Wow! The summer has come and gone and I haven’t posted anything on the Blog!I’m ashamed of myself. But never fear – History is always alive and well in my world.
Here’s a quick snippet about the legendary kingdom of “Prester John” way back from the late 12TH century. I’ll make it quick, because I know Lawrence is busy working on his football picks for the upcoming season already. So here goes. We’ll work from front to back.
During the last decades of the 15TH century you had the emerging states of Portugal and Spain taking (ahem) the helm of a ship and sailing across the choppy waters of the open sea. These voyages would quickly transport Europeans to every nook and cranny of the world – including the “Old World” continents of Asia and Africa, and the “New World” regions in the Americas and the Pacific. They used things like the invention of the “fly-compass” and the “astrolabe” to mark off degrees and chart the position of the sun and stars to determine latitude. Help me… I think latitude is the short-ways one? Anyway, with newer maps, newer sailing devices, and newer ships, sailors were propelling themselves outward into strong head-winds to see what lay beyond their own world.
Now, imagination played a big part in these journeys. And if we’re working backward, the European imagination had been steeped in a tradition of stories and tales and mythical fascinations dating back to the early 1100’s. There were rumors of distant, fantastical lands just on the outskirts of Christendom, where strange creatures and even stranger people dwelt. European sailors were sort of “rediscovering” the great geographer, Ptolemy, who wrote that he knew, perhaps, only a quarter of the globe’s actual volume. These sailors, adventurers, and early voyagers were also reading tales from Sir Mandeville and works from the travels of Marco Polo. I think Marco is a story for another time, so we’ll let him be for now. I think you can find him in a pool, somewhere, anyway.
Instead, let’s go back to the year 1165 and take a look at a letter from Prester John. This letter is interesting for two reasons – the first is the fact that it was circulated to the Byzantine Emperor and the Christian Pope; the second is the fact that Prester John was never a real person. But in 1165 he was *believed* to be real, and rumors swirled and grew into wondrous stories detailing Prester John’s “kingdom” inside the steppes of Asia. In Mongol country. Yeah!
Prester John was, as the story went, a Christian king who ruled in a fantastical realm where there were things like goat-headed men, one-eyed giants, children born from wolves, and blue-skinned women who used the stars to divine the future. Seriously. There were stories of snakes that could suckle milk from cows. Europeans believed that there was a tremendous amount of wealth to be found – they counted on gold-laden trees, silver waters, and the open-air markets where spices flowed like honey. It was also believed that a pathway toward Prester John’s kingdom might lead the way to the very gates of the Biblical garden, Eden.
To make the story richer, it was embellished with rumors that a Christian sect lived in Prester John’s kingdom. Indeed, it was believed that Prester John, himself, was one of the Three Magi who had personally tended the baby Christ. I am hazy on the history surrounding the Christian sect, but it is at least possible that a group of Christians had come to settle in the region as early as the 1ST century AD. These were perhaps the followers of St. Thomas, one of Jesus’ disciples, but it is also suggested that they were a break-away group from Rome.
Dreams of a new world and the wonders and riches to be found there would fuel the passion for those men who were the voyagers leaving from Portugal and Spain in the 1400’s. Europeans would light out for the hills (ahem, the waters) in their brand new shiny “Caravel” ships and begin to see places like the Azores, the Madeira Islands, and eventually they would make their way around the tip of Africa and trek into the waters of the Indian Ocean. They were looking for Prester John – okay, only partly (!); they were also following Marco Polo’s trails – but it was still believed that Asia held the wonders and riches detailed in the Prester John stories. How cool would it be to find the birds that could speak, the tamed lions and tigers, the women who bore mystical children, and perhaps Prester John, himself? Throw in those one-eyed giants who chucked rocks at the sky to make rain… and you’ve got yourself one heck of a journey. Even Christopher Columbus was enthralled with these early stories, and when he later “discovered” the Indians… he was looking for things like gold, silver, and spices they surely kept in their kingdoms.
So if you find yourself with a nice ship, and perhaps a nice astrolabe, I’m hoping you’ll set off for the waters. Who knows? You might get lucky and run into Prester John. Make sure you take your snippet of history with you. And your imagination. The goat-headed men and gold trees are waiting.
