In this modern account of the genesis of a great medieval myth, celebrated science fiction author Robert Silverberg’s explores the mysterious origins of Prester John, the astonishing Christian potentate of the East. Prester John was a legendary figure who cast a powerful spell over Latin Christendom for almost five centuries. Rumors of the warrior-king-prelate’s fabulous realms first reached Europe in the eleventh century and quickly assumed an exalted status alongside such fabled wonders as El Dorado, The Fountain of Youth, and the Holy Grail. The defeat of a Moslem Turkish tribe by a Buddhist Chinese warlord seems to have been the unlikely historical nugget around which the Prester John myth grew, but contributions to this strange saga have also been traced all around the globe to the Apostle Thomas' apocryphal preaching in India, to the actual existence of small colonies of Nestorian schismatics in central Asia, and even to Genghis Khan.

From the 14th century onward, political and religious motives led Ethiopian travelers to Mediterranean Europe. For two centuries, their ancient Christian heritage and the myth of a fabled eastern king named Prester John allowed the Ethiopians to engage the continent's secular and religious elites as peers. Meanwhile, back home the Ethiopian nobility came to welcome European visitors and at times even co-opted them by arranging mixed marriages and bestowing land rights. The protagonists of this encounter sought and discovered each other in royal palaces, monasteries, and markets throughout the Mediterranean basin, the Red Sea, and the Indian Ocean littoral, from Lisbon to Jerusalem and from Venice to Goa. Matteo Salvadore's narrative takes the reader on a voyage of reciprocal discovery that climaxed with the Portuguese intervention on the side of the Christian monarchy in the Ethiopian-Adali War. Thereafter, the arrival of the Jesuits at the Horn of Africa turned the mutually beneficial Ethiopian-European encounter into a bitter confrontation over the souls of Ethiopian Christians.

Most writers have considered that the great European explorations during the Age of Discovery were motivated primarily by a thirst for knowledge of other lands, desire for international trade, or missionary zeal. Professor Rogers demonstrates that there was another significant reason why Europeans traveled to the East during the lade medieval and Renaissance period. This was the dream of a Christian Indies, which in turn led to a quest for the Christians of the Farther East. The author specifically seeks to establish a direct relation between the knowledge of Indian and Ethiopian Christians which was available in Jerusalem from early Christian times onward and which returning pilgrims disseminated in the West, and the presence of the Portuguese in South India and the Ethiopian highlands in the early sixteenth century.

During the 16th century, Portugal endeavored to locate the mythical kingdom of Prester John--a Christian nation rumored to be somewhere in the Orient, amidst the pagans and Muslims. This study chronicles Portugal's final attempt, a six-year odyssey in Ethiopia that resulted in a tragicomic collision with a proud but isolated Christian kingdom. After summarizing the Prester John myth and the many efforts it spawned, the work focuses on the Ethiopian mission's chronicler, Father Francisco Alvares, who fell in love with the country and its people, became a friend of its king, hid the Abyssinians' heresies from his superiors, and set in motion events that saved Ethiopia from imminent destruction. Unique in the annals of Europeans' initial contacts with African peoples, the Portuguese mission is a portrait of hopeful preconceptions buffeted and eventually transformed by encounters with a fascinating, utterly unexpected reality.

The legends of Prester John were popular in Europe from the 12th through the 17th centuries, and 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. Prester John was reportedly a descendant of one of the Three Magi, 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. At first, Prester John was imagined to reside in India. After the coming of the Mongols to the Western world, accounts placed the king in Central Asia. Prester John's kingdom was thus the object of a quest, firing the imaginations of generations of adventurers, but remaining out of reach.

The Quest for Eastern Christians was first published in 1962. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. Most writers have considered that the great European explorations during the Age of Discovery were motivated primarily by a thirst for knowledge of other lands, desire for international trade, or missionary zeal. Professor Rogers demonstrates that there was another significant reason why Europeans traveled to the East during the lade medieval and Renaissance period. This was the dream of a Christian Indies, which in turn led to a quest for the Christians of the Farther East. The author specifically seeks to establish a direct relation between the knowledge of Indian and Ethiopian Christians which was available in Jerusalem from early Christian times onward and which returning pilgrims disseminated in the West, and the presence of the Portuguese in South India and the Ethiopian highlands in the early sixteenth century. Throughout his presentation of the evidence for the chain of events which links Palestinian knowledge with Portuguese action, Professor Rogers places emphasis on the early printed books and tracts which circulated both accurate information and rumor. Specimen pages from some of these books are reproduced as illustrations, and there is a double-page chart showing the genealogy of the nations and the sects of the Christians. There is a list of the early printed books which the author has used in his study as well as a bibliography.