In the Middle Ages, Prester John was seen as the great hope for Crusaders struggling to hold on to, then regain, Jerusalem. He was thought to rule a lost Christian kingdom somewhere in the East and was ready to attack Muslim opponents with his enormous armies. There was apparent proof of Prester John's existence, in letters purportedly from him and in stories from travelers who claimed they had met, if not him, then people who had news of him. Most pointed to a home in the earthly paradise in the Indies, outside Eden, with fantastical animals and unimaginable riches. Later, Portuguese explorers thought they had found him in Ethiopia, despite the mystified denials of people there. Melvyn Bragg asks why the legend was so strongly believed for so long, and what facts helped sustain the myths. With Marianne O'Doherty
Associate Professor in English at the University of Southampton Martin Palmer
Director of the International Consultancy on Religion, Education, and Culture And Amanda Power
Senior Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Sheffield. Producer: Simon Tillotson.

Prester John

Discussion of religious movements and the theories and individuals behind them.

History

Society & Culture

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the last pagan ruler of the Roman Empire.  Fifty years after Constantine the Great converted to Christianity and introduced a policy of tolerating the faith across the empire, Julian (c.331 - 363 AD) aimed to promote paganism instead, branding Constantine the worst of all his predecessors.  Julian was a philosopher-emperor in the mould of Marcus Aurelius and was noted in his lifetime for his letters and his satires, and it was his surprising success as a general in his youth in Gaul that had propelled him to power barely twenty years after a rival had slaughtered his family.  Julian's pagan mission  and his life were brought to a sudden end while on campaign against the Sasanian Empire in the east, but he left so much written evidence of his ideas that he remains one of the most intriguing of all the Roman emperors and a hero to the humanists of the Enlightenment.  With  James Corke-Webster 
Reader in Classics, History and Liberal Arts at King’s College, London Lea Niccolai 
Assistant Professor in Classics at the University of Cambridge and Fellow and Director of Studies in Classics, Trinity College  And  Shaun Tougher
Professor of Late Roman and Byzantine History at Cardiff University Producer: Simon Tillotson Reading list: Polymnia Athanassiadi, Julian: An Intellectual Biography (first published 1981; Routledge, 2014) Nicholas Baker-Brian and Shaun Tougher (eds.), Emperor and Author: The Writings of Julian the Apostate (Classical Press of Wales, 2012) Nicholas Baker-Brian and Shaun Tougher (eds.), The Sons of Constantine, AD 337-361: In the Shadows of Constantine and Julian, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020) G.W. Bowersock, Julian the Apostate (first published 1978; Harvard University Press, 1997) Susanna Elm, Sons of Hellenism, Fathers of the Church: Emperor Julian, Gregory of Nazianzus, and the Vision of Rome (University of California Press, 2012) Ari Finkelstein, The Specter of the Jews: Emperor Julian and the Rhetoric of Ethnicity in Syrian Antioch (University of California Press, 2018) David Neal Greenwood, Julian and Christianity: Revisiting the Constantinian Revolution (Cornell University Press, 2021) Lea Niccolai, Christianity, Philosophy, and Roman Power: Constantine, Julian, and the Bishops on Exegesis and Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2023) Stefan Rebenich and Hans-Ulrich Wiemer (eds), A Companion to Julian the Apostate (Brill, 2020) Rowland Smith, Julian’s Gods: Religion and Philosophy in the Thought and Action of Julian the Apostate (Routledge, 1995) H.C. Teitler, The Last Pagan Emperor: Julian the Apostate and the War against Christianity (Oxford University Press, 2017) Shaun Tougher, Julian the Apostate (Edinburgh University Press, 2007) W. C. Wright, The Works of Emperor Julian of Rome (Loeb, 1913-23)

Julian the Apostate

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most influential theologians of the twentieth century.  Karl Barth (1886 - 1968) rejected the liberal theology of his time which, he argued, used the Bible and religion to help humans understand themselves rather than prepare them to open themselves to divine revelation. Barth's aim was to put God and especially Christ at the centre of Christianity. He was alarmed by what he saw as the dangers in a natural theology where God might be found in a rainbow or an opera by Wagner;  for if you were open to finding God in German culture, you could also be open to accepting Hitler as God’s gift as many Germans did.  Barth openly refused to accept Hitler's role in the Church in the 1930s on these theological grounds as well as moral, for which he was forced to leave Germany for his native Switzerland. With Stephen Plant
Dean and Runcie Fellow at Trinity Hall, University of Cambridge Christiane Tietz
Professor for Systematic Theology at the University of Zurich And  Tom Greggs
Marischal Professor of Divinity at the University of Aberdeen Producer: Simon Tillotson Reading list: Karl Barth, God Here and Now (Routledge, 2003) Karl Barth (trans. G. T. Thomson), Dogmatics in Outline (SCM Press, 1966) Eberhard Busch (trans. John Bowden), Karl Barth: His Life from Letters and Autobiographical Texts (Grand Rapids, 1994) George Hunsinger, How to Read Karl Barth: The Shape of His Theology (Oxford University Press, 1993) Joseph L. Mangina, Karl Barth: Theologian of Christian Witness (Routledge, 2004) Paul T. Nimmo, Karl Barth: A Guide for the Perplexed (Bloomsbury, 2013) Christiane Tietz, Karl Barth: A Life in Conflict (Oxford University Press, 2021) John Webster, Karl Barth: Outstanding Christian Thinkers (Continuum, 2004)

Karl Barth

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the anchoress and mystic who, in the late fourteenth century, wrote about her visions of Christ suffering, in a work since known as Revelations of Divine Love.  She is probably the first named woman writer in English, even if questions about her name and life remain open. Her account is an exploration of the meaning of her visions and is vivid and bold, both in its imagery and theology. From her confined cell in a Norwich parish church, in a land beset with plague, she dealt with the nature of sin and with the feminine side of God,  and shared the message she received that God is love and, famously, that all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well. With Katherine Lewis
Professor of Medieval History at the University of Huddersfield Philip Sheldrake
Professor of Christian Spirituality at the Oblate School of Theology, Texas and Senior Research Associate of the Von Hugel Institute, University of Cambridge And  Laura Kalas
Senior Lecturer in Medieval English Literature at Swansea University Producer: Simon Tillotson Reading list: John H. Arnold and Katherine Lewis (eds.), A Companion to the Book of Margery Kempe (D.S. Brewer, 2004) Ritamary Bradley, Julian’s Way: A Practical Commentary on Julian of Norwich (Harper Collins, 1992) E. Colledge and J. Walsh (eds.), Julian of Norwich: Showings (Classics of Western Spirituality series, Paulist Press, 1978) Liz Herbert McAvoy (ed.), A Companion to Julian of Norwich (D.S. Brewer, 2008)  Liz Herbert McAvoy, Authority and the Female Body in the Writings of Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe (D.S. Brewer, 2004) Grace Jantzen, Julian of Norwich: Mystic and Theologian (new edition, Paulist Press, 2010) Julian of Norwich (trans. Barry Windeatt), Revelations of Divine Love (Oxford World's Classics, 2015) Julian of Norwich (ed. Nicholas Watson and Jacqueline Jenkins), The Writings of Julian of Norwich: A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman and a Revelation of Love, (Brepols, 2006)  Laura Kalas, Margery Kempe’s Spiritual Medicine: Suffering, Transformation and the Life-Course (D.S. Brewer, 2020) Laura Kalas and Laura Varnam (eds.), Encountering the Book of Margery Kempe (Manchester University Press, 2021) Laura Kalas and Roberta Magnani (eds.), Women in Christianity in the Medieval Age: 1000-1500 (Routledge, forthcoming 2024)  Ken Leech and Benedicta Ward (ed.), Julian the Solitary (SLG, 1998) Denise Nowakowski Baker and Sarah Salih (ed.), Julian of Norwich’s Legacy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) Joan M. Nuth, Wisdom’s Daughter: The Theology of Julian of Norwich (Crossroad Publishing, 1999)   Philip Sheldrake, Julian of Norwich: “In God’s Sight”: Her Theology in Context (Wiley-Blackwell, 2019) E. Spearing (ed.), Julian of Norwich: Revelations of Divine Love (Penguin Books, 1998) Denys Turner, Julian of Norwich, Theologian (Yale University Press, 2011)
 
Wolfgang Riehle, The Secret Within: Hermits, Recluses and Spiritual Outsiders in Medieval England (Cornell University Press, 2014)  Caroline Walker Bynum, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (University of California Press, 1982) Ann Warren, Anchorites and their Patrons in Medieval England (University of California Press, 1985) Hugh White (trans.), Ancrene Wisse: Guide for Anchoresses (Penguin Classics, 1993)

Julian of Norwich

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the revelatory collection of Biblical texts, legal documents, community rules and literary writings.  In 1946 a Bedouin shepherd boy was looking for a goat he’d lost in the hills above the Dead Sea.  He threw a rock into a cave and heard a hollow sound. He’d hit a ceramic jar containing an ancient manuscript. This was the first of the Dead Sea Scrolls, a collection of about a thousand texts dating from around 250 BC to AD 68. It is the most substantial first hand evidence we have for the beliefs and practices of Judaism in and around the lifetime of Jesus.  The Dead Sea Scrolls have transformed our understanding of how the texts that make up the Hebrew Bible were edited and collected. They also offer a tantalising window onto the world from which Christianity eventually emerged.  With  Sarah Pearce 
Ian Karten Professor of Jewish Studies and Head of the School of Humanities at the University of Southampton Charlotte Hempel
Professor of Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Judaism at the University of Birmingham  and  George Brooke 
Rylands Professor Emeritus of Biblical Criticism and Exegesis at the University of Manchester Producer  Luke Mulhall

The Dead Sea Scrolls

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Ramayana, the ancient Hindu epic which is regarded as one of the greatest works of world literature. Its importance in Indian culture has been compared to that of the Iliad and Odyssey in the West, and it’s still seen as a sacred text by Hindus today.  Written in Sanskrit, it tells the story of the legendary prince and princess Rama and Sita, and the many challenges, misfortunes and choices that they face. About 24,000 verses long, the Ramayana is also one of the longest ancient epics. It’s a text that’s been hugely influential and it continues to be popular in India and elsewhere in Asia.
 
With  Jessica Frazier
 Lecturer in the Study of Religion at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad 
Distinguished Professor of Comparative Religion and Philosophy at Lancaster University and  Naomi Appleton
Senior Lecturer in Asian Religions at the University of Edinburgh The image above shows Rama, Sita, Hanuman, Lakshmana and devotees, from the Shree Jalaram Prarthana Mandal, Leicester.  Producer  Luke Mulhall

Prester John

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