In 1513, only six years before Magellan undertook his circumnavigation, Juan Ponce de León set out to find the Fountain of Youth. Peter Martyr, another trusted authority of the Renaissance, described the Fountain of Youth as “a spring of running water of such marvelous virtue that the water thereof being drunk, perhaps with some diet, makes old men young again.” According to tradition, the fountain was located on the island of Bimini, in the Bahamas. On the strength of his reputation as a soldier, nobleman, and participant in Columbus’s second voyage to the New World, Ponce de León received a commission from King Ferdinand to claim Bimini for Spain. In a fruitless search, Ponce de León explored the Bahamas and Puerto Rico, but his failure to find the Fountain of Youth did not put the myth to rest. As late as 1601, the respected Spanish historian Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas wrote confidently about the fountain’s great efficacy in restoring youth and potency to aging men.
Although his quest seems fanciful and absurd today, Ponce de León was a man of his times. Superstition governed popular impressions, and even scholarly accounts, of the world at large. A work published in 1560 contained descriptions of various sea monsters infesting the oceans. One, known as the Whirlpool, was said to have a human countenance. Another, supposedly sighted in 1531, had hideous scaly skin. There were others: the Satyr of the Sea; the Rosmarus, which rivaled an elephant in size; and the wondrous Socolopendra, with its face of flames. Voyagers across the seas, especially those attempting to circumnavigate the globe, could expect to encounter all these creatures, and more, in the course of their journey.
Even educated people placed credence in fantastic realms on earth, for instance, the persistent belief in the existence of the kingdom of Prester John. It is difficult to overestimate the influence of this fabulous personage, Prester John (“Prester” is an archaic word for presbyter, or priest), on the European imagination during the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance. He was part Christian ruler and part Kublai Khan. Despite an enormous number of inconsistencies and improbabilities in the details surrounding Prester John and his realm, his existence was widely believed in for several hundred years. In an era of violent conflict between Christianity and Islam, and unsuccessful Crusades, it was vastly reassuring to the faithful to believe that a sprawling and wealthy Christian outpost existed beyond Europe.
The legend originated in 1165 when a lengthy letter began to circulate among various Christian leaders; as time passed, the letter became more elaborate as anonymous authors added beguiling, utterly fantastic details; so great was its appeal that it became one of the most widely circulated and discussed documents of the Middle Ages, translated into French, German, Russian, Hebrew, English, among other languages, and with the introduction of movable type, it was reprinted in countless editions.
Addressed to Manuel, the Constantinopolitan emperor, and to Frederick, the emperor of the Romans, the letter read, “If you should wish to come here to our kingdom, we will place you in the highest and most exalted position in our household, and you may freely partake of all that we possess. Should you desire to return, you will go laden with treasures. If indeed you wish to know wherein consists our great power, then believe without doubting that I, Prester John, who reign supreme, exceed in riches, virtue, and power all creatures who dwell under heaven. Seventy-two kings pay tribute to me. I am a devout Christian and everywhere protect the Christians of our empire, nourishing them with alms.” As it continued, the letter became overtly symbolic, yet it was taken to be factuaclass="underline" “Our magnificence dominates the Three Indias, and extends to Farther India, where the body of St. Thomas the Apostle rests. It reaches through the desert toward the palace of the rising sun, and continues through the valley of the deserted Babylon close by the Tower of Babel.” By “India,” Prester John, or whoever wrote this missive, meant more than just the Indian subcontinent. During the Middle Ages, India was believed to include a good portion of northeastern Africa. It was an elastic term, and medieval geographers obeyed the convention that there were several Indias, some near, and some far.
Prester John described his kingdom as an enchanted realm, far more luxurious than European countries beaten down by war, plague, famine, and, among less memorialized miseries, the hardships inflicted by the Little Ice Age. In contrast, Prester John boasted of the wonders of his kingdom: “In our territories are found elephants, dromedaries, and camels, and almost every kind of beast that is under heaven. Honey flows in our land, and milk everywhere abounds. In one of our territories no poison can do harm and no noisy frog croaks, no scorpions are there, and no serpents creep through the grass. No venomous reptiles can exist there or use their deadly power. In one of the heathen provinces flows a river called the Physon, which, emerging from Paradise, winds and wanders through the entire province; and in it are found emeralds, sapphires, carbuncles, topazes, chrysolites, onyxes, beryls, sardonyxes, and many other precious stones.”
And there was much more; this mysterious religious leader claimed his dominion reached from Eastern Europe to India and contained satyrs, griffins, a phoenix, and other wonderful creatures. He lived, or so he said, in a palace without doors or windows, built of precious stones cemented with gold.
Prester John’s letter was actually written by imaginative monks toiling in anonymity, and the result begged to be read as a symbolic document, an allegory, or an expression of faith. Yet it was taken as a factual account and diplomatic initiative. Those who read the letter or heard about it wanted to know where Prester John actually lived. By 1177, the letter’s renown had grown to the point where Pope Alexander III issued a reply addressed to the “illustrious and magnificent king of the Indies and a beloved son of Christ,” and pilgrims went in search of the elusive Prester John.
Over time, the letter, like Pinocchio’s nose, grew and grew; copyists embellished the text, adding ingredients to Prester John’s domain. One important interpolation described spices in vivid detaiclass="underline" “In another of our provinces pepper is grown and gathered, to be exchanged for corn, grain, cloth, and leather”—which sounded plausible enough, but then the interpolation took an allegorical twist—“that district is thickly wooded and full of serpents, which are of great size and have two heads and horns like rams, and eyes which shine as brightly as lamps. When the pepper is ripe, all the people come from the surrounding countryside, bringing with them chaff, straw, and very dry wood with which they encircle the entire forest, and, when the wind blows strongly, they light fires inside and outside the forest, so that the serpents will be trapped. Thus the serpents perish in the fire, which burns very fiercely, except those which take shelter in their caves.” In the Age of Faith, the serpents were representative of the devil, which invades the Edenic garden of peppers, and which could be defeated only by the fire of faith.