HISTORY

ETHIOPIA AND PRESTER JOHN

History

Orthodox Christianity became the established church of the Ethiopian Axumite Kingdom under king Ezana in the 4th century through the efforts of a Syrian Greek named Frumentius, known in Ethiopia as Abba Selama, Kesaté Birhan ("Father of Peace, Revealer of Light"). As a youth, Frumentius had been shipwrecked with his brother Aedesius on the Eritrean coast. The brothers managed to be brought to the royal court, where they rose to positions of influence and converted king Ezana to Christianity, causing him to be baptised in 330 AD. Ezana sent Frumentius to Alexandria to ask the Patriarch, St. Athanasius, to appoint a bishop for Ethiopia. Athanasius appointed Frumentius himself, who returned to Ethiopia as Bishop with the name of Abune Selama.

From then on, until 1959, the Pope of Alexandria, as Patriarch of All Africa, always named an Egyptian (a Copt) to be Abuna or Archbishop of the Ethiopian Church.

After the disappearance of the kingdom of Axum in 619 the Abune of Axum became Metropolitan of Axum and All Ethiopia. In the 14th century, after the muslim conquest of Nubia and the fall of king   Kudanbes in 1323, he is mentioned as “Patriarch of Nubia and Ethiopia”.

Ethiopia and Prester John

The legends of Prester John (also Presbyter John), popular in Europe from the 12th through the 17th centuries, told of a Christian patriarch and king said to rule over a Christian nation lost amidst the Muslims and pagans in the Orient. Written accounts of this kingdom are variegated collections of medieval popular fantasy. Reportedly a descendant of one of the Three Magi, Prester John was said to be a generous ruler and a virtuous man, presiding over a realm full of riches and strange creatures, in which the Patriarch of the Saint Thomas Christians resided. His kingdom contained such marvels as the Gates of Alexander and the Fountain of Youth, and even bordered the Earthly Paradise. Among his treasures was a mirror through which every province could be seen, the fabled original from which derived the "speculum literature" of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, in which the prince's realms were surveyed and his duties laid out.

In the fourteenth century the kingdom of Prester John was imagined in Nubia and Ethiopia. Much confusion arose from the contardictory ideas that Earthly Paradise was situated in Africa and that the Euphrates flew though Paradise.

The Franciscan monk and world traveller, author of  the Book of Knowledge, possibly insipred by the work of Ibn Battuta writes:

(I) travelled over many lands and through many cities arriving at the city of Malsa [Melée] where the Preste Iohan always resides.  He is the Patriarch of Nubia and Ethiopia, and at his coming  he always goes along the banks of the Euphrates. [............].

With this Euphrates he meant the Nile and he shows, further on, that he was quite aware that this was not the Mesopotamian Euphrates.

Thus we can be sure that, according to the author of the Book of Knowledge, the empire of Preste John has to be situated in Africa, and in particular along the Nile.

He also gives the flag of Preste John:

“The device of Preste Iohan is a white flag with a black cross having two crooks one on each side. For in Nubia and Ethiopia there are two emperors, one being Emperor of Graçiona and the other Emperor of Magdasor”  [1]

Three versions of the arms of Prester John in the Book of Knowledge (fig. 71)

In one of the editions of the Book of Knowledge there is also a triple cross on a white field. This matches two other devices.

The first is given in the margin of the Secreta Fidelium Crucis of Marino Sanudo, written 1320-’21.  [2]

Egyptian troops and Nubian crusaders in the manuscript of Marino Sanudo

This shows a group of knights chasing another with the banner of Alexandria. The knights themselves, of fairly black complexion, have a red triple cross on a yellow field on their shields and on the horseclothes of their commander.

The second is given on the portolan of Angelino Dulcerta who depicts red triple crosses in the territory below the confluence of the White and the Blue Nile. [3]

Later 14th and 15 c. Catalan sources also situate banners with the triple cross between the White and Blue Nile and Mecia de Viladestes even paints a portrait of Preste John in the same region.[4]

Flag of Nubia in the Atlas Catalan, 1375 ca.

This flag dates from the time of Metropolitan Salama II (1348-1388)

This flag is in the portolan of Mecia de Viladestes from 1413 in the region between the White and the Blue Nile. Below is a picture of Prester John, then Bartalomewos of Ethiopia (1398-1436), dressed in red and with a mitre on his head.

We may be sure that, according to 14t and 15th c. Catalan sources, the empire of Prester John has to be situated in the region between the White and the Blue Nile and that he himself can be identified as the Metropolitan Archbishop of Axum and Ethiopia.

The name of this prelate, used in the West, may not surprise us too much because of the Metropolitans of Axum and Ethiopia fifteen of them bore the name of Johannes, the thirteenth of that name, ruling about 1300 being of particular interest for us.

The banner with a red triple cross disappeared in the 15th century. Instead a sceptre with a red recrossed cross was depicted in the hands of Preito Iohan on the portolan of Gabriel de Vallseca of 1439. [5]

Preito Iohan on the portolan of Gabriel de Vallseca

After the Council of Konstanz in 1415-’18 the flags and coat of arms with the triple cross crosslet disappears. Instead a coat of arms appears with a square cross also ascribed to Preste John until it became clear that the Emperor of Ethiopia was not a priest but a prince from the House of Solomon. This will be explained in the section about the arms of the Emperor of Ethiopia.