Pope Alexander III and the Ambassador - Spinello Aretino
A shorter episode, on a letter from Pope Alexander III to Prester John.
If you like what you hear and want to chip in to support the podcast, my Patreon is here.
Sources:
Prester John: The Legend and its Sources, compiled and translated by Keagan Brewer. Taylor & Francis, 2019.
Pope Alexander III (1159–81): The Art of Survival. Taylor & Francis, 2016.
Rachewiltz, Igor de. Papal Envoys to the Great Khans. Stanford University Press, 1971.
Prester John comfortably enthroned in East Africa - Detail from the Queen Mary Atlas, MS 5415 A British Library
On the many fantastic additions to the Letter of Prester John (Dragons! Strange Bakeries! Etc!), and on the theories around it.
Sources:
Prester John: The Legend and its Sources, compiled and translated by Keagan Brewer. Taylor & Francis, 2019.
Nowell, Charles E. "The Historical Prester John." Speculum 28, no. 3 (1953).
Romm, James S. The Edges of the Earth in Ancient Thought Geography, Exploration, and Fiction. Princeton University Press, 2019.
Wang, I-Chun. "Alexander the Great, Prester John, Strabo of Amasia, and Wonders of the East." CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 14.5 (2012).
From "Le Livre des Merveilles", 15th century. From the Gallica Digital Library. (Wikimedia)
The legend in its early forms: the arrival in Rome of a patriarch from the east, the chronicles of Otto of Freising, and that famous "letter."
If you like what you hear and want to chip in to support the podcast, my Patreon is here.
Sources:
Otto of Freising, Chronicon, ed. G.H. Pertz, MGH SSRG (Hanover: Hahn, 1867), VII, 33, (pp. 334-35), translated by James Brundage, The Crusades: A Documentary History, (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 1962). Accessed at Fordham University Internet Medieval Sourcebook.
Prester John: The Legend and its Sources, compiled and translated by Keagan Brewer. Taylor & Francis, 2019.
Baring-Gould, Sabine. Curious Myths of the Middle Ages. Roberts Brothers, 1867.
Heng, Geraldine. The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages. Cambridge University Press, 2018.
