Associate Professor of History John Eldevik recently attended the 20th biennial colloquium of the Comité international de paléographie latine at Yale University, where he gave a "work in progress" presentation on his current research on the manuscript tradition of the so-called "Letter of Prester John," a famous medieval forgery describing a fantastical Christian kingdom in Asia.
The Letter shaped European conceptions (and misconceptions) about Asia and Africa for several centuries in the Middle Ages and beyond. Eldevik is studying the Letter's diffusion in medieval manuscripts along with other kinds of historical, geographic, and theological material that tell us about its reception and interpretation by various communities of readers. A book on the topic is now under contract with the ARC-Humanities Press.
