Prester John

4 Jun, 2015 940 History of Europe

In the Middle Ages, Prester John was seen as the great hope for Crusaders struggling to hold on to, then regain, Jerusalem. He was thought to rule a lost Christian kingdom somewhere in the East and was ready to attack Muslim opponents with his enormous armies. There was apparent proof of Prester John’s existence, in letters purportedly from him and in stories from travelers who claimed they had met, if not him, then people who had news of him. Most pointed to a home in the earthly paradise in the Indies, outside Eden, with fantastical animals and unimaginable riches. Later, Portuguese explorers thought they had found him in Ethiopia, despite the mystified denials of people there. Melvyn Bragg asks why the legend was so strongly believed for so long, and what facts helped sustain the myths.

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Guests

  • Marianne O'Doherty No other episodes
    Associate Professor in English at the University of Southampton
  • Martin Palmer 22 episodes
    Director of the International Consultancy on Religion, Education, and Culture
  • Amanda Power 2 episodes
    Senior Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Sheffield

Reading list

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    M. S. Asimov and C. E. Bosworth (eds.) (UNESCO Publishing, 1998) Google Books →
  • Prester John, the Mongols and the Ten Lost Tribes
    Charles F. Beckingham and Bernard Hamilton (eds) (Variorum, 1996) Google Books →
  • Prester John: The Legend and its Sources
    Keagan Brewer (Ashgate, 2015) Google Books →
  • The Mongol Mission: Narratives and Letters of the Franciscan Missionaries in Mongolia and China in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries
    Christopher Dawson (ed.) (Ams Pr Inc, 1980) Google Books →
  • Baudolino
    Umberto Eco (trans. by William Weaver) (Secker and Warburg, 2002) Google Books →
  • The Prester Quest
    Nicholas Jubber (Doubleday, 2005) Google Books →
  • Asia in the Making of Europe
    Donald Lach (University of Chicago Press, 1993) Google Books →
  • The Travels of Sir John Mandeville
    John Mandeville (trans. Charles Moseley) (Penguin Classics, 2005) Google Books →
  • The Riddle and the Knight: In Search of Sir John Mandeville
    Giles Milton (Sceptre, 1996) Google Books →
  • The Travels of Marco Polo
    Marco Polo (trans. Henry Yule) (Dover Publications, 2003) Google Books →
  • Papal Envoys to the Great Khans
    Igor de Rachewiltz (Faber & Faber, 1971) Google Books →
  • Essays in Christian Mythology: The Metamorphosis of Prester John
    Manuel Joao Ramos (University Press of America, 2006) Google Books →
  • The Quest for Eastern Christians: Travels and Rumor in the Age of Discovery
    Francis M. Rogers (University of Minnesota Press, 1962) Google Books →
  • The Monks of Kublai Khan, Emperor of China
    Rabban Sawma (trans. E. A. Wallis) (I.B.Tauris, 2014) Google Books →
  • The Realm of Prester John
    Robert Silverberg (W&N, 2001) Google Books →
  • Prester John: The Letter and the Legend
    Vsevolod Slessarev (University of Minnesota Press, 1959) Google Books →
  • Ecstatic Transformation: On the Uses of Alterity in the Middle Ages
    Michael Uebel (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005) Google Books →
  • Cathay and the Way Thither
    Henry Yule (ed.) (Asian Educational Services, 2005) Google Books →

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Programme ID: b05wyq5m

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Auto-category: 940.1 (Medieval history)