de Vitry and other churchmen like him decided this King David must be a descendent of a mythical Christian warrior-ruler called Prester John. In their forefathers’ times men had spoken of this Prester John, ruler of a dimly perceived place called the Three Indies, to whom dozens of kings allegedly paid tribute—predicting he would visit Jerusalem “with a huge army befitting the glory of our Majesty to inflict a humiliating defeat on the enemies of the Cross.”3 Sadly for them, this had never happened, for the simple reason that Prester John did not exist.
