Inventing the Enemy: Essays

IMAGINARY GEOGRAPHY AND TRUE HISTORY

During the second half of the twelfth century, a letter reached the West telling how in the Far East, beyond the regions occupied by the Muslims, beyond those lands that the Crusaders had tried to take from the dominion of the infidels but had nonetheless returned to their dominion, there flourished a Christian kingdom, governed by the legendary Prester John, or Presbyter Johannes, re potentia et virtute dei et domini nostri Iesu Christi. The letter began as follows:

Hear and believe: I, Presbyter Johannes, the Lord of Lords, surpass all under heaven in virtue, in riches, and in power; seventy-two kings pay us tribute . . . In the three Indies our Magnificence rules, and our lands extend beyond India, where rests the body of the holy apostle Thomas; they reach toward the sunrise over the wastes, and extend toward deserted Babylon near the Tower of Babel . . . In our domains live elephants, dromedaries, camels, hippopotami, crocodiles, metagallinari, cametennus, tinsirete, panthers, onagers, red and white lions, white bears and blackbirds, mute cicadas, griffins, tigers, jackals, hyenas, wild oxen, centaurs, wild men, horned men, fauns, satyrs and women of the same species, pygmies, men with dogs’ heads, giants forty cubits tall, monocles, cyclopes, a bird called phoenix, and almost every kind of animal that lives beneath the vault of the heavens . . . In one of our provinces the river known as Indus flows. This river, whose source is in Paradise, winds its way along various branches through the entire province and in it are found natural stones, emeralds, sapphires, garnets, topazes, chrysolite, onyx, beryl, amethyst, sardonyx, and many other precious stones.

And so it went on, listing other wonders. Translated and paraphrased many times during the following centuries, up to the seventeenth century, and in various languages and versions, the letter was to be highly influential in the expansion of the Christian West toward the East. The idea that a Christian kingdom might exist beyond the Muslim lands justified all enterprises in expansion and exploration. Giovanni da Pian del Carpine, William of Rubruck, and Marco Polo all mentioned Prester John. Toward the middle of the fourteenth century, Prester John’s kingdom moved from a vague Orient toward Ethiopia when Portuguese mariners began their African campaign. Attempts to contact him were made in the fifteenth century by Henry IV of England, by the duc de Berry, and by Pope Eugene IV. In Bologna, at the time of the coronation of Emperor Charles V, there were still discussions about Prester John as a possible ally for the recapture of the Holy Sepulcher.

How did Prester John’s letter come into being, and what was its purpose? Perhaps it was a piece of anti-Byzantine propaganda, produced in the scriptoria of Frederick I, but the problem is not so much its origin as the way it was received. Through geographical fantasy a political project gradually gained strength. In other words, the specter evoked by some scribe inclined to forgery (a highly respectable literary genre at the time) was used as an excuse for expanding the Christian world toward Africa and Asia, a friendly gesture in supporting the white man’s burden.

And thus we have a case of imaginary geography that has produced real history. And it is not the only case. I would like to finish with the sixteenth-century Typus orbis terrarum by Ortelius.

Ortelius had already portrayed the American continent with remarkable precision, but he still thought, like many before and after, that Terra Australis, an immense cap covering the southern part of the planet, existed. It was in search of this hypothetical austral land that indefatigable mariners like Mendaña, Bougainville, Tasman, and Cook explored the Pacific. Thanks to an imaginary map, the real Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand were eventually discovered.

Spare a thought, then, for those who fought at the frontiers of infinity and the future. Remember the greatness of those imaginary geographies and astronomies, and those errors that often bore fruit.

[Revised version of two lectures, one given in 2001 at a conference of astronomers and the other in 2002 at a conference of geographers.]