Baudet on Approaches
to Paradise
From Henri Baudet's 1959 book
Paradise
on Earth: Some Thoughts on European Images of Non-European Man.
...the Christian
Ethiopians'
physical proximity to [Paradise: Garden of Eden] was interpreted as highly
significant. They could not be far removed from a true state of bliss,
and therefore from every point of view contact with them could only mean
an immense gain for Latin Christianity and for the cause of Christianity
versus Islam.
The figure of Prester John, the Ethiopian
Priest-King, appealed to the imagination of the late Middle Ages. No one
knew him, but his person and his realm were described in minute detail
by contemporary writers. Their accounts evoked a string of fascinating
and fundamental questions, for the image of the Priest-King was closely
in tune with the needs of the time. What were felt to be the perils of
the situation caused him to be regarded first and foremost as a powerful
ally who would deliver the Christian world from the permanent danger of
Islam. A much more widely held expectation, in evidence throughout the
Middle Ages, was based on an even deeper conviction: the coming of the
Emperor-Redeemer, the great Prince of Peace, which would be followed by
a conclusive battle between the forces of Light and the forces of the Antichrist
resulting in the certain victory of the former. Thus clothed in symbolism,
the prophecy had predicted the end of the world at an indeterminate moment,
and each successive generation had interpreted this in terms of contemporary
persons and problems. Europe now became aware of a connection between this
expectation and the almost celestial ruler of blessed Ethiopia. Was he
immortal? Even in periods not linked by time it was always the selfsame
Prester John who was the subject of speculation. It had been rumored since
the twelfth century that John had sent a letter to the Emperor at Constantinople,
and for several centuries after Pope Alexander III referred to his "beloved
son John the illustrious and glorious king of India" (1170) the miraculous
Prince continued to dominate the Western imagination. His envoys were said
to have come to Europe in the fourteenth century, visiting Rome, Naples,
France, and Aragon. Nevertheless, he was still regarded as a contemporary
in the middle of the fifteenth century, and Prince Henry the Navigator,
in the last year of his life (1460), intended or at least wished to go
to the country of this King of Kings in order to meet him in person. He
could not fail to be the object of all sorts of different interpretations,
and one of the oldest of them would seem to be particularly relevant at
this point. In his famous Chronicon, Otto von Freising (1150)
established a relationship between the Ethiopian royal family and Caspar
who, according to the later Evangelists, was the King of India (which included
Ethiopia) and one of the Three Magi who journeyed to Bethlehem.
Meanwhile, the concept of the Three Kings had undergone
a lengthy and remarkable development. The vague group comprising an unspecified
number of magi referred to in Matthew 2 had, in the course of the centuries,
become a colorful and minutely described trio. First their number was fixed
at three, and it was not long before they were described as kings. They
appeared in a sixth-century Armenian gospel as King Melchior of Persia,
King Caspar of India-Ethiopia, and King Balthazar of Arabia. But the Legenda
Aurea written in the thirteenth century by Jacobus de Voragine
showed that another important element had been added: in the combination
that was to become Christian tradition the Three Kings also represented
three generations, thus symbolizing the whole of humanity. Moreover, racial
differences between the monarchs appeared in the thirteenth century and
were thenceforward closely related to certain peoples. Although there is
no means of verifying it, one wonders whether in the course of the Middle
Ages they might not have undergone a certain symbolic identification with
the sons of Noah. There is frequent mention of them. Ham, the youngest,
is associated with Africa; Shem with the East (Asia); and Japheth with
Greece (Europe). The depraved Ham was the mighty Croesus from whom Nimrod
was descended. Shem was the progenitor of the Saracens, which was not much
better. Japheth was the father of the Israelites and of the Europeans.
By the beginning of the fifteenth century Caspar, the youngest of the Three
Magi (although by now he had become noble), was also depicted as an "African"
in art and literature while Balthazar was a relatively indeterminate Oriental,
and Melchior, the oldest, a white European. Two points deserve special
attention. One is that the Negro thus appeared "canonized" in our culture
before the Indian was discovered. The second is that this racial aspect
combined with the older theory of the three generations almost suggests
a primitive form of the modern metaphorical reference to "young nations,"
where colored peoples are meant.
So Prester John came to be seen in many perspectives,
being linked with Caspar, with Queen Bilqis of Sheba whose dominions Josephus
had localized on the Nile, and with the myths relating to an earthly Paradise.
Pierre
d'Ailly, whose famous work Imago Mundi, written at the beginning
of the fifteenth century, contained all the geographical knowledge of his
day and had such a profound effect on Columbus, provided a full account
of the theories put forward over the years concerning both Ethiopia itself
and the nature of its inhabitants. He thus expressed the pronounced interest
which the late Middle Ages took in the Ethiopian question. When the Portuguese
began their voyages of exploration along the west coast of Africa in the
middle of the fifteenth century, one of their principal aims was to find
a channel of communication with that mysterious Christian kingdom, either
by means of the great river referred to by all geographers or by means
of another route along the eastern shore of the Guinea coast which the
Genoese Vadino and Guida Vivaldi were said to have followed two centuries
before. Vasco da Gama carried letters for Prester John as Columbus
was to do later for the Great Khan.
It seems to me an essential part of our theme that
the whole of this Ethiopism with its paradisiacal streak, its excessive
identification with biblical texts, and its expressive ethnical character
derived its particular significance from the bitter struggle between Christianity
and Islam. Although the interpretation of all real and imaginary facts
was tinged with a strong mythical quality, all this mythomania was nevertheless
directed toward a positive political end. Pierre d'Ailly, for instance,
never lost sight of one consuming idea: the struggle against Islam and,
more especially, the war against the Turks who were pressing in on the
southeast. Once they were defeated the whole of the East could be liberated....
The question of Paradise did not fade from men's
minds but it progressively ceased to be linked with the legendary Ethiopia.
The world now appeared to be so immense, so very much greater than had
been supposed; new knowledge required new interpretations. The geographers
who came after Pierre d'Ailly sought Paradise more and more to the west,
following in the footsteps of St. Brendan, whose history was endowed with
greater authenticity. In his third letter Columbus expressed the
view that Paradise was situated south of the Equator, lying somewhere on
top of a mountain in the land recently discovered. Leo Africanus,
the remarkable early sixteenth-century traveler who gave an objective and
fairly accurate account of his journey through Africa, describing the countries
and peoples he had seen, made no mention of the paradisiacal character
of Ethiopia, nor is there any reference in his Navigazzioni to a
river flowing westward. Belief in a connection between Ethiopia and Sheba
lived on, however, and Leo provided particulars--culled from Ethiopian
sources-- regarding the Ethiopian diplomatic mission to Pope Eugenius IV
in 1440. But the picture painted by the Navigazzioni was soberly
factual, sapping the roots of many a mythical interpretation.
At length John II of Portugal despatched envoys
in search of Prester John. Pedro de Covilha and Afonso de Paiva, disguised
as merchants and supplied with credentials, money, and goods, left Portugal
for East Africa in 1486 or 1487. After many wanderings, de Covilha eventually
reached Ethiopia, where he was received with honor. The Ethiopians had
developed their own image of the outside world, however, and he was refused
permission to leave. According to the reports of later Portuguese travelers
he finally resigned himself to his fate, married an Ethiopian wife, and
settled down with his family in the land of the King of Kings. In spite
of his misfortune, and notwithstanding the modified popular image which
no longer centered its dreams of Paradise on the ancient country of Prester
John, the orientation toward Ethiopia long remained unchanged, and Latin
Christianity acknowledged the bon ethiopien, the good Negro on whom
all sorts of definite and indefinite expectations continued to be centered.
His was to be a strange fate.
@Back to
list of assigned readings