Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} The Kingdom of Lagash & other stories by John Melmoth Tag Archives: Sebastian Melmoth. Melmoth the Wanderer: Grandfather to Gothic and Irish Literature. Charles Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer will be celebrating its two hundredth anniversary next year, and it deserves to be celebrated since it is one of the most important Gothic novels of all time, yet few people who are not students of the Gothic have ever heard of it. Published in 1820, the novel was the most popular of the several novels Maturin, an Anglo-Irish and Anglican clergyman, published. It is also one of the last works from the Golden Age of Gothic Literature, ranging from roughly 1790 to 1820 when Radcliffe, Lewis, Shelley, and many other writers published notable Gothic novels. Most importantly, it had a huge influence on many other Irish and Gothic novels that followed it. Charles Maturin (1780-1824) wrote several novels including historical fiction that predated Sir Walter Scott, whom he was friends with, and a popular tragedy, “Bertram.” In this article, I will discuss a little about why Melmoth the Wanderer is an important Gothic novel, especially for its title Gothic wanderer figure and its anti-Catholicism, and then I will look at some of the other works it influenced. Contribution to the Gothic Wanderer Figure and Anti-Catholicism. A good summary of Melmoth the Wanderer can be found at Wikipedia for those not familiar with the novel although I would encourage you to read it. Its stories-within-a-story technique, a common element of the Gothic, makes the reader wonder how all the stories will come together, but in the tale of Immalee, the full extent of Melmoth’s Gothic wanderer role is apparent. Melmoth is a member of an Irish family who in the seventeenth century was cursed and now wanders about Europe causing terror and tempting the innocent. He is not immortal, but he does have an extended life of about 170 years before he meets his fate at the end of the novel. Although he does try to tempt people, at times Melmoth feels torn with guilt, especially when he attempts to convince the innocent Immalee to marry him. Immalee was lost in childhood and has grown up alone in nature, innocent and childlike, but eventually, she is found and returned to her family in Spain. However, before Immalee is found, Melmoth visits her on the island and educates her in religion and other problems and hypocrisies of human society—or rather he miseducates her. After Immalee returns to Spain, Melmoth convinces her to marry him in a dark ceremony, and then she conceives his child. When her brother accosts Melmoth, Melmoth slays him and Immalee nearly dies from grief. She is then taken to the prisons of the Inquisition where she gives birth to a daughter. Because of her sin for loving a minion of Satan, she is condemned to lifetime imprisonment in the Inquisition’s prison, and her child is to be taken from her and raised in a convent. However, the child dies before it can be taken from its mother and Immalee dies soon after. Although the novel was written by an Irishman, it’s important to note that Maturin had a low opinion of Catholics and was himself Anglican. The novel is the most extreme example of anti-Catholicism of all the Gothic novels I have read. Much of the novel is the story of Moncada, who is forced by his family members—themselves manipulated by the clergy—to enter a seminary and become a priest. Because he resists, Moncada is beaten, tortured, and locked up in a cell without light. The depiction of the Inquisition is overall very derogatory. Not that the Inquisition was not a horrible institution, but Maturin has no problem with depicting it in the most derogatory way possible, likely without any real knowledge of the institution. A Sequel by Honoré de Balzac. This edition of Melmoth the Wanderer includes Balzac’s sequel, and an introduction by Julian Hawthorne, the son of Nathaniel Hawthorne, who referenced Melmoth in his 1828 novel “Fanshawe.” At the novel’s conclusion, Melmoth’s prolonged life appears to end. However, because no one witnesses Melmoth’s death and there is no final body, the possibility exists that he lives on. Melmoth may not have died since it is believed that Maturin intended a never-written sequel in which Melmoth would return. Honoré de Balzac did write a sequel, Melmoth Reconciled (1835), in which Melmoth is able to find someone to take his place and thereby rest from his wanderings. This short sequel is lacking in Gothic atmosphere and effectiveness, but Balzac does retain the concentration upon Melmoth’s eyes which create a “piercing glance that read men’s inmost thoughts.” The French work is also progressive compared to British Gothic in that it allows the Gothic wanderer to rest, which would be denied to Gothic wanderers in British fiction until the Victorian period. Influence of Melmoth the Wanderer on J. S. Le Fanu and James Joyce. In rereading Melmoth the Wanderer , I noticed many aspects and possible influences it may have had on literature that I had failed to notice previously when I wrote about it in The Gothic Wanderer . First is the opening scenes where John Melmoth comes to his uncle’s deathbed. This scene is written in a tongue-in-cheek, lighthearted, and comical manner, despite the gravity of the situation. The manuscript John Melmoth reads that depicts life at the court of Charles II is also of this style. What surprised me was that these pages seem like they could have come straight out of J. S. Le Fanu’s The House by the Churchyard (1863). I’ve always thought that particular novel of Le Fanu’s to be almost unreadable, but the comical tone is very similar, suggesting that Le Fanu must have read Maturin. Notably, James Joyce is said to have been inspired by Le Fanu’s novel in writing Finnegan’s Wake (1939). However, the influence of Maturin on Joyce is even more specific. In Chapter 14 of Ulysses (1922), titled “Oxen of the Sun,” Joyce uses a variety of literary styles that basically trace the history of the English language. One section of the chapter, lines 1010-1037, is written as a parody of Gothic novels, as scholars have long noted. Don Gifford’s Ulysses Annotated even notes that this parody owes a debt to Le Fanu’s The House by the Churchyard . Note the similarity between this passage from “Oxen of the Sun” and the following one from Melmoth the Wanderer : “The secret panel beside the chimney slid back and in the recess appeared…Haines! Which of us did not feel his flesh creep? He had a portfolio full of Celtic literature in one hand, in the other a phial marked Poison. Surprise, horror, loathing were depicted on all faces while he eyed them with a ghastly grin.” In the penultimate paragraph of Chapter 1 of Melmoth the Wanderer , John Melmoth first sees Melmoth the Wanderer as follows: “At this moment, John saw the door open, and a figure appear at it, who looked round the room, and then quietly and deliberately retired, but not before John had discovered in his face the living original of the portrait. His first impulse was to utter an exclamation of terror, but his breath felt stopped.” John is shocked because he has already heard that Melmoth the Wanderer has lived well over a century and seen the portrait of this relative. The two passages are not obviously the same, but the entrance of a figure who causes shock occurs in both, and I suspect Joyce borrowed it from Maturin, whether consciously or not. Since Maturin was an Irish writer, Joyce was likely familiar with his work, though I am not aware of any scholars discussing Maturin’s influence on him, something that should be explored further. Influence on George W. M. Reynolds. This painting by Eugene Delacroix is titled “Melmoth or Interior of a Dominican Convent.” It depicts Moncada being mistreated by the other monks for wanting to renounce his vows. George W. M. Reynolds was the bestselling author of Victorian England and a key player in the Gothic renaissance that occurred in the 1840s and 1850s with the rise of the penny dreadful. One of Reynolds’ novels, The Necromancer (1851-2), tells the story of a man who has a bargain with the devil to marry seven women over the course of a couple of centuries so that they sell their souls to Satan; if he fails, his own soul will be lost. The plot of Reynolds’ novel recalls Melmoth’s effort to deceive Immalee into marrying him and agreeing to follow his God (Satan), although she never completely understands his purposes. That she ends up dead, and in the final scene of the novel, Melmoth is taken by the devil suggests that perhaps Melmoth had a similar pact with Satan. Maturin does not say this overtly, but Reynolds might well have read the novel, read between the lines, and expanded on the idea in his own book. Since so little is known about Reynolds, we do not know if he read Maturin’s novel or not, but it seems plausible given that he was obviously well-versed in the Gothic tradition. Influence on Anthony Trollope. Scholars have not failed to note that the villain in one of Anthony Trollope’s greatest novels, The Way We Live Now (1875) is named Melmotte, a name that may owe a debt to Maturin’s Melmoth. Besides the name similarity, there is much confusion and many rumors about exactly who Melmotte is in Trollope’s novel. He is suspected of being Jewish because he is in finance, but beyond this, he is known for having lived in various locations—a type of wandering that makes him akin to the Wandering Jew, whose legend was a major influence on the creation of Melmoth the Wanderer . Among the possible backgrounds of Melmotte is also that he is Irish—his father believed to be an Irish coiner in New York named Melmody (Chapter 98), from whom Melmotte may have learned forgery. Melmotte, of course, claims he is English, wanting to rise in English society. Since Trollope spent considerable time in Ireland, it is not surprising that he was likely familiar with this Irish novel, which would have been quite popular in his childhood. Coincidentally, Trollope worked for the Post Office in Ireland and Maturin’s father was a Post Office official. Influence on Edward Bulwer-Lytton and Charles Dickens. Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s novel Zanoni (1842) is noteworthy for how it reversed the Gothic tradition by creating positive depictions of Rosicrucian characters with extended lives. (For a full discussion of Zanoni and Rosicrucianism in the Gothic tradition see my book The Gothic Wanderer .) Notably, Rosicrucians were known for life-extension and so Melmoth the Wanderer may have been influenced by the Rosicrucian tradition, which had already influenced other earlier novels such as Percy Shelley’s St. Irvyne (1811). (Notably, George W. M. Reynolds’ novel Wagner the Wehr-Wolf (1846-7) features the Rosicrucian founder, Christian Rosencrux, as a character.) Bulwer-Lytton may have been influenced specifically by the end scenes of Melmoth the Wanderer when Immalee is imprisoned by the Inquisition and gives birth to a child who dies. In Zanoni , Bulwer-Lytton’s title character is a Rosicrucian who has lived a long life. He and his lover, Viola, are caught up in the chaos of the French Revolution, resulting in Viola giving birth to their child in prison. Melmoth dies long after Immalee when Satan comes to take him, but Zanoni ends up dying at the guillotine. However, hope remains in the image of the child born to Viola, who survives. Notably, Zanoni was a major influence on Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities (1859), particularly Sidney Carton’s sacrifice at the end of the novel, but also because of its many Rosicrucian elements, as discussed in my book The Gothic Wanderer . Therefore, Melmoth the Wanderer may be said to be the grandfather of Dickens’ novel. Influence on Oscar Wilde. Oscar Wilde was Charles Maturin’s great-nephew by marriage and adopted the name Sebastian Melmoth to protect his privacy and comment upon his state as an outcast following his famous trial and prison term. It is well-known, but worth repeating, that Maturin was the uncle by marriage to Oscar Wilde’s mother. After Wilde was released from prison after serving a sentence for homosexuality, Oscar Wilde adopted the name of Sebastian Melmoth while he wandered about Europe. The name Melmoth implied he was cursed and a wanderer, and the name Sebastian referenced St. Sebastian, considered the first gay icon of the nineteenth century. Numerous Other Influences. Melmoth the Wanderer influenced many other literary works in direct and indirect ways and has even influenced the creation of characters in movies and TV. The following list comes from Wikipedia, which includes a few of the works I have already mentioned: In Arturo Pérez-Reverte’s The Club Dumas (the basis for Roman Polanski’s film The Ninth Gate ), Corso bumps into the mystery girl following him as she is reading Melmoth the Wanderer in the lobby of the hotel after seeing Fargas to review his copy of The Nine Doors of the Kingdom of Shadows . In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Fanshawe , one of the major characters is named “Doctor Melmoth.” In Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita , Professor Humbert Humbert calls his automobile “Melmoth.” In John Banville’s 1989 novel The Book of Evidence , the narrator steals an automobile from a garage called “Melmoth’s”; the make of the car is a Humber, an allusion to both Wilde and Nabokov. “Melmoth” is mentioned in Alexander Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin . In Dave Sim’s Cerebus comic book (issues 139–150), there’s a writer named Oscar (homage to Oscar Wilde), who’s registered under the name “Melmoth” at his hotel. In Grant Morrison’s Seven Soldiers metaseries, Melmoth is an antagonist of Frankenstein. In Leonie Swann’s Three Bags Full: A Sheep Detective Story , the mysterious sheep who has wandered the world and comes home to teach the flock what he has learned is named Melmoth. The mysterious financier Melmotte in Anthony Trollope’s The Way We Live Now resembles Melmoth in more than name. In an 1842 review of Stanley Thorn, Edgar Allan Poe refers to “the devil in Melmoth” as an ineffectual seducer of souls. In letters P. Lovecraft addresses Donald Wandrei as Melmoth the Wandrei . A British magazine about surrealism was named Melmoth after the book. Melmoth was published from 1979-1981 and its contributors included George Melly and Ithell Colquhoun. In the British TV murder mystery series Midsomer Murders the episode “Murder By Magic” (2015) included a mysterious country manor called Melmouth House, the home of an infamous rake-hell and paganist, Sir Henry Melmouth, who died, apparently, in a ritual pagan fire, hoping to be reborn from the ashes like the mythical phoenix. In Marty Feldman’s movie In God We Tru$t (1980), Peter Boyle plays a con man and crooked street preacher named Dr. Sebastian Melmoth. named the aircraft Garrison Melmoth after himself and Melmoth the Wanderer . ’s third novel Melmoth (2018) centers on a female variation of Maturin’s character, damned (like Richard Wagner’s Kundry in Parsifal ) for denying the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The reason I recently decided to reread Melmoth the Wanderer was because I had heard about Sarah Perry’s new novel Melmoth . I will be reviewing that novel in my next article. Even though Melmoth the Wanderer’s life appears to end at the conclusion of Maturin’s novel, it is clear his influence wanders on and likely will continue to do so for many years to come. : 10 Forgotten Conquerors. The conquerors on this list boasted that they had “all the lands at [my] feet” or promised to make “Egypt taste the taste of my fingers!” But in the end, they, too, have been largely forgotten. Look upon their works and despair. 10. Lugalzagesi. Civilization was born in ancient Sumeria, in the rich lands between the Tigris and rivers. But by 2330 BC, the region was in an uproar and ancient cities lay in ruins. The culprit was Lugalzagesi, the king of Umma. Before inheriting the throne, Lugalzagesi was a priest of the goddess Nisaba and he has been labeled an “ecstatic” and a “bone fide berserk” by historians seeking to explain the unprecedented destruction he unleashed. Shortly after inheriting the throne of Umma, Lugalzagesi also became king of Uruk, probably through marriage. He then launched a series of frenzied campaigns against the kingdom of Lagash, eventually conquering the city itself. A priest of Lagash reported that he “set fire to the [temples] . . . he plundered the palace of Tirash, he plundered the Abzubanda temple, he plundered the chapels of Enlil and Utu.” In another inscription, the defeated king of Lagash bitterly cursed the conqueror: “The leader of Umma, having sacked Lagash, has committed a sin against Ningirsu. The hand which he has raised against him will be cut off! May Nisaba, the god of Lugalzagesi, ruler of Umma, make him bear the sin.” But the conquest of Lagash only increased Lugalzagesi’s strength. Before long, he was ruler of all Sumeria, lord of primeval cities like Ur, Zabala, and Nippur. His armies raided from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean: “Enlil, king of all lands, gave to Lugalzagesi the kingship of the nation, directed all eyes of the land toward him, put all the lands at his feet . . . from east to west, Enlil permitted him no rival.” Enlil must have changed his mind. Lugalzagesi’s conquests soon brought him into conflict with a minor ruler named Sargon. In a stunning upset, Sargon’s well-drilled troops defeated the primitive armies of Sumeria. Lugalzagesi was paraded in chains through Nippur and was soon all but forgotten, while Sargon of Akkad went on to found the first great in history. 9. Modu Chanyu. The horse was first domesticated on the great Eurasian Steppe, the seemingly endless ocean of grass that runs from to Eastern Europe. Every so often, the nomadic horsemen of the plains would unite under some great ruler and erupt on the civilized world. Some of these conquerors remain famous—-Attila, Genghis, Timur the Lame—-but Modu Chanyu, who was one of the earliest, is now almost forgotten in the West. Modu’s father was king of the Xiongnu, a people who lived in what is now Mongolia. The king preferred Modu’s brother, so Modu had him killed and took power anyway. According to the Chinese historian Sima Qian, Modu invited his bodyguards for some archery practice and told them to use his favorite horse as a target. When some objected, Modu immediately executed them. Then, he told them to use his wife as a target. Again, some objected, and Modu killed them on the spot. Finally, he told the survivors that their new target was his father. They shot him without hesitation. After murdering his siblings, Modu launched lightning campaigns against the Donghu and , forming a sprawling empire that stretched across the eastern steppes. In 200 BC, he lured the Chinese Emperor Gaozu into an ambush and forced him to sign a humiliating treaty. The Chinese had to pay tribute and Gaozu agreed to give his daughter as a concubine to Modu (he sent some other girl and lied that she was his daughter instead). In a way, Gaozu was lucky—-the king of Yuezhi had his skull turned into a drinking cup by Modu’s son. Modu himself died in 174 BC, as the ruler of an empire that rivaled ’s in size. 8. Cyaxares. For centuries, the mighty Assyrian Empire dominated the ancient . Its influence even extended to the lands of the , in what is now . The Medes had mixed feelings about this and a nobleman named Phraortes led a revolt around 653 BC. But the bowmen of were justly feared, and the rebellion was crushed. Phraortes was executed and his grieving son Cyaxares swore to finish what his father had started. This was no mean task, particularly considering that the Scythians had invaded Media in the meantime. But Cyaxares quietly submitted to Scythian rule until he was able to lure their leaders to a banquet. Once the Scythians were drunk, Cyaxares had them slaughtered. Next, he united the Medes into one kingdom under his command. He reformed the Mede army with new weapons and a focus on horsemen, which the Assyrians lacked. In 614 BC, the Medes attacked, sacking the Assyrian stronghold at Ashur. Over the next two years, they ground closer to the Assyrian capital Ninevah, which fell in 612. Cyaxares had avenged his father and destroyed the greatest empire of the day. The Median Empire seemed destined to dominate the ancient world—-and it might have, had Cyaxares’s successor not had the misfortune to cross an young man called Cyrus, the leader of an obscure tribe called the Persians. Lagash. Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. Lagash , modern Telloh , one of the most important capital cities in ancient Sumer, located midway between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in southeastern . The ancient name of the mound of Telloh was actually Girsu, while Lagash originally denoted a site southeast of Girsu, later becoming the name of the whole district and also of Girsu itself. The French excavated at Telloh between 1877 and 1933 and uncovered at least 50,000 cuneiform texts that have proved one of the major sources for knowledge of Sumer in the 3rd millennium bc . Dedicatory inscriptions on stone and on bricks also have provided invaluable evidence for assessing the chronological development of Sumerian art. The city was founded in the prehistoric Ubaid Period ( c. 5200– c. 3500 bc ) and was still occupied as late as the Parthian era (247 bc – ad 224). In the Early Dynastic Period the rulers of Lagash called themselves “king” ( lugal ), though the city itself never was included within the official Sumerian canon of kingship. Among the most famous Lagash monuments of that period is the Stele of the Vultures, erected to celebrate the victory of King Eannatum over the neighbouring state of Umma. Another is the engraved silver vase of King Entemena, a successor of Eannatum. Control of Lagash finally fell to Sargon of Akkad (reigned c. 2334–2279 bc ), but about 150 years later Lagash enjoyed a revival. It prospered most brilliantly under Gudea, who was probably a governor rather than an independent king and was nominally subject to the Guti, a warlike people who controlled much of from about 2230 to about 2130. Lagash was endowed with many temples, including the Eninnu, “House of the Fifty,” a seat of the high god Enlil. Architecturally the most remarkable structure was a weir and regulator, once doubtless possessing sluice gates, which conserved the area’s water supply in reservoirs. The Saga of Lagash. I feel like talking more about my reading adventures today, so picking up after I finished with the Royal Annals of the Old Kingdom of , after asking my mother to help me return it to the library, I started out looking for an old set of foundation cones I discovered on a wiki- page. These objects are known as the Foundation Cones of Urukagina, on which may be found the Code of Urukagina. What I found, thanks to the website “Sumerian Shakespeare” was a bit of a rabbit hole leading through a number of essays on the site, on various topics like the idea of “The Shepherd Kings” as well as a rather neat story told through several artifacts about the Ancient City of Lagash, in modern day South-east Iraq. While discovering they had a translation of the cones, I also found a history of Urukagina, which led me to backtrack about fifty years from 2350 BC to 2400 as I discovered one of his precursors, the king Eanattum, who had commissioned the carving of these two artifacts known as the Eanattum Boulder, and the Vulture Stele. They both spoke about Eanattum’s glorious exploits kicking the asses of all the neighboring cities as well as the tabloid details about how he was literally birthed by the gods and raised by Inanna herself (those seeking out more information about Sumerian gods should check out the Ancient History Encyclopedia), but the neat thing about all of this was that Eanattum’s exploits could very well have set the stage for the tragedy of Urukagina’s relatively short rule. After Eanattum, there were a couple of kings such as Enmetena who tried to pass various social reforms as illustrated in the Enmetena tablet. But Urukagina was the guy who really tried hard, as seen on his cones, to reform the system, root out corruption, lower fees, and my personal favorite part, fire all the tax collectors. Unfortunately, as I learned, this reformative fire in his belly was the source of no small amount of tragedy for the simple reason that doing all this stuff ticked off the aristocrats in his city. It also seems that Urukagina was paying so much attention to his reforms, that he wasn’t paying enough attention to what the other cities were doing. This was to his own peril, because many of the civil elites in his city were also his military elites, so when the other cities came to get their revenge for all of Eannattum’s ass-kicking around 50 years prior, none of the military elites were willing to help him defend anything, thus causing the city to be sacked, and Urukagina’s plans for reforms to be tragically consigned to the dustbin of history, except perhaps, as a warning to future reformers. Can’t say I’m a big fan of his price controls (let’s face it, no one’s perfect), but the rest of it is a bit of a shame, because if the cones are anything to judge by, it almost looks like they were a precursor to some of our ideas about liberty, so that’s pretty cool. The Legend of and His Lost Kingdom in the East. Prester John (known also as Presbyter John or John the Elder) was a legendary figure in Europe during the Medieval and Early Modern periods. Europeans living at that time believed that Prester John was a wealthy and powerful Christian monarch who ruled over a kingdom somewhere in the East, beyond the borders of Medieval Christendom. This kingdom was thought to be ‘lost’ among the nations of the Muslims and pagans, though no one knew its exact location. Nevertheless, the Europeans were extremely keen on making contact with this legendary ruler, as they were hoping to find a powerful Christian ally in the East in their struggle against the Muslims. Although Prester John’s kingdom was never found, its legend contributed to Portuguese exploration during the . Thus, indirectly, this fabled ruler had a big impact on world history. What is the Legend of Prester John? The legend of Prester John first arose during the 12th century. This was the time of the , when Christians from Europe attempted to seize the Holy Land from the Muslims by force. The earliest known reference to the legend of Prester John dates to 1145. It’s important to note that in the previous year, the County of Edessa, the northernmost Crusader state, was captured by Zengi, the Seljuk governor of Mosul. The loss of Edessa sent shockwaves across Europe, leading to the Second Crusade in 1147. In any case, the legend of Prester John was first reported in Bishop Otto of Freising’s ‘ Chronicon’ a year after the fall of Edessa. Otto claims that he heard this story from Bishop Hugh of Jabala in , who told it to the papal court in Viterbo. Otto’s account of Prester John is as follows: “He said, indeed, that not many years since, one John, a king and priest living in the Far East, beyond Persia and , and who, with his people, is a Christian, but a Nestorian, had warred upon the so-​called Samiards, the brother kings of the Medes and Persians. John also attacked Ebactanus, the capital of their kingdom. When the aforesaid kings advanced against him with a force of Persians, Medes, and Assyrians, a three-​‐ day struggle ensued, since both sides were willing to die rather than to flee. At length, Prester John ​so he is usually called put the Persians to flight and emerged from the dreadful slaughter as victor.” Prester John as depicted in the chronicles of Hartmann Schedel (1493). ( Public Domain ) He goes on to say that Prester John tried to bring his army to aid , but was unable to do so, “The Bishop said that the aforesaid John moved his army to aid the church of Jerusalem, but that when he came to the Tigris and was unable to take his army across it by any means, be turned aside to the north, where he had been informed that the stream was frozen solid during the winter. There he awaited the ice for several years, but saw none because of the temperate weather. His army lost many men on account of the weather to which they were unaccustomed and he was compelled to return home.” Lastly, Otto provides some information about Prester John’s lineage, and his qualities as a ruler, “He is said to be a descendant of the Magi of old, who are mentioned in the Gospel. He governs the same people as they did and is said to enjoy such glory and such plenty that he uses no scepter save one of emerald. Fired by the example of his forefathers, who came to adore Christ in the manger, he proposed to go to Jerusalem, but he was, they say, turned back for the aforementioned reason.” A depiction of Prester John from 1800. ( Public Domain ) According to one interpretation of the text, the battle mentioned by Hugh may have been the Battle of Qatwan, which was fought to the north of in 1141. During the battle, the Seljuks were defeated by Yelü Dashi, the founder of the . Since the dynasty’s rulers adopted the title Gur-khan or Kor-khan, it has been suggested that this title may have been changed phonetically in Hebrew to Yoḥanan or in Syriac to Yuḥanan, ultimately resulting in Johannes, Latin for John. Although Yelü Dashi was himself a Buddhist, many of the Qara Khitai elite were Nestorians, thus fitting Hugh’s description. If this interpretation were correct, it would mean that the legend of Prester John did have some historical basis. The Letter of Prester John was a Medieval Bestseller. During the 13th century, a monk and chronicler, Alberic of Trois-Fontaines, recorded that in 1165, a letter, allegedly from Prester John, was sent to several Christian rulers, most notably Manuel I Komnenos, the Byzantine emperor, and Frederick I Barbarossa, the Holy Roman Emperor. These were the two most powerful secular rulers of Christendom at that time. Although the Letter of Prester John is today generally believed to be a hoax, the Christians of Medieval Europe may have been convinced of its authenticity. The pope, Alexander III, for instance, even sent a reply to Prester John through his physician, Philip, on September 27, 1177. Philip vanishes from history after that, as he probably did not succeed in his mission. Additionally, the Letter of Prester John was a best-seller during the , and over 100 versions of this letter were published in the centuries after its first appearance. Letter of Prester John. (Walters Art Museum/ CC BY SA 3.0 ) The Letter of Prester John is a much longer piece of text compared to Otto’s account of Prester John, and it is a considerable elaboration of the legend. For instance, Otto describes neither the power of Prester John, nor the extent of his kingdom. These details, however, are found in the Letter of Prester John . In one version of the text, for instance, Prester John claims to have 72 kings as his vassals, most of whom are not Christians. As for the extent of his kingdom, it is described as follows: “And our land stretches from the extremities of , where the body of Thomas the Apostle rests; and it extends through the wilderness to the setting sun, and reaches back, sloping to deserted Babylon, near the tower of Babylon.” These details were no doubt meant to portray Prester John as a powerful ruler, which is the chief purpose of the letter. Other details in the letter that serve this purpose include a list and description of the exotic flora and fauna in Prester John’s kingdom, and some of the peoples under his rule. For example, the letter speaks of an herb that drives evil spirits away , worms that can live only in fire, and people who can live under water for three or four months. The letter also describes the wealth of Prester John, as well as the might of his army: “Our men have abundance of all kinds of riches; …. We liken none on the face of the earth to us in riches. When we go to war in force against our enemies, we let carry before us fifteen large, magnificent crosses made of gold and silver, with precious stones therein, one in each car, instead of standards, and behind each one of them twelve thousand men of arms, and a hundred thousand foot soldiers, without counting the five thousand who have to do with bearing food and drink.” While the real author of the Letter of Prester John may never be known, it has been speculated that he / she was a Westerner who was probably familiar with two much older works – the ‘ Alexander Romance ,’ and the ‘ Acts of Thomas .’ The former, though based on the life of Alexander the Great , contains numerous fantastical elements, whereas the latter speaks of Saint Thomas’ mission to spread Christianity in India. The ‘ Acts of Thomas’ could have been the inspiration behind the possibility of a Christian ruler in the East and the ‘ Alexander Romance’ provided details for the marvelous flora, fauna, and peoples in this eastern kingdom. The Letter of Prester John may have been merely a piece of Medieval travel literature, though the original purpose of its composition, and how its readers received it, is unclear. Apart from the pope’s mission to Prester John, it seems that other Christian rulers did not really bother themselves with the legend. A Surprising ‘King David’ of India. During the 13th century, however, the legend of Prester John gained popularity once again. In 1221, the Fifth Crusade, which aimed to recapture Jerusalem and the Holy Land by seizing Cairo, the Ayyubid capital , ended in failure. When the Bishop of Acre, Jacques de Vitry, returned to Europe several years later, he brought with him a piece of good news – a King David of India, apparently the son or grandson of Prester John, had subdued the Muslim , which ruled over Persia at that time. Moreover, this King David was rumored to be marching against the other Muslims powers. Thus, the Christians of Europe were hopeful that they would be able to defeat the Muslims with the aid of this Christian monarch from the East. The rumors of this King David were not entirely false, nor were they entirely true. While King David was a king from the East, he was not a Christian. In fact, the Europeans soon learned that he was , the founder of the . Genghis Khan proclaimed Khagan of all . Illustration from a 15th-century Jami' al-tawarikh manuscript. ( Public Domain ) The Europeans soon learned that ‘King David,’ a supposed descendant of Prester John, was Genghis Khan. The connection between Genghis Khan and Prester John was also elaborated on by Christian writers during that time. The relation between the two figures vary from one author to another. In one version of the tale, for instance, Genghis Khan had been a vassal of Prester John, rebelled against him, and defeated him. In another, Prester John was identified as Toghrul, Genghis Khan’s foster father. In any case, it is clear that Prester John was no longer seen as the invincible Christian king of the earlier tales, but a human monarch, though mighty, who had been defeated by the Mongols. Initially, the Europeans tried to form alliances with the Mongols, and hoped that their conversion to Christianity would help them turn the tide against . However, the excessive brutality displayed by the Mongols during their conquests, as well as the fact that some of them converted to Islam, brought an end to the Europeans’ hopes. Where was the Kingdom of Prester John? Furthermore, during the 14th century, the Mongol Empire itself was disintegrating. As a consequence, the search for Prester John shifted from to Africa, more specifically to Abyssinia, an area which covers modern Ethiopia and Eritrea. This may be strange, as Prester John is said to be the King of India, which would mean that he came from somewhere in Asia, rather than Africa. The Medieval Europeans, however, have a different view of ‘India’ from us, and Abyssinia is sometimes considered to be part of it. Map of Africa by Abraham Ortelius (1527-1598). Latin title in box: Presbiteri Johannis, sive, Abissinorum Imperii descriptio ("A Description of the Empire of Prester John, that is to say, of the Abyssinians"). ( Public Domain ) The Europeans were aware that there were Christians in Abyssinia. Following the Islamic conquests during the 7th century AD, however, contact between the two areas was severed. Around the time when the Europeans no longer believed that Central Asia was the land of Prester John, contact between Europe and Abyssinia was re-established. During the 14th century, Abyssinian embassies had reached the courts of Europe, while Dominican missionaries made it as far as central Africa. Thus, by the end of the century, it was commonly agreed in Europe that Prester John was a ruler of Abyssinia. In one version of the legend, Prester John is said to have retired to Abyssinia after he was defeated by Genghis Khan, thus making a connection between the stories from the 14th and 13th centuries. The hope that Prester John would be a formidable ally of the Christians against their Muslim enemies continued during the 14th century and beyond. For instance, it was thought that he could have diverted or blocked the Nile, thereby starving the Muslims in Egypt into submission. This, however, was not done - with some arguing that Prester John, being a benevolent ruler, was reluctant to starve the Christians living along the Nile as well. Others, however, claim that Prester John had been paid off by the Muslims. The Fabled King’s Impact on the Age of Exploration. During the Age of Exploration, which began during the 15th century, one of the factors motivating the Portuguese explorers was the legend of Prester John. They were still hoping to find the kingdom of this legendary ruler, and to form an alliance with him / his descendants against the Muslims. Although the Portuguese never found Prester John, they did find a sea route to Asia, thereby ushering in a new era in world history. Prester John of the Indies. Close-up from a portolan chart from the late 16th century. (The Bodleian Libraries/ CC BY 4.0 ) Today, it is generally accepted that Prester John was a legendary figure who did not exist, or at least was based partly on actual historical personages. Nevertheless, it is undeniable that Prester John and his legend had a huge impact on the people of Medieval Europe. Moreover, by motivating the Portuguese during the Age of Exploration, the legend of Prester John exerted an influence on world history as well. Finally, Prester John was a literary icon. Apart from the Medieval texts mentioned earlier, he also appears in other, more modern works of literature, including William Shakespeare’s ‘ Much Ado About Nothing ,’ and Umberto Eco’s ‘ Baudolino .’ Top Image: Prester John was a legendary Medieval king. Source: diter / Adobe Stock.