "PresterJohn". During Mongol-European diplomacy, the Mongols sometimes played upon...
whose monarch was known as PresterJohn. Originally thought to have been in the Orient, eventually, the search for PresterJohn's mythical kingdom focused...
Ethiopia, its people, and religious faith in connection to the mythical PresterJohn, who was viewed as a potential ally against Islamic powers. Ethiopian...
news, John II sent, in 1487, Frei António de Lisboa and Pedro de Montarroio to locate in the East new information that could find PresterJohn, which...
album, Painting With (2016). Time Skiffs was preceded by four singles: "PresterJohn", "Walker", "Strung with Everything", and "We Go Back". In late 2017...
literal rendering of episkopos) connotes the job description. John the Presbyter PresterJohn Presbyterium Cottrell, Jack (2002). The Faith Once for All:...
Jesus. However, the Europeans also had legends about a figure known as PresterJohn, a great Christian leader in the East who would come to help with the...
Africa in general; he was most intrigued by the Christian legend of PresterJohn and the expansion of Portuguese trade. He is regarded as the patron of...
early 11th century and are one of the possible sources of the European PresterJohn legend. Their original territory was expansive, corresponding to much...
Asian leaders who was identified with the legend of PresterJohn, but also King David, a brother to John. Although the Keraites converted to Nestorianism...
BC), in the Alexander romance (3rd century AD), and in the stories of PresterJohn (early Crusades, 11th/12th centuries AD). Stories of similar waters also...
began that the army of one King David, a descendant of the legendary PresterJohn, was on its way from the east to the Holy Land to join the Crusade and...
Eleni had no children, in some manuscripts of Francisco Álvares's The PresterJohn of the Indies, a male relative of Lebna Dengel who escaped from Amba...
the Jews who are found there near PresterJohn. Reading the Hebrew letters of PresterJohn shows that PresterJohn lived in India; or to be more precise...
von Eschenbach's Parzival) and learns about the legendary kingdom of PresterJohn. From this event onward, Baudolino dreams of reaching this fabled land...
Francisco (March 1962). "The PresterJohn of the Indies. The PresterJohn of the Indies. A True Relation of the Lands of PresterJohn, Being the Narrative of...
greatly advanced by Diogo Cão). Dias was also charged with searching for PresterJohn, a legendary figure believed to be the powerful Christian ruler of a...
the early 13th century; kings and popes took them for the legendary PresterJohn, marching to save Christians from the Muslim Saracens, but when they...
Jesus Christ in Zombiegeddon (2003). In 2006, Savini essayed the role of PresterJohn, the mythical villain in the dreamlike Sea of Dust. That year also saw...
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