Priest-King John
The priest king Johannes (Latin rex et sacerdos or indorum rex , also priest Johannes , presbyter Johannes , prester John ) is a mythical ruler of the Middle Ages who is said to have ruled a large and powerful Christian empire in eastern Asia .
Creation of the legend
The Syrian Bishop Hugo von Jabala brought Pope Eugene III in 1145 . the news of the reconquest of the city of Edessa by the Muslims and wanted to induce him to another crusade against the infidels. He also told him about a powerful Christian king named John. He was the ruler of a large empire east of Persia and Armenia and had already conquered the Persian city of Echatane (also Ekbatana , today's Hamadan ) from the Muslims. John is a descendant of the wise men from the Orient .
The chronicler and bishop Otto von Freising was in the entourage of the Pope and mentioned the episode in his comprehensive world chronicle, Chronica sive Historia de duabus civitatibus ("History of the Two Kingdoms") , written from 1143 to 1146 . He hoped that John could help Christianity fight the unbelievers.
A letter (Joannis presbiteri Epistola) allegedly written by John personally to the Byzantine emperor Manuel I Komnenos appeared in 1165, the actual author of which is unknown. As we now know, it was a fake. However, the letter caused such a stir that Pope Alexander III. saw compelled to a comprehensive reply. The Pope's reaction was mixed; On the one hand, he feared for his claim to sole representation, but on the other hand he hoped for the active help of the legendary king in the fight against the Muslims. In the centuries that followed, especially after the invention of the printing press, the letter was copied so often that numerous copies are still preserved today.
myth
The letter describes the fabulous country and its many wonders in detail: John writes that 72 kings owe him tribute. His empire with the capital Bibrich (or Bribrich) extends from the other side of India through the desert to the rising of the sun. In addition to elephants, camels and dromedaries, there are also vampires , horned people, fauns , satyrs , pygmies , dog-headed people , giants , cyclops , one-eyed people and the phoenix .
The river Ydonus, which rises in the Garden of Eden and whose pebbles are precious stones, flows through the empire . A spring rises at the foot of Mount Olympus that gives immortality to those who have drunk from it three times. In a sea made entirely of sand, one finds stones that could cure diseases. There is also a hollowed stone, shaped like a shell, with medicinal water that cures leprosy and any other disease if you bathe in it. In the desert , worms lived in the fire, surrounded by a skin of the finest silk thread, from which clothes and shawls for the king were made, which were washed in the fire. The military campaign against the enemy consists of 13 wagons with huge golden crosses, followed by 10,000 horsemen and 100,000 foot soldiers .
The palace of the Priest King John is described as splendidly furnished. The doors were covered with the horn of the horned snake so that supposedly nobody could bring poison into the palace. The walls and floors are made of onyx , the dining tables of gold and amethyst . The king's bedroom is adorned with wonderful gold work and precious stones, the bed made of a single sapphire . There is a gigantic mirror on a tower near the palace, to which one climbs over 125 steps. In this mirror the king could follow the events in all provinces of his empire and recognize any conspiracy against the throne.
There is also another palace, the plan of which God showed the father of John in a vision . The most valuable precious stones and gold were used as mortar for the construction. Whoever enters there will lose all feeling of hunger and when he leaves him will be miraculously satiated, strengthened and cured of diseases. A spring rises in a corner of the throne room. Whoever tastes her will taste what he wants to eat or drink at the moment. Anyone who drinks from the spring several times will not die 300 years ago and will always be in their prime. The entrance gate is 130 cubits high, made of sparkling crystal , surrounded by the purest gold, and it opens and closes by itself, without touching it.
The letter ends with a declaration that John gave himself the title “Presbyter” out of modesty, since his subordinates are all of such high ecclesiastical and secular rank that no title, however melodious, does justice to his power and greatness.
Search in Asia
In 1177 Pope Alexander III sent his doctor Philipp with a personal message to John in Asia, in which he asked for support for another crusade against the Muslims. Philip's journey apparently ended without result, he remained missing.
The priest-king John was mentioned again and again in sources over the following centuries. Several expeditions were sent to Asia to establish contact with him. The trips were based on misinformation. The bishop of Acre (now Akko in Israel ) had a letter to Pope Honorius III in 1221 . in which he reported the arrival of the new and powerful ally King David of India, who had taken up the struggle against the Muslim Persian Empire and was now on the verge of conquering Baghdad . The bishop had heard about Genghis Khan's campaigns to conquer and wrongly identified him with the legendary priest-king John. However, in Asia, along the Silk Road , in parts of today's Syria , Iran , India and China , there was actually a Christian community of faith, the Nestorians , who, however, had little political influence in the Mongolian empire.
The Terra-X documentary “Im Bann des Priesterkönig Johannes”, broadcast by ZDF and arte, highlights a different approach. The temporal and political victory of the Mongolian Karakitai (Western Liao) under Yel-Lü-Tashih over the Seljuks of 1141 is mentioned, but then these Mongols are lumped together with the later successors of Genghis Khan. In fact, at least up to the time of the Karakitai, the Nestorian Christians, referring to the Apostle Thomas, had considerably greater influence among the Mongols than, for example, later at the court of the successors of Genghis Khan. In addition to Yel-Lü-Tashih, the last ruler of the Mongolian Keraites , Toghril Khan (Wang Khan), who lived at the end of the 12th century , was associated with the figure of the priest-king in other versions of the legend.
In 1245/1246 Pope Innocent IV sent the Italian Franciscan Johannes de Plano Carpini on a diplomatic mission to the Great Khan of the Mongols . At the same time he had the task of obtaining information about the priest king John and winning him over as an ally against Islam. However, he was unable to bring back any specific information about Johannes from his trip. He suspected the kingdom of the Priest-King to be in "India". However, it should also be taken into account that the term “India” was very vague in the Middle Ages and is not congruent with the territory of today's Republic of India .
“Chinggis Khan sent another son with an army against the Indians. [...] He also led an army into battle against the Christians who live in Greater India. When the king of that country, known to the people as the priest king John, heard this, he went to meet them with an army. "
Wilhelm von Rubruk received the same order as Carpini from King Ludwig IX. of France ; 1253/55 he traveled with a royal embassy in Mongolia . Both returned with information about the Mongol Empire, but failed to clear up the myth of John.
Marco Polo settles the kingdom of the Priest King John in what is now northeastern China . He writes about this in his travel report:
“Now the events that initiated the rule of the Tatars are to be narrated: They lived in the countries of the north, Jorza and Bargu, but without proper apartments, that is, without cities and permanent places. There were wide plains, good grazing areas, large rivers and thus an abundance of water. They had no master and were only liable to pay tribute to a powerful prince, who, as I have learned, was called Un-Khan in their language, which, as some believe, has the same meaning as priest John in our language. "
Marco Polo also tells of a great battle that is said to have taken place between the armies of Genghis Khan and the Un-Khan (Wang Khan?). It ended with the death of Un-Khan and the submission of his empire.
“Tenduk, located in the former kingdom of priest Johannes, is an eastern province with many cities and castles that belong to the rule of the great khan; all the princes of the priest John's family have remained dependent since Genghis Khan subjugated the country. The capital is also called Tenduk (probably today's Hohhot , northwest of Beijing, author's note). The current king is a descendant of the priest Johann and is called Georg. He is a Christian and a priest; the majority of the population is of Christian faith. The mentioned Georg is the sixth successor of the priest Johann. "
With the end of the Crusades, finding an ally in the east was no longer important. The legend ebbed with the 13th century, but latently remained in consciousness. Hartmann Schedel only mentions Johannes in one short paragraph in his extensive world chronicle from 1493:
“In India they are called iren patriarche briesterjohann. [...] Now the same briesterjohann is respected not allain as a bishop, sunder also as an emperor. One says of him that there are numerous king underworffen and honestly cynical and in the same kingdoms there are hundreds of other bishoprics. And the supreme episcopal and imperial chair is sewn in a large, powerful one instead of Bibrith and John the patriarch has clearly said something other than the great of the indians (who comes in the jar of mr tawsent a hundred gein rom) to the babst calisto, the cardineln and other prelates . "
A possible original figure for the priest king John could be the historical office of the archdeacon of the Thomas Christians . This was the recognized head of his community and was viewed in India as prince-like. He had the status of a "king" of his people, which is also evidenced by his honorary titles such as "Prince and head of the Christians of Saint Thomas" or "Archdeacon and Gate of All India, Governor of India". The rulers of Cochin presented the newly elected archdeacon with royal regalia and he was always escorted by an armed honorary group when traveling. Patriarch Timothy of Babylon called the archdeacon the "head of the believers of India" as early as 800. The archdeacons came exclusively from families who claimed to be descended directly from the priests whom the Apostle Thomas ordained and installed in India. The name Georg was also very common among the archdeacons of India. These facts would coincide with the report by Marco Polo, and the cross coat of arms of the "Priest King John" with the two side scrolls, which often appears, could also be a mutilated form of the traditional Indian St. Thomas Cross .
Search in Africa
The Doge Teodisio D'Oria (also Tedisio Doria) supported and financed an expedition of the Genoese merchant Ugolino Vivaldi and his brother Vandino with two galleys for a trip to India. They set out in the spring of 1291, passed the Strait of Gibraltar , sailed along the Moroccan coast, and it is believed that they reached the Canary Islands and the region around Cape Nun . Their further fate is unknown; they were probably shipwrecked on the African coast. In the early 14th century Ugolino's son Sorleone de Vivaldo († approx. 1315) made several long-distance trips in search of his father. He is said to have circumnavigated the Cape of Good Hope and advanced as far as the Somali coast to Mogadishu. The Dominican Jourdain de Séverac takes up this story in letters from the years 1321-1324 and reports that two Genoese asked for help at the court of the Priest King John in what is now Ethiopia. With this he sparked new speculations about the situation of the kingdom of the Priest-King in Africa.
The myth was willingly taken up in a modified form by the Portuguese in the 15th century in order to provide a justification for their voyages of discovery and the circumnavigation of Africa. King Manuel I intended to push back the influence of Islam in Africa and win the continent over to Christianity. To this end, he sought an alliance with the legendary Priest King.
The news of a Christian empire in East Africa reached Europe through the Arabs, and the legend of the priest-king John was immediately remembered. Indeed, in East Africa, in what is now Ethiopia , there was a powerful and influential Christian community, the empires of Aksum and Lalibela . The emergence of Christianity in Ethiopia went back to the traders who brought the still young religion with them from Syria, with which extensive trade relations existed. During the heyday of the Aksum Empire, King Ezana adopted Christianity in the form of Monophysitism as the state religion in the 3rd century . There were close ties to the Coptic Church in Egypt . The empire existed until the 10th century, when it was cut off from the Mediterranean and thus from important trade relations by the Islamic conquests of Syria and Egypt . In the early 13th century, King Lalibela reestablished a strong, Christian Ethiopia in the tradition of Aksum. He had twelve churches carved out of the massive rock in Roha, today's Lalibela, which today still bear impressive testimony to the power and size of the empire.
Since the climax of the early expansion of Ethiopia into the northeast (today's Somalia ) and the reclamation of Islamic territories in the 15th century overlapped with the climax of the European expeditions under the leadership of Portugal , it is understandable that medieval Ethiopia with the kingdom of the priest-king John was identified. In the late Middle Ages there were several expeditions of European adventurers to this region. However, visitors who actually reached the Ethiopian Empire were no longer allowed out, so the information remained vague.
Pêro da Covilhã (1450–1530) traveled to East Africa in 1487 on behalf of the Portuguese King John II to visit John. Although he reached Ethiopia, he was detained there and did not return. The same thing happened to Alfonso de Payva, who tried to reach Ethiopia from Alexandria by land. He was missing.
It was not until 1520 that an expedition led by Rodrigo da Lima reached Ethiopia, which also managed to return to Portugal with reports. The chaplain accompanying the group, Francisco Álvares , was the first European to write a detailed report ( Verdadeira Informação das Terras do Preste João das Índias , Lisbon 1540 - it contained reports by Pêro da Covilhã) about the Ethiopian Empire in its heyday, but could solve the riddle of the Do not enlighten Priest-King John.
Map display
The kingdom of the Priest King John was marked on the maps well into the 16th century. Some examples of this:
- In Andreas Walsperger's world map , created in 1448 in Reichenau Monastery , the city of Bibrich is particularly highlighted as a magnificent, large-format silhouette north of Tabrobana ( Ceylon ).
- A cycling map of Jerusalem and the Holy Land, created in Lübeck in 1475, shows the kingdom of the Priest King John south of India and west of Babylon.
- The world map of Juan de la Cosa from 1500 shows the kingdom of the priest king John north of Ethiopia (Ethiopia), directly west of the Nile .
Lore
The Latin Epistola presbiteri Johannis ("Letter of Presbyter John") has survived in more than 200 manuscripts from the 12th to 17th centuries and 14 printed editions from around 1483 to 1565. The versions of the text vary greatly. In addition to the text of Tradition I edited by Zarncke , which is divided into five editorial offices and several short and long versions, five special Latin versions ( Tradition II ) have been preserved, some of which have been significantly revised and are closely related to the Romansh translations.
German translations can be found in the following manuscripts:
- Berlin, SBB-PK, Ms. germ. Oct. 56
- Vienna, ÖNB, Cod. Ser. nova 2663 ( Ambraser Heldenbuch )
- Munich, BSB, Cgm 1113
- Paris, BNF, Ms.all. 150
- Heidelberg, UB, Cod. Pal. germ. 844
as well as in Albrecht von Scharfenberg's Younger Titurel .
Literary processing of the topic
- Wolfram von Eschenbach already took up elements of the Johannes myth in his verse novel Parzival in the 13th century .
- Umberto Eco processed parts of the myth of the priest king Johannes in his novel Baudolino (2001, Hanser Verlag Munich, ISBN 3-446-20048-7 ).
- Tad Williams uses Johannes Presbyter or Johannes the Priest in the novel The Dragonbone Throne as the High King of the fictional country Osten-Ard
- Michael Peinkofer wrote a historical novel about the search for the kingdom of Johannes', Das Verschollene Reich
- Philipp Schmidt wrote a historical fantasy novel in which the myth about the priest king is referred to.
literature
Work editions
- Friedrich Zarncke : The priest Johannes , In: Treatises of the philological-historical class of the royal. Sächsische Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften 7/1879, pp. 827-1030 and 8/1883, pp. 1–186 (editions of the Latin and the German text) ( digitized at SLUB Dresden )
- Bettina Wagner : The "Epistola presbiteri Johannis": Latin and German. Tradition, text history, reception and transmission in the Middle Ages; with previously unedited texts (= Munich Texts and Studies on German Medieval Literature, Volume 115). Tübingen 2000, ISBN 3-484-89115-7 (in particular for tradition).
Secondary literature
- Wilhelm Baum : The metamorphoses of the myth of the kingdom of the priest king Johannes - Rome, Byzantium and the Christians of the Orient in the Middle Ages. Kitab, Klagenfurt 1999, ISBN 3-902005-02-5
- Charles F. Beckingham, Bernard Hamilton (Eds.): Prester John, the Mongols and the Ten Lost Tribes , Variorum, Aldershot 1996, ISBN 0-86078-553-X
- Lev Nicolai Gumilev: Searches for an Imaginary Kingdom. The Legend of the Kingdom of Prester John , Cambridge University Press, Cambridge et al. 1987, ISBN 0-521-32214-6
- Gerd-Klaus Kaltenbrunner : Johannes is his name - priest king, guardian of the grail, dream figure (= the gray series 12), gray edition, train 1993, ISBN 3-906336-12-3
- Ulrich Knefelkamp : The search for the kingdom of the priest king Johannes. Represented on the basis of travel reports and other ethnographic sources from the 12th to 17th centuries. Century , Müller, Gelsenkirchen 1986, ISBN 3-89049-006-9 (also: Freiburg (Breisgau), Univ., Diss. 1985)
- Ulrich Knefelkamp: The priest king Johannes and his kingdom - legend or reality In: Journal of Medieval History 14, 1988, ISSN 0304-4181 , pp. 337-355
- Udo Friedrich: Between utopia and myth - the letter of the priest Johannes In: Journal for German Philology 122, 1, 2003, ISSN 0949-1678 , pp. 73-92
- Wolbert Smidt: Der Priesterkönig Johannes: ein Sehnsuchtsfigur In: Kerstin Volker-Saad, Anna Greve (ed.): Ethiopia and Germany, Sehnsucht nach der Ferne Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich et al. 2006, ISBN 3-422-06603-9 , p. 35 -39
- Christof Dahm : John the Priest King. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 3, Bautz, Herzberg 1992, ISBN 3-88309-035-2 , Sp. 530-533.
Web links
- Iohannes Presbyter regis Indiae in the repertory "Historical Sources of the German Middle Ages"
- Literature by and about the Priest King Johannes in the catalog of the German National Library
Remarks
- ↑ Terra X - Under the Spell of the Priest King - Search for the "Three India"
- ↑ After the battle, Khoresmians, Karachnids and other former vassals of the Seljuks recognized Karakitai suzerainty, which also largely fits the content of the letter
- ↑ The Westermann Atlas on History, for example, sees a majority of Mongols as Nestorians "around 1000"
- ^ Igor de Rachewiltz: Papal Envoys to the Great Khans, 114. Stanford University Press 1971
- ^ Johannes von Plano Carpini: News from the Mongols , translated by F. Schmiederer. Sigmaringen 1997, p. 65.
- ^ A b Marco Polo: From Venice to China, 1271–1292 , translated by Theodor A. Knust. Thienemanns Verlag, Stuttgart.
- ↑ Quote from: Hartmann Schedel: Weltchronik. Nuremberg 1493, sheet CXCVII.
- ↑ Illustrated treatise on the Indian archdeacons from the Syro-Malabar church portal Nasrani.net
- ↑ Oliveira Martins: História de Portugal , Lisbon 1894, Livro V, pp. 4–8