Bartolomeu Dias

Prester John 7: The Way from Lisbon

Detail from the Cantino planisphere, a Portuguese map from 1502.

It's part 7 of the Prester John story, on the trip to Prester John's Ethiopia, and on the Portuguese crown's pursuit of the priest-king and how that story was connected to the developing ones of exploration and colonialism.

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Sources:

  • A Journal of the First Voyage of Vasco Da Gama, 1497-1499, translated by Ernst Georg Ravenstein. The Hakluyt Society, 1898

  • Prester John: The Legend and its Sources, compiled and translated by Keagan Brewer. Taylor & Francis, 2019.

  • Ferreira, Susannah. The Crown, the Court and the Casa Da Índia Political Centralization in Portugal 1479-1521. Brill, 2015.

  • Knobler, Adam. Mythology and Diplomacy in the Age of Exploration. Brill, 2016.

  • Krebs, Verena. Medieval Ethiopian Kingship, Craft, and Diplomacy with Latin Europe. Springer International, 2021.

  • Krebs, Verena. "Re-examining Foresti's Supplementum Chronicarum and the 'Ethiopian' embassy to Europe of 1306," in Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, Volume 82, Issue 3 (October 2019) .

  • Kurt, Andrew. "The search for Prester John, a projected crusade and the eroding prestige of Ethiopian kings, c .1200 – c .1540," in Journal of Medieval History, 39.3 (September 2013).

  • Salvadore, Matteo. The African Prester John and the Birth of Ethiopian-European Relations, 1402-1555. Taylor & Francis, 2016.

  • Salvadore, Matteo. "The Ethiopian Age of Exploration: Prester John's Discovery of Europe, 1306-1458," in Journal of World History, Vol. 21, No. 4 (December 2010).