[728] Jordani Nemorarii Geometria vel De triangulis libri IV, ed. M. Curtze, Thorn, 1887, pp. 43-44.
[729] A good brief summary of the results of d’Avezac, Zarncke, and others will be found in Sir Henry Yule’s article on “Prester John,” EB. For the various texts to be here considered, with later interpolations and additions distinguished, see Friedrich Zarncke, Der Priester Johannes, in Abhandl. d. Kgl. Sächs. Gesells. d. Wiss. VII (1879), 627-1030; VIII (1883) 1-186.
[730] In Yule (1903) I, 231-7, Cordier discusses whether this monarch was Gurkhan of Kara Khitai (as urged by d’Avezac and Oppert) who “in 1141 came to the aid of the King of Khwarizmi against Sanjar, the Seljukian sovereign of Persia, ... and defeated that prince with great slaughter,” or whether he was “John Orbelian ... for years the pride of Georgia and the hammer of the Turks” (as urged by Professor Bruun of Odessa).
[731] For its text, with interpolations distinguished from the original text, see Zarncke (1879) 909-924. Some of the passages which Zarncke regards as interpolations are, however, already found in 12th century MSS. On the other hand, his text does not include all the interpolations and variations to be found even in the MSS which he describes. For instance, in BN 6244A, fol. 130r, just before the description of the herb assidios, occurs a passage which may be translated as follows: “You should know also that in our country we do not need doctors, for we have precious stones, herbs, fountains, and trees of so great virtue that they prevail against every infirmity and against poisons and wounds. And we have books which instruct us and distinguish between the potencies and virtues of the herbs.” In this MS Prester John is also more voluble on the theme of his devotion to the Christian faith than appears in Zarncke’s text, and (fols. 127v-128r) repeats the story of the administration of the Eucharist by the hand of the body of the Apostle Thomas. Zarncke lists about one hundred MSS of the letter but fails to use or mention any of those in the Bodleian Library where, for instance, Digby 158, fols. 2r-5v, is of the twelfth century. Another twelfth century MS not in his list is Paris Arsenal 379A, fol. 34. Zarncke also does not list the MSS of the letter at Madrid and Wolfenbüttel.
[732] In many MSS. nothing is said of its being a translation or when or by whom it was translated; others state that it was translated into Greek and Latin, or, in at least one case, from Arabic into Latin. Only from the thirteenth century on, I think, is Christian, Archbishop of Mainz, sometimes said to have translated it from Greek into Latin. Often it is simply stated that Manuel transmitted the letter to the Emperor Frederick, to whom also it is sometimes represented as sent direct by Prester John. Sometimes it is to the Pope to whom the letter comes from Manuel or Prester John.
The statement that Manuel transmitted the letter to the Emperor Frederick makes one wonder whether Anselm, Bishop of Havelberg and later of Ravenna, can have had anything to do with it. He was sent by Frederick on an embassy to Manuel in 1153, which seems to identify him with the author of a “Liber de diversitate nature et persone proprietatumque personalium non tam Latinorum quam ex Grecorum auctoritatibus extractus”—CUL 1824 (Qi. vi. 27), beautiful 13th century hand, fols. 129-76,—who states in his preface that he collected his Greek authorities in Constantinople where he was sent by Frederick on an embassy to Manuel, and on his return to Germany showed them to “Petro venerabili Tusculano episcopo.”
[733] Such as Apocrisarius and Archimandrite, a word however not entirely unknown in the west; see Ducange.
[734] “Cum enim hominem nos esse cognoscamus, te Graeculi tui Deum esse existimant, cum te mortalem et humanae corruptioni subiacere cognoscamus,” Zarncke (1879) 910.
[735] For instance, the writer twice alludes to the square before Prester John’s palace where he watches the combatants in judicial duels or wager of battle, Zarncke (1879) 918, 919.
[736] I have seen a copy in the British Museum (IA.8685), De Mirabilibus Indiae, where the account given Calixtus II of miracles of the Apostle Thomas is run together with the letter of Prester John.