Legends 57: Long Live the King

This is the story of the one.

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It sounds like a weird plan.

If you're looking to take your wellness journey to the next level, consider bathing in a vat of wine.

From Japan to Argentina, spas have started to add pools filled with red wine.

Of course, it's fairly watered down and there are a few other ingredients thrown in, but the optics are still pretty fun.

Like I said, it sounds a bit odd, but the concept has been around a lot longer than you'd think.

In fact, bathing in wine was common back in the ancient world, but for them, it was less about health and more about indulgence.

The most infamous example comes from China's Shang dynasty during the reign of Emperor Zhou.

He had started out as a decent ruler but had slowly fallen into corruption and greed.

And most of Zhou's own court historians lay the blame for this change at the feet of the emperor's favorite consort, Daji.

Apparently, Daji's hunger for opulence knew no bounds.

So, one day, she told Zhou to build her a lake filled with wine, and he was so completely bewitched by her beauty that he did exactly what she asked.

The pool was large enough to fit multiple canoes and featured a small island in the middle covered in trees made of skewers of meat.

They called it creatively the Lake of Wine and Forest of Meat.

The emperor, his lover, and all their friends would float around in their canoes, stuffing their faces and getting tipsy.

The parties there were legendary.

According to one chronicler, Zhou once invited over 3,000 guests and told them to chase each other in the nude.

When one of his concubines protested, he had her executed.

And naturally, this legend is pretty hard to verify.

Back in 1999, archaeologists thought they had uncovered the lake of wine, but they weren't absolutely certain.

Most historians today believe that the story was a bit of an exaggeration and one with a purpose to damage the reputation of Emperor Zhou.

Propaganda has always been a part of politics, and from time to time, even kings and queens got caught in the crossfire.

Because, as it turns out, it's really easy to make up stories about world leaders.

I'm Aaron Manke,

and this is Lore Legends.

In 1165, Pope Alexander III received a letter.

Now you would probably imagine that since the Pope held one of the most unique offices in the world, then his mail would be pretty unique as well.

But this letter had actually been duplicated and each copy was sent to a different European leader.

The Byzantine Emperor, the king of France, the king of Portugal, the Holy Roman Emperor.

Every single one of these people received the exact same letter and it came from one of their peers, another king.

Except none of them had ever met this king before.

And not only that, but most of them had never even heard of him.

He called himself Prester John.

It was an odd name for a king, but to be fair, he himself was an odd ruler.

Prester John was said to rule a land far to the east.

No one knew exactly what land, just some country or other, but their lack of details can be forgiven.

You see, the only time anyone had ever heard of him before was 20 years prior, when a Syrian bishop told a former pope about Prester John in the year 1144.

This bishop had claimed that Prester John was a Christian king in the Middle East who was descended from the Magi in the story of the birth of Christ in the Bible.

He commanded a great army and he had recently won a military victory over the Persians.

The Pope was naturally intrigued, but he never heard anything about Prester John again.

Fast forward a few popes later to the year 1165 and no one remembered ever learning about this mysterious Christian ruler halfway across the known world until, of course, he sent everyone in Europe a letter introducing himself.

And this letter didn't name his kingdom or his lineage.

He simply called himself Lord of Lords.

And the only clue he gave to his location was, and I quote, our magnificence dominates three Indias, and our land extends from farthest India where the body of St.

Thomas the Apostle rests to the place where the sun rises and returns by slopes to the Babylonian desert near the Tower of Babel.

He might have been hiding his location from the greedy plundering kings of Europe for a good reason, because according to Prester John, his country was mind-bogglingly rich.

He said that his nation collected tributes from 72 other kings, but he didn't even really need it because his hills were filled with gold and gemstones.

He went on to claim that in his country, the skies were full of phoenixes and their rivers were full of water that could heal the sick.

They had oceans made of sand and magical charms that made people invisible and cyclopses wandering through their mountains.

So basically his his kingdom was just way better than everyone else's.

And if you're thinking that this guy is just totally full of it, well you wouldn't be wrong.

Prester John was basically peddling a more outlandish version of the Nigerian Prince email scam.

As far as I can tell, the Pope and the rulers of Europe didn't fall for it.

It was clearly written by someone who had no diplomatic training and who stole from some of the popular literary tropes of the time.

It seems that they collectively rolled their eyes and then they promptly forgot about Prester John along with his fields of cyclopses and rubies.

But something about the letter must have niggled at Pope Alexander's mind because 12 years after he received it, he sent a reply.

No one knows why he waited so long, or for that matter, why he bothered to reply at all.

He clearly struggled to believe that Prester John actually existed.

But the fact of the matter is that the Pope responded.

Well, sort of.

You see, we don't really know where his letter went once it was sent off, but we do know that he mailed it, or at least that he very publicly gave it to an emissary and told that man to take the letter to Prester John.

And if you're curious, the gist of the letter's contents were: hey, we're so glad that such a rich guy wants to be friends with us.

Now please stop bragging about how rich you are and declare you're loyal to the papacy.

But what the letter said isn't the important part here, it's the fact that it existed at all.

Because that letter was a genius political move.

We may never truly know Pope Alexander's rationale in writing to Prester John, but we can still make an educated guess as to why he did.

Some historians have hypothesized that his interest in Prester John had been renewed after hearing stories about him from one of his emissaries.

Others have claimed that he was trying to announce his religious supremacy to the entire world after a schism in the church was coming to an end.

And both of these theories probably hold some truth.

But if you ask me, more than anything else, it can most likely be chalked up to propaganda.

Something I haven't mentioned yet is that all of this was happening during the Crusades.

For those few of you who may not be familiar, the Crusades were a series of religiously motivated invasions into the Middle East.

The entire goal was to reclaim the Holy Land from the Islamic people who actually lived there.

The Crusades were brutal too.

They were bloody, and in 1177 they were almost 100 years into the conflict with no end in sight.

Europeans were tired and they weren't feeling particularly hopeful.

Politically speaking, things were on shaky ground.

For the past couple of decades, the all-powerful church had been weakened by infighting over who the true pope was.

And when it came to the Crusades themselves, one of their few strongholds in the Middle East was suddenly unstable.

The king of Jerusalem, who ruled over a state established by previous crusaders, had been officially diagnosed with leprosy only one year before, putting the entire region at risk.

And in those days, leprosy was a death sentence.

It was only a matter of time before they lost one of the only men in the Holy Land who could give them any semblance of a home field advantage.

European rulers were all rushing to make a marriage alliance with the king's sister.

but that sort of thing takes time, and if they spent years sending peasants to their deaths with no hope of aid from Israel, then they'd soon run out of peasants who were willing to fight.

Hope, after all, is a powerful thing.

And so, Pope Alexander needed a new ally in the Middle East, someone who was sympathetic to their Christian plight, and who had the resources to help them on the battlefield.

Someone like a fantastically rich Christian king.

Now, it didn't matter that Prester John didn't actually exist.

It didn't matter that his letter had probably just been an elaborate hoax written by some crusader or priest.

What mattered was that if people believed he existed, then they would have the hope to fight another day.

Which is why Pope Alexander didn't hide the news that he sent Prestor John a reply.

In fact, he bragged about it.

And that's all it really took.

Because if His Holiness said that he was corresponding with Prestor John, then Prestor John had to be real, right?

And thus, the legend of the great Christian Christian king was born.

But if you're going to make people believe in a mythical king, you need proof, right?

So remember that letter that Prester John sent back in 1165, the really outlandish one?

Well, it didn't stay private.

It was published and circulated widely throughout Europe.

By the end of the century, it had been translated into Anglo-Norman, French, Italian, German, Serbian, Russian, even Hebrew.

According to one historian, the letter of Prester John became one of the most widely read documents of medieval times.

Translating the letter was like playing a huge game of telephone.

Each translator added their own embellishments and some even inserted new monsters into Prester John's kingdom.

The more fantastical, the better.

And unlike modern audiences, the people of the Middle Ages didn't scoff at Phoenixes or the Fountain of Youth or even the Cyclopses.

In fact, those were the very things that captured their imaginations.

Within the span of just a few years, Prester John became the most famous legend in all of Europe.

And not a moment too soon.

Because out on the front lines, they really needed something to believe in.

And that something was going to have to be.

Prester John.

Things were not going well for the Europeans in the Holy Land.

Between 1177 and the early 13th century, their invasions weren't successful.

The Europeans lost Jerusalem and the majority of Palestine in 1187, and they hadn't been able to win it back.

Constantinople was sacked, and it never truly recovered.

Most of the forces who marched on the Middle East were sent back in shambles, with their numbers completely decimated.

Not even great rulers like Richard the Lionheart or King Henry VI could avoid death during their campaigns.

So, the Crusaders needed a light at the end of the tunnel, something to believe in.

So in 1221, a bishop told the Pope that the King of India, whom he quite believably named David, was a descendant of Prester John and he had defeated one of the greatest Islamic forces in all of Central Asia, the Khwarizmians.

And I know that I just threw a lot of words and names at you, so let me try to break it all down real quick.

You see, the Europeans didn't understand world geography in the same way we do today.

For one, national borders were very different, and if people hadn't actually traveled the world, maybe as merchants or sailors, then they really had only a passing understanding of what the globe looked like beyond their own lands.

As a result, most people considered the Middle East and Central Asia to basically be the same thing.

Yes, they knew that they were in different places, but they were both in the Far East.

So really, how different could they be?

To them, it was all just a mysterious blob on the map full of pagans and spices.

And as far as they were concerned, the only notable religion in the Far East was Islam.

So by that logic, if someone started to invade Islamic countries, then they probably weren't Islamic themselves.

And what could that other religion be but, of course, Christianity?

So when the Mongols invaded the Khwarizmian Empire, which stretched across modern-day Afghanistan and Iraq, the Europeans initially didn't see them as a new non-religious player in the Crusades.

They just assumed that if they were fighting the Muslims, then the Mongols were Christians.

That's right, European leaders believed that Genghis Khan was a Christian, as well as a descendant of Prester John.

He was who they called David, king of India, because they had no idea where Mongolia was, and India sounded properly exotic.

Honestly, it's less of a legend and more of a word salad, the more you think about it.

And they ran with this idea for decades.

Europe believed that Mongolia was Prester John's mythical Christian kingdom, and the fact that a few nomadic Mongolian tribes had actually converted to Christianity only added fuel to the fire.

And then in 1245, the Pope sent Friar John of Plano-Carpini to visit the Mongols, and the entire fantasy fell apart.

It didn't take long for the friar to figure out that Genghis Khan wasn't a descendant of Prester John.

Everyone was, of course, disappointed, but they quickly pivoted to a new theory.

Friar Carpini hypothesized that the real Prester John might actually be Ethiopian.

After all, that was one of the only only known Christian nations in the quote-unquote Far East, and they had a lot of money.

It made sense.

Of course, the European definition of Ethiopia was wholly inaccurate as well, and was largely used to refer to all of East Africa.

I mean, they tried, right?

In this new version of the events, Karpini claimed that Genghis Khan had been only one of many rulers who once paid tribute to Presturjan, but he eventually rose against the great king and defeated his son, King David of India.

And from their perspective, this would fill a lot of plot holes.

And yet most people still weren't satisfied with this theory.

And so the search for Prester John continued.

In 1253, Francis King Louis IX sent a friar on a mission to find the legendary king.

After traveling throughout the Far East, this friar claimed that the Kara-Kitai regime of Central Asia was the mythical home of Prester John.

The only problem was that the Kitai people weren't Christian, and they never had been.

So that theory didn't last long either.

The infamous explorer Marco Polo also tried to locate Prester John.

He actually believed that the king had probably been defeated by the Mongols, which he attributed to his braggadocious pride.

Eventually though, Marco Polo located a man who he claimed was the descendant of Prester John.

His name was George, and he lived on the banks of the Yellow River in modern-day Kazakhstan.

Despite allegedly finding a descendant all the way out in Central Asia, Marco Polo favored the theory that Prester John came from Abyssinia, an empire that encompassed modern-day Ethiopia.

In short, no one knew where Prester John was.

They just knew where they wanted him to be.

By the end of the 13th century, Europe had pivoted from sending crusaders to Palestine to sending them into Egypt and North Africa.

A Christian king in the Middle East was no help to them anymore, but a Christian king in Africa was.

And so the narrative shifted.

Prester John, they now claimed, had never stayed in the the Holy Land.

Instead, he had retired after the Mongolian hordes defeated him, and then he went to Africa, specifically Abyssinia.

For the rest of his allegedly long life, Prester John did all sorts of legendary things.

He converted Muslims in Egypt and fought against the Islamic forces that were trying to cross the Mediterranean to destroy all the Christians.

In other words, Prester John was using his retirement to protect Europe.

Because, of course, the entire world had to revolve revolve around them.

I get it.

The legend of Prester John is far from frightening, but legends cover a wide spectrum of flavors, and each kind serves a purpose that has a way of teaching us powerful lessons.

Just as the legend of a hook-handed killer slaughtering young couples as they make out in their car has a moral engine within it, Prester John's story offers its own meaning.

From it, we can see the destructive power of cultural ignorance and nationalist bias, and sadly, just how popular those traits can be.

The Europeans' refusal to understand the world around them only enabled further harm and chaos.

But Prester John's story wasn't niche.

Almost everyone on the European continent had heard of him, and they 100% believed in him.

His existence was so certain that for centuries, his kingdom was depicted on almost every world map, even though none of the cartographers really knew where he was.

They were just spitballing over and over again.

Over 150 years after Marco Polo's travels, Portugal funded a series of explorations down the African coast, and the goal of one of those trips was to find You guessed it, Prester John.

Of course, they failed to find the legendary king, but in the process they found something else, a direct route to the Indies.

In that way, the Portuguese explorers were really the ones to put an end to the myth of Prester John.

As they explored more and more of Africa, it became abundantly clear that there was no wealthy Christian king who had dedicated his life to fighting Islam.

And more importantly, there never had been.

By the early 17th century, European explorers finally traveled to the furthest reaches of Asia, finally putting the legend to rest.

Prester John was dead.

It's ironic really.

Prester John was one of the most politically important folkloric figures in all of history, and most people today have never even heard of him.

In fact, it would be easy to assume that he has been completely forgotten.

But it's a lot harder to get rid of a legend than you might think, because something always stays behind in the cultural zeitgeist, and one little piece of Prester John has stuck around.

Where can it be found?

In Marvel Comics.

Yes, you heard that right.

Prester John is a character in the most successful superhero franchise on the planet.

The comic book version of Prester John is an immortal explorer who was once allies with King Richard the Lionheart.

He carries a magical weapon, and at one point he even dukes it out with Iron Man.

Legends come and go.

Some of them might enjoy more popularity than others, but eventually all of them will fade away.

Still, those stories always seem to leave some sort of a mark, a tiny impression left on popular culture, or a scar that we can feel but not see.

And through that mark, somehow, they continue to exist, bringing new life to that old traditional proclamation: The king is dead.

Long live the king.

Some legends are shockingly dark, while others impact us in other ways.

With that in mind, I hope our trip into the past today left you with a better understanding of just how gloriously wrong medieval Europe got things.

Prester John's story, of course, is a complex and tangled web that stretches back centuries.

But don't worry, legendary kings don't always have to be complicated.

Sometimes, as our final story will reveal, they can also be fun.

Stick around through this brief sponsor break to hear all about it.

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Gambrinus was the king of beer.

Sometimes known as the Bacchus of Beer, Gambrinus is a legendary figure who's said to have invented, you guessed it, beer.

He was frequently depicted as a large, jolly man wearing a cape and straddling a keg.

He was definitely the kind of guy that you would want at your party.

But inviting him might be difficult and not just because he doesn't actually exist.

You see, for such a boisterous figure, he's rather hard to pin down, and historians historians seem to differ on where his story originated.

One thing they all agree on, though, is that he is very, very old.

Greek and Roman historians claim that he originated with the ancient Germanic tribes.

One 15th century scholar suggested that he was the son of a German king who was known for being able to drink vast amounts of beer.

And more recently, one 19th century historian claimed that Gambrinus was based on the historical figure of John I, Duke of Brabant.

The Belgians are particularly fond of this version.

In the tale, Gambrinus, or as he was allegedly known in life, John I, invented the famous beer of Brussels and laid the groundwork for the entire local brewing industry.

He also became the head of the Brewery Guild after winning a race against the other competitors for the job.

You see, he was supposed to carry a barrel full of beer over the finish line of a race, but he saw no sense in overexerting himself, so Gambrinus popped the barrel open, drank the contents in a few gulps, and then dashed his empty keg across the finish line.

And if you visit the Belgian Beer World Museum today, you'll see a portion of the collection dedicated specifically to Gambrinus, along with a giant golden statue of him balancing on his keg, toasting to everyone's health.

Now, no disrespect meant to my Belgian listeners, but that version of the legend isn't actually my favorite.

My personal preference lies with one that was written a little bit later by a 19th century French folklorist.

In this version of the story, Gambrinus wasn't a duke, he was just a simple apprentice to a Flemish glassblower.

Unfortunately for him, he didn't really like blowing glass.

What he really liked was the master glassblower's daughter, Flandin.

And so Gambrinus spent months working up the courage to confess his feelings to her, only for Flandin to reject his love.

Devastated, he quit glassblowing and he went to learn to play the violin instead.

But if he thought that the power of music would save him from his unrequited love, he was wrong.

One day he played for a village dance.

It was going well at first, but seeing Flandin in the crowd tripped him up.

His mistakes made the music so terrible that the entire dance ground to a halt.

For this social crime, the villagers turned him over to a judge who threw him in prison for an entire month.

Once he got out of jail, he no longer had the will to live.

So he found a rope and he prepared to hang himself.

But before he could, a man with horns appeared in front of him.

It was, of course, the devil, or as this story calls him, Beelzebub.

He told Gambrinus that if he took his own life, then his soul would belong to him, and Gambrinus would be trapped in hell for all eternity.

Panicked, Gambrinus tried to bargain with the evil one.

He told him about his hardships and that he wanted Flandrine to love him back and asked Beelzebub for help.

But the devil told him that he didn't have the power to make a woman fall in love with anyone.

So instead, Gambrinus requested to simply forget forget that he had ever loved her at all.

Beelzebub laughed and told him that the powers of hell weren't required for that.

Alcohol was just as effective.

Which is when Beelzebub introduced Gambrinus to beer, seemingly to imply that it is a drink that comes straight from hell.

Deep in his cups, he then asked Beelzebub how to get revenge on the villagers who threw him in jail.

His new friend told him that he could get his revenge with a carillon, which was a large musical instrument made out of huge huge bells.

So Gambrinus built a brewery, put a giant carillon inside, and then invited all of the villagers to come by and try his beer.

When they tasted it, they all spit it out, saying that it was too bitter, which is when Gambrinus played the carillon and the sound of the music forced everyone to dance.

And I really mean forced because the devil's power was working through the bells, meaning that the villagers weren't able to stop dancing until they drank more beer.

Upon their second try, they all miraculously decided that it tasted wonderful and within no time people were traveling from all across the Netherlands to visit Gambrinus' brewery where he served beer and hosted dances every night.

Heckey became so popular that the king of the Netherlands himself gave him a whole host of fancy titles and all the villagers called him the king of beer.

Beelzebub allowed Gambrinus an unnaturally long life after that, all spent thriving at his brewery.

When he passed away 300 years later, the devil finally came to collect the man's soul.

But when he arrived, Gambrinus' body was gone.

It had turned into a beer barrel.

This episode of Lore Legends was produced by me, Aaron Mankey, with writing by Alex Robinson and research by Jamie Vargas.

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