Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 12.djvu/464

 PRESENTATION

400

PRESTER

France, by the Venerable Mother Marie Rivier. The mother-house is now at Saint-And6ol, Ardeche. The superior general is the Mother Marie Ste-Honorine. The provincial house in Canada was founded on 18 October, 1853, by Mgr Jean-Charies Prince, first Bishop of St. Hyacinthe. It is also the mother-house and the religious make their vows there. The first si.x religious, with Mother Marie St-Maurice as superior, settled at Ste-Marie de Monnoir, where Rev. E. Cre- vier, pastor of this parish, had prepared a convent for them. They opened a boarding-school and a class for day pupils; both of these are very prosperous at the present time. In 18.55 the novitiate was transferred to St. Hugues (in the county of Bagot), and in 1858 it was definitively located at St. Hyacinthe in a convent which was occupied up to this time by the Sisters of the Congregation of Notre Dame of Montreal. This house was of insufficient accommodation and the com- munity was obliged to erect, not far from the seminary, a large building of which they took possession in 1876. The house occupied since 1858 then became an academy. Later it was necessary to add a large annex to the first building. The students were installed there in 1907. The provincial house is at the same time the mother-house of the institution in Canada. The Congregation of the Presentation of INIary comprises 30 houses in Canada and 16 in the United States, edu- cating 13,670 children.

Sister Mary St. David.

Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Feast OF THE. — The Protoevangel of James, the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, the Gospel of the Nativity of Alary, and other apocrjT)hal writings (Walker, "Apocryph. Gosp.", Edinburgh, 1873) relate that Mary, at the age of three, was brought by her parents to the Temple, in fulfilment of a vow, there to be educated. The corre- sponding feast originated in the Orient, probably in Syria, the home of the apocrypha. Card. Pitra (Anal. Spici. Solesmensi, p. 275) has published a great canon (liturgical poem) in Greek for this feast, composed by some "Georgios" about the seventh or eighth century. The feast is missing m the earlier Menology of Con- stantinople (eighth centurj') ; it is found, however, in the liturgical documents of the eleventh century, like the "Calend. Ostromiranum " (Martinow, "Annus graeco-slav.", 329) and the Menology of Basil II (cfiroSos TTJs irayaylas 6eoT6Kou). It appears in the constitution of INIanuel Comnenos (1166) as a fully recognized festival during which the law courts did not sit. In the West it was introduced by a French noble- man, Philippe de Mazieres, Chancellor of the King of Cyprus, who spent some time at Avignon during the pontificate of Gregory XL It was celebrated in the presence of the cardinals (1372) with an office accom- modated from the office chanted by the Greeks. In 1373 it was adopted in the royal chapel at Paris, 1418 at Metz, 1420 at Cologne. Pius II granted (1460) the feast with a vigil to the Duke of Saxony. It was taken up by many dioceses, but at the end of the Middle Ages, it was still missing in many calendars (Grote- fend, "Zeitrechnung", III, 137). At Toledo it was assigned (1500) by Cardinal Ximenes to 30 September. Sixtus IV received it into the Roman Breviary, Pius V struck it from the calendar, but Sixtus V took it up a second time (1 September, 1585). In the province of Venice it ia a double of the second class with an octave (1680); the Passionists and Sulpicians keep it as a double of the first class; the Servites, Redemptorists, Carmelites, Mercedarians, and others as a double of the second with an octave. In the Roman Cal- endar it is a major double. The Greeks keep it for five days. In some German dioceses, under the title "lUatio", it was kept 26 November (Grotefend, III, 137).

Kellner, Heorloloaie (Freiburg, 1901); Nilles, Kal. Man. (Innsbruck, 1897); Holweck, fosii Jl/arMni (Freiburg, 1892). F. G. HOLWECK.

Prester John, name of a legendary Eastern priest and king.

First Stage. — The mythical journey to Rome of a certain Patriarch John of India in 1122, and his visit to Calhstus II, cannot have been the origin of the legend. Not until much later, in a MS. dating from the latter part of the fifteenth-century "Tracta- tus pulcherrimus " (Zarncke), do we find the patriarch and priest united in one person. The first combina- tion of the two legends appears at the end of the twelfth century, in an apocryphal book of devotions called the "Narrative of Efiseus". The first au- thentic mention of Prester John is to be found in the "Clironicle" of Otto, Bishop of Freising, in 1145. Otto gives as his authority Hugo, Bishop of Gabala. The latter, by order of the Christian prince, Raymond of Antioch, went in 1144 (after the fall of Edessa) to Pope Eugene II, to report the grievous position of Jerusalem, and to induce the West to send an- other crusade. Otto met the Syrian prelate at Viterbo, where in the pope's presence he learned that a certain John, who governed as priest and king in the Far East, had with his people become con- verted to Nestorianism. A few years earlier he had conquered the brother monarchs of Media and Persia, Samiardi. Prester John had emerged victorious from the terrible battle that lasted three days, and ended with the conquest of Ecbatana; after which the victor started for Jerusalem to rescue the Holy Land, but the swollen waters of the Tigris compelled him to return to his own country. He belonged to the race of the three Magi, their former kingdoms being subject to him. His enormous wealth was demonstrated by the fact that he carried a sceptre of pure emeralds.

It is doubtful if the West gave unreserved credence to this tale, judging from the long silence of its chronicles. Some twenty years later there came to light in unaccountable ways letters from this mys- terious personage to the Byzantine emperor Manuel, Barbarossa, and other princes, which roused ex- travagant hopes. About a hundred manuscripts of the letter to Manuel of Constantinople are still extant (with many variants), and afford an in- teresting insight into this exceedingly complicated fiction. This ^Nald medieval tale contains the principal incidents of the long Alexander legend. This letter is probably a Nestorian forgery. From that time it was believed that a Christian kingdom existed in the Far East, or in the heart of Asia. The legend furnished a wealth of material for the poets, writers, and explorers of the Middle Ages. In England Sir John Mandeville exploited it to excess. In Germany Wolfram von Eschenbach, in " Parsifal ", was the first to unite the legend of the Holy Grail with this history of Prester John. He found many and more extravagant imitators (e. g. Albrecht von Scharfenstein in "Jiingere Titurel").

It is questionable whether the letter of Pope Alexander III, dated from the Rialto in Venice in 1177 and beginning with the words "Alexander episcopus [or Pnpa], servus servorum Dei, carrissimo in Christi filio Joanni, illustro et magnifico Indorum regi", has anything to do with Prester John. The pope had heard many rumours of a powerful Chris- tian ruler in the East. His physician in ordinary, Philippus, on returning from those parts, brought him further information. The pope sent his con- fidant to the king with the much-discussed letter, and an invitation to enter the Roman Church; also a caution against boastfulness about his vast power and weaUh. Provided th.at he listened to this warning, the pope would willingly grant his two requests (apparently, to cede him a church in Rome, and to accord him certain rights in the church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem). The result of this mission is not known; but judging from the