Note 732 — Chapter XLVII

In many MSS. nothing is said of its being a translation or when or by whom it was translated; others state that it was translated into Greek and Latin, or, in at least one case, from Arabic into Latin. Only from the thirteenth century on, I think, is Christian, Archbishop of Mainz, sometimes said to have translated it from Greek into Latin. Often it is simply stated that Manuel transmitted the letter to the Emperor Frederick, to whom also it is sometimes represented as sent direct by Prester John. Sometimes it is to the Pope to whom the letter comes from Manuel or Prester John.

The statement that Manuel transmitted the letter to the Emperor Frederick makes one wonder whether Anselm, Bishop of Havelberg and later of Ravenna, can have had anything to do with it. He was sent by Frederick on an embassy to Manuel in 1153, which seems to identify him with the author of a “Liber de diversitate nature et persone proprietatumque personalium non tam Latinorum quam ex Grecorum auctoritatibus extractus”—CUL 1824 (Qi. vi. 27), beautiful 13th century hand, fols. 129-76,—who states in his preface that he collected his Greek authorities in Constantinople where he was sent by Frederick on an embassy to Manuel, and on his return to Germany showed them to “Petro venerabili Tusculano episcopo.”