Medieval Phoenix and Prester John

You probably recognize the bird in this 13th-century Medieval illumination as the legendary Phoenix, who lived for 500 years and then cast itself into flames in order to be reborn. Medieval people had never seen such beasts, of course, but loved to imagine that fantastical creatures lived far away in exotic lands — and the stories about such distant places held the Medieval imagination for centuries.

Maybe we, more than previous moderns, can relate to the Medieval wanderlust for things not normally experienced, since we have lived through the smaller worlds imposed on us by the travel restrictions from the pandemic. At any rate, one of the most talked-about far-off places was the land of Prester John, a legendary ruler of a remote and fabulously wealthy Christian kingdom.

Just because Prester John was made up didn’t mean Medievals thought he was fake. Stories about his reign and lands started in the 12th century. In a letter allegedly written by him in 1165, the writer claims that he commands 72 tributary kings in a land to the east – vaguely in the direction of India – where wealth abounds. Prester John describes a fantastic kingdom that includes a wellspring that will keep people at age 32; beasts such as phoenixes, horned men, Amazons, and ever-burning salamanders; and a natural world bursting with temperate climates with all the trees, water, and jewels just laying about that one might want.

My favorite feature of Prester John’s lands (as described in the 1165 letter) was a mirror standing atop many columns in his palace. This mirror was fashioned “by such art that all machinations and all things which happen for and against us in the adjacent provinces subject to us are most clearly seen and known” — he was describing a surveillance camera (!), over 800 years before one was actually invented.

As the Medieval world changed, lands “to the east” became less exotic, and thus the legendary ruler’s kingdom began to migrate. For a while Prester John was thought to reign in Africa, and eventually to the “New World” discovered in the Age of Exploration. The legend speaks to a longing for unknown places and creatures that humans have perhaps always possessed.