ABSTRACT
The Prester John legend grew when a letter, addressed to the Byzantine emperor Manuel I Comnenus and purporting to come from Prester John, began to circulate in Europe in 1156. He was said to be a descendant of one of the Three Wise Men or Magi. Marco Polo's account of Prester John downplayed the Christian aspect, but described how Qinghis Khan wanted to marry Prester John's daughter and killed John in battle when refused. Whoever wrote it, the passage relating to the Manichaeans as Christians testifies to the desire of medieval Europeans to see Christians in the Far East, as does the legend of Prester John. Polo's other great discovery on behalf of Christianity was a group of terrified believers in Fuzhou, capital of the southern province of Fujian in China. A problem with Marco Polo's identification of the Manichaeans as Christians is that the passage occurs only in the fifteenth-century 'Toledo' manuscript.
