King David, though not the one we’re talking about here, from a 13th century manuscript.
YOU CAN LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE HERE OR ON YOUR FAVOURITE PODCATCHER.
Sources:
Prester John: The Legend and its Sources, compiled and translated by Keagan Brewer. Taylor & Francis, 2019.
Crusade and Christendom: Annotated Documents in Translation from Innocent III to the Fall of Acre, 1187-1291. Edited by Jessalynn Bird, et al. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013.
The Fifth Crusade in Context: The Crusading Movement in the Early Thirteenth Century. Edited by E.J. Mylod, et al. Routledge, 2016.
Brownworth, Lars. In Distant Lands: A Short History of the Crusades. Crux Publishing Ltd, 2017.
Cassidy-Welch, Megan. War and Memory at the Time of the Fifth Crusade. Penn State University Press, 2019.
Madden, Thomas F. The New Concise History of the Crusades. Rowman & Littlefield, 2005.
Powell, James M. Anatomy of a Crusade, 1213-1221. University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986.
Powell, James M. Innocent III: Vicar of Christ Or Lord of the World? Catholic University of America Press, 1994.
Script:
“Damietta! Renowned among kingdoms, very famous in the pride of Babylon, ruler of the sea, plunderer of Christians, seized in the pride of your persecutors by means of a few small ladders, now you are ‘humbled under the mighty hand of God.’”
So wrote a triumphant Oliver of Paderborn after the capture of Damietta.
“The bishop of Acre,” he wrote, referring to Jacques de Vitry, “ released from you the first fruits of souls for God by cleansing in the sacramental waters of baptism your little ones, who were found in you, alive by his power, even though they were near death.”
“You have been subjected to manifold punishments,” he wrote, still addressing himself to the recently conquered city, “because besides those who were taken alive in you, your dead ... from the time of the siege round about you are [numbered] at thirty thousand and more. The Lord struck them down without sword and fire, scorning henceforth to endure the uncleanliness committed in you.”
Damietta was compared, in his writing, to a woman who had kicked out the adulterer and returned to her former husband, a metaphor with some weaknesses given that crusaders had not previously held the city. But inaccuracies aside, Oliver was in a most celebratory mood. He was very pleased with how things had gone, and he also looked to the future.
He wrote of a book of prophecy that had come to the besiegers’ attention before the city fell, one written in Arabic by an author who was, quote, “neither Jew nor Christian nor Saracen.” This mysterious author apparently wrote of mysterious things, some which had come to pass, concerning Salah ad-Din for example or the capture of Damietta which had just occurred, and some which had not, or not yet, a king who would destroy the city of Mecca and scatter the bones of Muhammad. This episode is, in a way, about that king.
Hello and welcome. My name is Devon, and this is Human Circus: Journeys in the Medieval World, the history podcast that covers all things medieval travel and medieval travel adjacent, and, as I may have mentioned to you before, it is a history podcast that is supported by a Patreon, one that could be supported by you at patreon.com/humancircus. Today, I want to especially thank my newest patron, Robbie, for doing so. Thank you Robbie!
And now back to the story. Back to the story of Prester John and the Fifth Crusade.
Last episode, we talked about the preparations for the Fifth Crusade, the arrival in Acre, the move to Egypt, and the Siege of Damietta. This time, we continue the story from there, from success in the siege to rumours and prophecies of impending aid, maybe from a western emperor, maybe from an eastern king. Meanwhile, the crusaders were deciding what they should do next, fresh from that successful siege. Should they press on? Should they stay? Should they perhaps take their campaign in a new direction?
After they took Damietta, what the crusaders did was wait. Clearly not in any great hurry, they would actually wait for an astonishing 20 months. They waited, and they settled into their newly conquered city, did a little looting, enjoyed themselves a little too much it was sometimes said, for though the city had run short of food over the previous months, there was no lack of material wealth to be snatched up. They lingered maybe too long, but then it was not exactly clear what they should be doing instead.
There was something of a lack of leadership at this stage, a general shortcoming that has often been blamed for the failure of the whole endeavour. John of Brienne, the King of Jerusalem, had headed back to Acre. He had wanted peace with the sultan and had other business to attend to for his holdings were threatened by al-Mu’azzam, the ruler of Damascus, and after he left, he was missed. The crusaders did still have the papal legate, Pelagius, but there were those among them who were not all that keen to follow him. It would all be so much better if Frederick would just show up, Frederick or somebody else. As to that at least, they had reason for optimism. Frederick was stirring their direction.
In the winter of 1220, Frederick renewed his crusading vows, pledging to first send men and then go join the effort himself, and in the spring of 1221, the first part of that promise was fulfilled as soldiers arrived with Duke Louis of Bavaria. Now at last, the emperor would soon be along to help them sweep away their opposition, and he was not the only powerful figure who they held out hope for. There was someone else too, someone new and special, someone who was of course Prester John, except that he wasn’t, not quite.
It wasn’t actually Prester John in the texts. It was King David. But who was that? Where did he come in? Where did he come from?
King David comes into the story in a family of texts that circulated at this time, texts known as the Relatio de Davide that actually reached and were read by Jacques de Vitry on crusade in Egypt. And what were they all about? What had this King David done? The overall theme was fairly constant—a mighty Christian ruler from the east—but the details varied, as did the connection to our main topic here.
In one of the texts, there is talk of this David and of the many great cities and lands which he ruled, some of the names easily identifiable as, for example, Bukhara, Merv, and Khwarazm, some less obviously so. There is mention of his one conquest, where the finest silks were made, and another, where there were “300 [cities] and 64 rivers, and 12,000 jurors or magistrates.” There is mention of capturing the realms of a Sultan Muhammad, a Great Sultan Kai-Khosrau, a Sultan Toghrul de l’Iraq, a Sultan Sardjahan, and an Emir Abu-Bakr.
In another of the texts, King David’s family situation is outlined, a bit of his backstory and family history, how he was “the son of King Israel, the son of King Sarkis, the son of King John … a believer in Jesus Christ.” That King John was of course Prester John, making David, according to this document, the great-grandson of our priest-king. There were six brothers, the first-born of whom had been made king but was, like his father, subject to a greater power, a king of kings.
A prophecy had been made that young David would make this king-of-king’s lands his own. The great king had David in his power at one point and was going to kill him, but he was shamed out of killing a boy who was under his protection, an act of basic decency which he would later come to regret. David would grow up to conquer him, very much as had been foretold, to kill most of his people, and to carry him off in golden shackles. And David would go on to other great victories too, on the borders of India, and again near China, and also in Khwarazm. The text lists city after city that submitted to him and his armies. It talks of the great leaders who he commanded, how one himself commanded 100,000 men and another 200,000. How when someone from one of the conquered cities had killed his steward, David went back and brought down the city’s walls and towers, how in that city, he had killed 80,000 fighting men.
There’s a whole section in the text about David’s dealings with the caliph of Baghdad. It’s all very civil and friendly, but then David is sweeping ever closer. He’s entering the land of the Georgians, defeating them and seizing forty castles, for, quote, “although they were Christians, they had allied with the Saracens,” thus, apparently, deserving of this fate. His envoys are riding into Baghdad under a banner with the sign of the cross, and they’re telling the caliph that their king is well-disposed towards him for his “sincere heart towards Christians” and because of this would allow him to keep one sixth of his land, but King David wanted Baghdad, and he wanted money in gold and silver to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. Those envoys refused the extra money that the caliph also offered in gifts, but they did have him free a group of Christian knights that Sultan al-Kamil had sent him from Egypt as a gift.
“On account of [all of] this, we remind all those who believe in Jesus Christ to beseech God in order that triumph and health be preserved for King David, who is obedient to God and the holy church, who liberates believers from the hands of unbelievers, who is king of kings, who destroys the law of the Saracens, who protects the holy church, who is king of the Orient.”
This king was out there, or so it was believed. An impossibly powerful Christian ruler, the great-grandson of Prester John, or sometimes the son, and a man who planned on reclaiming and refortifying Jerusalem. You could see how it would be an exciting prospect for someone like Jacques de Vitry who read these reports while waiting in Egypt. He read them, but you might be wondering if he believed them. Did anyone else?
The short answer is yes, yes he did. Yes, they did, and we have the sources to show it.
There is one document written by a pair of clergymen in Damietta to their colleagues back in Munster, and their belief was sufficient for them to write to those colleagues of how King David was even then rushing to Jerusalem, of how he had conquered great lands, cities, and castles “by means of God’s help, just as Hell is contained.”
There is one from Pope Honorius III himself, a letter written to the Archbishop of Trier and dated that March of 1221. In it, Honorius urged the archbishop to press all would-be crusaders in his region to fulfill their vows and also to bring horses with them when they went, for there was a scarcity of mounts in Egypt. He wrote that his legate Pelagius had sent messengers to the Georgians asking them to threaten al-Kamil’s allies from their side, drawing away any help that the sultan might receive. And he wrote about Prester John. He told the archbishop what he had heard from Pelagius, that quote:
“King David, who is commonly called Prester John, a Catholic and God-fearing man, has entered Persia with a mighty force and, having defeated the Sultan of Persia on the battlefield, is invading and occupying 24 days’ worth of his land … he has proceeded so far from that region that his army is not even ten days distant from Baghdad, that greatest and most infamous city which is said to be the special seat of the Caliph.”
As far as Pelagius and the pope were concerned, Prester John was very real and increasingly close, and he was already affecting matters. As Honorius had it, the Sultan of Aleppo was already reacting in fear to Prester John’s approach and directing his forces accordingly.
And then there was Jacques de Vitry. That April of 1221, as he waited in Egypt, Jacques recorded his assessment of the situation, addressing himself to Honorius and to other notables. Matters, as he saw them, stood like this.
Things were looking bright for the crusaders, Jacques wrote, even as that light dimmed for al-Kamil and his supporters. It was not only Damietta that had been taken. There were fortresses too: Toronum in the sand, Thanis, and Butavant on the lake. Meanwhile, al-Kamil had not only lost those holdings. He had also lost allies. The ruler of Damascus had withdrawn and also the governor of al-Jazira, and that governor had left because of King David.
Jacques enthuses over David’s coming at great length. He actually includes those two sources I talked about a moment ago almost in their entirety, translated, he says, from Arabic into Latin, and he adds to them. King David was, quote, “a most powerful man and a knight strenuous in arms, fiery in nature, and most victorious in battle, whom the Lord,” still quoting, “roused in our times to be the hammer of pagans and the exterminator of the pestilential tradition and detestable law of the faithless Muhammad; he is the man whom the common people call Prester John.” Whether this was actually John himself or his great-grandson, it doesn’t seem to have mattered very much.
Whether you called him John or David, the king was coming, Jacques wrote. God had amplified his deeds and directed his steps, bringing peoples and places beyond count into his dominion. Now, according to Jacques, he was “only 15 days’ journey away from Antioch, hurrying to come to the promised land to visit the sepulchre of the Lord and rebuild the holy city,” and he was intending to conquer the territories of Aleppo and Damascus so that no adversary would remain at his back. Word of his coming had travelled to Bohemond IV of Antioch. It had spread with people travelling from the east, and from merchants bringing spices and precious stones. It had reached al-Kamil by way of messengers from the caliph in Baghdad, and it had left him “terrified in soul and confused in mind,” willing, Jacques said, to offer this or that to obtain a truce.
You see, in reading Jacques’ letter, how confident he was, and after this quick break, during which you’ll hear from the Twilight Histories podcast, we’ll pick that thread up again.
...
That confidence felt by Jacques and the rest, wasn’t owed only to the approach of King David/John. There was, in addition, fresh word from Frederick that he would be along soon with “great strength and sumptuous supplies.” There was an enemy reeling in horror at the arrival of a powerful eastern lord, and then there was the prophecy, the book that had somehow come into their possession. It had apparently been written by a Muslim astrologer, and for the crusaders, it contained everything they wanted to hear.
This astrologer had written of events which they read as having already come to pass and others that had not yet done so. He had “predicted how a multitude of Christians would obtain Damietta, Alexandria, Cairo, Babylonia, and all the regions of Egypt.” He had, most strikingly for Jacques de Vitry and ourselves, “predicted “how a prince of Christians, most powerful in the strength of his army of Christian people, would seize Damascus and Aleppo and all the neighbouring provinces, and would liberate the city of Jerusalem along with all of Syria… .”
Jacques de Vitry did allow that there were those around him who didn’t trust the source of these prophecies, a Muslim, but then to reassure those who doubted, another source had been produced by certain friendly Syrians, likely Copts I’ve seen it suggested, an ancient book: “The Revelations of the blessed Peter the apostle by his disciple Clement.” This author’s integrity and accuracy were unquestionable, and for the crusaders, its message was, again, full of promise. The end was imminent for Christianity’s enemies, “as though it were standing in a doorway.” The fall of Damietta was anticipated there on the page, referred to as the “city which is grassy and surrounded with waters,” and in times to come, it was said that two kings would control it: one from the west, maybe Frederick Jacques might have thought, and one from the east, King David. Through the hands of these kings, quote, “the Lord [would] exterminate the detestable law of the wicked men.”
It all seemed very positive for Jacques and the rest, but there was, in that same document, a moment of uncertainty, a bit of shaken conviction in Jacques words. It was April of 1221, and, quote, “...after a long time, we have not heard any notable letters or pleasant rumours either from David, the eastern king, or from the emperor Frederick… .” Jacques de Vitry, surely not alone, was eager for those prophecies to finally be born out. It all fitted in nicely with the apocalyptic ideas that had long simmered and stewed as part of the crusading dynamic, of the retaking of Jerusalem as precondition for the final stages of the human drama, and of the Christian emperor who would be placed on the throne there.
By mid-summer of the year 1221, however, there was still no Frederick, no David, no eastern or western emperor appearing over the horizon to carry the crusaders of Damietta to a victory not only right there against al-Kamil, but everywhere. They were rejoined by John of Brienne though, John having been berated into doing so by the pope, and what John found when he got back to Damietta was that matters had already been decided in his absence. A plan was already in place to be acted upon.
Pelagius had long been pushing for an advance on Cairo, and while Louis, Frederick’s man, didn’t really support that, he did agree that something did need to be done if only so that the men were not sitting idle any longer. What they had eventually settled on was an attack on al-Kamil’s fortified encampment at Mansurah, highly fortified by this point. The offensive would get things moving again in a positive direction and would provide a good forward position from which Frederick, when he got there, could then move on and take Cairo. As for John, he didn’t like the idea at all—he wanted to wait for Frederick—but it was already decided, and his grumblings were ignored, with Pelagius even threatening excommunication for anyone who opposed the march south.
So they didn’t listen to John then, setting forth from Damietta in mid-July, and they didn’t listen to him later, when he warned against taking up a dangerous position between the Nile and one of its tributaries. They ignored this apparently obstinate naysayer, and so that dangerous position was exactly where they were when reinforcements arrived in the form of al-Kamil’s brothers and their forces.
The crusaders, in summary, were cut off, flung into a state of siege in which they were no longer the aggressors. Their provisions dwindled. In late August, they made an attempt to fight their way out and head back north, but they found no one to fight. Their enemies had no need to confront them directly, not when they could open the floodgates and have the Nile decide matters for them, which they promptly did.
With the crusader camp flooded, Pelagius turned to John in desperation, but there was little that the King of Jerusalem could do at that point. He prepared for an open battle, but again, the opponent was not willing to give them one, and why should he? Al-Kamil needn’t spend men unnecessarily, and even if he were to absolutely crush his adversaries, as he was surely in position to do, then he would still need to lay siege to those left behind in Damietta, surely a time-consuming and unpleasant prospect. Better to strike a deal here and now and be done with it all, now, when he had John, Pelagius, and Louis at his mercy. They were to be allowed to leave that flooded encampment, but they and the rest of the crusaders were to leave Damietta also. They were to leave Egypt. Al-Kamil even offered the True Cross to help smooth the whole thing over—though he would never actually provide it—and the crusading leadership agreed. They had little choice.
The crusader withdrawal from Egypt was not entirely without obstacles. The defenders of Damietta, some only freshly arrived since Pelagius and the others had departed, were appalled at the news of what had happened and not at all eager to surrender their hold on that city. They had come all this way for a crusade and were now being denied one. Some were shocked that any such march south had been made in the first place, that the entire venture had been risked and then sacrificed before Frederick could even set foot on those shores, that the whole game had been forfeited before their strongest player could take the field, though of course, Frederick shares some of the blame there.
In the end, angered, upset, or otherwise, and despite all the organization that had gone into it, the immense effort that was the Fifth Crusade was being abandoned, its participants dispersed.
But what of Prester John? That is, after all, really the main topic here. What had those stories of King David to do with all of this? By some accounts, quite a bit.
By the accounts of Jacques de Vitry and the pope, quite a bit, for the way the coming of Prester John/King David had impacted their worldview, but perhaps also for more than that. Did they delay so long in Damietta partially because they were waiting not just for Frederick but also for King David to join them and guarantee their victory? By Keegan Brewer’s reading, the answer is yes, that this rumour, this idea, sent the course of events spinning in a new direction, or held it in its orbit just a little longer, so that by the time it came back around, things had changed. Matters fell into place in a new and, for the crusaders, unfortunate way.
But aside from that, I wonder also if their confidence in David’s arrival might have influenced them in their ill-conceived southern march. Did the comforting assurance that an eastern king would soon fulfil those prophecies make them just a little too sure of themselves, a little too cozy in the blanket of their own invincibility, a little more likely to slip up in their advance and leave themselves open to the disaster that ensued? Maybe. That is how this has sometimes been read, and we do have some supporting evidence of the relevant ideas spreading in the crusading army.
We’ve already seen a little of what Pelagius and the pope thought about the eastern king. We’ve seen what Jacques de Vitry thought, and just in case you’re wondering if they kept those thoughts to themselves or limited them to written reports back to Europe, know that they did not. In one of those letters, Jacques writes of reading from one of those books of prophecy about the coming of the king, of showing it to quote, “all the people in the sand before Damietta.” Whatever numbers “all the people” actually entailed, Jacques was a believer who was actively spreading the word, and he was not alone.
There’s one more source I’ll reference here, one written some time after the events of the fifth crusade, in the late 1220s, but written by someone who was there on hand at time, by Oliver of Paderborn. Oliver would also write of a book written in Arabic, one which told of things past, the victories of Salah ad-Din, or so they interpreted it, the recent “destruction of the gardens of palm-trees in the city of Damietta… .” But there was, in addition, this, that, quote, “a certain king of the Nubian Christians would destroy the city of Mecca and cast out the scattered bones of Muhammad…,” that events would transpire which would “result in the elevation of Christianity.”
In fact, says God, in Oliver’s writing:
“I have found David, My servant; with My holy oil have I anointed him King of the Indians, whom I have ordered to avenge My wrongs, to rise up against the many-headed beast. To him I have brought victory against the King of the Persians. I have placed a great part of Asia beneath his feet.”
King David, Oliver tells us, had defeated first the Persian king and then other kings and kingdoms. He was “believed to be the executor of divine vengeance, the hammer of Asia.” He was the son of Prester John, a slight variation there as to the exact relationship, and Oliver writes that after Damietta fell, Pelagius, the papal legate, ordered that one of these books of prophecy be read aloud by an interpreter “to the ears of the multitude,” very much confirming what Jacques de Vitry said on the matter, that the promise of David’s coming, clearly prevalent among the religious leadership, was disseminated among the crusading army there in Egypt.
To what degree that affected them, we must, to some extent, imagine.
Oliver would add that the looming figure of King David had an impact on matters in Syria too, as rulers there deliberated whether to go to Egypt or not and wondered, under threat of that powerful king, if they shouldn’t instead stay closer to their own lands. And this brings us to one last point I want to talk about here in this episode.
Of course, we know that King David aka Prester John, his son, or his grandson, was never coming to the aid of the crusaders. We know that the crusaders took those prophecies seriously, that they were led astray by them, and that this may possibly have contributed to the failure of their campaign. But then it wasn’t just prophecies, was it? It wasn’t just that one or two books foretold the arrival of a kind of apocalyptic king. It was more than that which gave the crusaders hope.
There were rumours circulating, brought by merchants and other travellers. There were, as Oliver puts it, “the great many letters written about the victory of King David, along with his common fame amongst Christians and Saracens.” There’s a story that comes up a few times of how knights captured in Egypt were sent to the caliph in Baghdad as gifts, only to be released and returned to Antioch at the urging of the representatives of King David. This King David had an existence outside that of letter and prophecy, just not quite that which the crusaders were fondly imagining. He had substance. He was very real, and so were his victories, his armies.
By 1221, those armies had already won such renown, such conquests in Central Asia, that word was reaching the crusaders. He had united the surrounding nomadic groups of the steppes and won victories over the Xi Xia, the Jin, the Qara Khitai, and the Khwarazmian Empire. He was getting closer. He wasn’t exactly coming to help, but Genghis Khan, the khan of khans, was coming.
Sometimes, when you wish for something, you see confirmation of it everywhere. You’d heard about that distant priest-king and his immense, terrible powers, and it was all okay, better than okay because he was on your side. He had been distant, but he was becoming less so. He was getting closer. Letters from afar had become news carried by merchants and other travellers. Just tantalizingly out of view, you were hearing of the impact of his onslaught. You could not see the fire yet, but there were creatures of the bush scuttling past you, and was that not smoke on the horizon? The letters, the prophecies, the reports of this lord or that collapsing before the priest-king’s advance, it was all telling you that things were going to be alright. The defeats of the past no longer mattered because the entire landscape was about to change. And indeed it would.
You were not wrong about that.
Sometimes, you wish for something, and you get nothing at all. Sometimes you wish, and you get Mongols
Next episode, we’ll get into that.