Note {4} — Chapter XLVI

Note 4.—The idea that a Christian potentate of enormous wealth and power, and bearing this title, ruled over vast tracts in the far East, was universal in Europe from the middle of the 12th to the end of the 13th century, after which time the Asiatic story seems gradually to have died away, whilst the Royal Presbyter was assigned to a locus in Abyssinia; the equivocal application of the term India to the East of Asia and the East of Africa facilitating this transfer. Indeed I have a suspicion, contrary to the view now generally taken, that the term may from the first have belonged to the Abyssinian Prince, though circumstances led to its being applied in another quarter for a time. It appears to me almost certain that the letter of Pope Alexander III., preserved by R. Hoveden, and written in 1177 to the Magnificus Rex Indorum, Sacerdotum sanctissimus, was meant for the King of Abyssinia.