Prester John The Rumours Begin

"Should you wish to know of the greatness and excellence of our Exaltedness and of the lands subject to our rule , then hear this and believe: I, who am Presbyter Johannes, the Lord of Lords, surpass everyone under Heaven in virtue, in wealth and in power; seventy two kings pay tribute to us - In the three Indies our Magnificence reigns, and our lands stretch beyond India, where the body of the Holy Apostle Thomas lies; they reach towards the sunrise over the wastelands and turn towards deserted Babylon near the Tower of Babel. Seventy two provinces, only a few being Christian, serve us. Each one has its own ruler, but all of them are tributary to us."

The above is an extract from a letter which was supposed to have been sent from Prester John to Emanuel of Constantinople in 1165. The reference to Thomas the Apostle highlights the tradition that he travelled as far as present day Indian states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu to preach the gospel. Nowadays, we tend to think of medieval Christianity as split into two camps: the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church based in Constantinople, but there was a third, greater in geographical extent than either of the other two. This was the Church of the East, or Nestorian Church which had split from the western Church following the Council of Ephesus in 431. Its reach, from the ninth to the fourteenth century extended from the Mediterranean, through modern Iran and Iraq and on to India, China and was present and influential within the Mongol Empire as it expanded in the thirteenth century.

         The Second  Crusade,which ran from 1147 until 1149, had been a failure and it             seemed that the Christian presence in the Holy Land was under immediate and           serious threat. Rumours started to spread that, somewhere to the east, lay an                 enormous and powerful Christian power which might be called upon for aid.
             Otto of Freisingen was perhaps the first to talk about the empire of Prester                 John. He wrote in his chronicle that, in an audience with the Pope in 1145, a                  Catholic Bishop stated:
                 "...that a few years ago a king and Priest named John, who lives beyond                  Persia and Armenia, in the remote East, and who, and all of his subjects, were              Christian, though belonging to the Nestorian Church..."
        The text goes on to record Prester John's victory over the Persians and that he                had  gone on to march his army west to aid the Church at Jerusalem but had had          to turn back when he could not cross the Tigris.
           Pope Alexander III is supposed to have written a letter to the mysterious                     Emperor, in 1177, which he entrusted to his physician, Philip, to deliver by hand.         Philip never returned. Later, in 1241, the Mongols reached the Danube and might         have gone on to threaten the whole of the European subcontinent if they had not         pulled back. Contact and convesation with Nestorian Christians among the                     Mongols revealed that they knew nothing at all of such a person as Prester John.
         Gradually, people came to realise that Prester John's domains could not be in               the area first supposed, but this did not mean that he did not exist. There was               another Church territory where he must be, Ethiopia.
       (Next - Prester John's world and my interpretation)

Shostakovich: Symphony #07 - EVGENY SVETLANOV/ USSR State Symphony Orche...

The Leningrad Symphony by Shostakovich was premiered in the city of Kuybyshev where the composer was temporarily living having been evacuated from Leningrad as the Germans completed their encirclement of the city. The Siege is a topic I deal with in 'A Book of Days - January' but here I would just like to say a few words about its first performance in the city it was dedicated too. A copy of the completed score was dropped into Leningrad by plane in May 1942. Many of the musicians who should have formed part of the orchestra were, by then, dead or too sick to play. They would be represented by empty chairs on performance night. Replacements were found amongst the city's defenders but there was only time and strength for one complete run through of the work before playing to the public, during rehearsals the weakened musicians frequently fainted and three died. The concert was broadcast live to the city and to the German beseigers. Although the orchestra was too weak to play well the work received an hour long ovation.
It was and remains a powerful symbol of defiance.