Changes

The whole thing was a fake, but it was what people wanted to hear in those times of uncertainty and the [[Crusades]]; and for centuries there was to be much conjecture and occasional searching for this phantom ally. Nearly 200 years after the letter, Prince [[Henry the Navigator]] had Prester John as much on his mind as he had hopes for trade with the Indies, as he sent his captains ever south searching for the way through or around Africa (The Portuguese were half way down the African coast before discovering a searoute to India became the paramount quest.) By then the [[Mongol Empire]] and its immediate successor Khanates had come and gone and the likely position of his kingdom had moved from the now relatively known [[Asia]] to the still mysterious Africa.

The whole thing was a fake, but it was what people wanted to hear in those times of uncertainty and the [[Crusades]]; and for centuries there was to be much conjecture and occasional searching for this phantom ally. Nearly 200 years after the letter, Prince [[Henry the Navigator]] had Prester John as much on his mind as he had hopes for trade with the Indies, as he sent his captains ever south searching for the way through or around Africa (The Portuguese were half way down the African coast before discovering a searoute to India became the paramount quest.) By then the [[Mongol Empire]] and its immediate successor Khanates had come and gone and the likely position of his kingdom had moved from the now relatively known [[Asia]] to the still mysterious Africa.

Whilst the idea of a great and splendid Christian ruler somewhere in the East was only wishful thinking fed by the still unknown perpetrator(s) one of the great hoaxes in history; there was truth in the idea of  flourishing Christian communities beyond the wall of Muslim dominance in the [[Middle East]] and [[North Africa]].

Whilst the idea of a great and splendid Christian ruler somewhere in the East was only [[wishful thinking]] fed by the still unknown perpetrator(s) one of the great hoaxes in history; there was truth in the idea of  flourishing Christian communities beyond the wall of Muslim dominance in the [[Middle East]] and [[North Africa]].

    

    

*Tradition has it that the [[Apostle]] [[St. Thomas]] led a group of [[Syria]]n Christians to the west coast of India. Whatever the truth of the history, and the specifics of the geography, a large community still referred to as the “St. Thomas Christians” still worships along the [[Malabar Coast]] of India, having been converted from their original [[Nestorian]] form of the faith to [[Roman Catholicism]] by the [[Portuguese]] in the early 16th century.

*Tradition has it that the [[Apostle]] [[St. Thomas]] led a group of [[Syria]]n Christians to the west coast of India. Whatever the truth of the history, and the specifics of the geography, a large community still referred to as the “St. Thomas Christians” still worships along the [[Malabar Coast]] of India, having been converted from their original [[Nestorian]] form of the faith to [[Roman Catholicism]] by the [[Portuguese]] in the early 16th century.