Prester John

The legend of Prester John (also Presbyter John), popular in Europe from the 12th through the 17th centuries, told of a mythical Christian patriarch and king said to rule over a Christian nation lost amidst the Muslims and pagans in the Orient. Reportedly a descendant of one of the Three Magi, Prester John was said to be a generous ruler and a virtuous man, with a realm full of riches and strange creatures, in which the Patriarch of St. Thomas resided. His kingdom was first imagined to be India, but later accounts shifted it to Central Asia and Ethiopia.

Further reading

• Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science: During the First Thirteen Centuries of Our Era, Volume II, pp. 236-245, Columbia University Press, 1923, New York and London, Hardcover, 1036 pages ISBN 0231087950
• (Johannes Presbyter) Edition and study of the "Letter of Prester John to the Emperor Manuel of Constantinople": The Anglo-Norman rhymed version, Robert Anthony Vitale, editor, College Park, Maryland, 1975
• Wilhelm Baum, Die Verwandlungen des Mythos vom Reich des Priesterkönigs Johannes, Klagenfurt 1999
• Umberto Eco, Baudolino ISBN 0156029065 -- Baudolino and his ragtag friends engage in typical scholastic debates of the period, trying to determine the dimensions of Solomon's Temple and the location of the Earthly Paradise. And when the Emperor needs support for his claims to a saintly lineage, who but Baudolino can craft the perfect letter of homage from the legendary Prester John, Holy (and wholly fictitious) Christian King of the East?
• Marco Polo, The Travels of Marco Polo, which tells much of Prester John's supposed history, written in 1298. See especially Book I, Chapters 46-50, 59; and Book II,Chapters 38-39.
• Robert Silverberg, The Realm of Prester John ISBN 1842124099
• Charles Beckingham, Prester John, the Mongols and the Ten Lost Tribes, Aldershot 1996, ISBN 086078553X -- Assembly of the essential source texts and studies.