THE PRINCIPLE OF HOPE

Page 769
three letters. The news of the Moslem defeat filtered through to the west, the historian Otto von Freising heard of it from a Syrian bishop in 1145, and even in this first
account the Nestorian Turkish prince was turned into a descendant of the Three Wise Men, into St George who defeated Islam. This was joined by hazy ideas about
Mongolian theocracy, passed on by travelling merchants; thus the military­geographical utopia of Prester John finally developed at the same time that its prototype, the
radiant Expected One, was already dead. This is the now transparent external cause of this legend itself, — the purposive­factual cause, which produced the
conspicuous mystification of the letters, admittedly appears considerably more obscure. Their author is completely unknown, the social mission behind the forgery,
assuming there was one at all, can hardly be guessed at with plausible reasons. A French historian, de la Roncière (The discovery of Africa in the Middle Ages, 1929),
admittedly declares that the letter is ‘a forgery perpetrated by Bishop Christian of Mainz between 1165 and 1177, in which the legend of Alexander the Great was
used’; but all the evidence for this hypothesis is lacking. Almost as little is known about the purpose of the mystification, despite a very interesting interpretation by
Olschki in terms of a political utopia (‘Der Brief des Presbyters Johannes’, Hist. Zeitschrift, Vol. 144, [1931], p. 1). According to this, the garb of geographical fable
was only padding, exciting and accessible, it was only a stimulus and a recommendation. There was a political purpose behind it: the tormented Europe of Frederick
Barbarossa was to be presented with an ideal portrait of the opposite kind, a picture of the secure and peaceful life of numerous nations under a theocratic government
which provides and maintains both material and moral welfare. Hence the profusion of humane touches besides the swaggering ones: the abolition of private property,
the realm without discord and war, the tolerance towards the numerous non­Christians within the realm under a Christian priest (with the characteristic omission of the
Moslems). Hence the simple title of presbyter for the head of such a vast state (in connection with attacks against the idolization of the Byzantine emperorship). In its
exotic atmosphere, Prester John's letter would therefore be a similar ruse to Montesquieu's ‘Persian letters’, for example (which were admittedly addressed by fictitious
Persians from the West to the East); but the substance of its ideas could possibly come from the direction of Bernard of Clairvaux and the reformed order of his
Cistercians. A good many things support this interpretation, it would give point and relief to an otherwise incomprehensible aplomb; though it is not clear what kind of a
utopian value tolerance