598 priests and priesthood
King of the Indies,” which might have been from
ABYSSINIAor Ethiopia.
After an invasion of Persia by the MONGOLSin 1221,
additional information reached the West through the
intermediary of the Christians migrating from the East.
They attributed these conquests to a “King David,” the
son of Prester John, but they seem to have confused him
with JENGHIZKHAN. Throughout the 13th century, travel-
ers sought to identify this Christian “king of the Indies.”
He was a Christian king, sometimes defeated by the Mon-
gols, sometimes holding out against them. His kingdom
was at times identified with the land of the three kings of
the Nativity of Christ and was situated either near China
or in India. This was probably connected to the dying
Nestorian Christian principalities in central Asia being
swept aside by the Mongols. There were references to him
and his kingdom on maps and in literary references.
In about 1321 a certain Jordan of Sévérac sought him
in AFRICA and identified his realm with Ethiopia or
Abyssinia, which was then regarded as one of the
“Indies.” The Ethiopians had encountered Europeans in
Jerusalem. It was hoped that any Christian king from
there could help the Christians in their struggle with
the Muslims of EGYPT. Travelers in the 13th century con-
tinued to try to reach Prester John’s kingdom in India
or Africa. When the church, however, finally did make
contact with the Ethiopians in the middle of the 15th
century, Prester John was only a vague memory.
See alsoJOHN OFPLANOCARPINI;MANDEVILLE,JOHN,
ANDMANDEVILLE’S TRAVELS;MARCOPOLO; WILLIAM OF
RUBRUCK.
Further reading:L. N. Gumilev, Searches for an Imag-
inary Kingdom: The Legend of the Kingdom of Prester John,
trans. R. E. F. Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1987); Charles F. Beckingham and Bernard Hamil-
ton, eds., Prester John, the Mongols, and the Ten Lost Tribes
(Aldershot, England: Variorum, 1996); Vsevolod
Slessarev, Prester John: The Letter and the Legend(Min-
neapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1959).
priests and priesthood (presbyter) Christianity was
constructed as an alternative to Jewish ritualism and
priestly tradition. That tradition attributed to the priest-
hood the management of the sacred. In the Christian
New Testament, there was little allusion to a priesthood.
In the early third century, the CLERGYgradually emerged
and separated from the LAITY. Until then there was evi-
dence that all Christians were deemed priests.
Eventually Christianity fixed on several traits of the
concept of priest, which it then marshaled to clarify the
role of the priest in the Christian religion. Jesus became
the one mediator and model for the clergy. There was a
vague concept of the priesthood of the whole church.
Priesthood could be accorded by the GRACEof baptism.
They further promoted the idea of a ministerial priest-
hood with a necessary role in the administration and
validity of the sacraments. These ideas were worked out
through numerous conflicts lasting centuries. The spe-
cialized function of the priest was capped by a fundamen-
tal demand for a vow of CELIBACY, reception of the
sacrament of Holy Orders, and a system of economic sup-
port. Many Christians questioned the necessity of all of
this during the Middle Ages, especially the idea of a priest
as a link between GODand humankind, the privileged
place of the priest in the world, and the relationship
between the clerical and papal church and the rest of
CHRISTENDOM.
See also ANTICLERICALISM; BENEFICE; CLERGY AND
CLERICAL ORDERS; GREGORIAN REFORM; INVESTITURECON-
TROVERSY OR DISPUTES; HUS, JOHN; LOLLARDS; SEVEN
SACRAMENTS, WYCLIFFE, JOHN.
Further reading:Robert B. Ekelund, Sacred Trust:
The Medieval Church as an Economic Firm(New York:
Oxford University Press, 1996); Richard W. Southern,
Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages(Har-
mondsworth: Penguin Books, 1970); Robert N. Swanson,
Religion and Devotion in Europe, c. 1215–c. 1515(Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).primacy of pope SeePAPACY.printing, origins of Printing emerged in the 15th cen-
tury. It was already known in China but probably devel-
oped independently in the West. The mechanical
problems of producing printed matter were resolved into
a workable method by the Mainz goldsmith Johann
GUTENBERG. In 1455–56 he published his first printed
book, the Gutenberg Bible, on paper and vellum. His lead
type font was cut by hand in the German Gothic script of
contemporary writing. This technique spread rapidly. By
1500 presses in Germany numbered about 60. Outside
GERMANY Gothic type persisted for religious and law
books for another century or far longer in some cases,
but elsewhere it was replaced by a Roman type based on a
15th-century Italian humanist script similar to Caroline
minuscule. The first press in ENGLANDwas established in
1476 by William CAXTON, and the first dated English
printed book appeared in 1477. The early printers were
artists, craftsmen, publishers, and booksellers, who
favored commercial centers, such as VENICE. The effect of
printing and the shift from handwritten script to print on
the distribution and communication of culture was obvi-
ously important, but the exact trends and the implica-
tions of this change are complex and much debated.
See alsoPARCHMENT; PUNCTUATION.
Further reading:Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, The Print-
ing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and
Cultural Transformations in Early Modern Europe,2 vols.
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979); Lucien
P. Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin, The Coming of the Book: