Prester John, Part 1

That "inaccessible area" in Asia mentioned in the Finding Paradise entry fascinated Europeans. Knowledge of the lands to the east was rare, and accounts of travels in that direction were devoured. Marco Polo's tales were only one example.

The 3rd century apocryphal text Acts of Thomas tells of St. Thomas and his attempts to convert India to Christianity. Although not included in the definitive collection of books of the Bible, it was still copied and read (Gregory of Tours made a copy), and sparked the imagination: what if there were a thriving community of Christians in exotic India, cut off from Europe and desirous of contact?

In the 12th century, a German chronicler and bishop called Otto of Friesling recorded that in 1144 he had met a bishop from Syria at the court of Pope Eugene III. Bishop Hugh's request for aid in fighting Saracens resulted in the Second Crusade. During the conversation, however, Bishop Hugh mentioned a Nestorian Christian (Nestorians and their origin were briefly mentioned here) who was a priest and a king, named Prester John, tried to help free Jerusalem from infidels, bringing help from further east. He had an emerald scepter, and was a descendant of one of the Three Magi who brought gifts at Jesus' birth.

The idea of Prester John, a fabulously wealthy and well-connected Christian potentate poised to help bridge the gap between West and East, captured the imagination. A letter purporting to be from Prester John appeared in 1165. The internal details of the letter suggest that the author knew the Acts of Thomas as well as the 3rd century Romance of Alexander.

The letter became enormously popular; almost a hundred copies still exist. It was copied and embellished and translated over and over. Modern analysis of the evolution of the letter and its vocabulary suggest an origin in Northern Italy, possibly by a Jewish author.

At the time, however, no analysis was needed for people to act. Pope Alexander III decided to write a letter to Prester John and sent it on 27 September 1177 via his physician, Philip. Philip was not heard from again, but that did not deter the belief in Prester John  at all.

Got Silk?

Silk was not a medieval invention. According to Chinese tradition, Empress Si-Ling-Chi in 2460 BCE watched silkworms spinning cocoons; she unwound several cocoons, then ran the strands together to make thread, then wove the result into cloth to make a robe for Emperor Huang-Ti.

The Silk Road routes

Unverifiable, but it may very well be true. What is slightly more historically documented is that China guarded the secret of this magnificent fabric for centuries, but was willing to manufacture the cloth and sell it for very high prices to others. Wealthy people from other countries would gladly pay large sums to purchase it—soft and smooth, light to wear, dyed easily—so knowledge of this material spread. India somehow figured out the secret and was manufacturing its own silk by the 2nd century CE.

Ezekiel mentions silk, which means it was known to the Middle East in the 6th century BCE. Aristotle mentions the process of dealing with the cocoons, but the knowledge must have been lost for awhile, because it seems to be a mystery to that part of the world centuries later. We are told that Julius Caesar (100-15 March 44 BCE) had silk curtains. It is thought that the Romans first encountered silk in the hands of the Parthians in the first century BCE. By the end of the 1st century CE, Rome was trading for silk with the Parthians; we don't know what kind of "mark up" the Parthians were putting on the silk that they got from the East, but it was probably substantial. Although more than silk was traded between the East and West, silk was one of the few things only available from the Far East, and so the collection of interconnected trade routes from China and India to Byzantium and Alexandria became known as the "Silk Road."

Of course, it is cheaper to manage production yourself, and the Byzantine scholar Procopius (500-565 CE) tells us how some Nestorian monks* gave the Emperor Justinian the secret: the thread comes from silkworms that could not survive transportation, but their cocoons would travel well if insulated in dung and fed on mulberry leaves when hatched. Byzantium created a thriving silk industry and supplied Europe for centuries. The silk factories were staffed by all-female crews, and so were called gynaecea—after the name given to the section of a Roman or Greek home devoted to women.

Marco Polo on the Silk Road

The cycle of industrial espionage continued, however, when Muslims, who learned the secret of silk when they conquered Persia, took over Sicily and Spain. By the 13th century, Europe was producing its own silk and purchasing less from Byzantium. By the 15th century, France had its own factories. This was necessary, according to Louis XI, because purchasing silk from Italy created a trade deficit for France of 40-50,000,000 gold écus.**

Silk is different from cotton or wool in that it is not spun; rather, two or more strands are twisted together. To produce this, new techniques were invented. The simple reel is said to have been first devised for holding strands of silk, which could be up to a mile long. Two reels would be set up to unwind simultaneously so that their strands could be twisted together in a technique called "throwing."

The Middle Ages loved silk so much that a whole new vocabulary was created to describe its uses in fabrics:

• alexander - a striped silk
• baldachin - a warp of gold thread with a woof of silk
• begin - 14th century rayed silk fabric
• camlet - half silk/half hair (such as angora)
• cendal - woven silk material
• ecarlate - high-quality silk
• gauze - semi-transparent silk (from 13th century onward)
• imperial - silk with gold thread; originally from Byzantium, later called baldachin
• osterni - silk dyed purple
• samite - silk with interwoven gold or silver threads
• sarcenet - thin soft silk with slight sheen; sometimes called "shot"
• tartaire - silk from Tartary

...and in all these centuries, it hasn't lost its luster.

*Remember the Nestorians? They were a branch of Christianity deemed heretical a century before Procopius, who made their home in the East where William Rubruck ran into them.
**Story of the Silk Road by Yiping Zhang, p.146 (I don't normally bog things down with citations—I assume you trust me!—but this number was so ... impressive that I felt the need to point to a source. It may be a huge exaggeration.

Before Marco, There was William

Everyone's heard of Marco Polo (1254-1324) and his travels with his Venetian uncles to the Far East. He was not alone, however, in leaving Europe on long journeys to strange lands.

The most detailed early account of life in Asia was written by a Flemish Franciscan monk named William Rubruck (Willem van Ruysbroeck, c.1210-1270). While on crusade with King Louis IX of France, in Palestine he met a Dominican sent by the pope to enlist the Mongols' aid against the Muslims. Rubruck decided he would try to convert the Mongols to Christianity.

Rubruck's Travels

He set out in 1253 on a round-trip journey that took him three years, traveling as far as the Mongol capital of Karakoram; he was the first European ever to visit it—that is, who also returned to write about it. His personal mission gave him the opportunity to write about what he saw and the ethnicities and religions and customs he observed.

It is interesting that, as he traveled, he often found other Europeans who recognized his Order because of his clothing. He was also questioned frequently about his "version" of Christianity. He met several Christians and Christian priests who were Nestorians. Nestorius (386-451) was a patriarch of Constantinople who claimed Jesus had two distinct natures: a human nature and a completely divine nature, referred to as Logos. These two natures, or essences, are connected but unmingled. When Nestorianism was condemned in 431 at the Council of Ephesus, the Assyrian Church refused to change their support for it. Rubruck had his work cut out for him: preaching Christianity, and preaching against the local Christianity.

There's more to say about Rubruck, but I'll leave off for today with a simple thought: if he had become more famous than the other guy, would there be a game now where people called out "William!" "Rubruck!"