The legend Prester John’s kingdom – the existence of a land between dream and reality in Romanian mediaeval culture
The legend Prester John’s kingdom – the existence of a land between dream and reality in Romanian mediaeval culture

Summary/Abstract: Africa and Asia came to exert a very particular form of fascination during the Middle Ages. Unlike fantastic stories about Africa (initially known as Libya) – which in mediaeval Cosmographies, especially that of Sebastian Münster, was afforded less importance than descriptions of other continents – written facts about Asia are numerous. One such work to mention a paradisiacal province in a faraway place is the legend of The Kingdom of Prester John, which is possibly based on the real-life existence of a Christian population in distant Asia. This popular European legend is present in Romanian pre-modern culture (via translations from Slavic languages) and the myth of Prester John is of particular significance to the history of the Romanian Church1. Research shows that, during the Romanian Middle Ages, The Kingdom of Prester John was found in three different types of works: the Physiologos, various Cosmographies, and the geographical text by Giovanni Botero, Le relazioni universali, which was partially translated into Romanian at the beginning of the 18th century.

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