Columbus, Magellan and the "Hidden King" (Article)

The explorer Christopher Columbus saw himself as the fullfillment of the prophecy of the Encubierto "the Hidden One" who brings about the last age and rebuilds Zion. King Ferdinand also saw himself playing the same role but as the "Last World Emperor."

Magellan was commissioned for his world journey by Charles V who was also widely seen as the Universal Emperor of the Last Days. The millenarian aspects of the age of exploration have their roots in the old motif of the "Hidden King."

Ancient beginnings

The Hidden King theme is related to similar motifs like the "sleeping king/god", "lost king/brother", and the messiah of lowly origins who often has a secret or lost lineage.

In India, the Narayana mythology of the sleeping god that awakens periodically to save the world is a well-developed version of this theme.

A very old example of the motif is the serpent king of Punt who appears and disappears on a hidden moving island. The "hidden island" also occurs in latter beliefs of the Hidden Imam in Shi'ism and the Ilha Encuberta of Joachimite-inspired beliefs. The Hidden King takes recluse on this island or in a cave, fortress, etc., or dissimulates among the populace until the appointed time of the last days. In other cases, he is born/reborn and raised among the peasants unaware of his destiny and/or high origin until a sudden or gradual revelation occurs.

Ancient Chinese prophecies tell of a savior with the surname Li, the surname of the sage Laozi, who would arise at times of crisis. Later, during the Ming Dynasty, the imperial family claimed that the future Mingwang or Luminous King would arise from their line and would have their own surname Zhu.

Messiahs with the surnames Li and Zhu have sprung up periodically including in modern times with the founder of the Falun Gong movement, Li Hongzhi.

In the Old Testament and in Rabbinic Judaism, the idea of the Hidden Messiah was well-developed. Joachim of Fiore, a Cistercian abbot appears to have absorbed some of these and other "Oriental" influences when he experienced a "conversion" on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

His apocalyptic writings set the stage for late medieval European millenarianism and had much in common with Jewish and converso millenarianism, and also the cyclic thinking of Albumasar. Belief arose in a Pastor Angelicus, an Angelic Pope (Papa Angelico) and/or the Last World Emperor who would come during the latter times to reconquer Jerusalem just prior to the Second Coming.

In Iberia, the Last World Emperor became known as Rey Encubierto or Rei Encuberto, "Hidden King," and El Murcielago "the Bat." This coming monarch would conquer the Antichrist, who would also arise in Spain, defeat the Muslims and establish a worldwide empire. Spain with its heavy milieu of Muslim millenarian thinking as represented by Albumasar and Jewish/converso apocalyptic thought was ripe for messianic revival.

By the late 15th century, it became popular to think of Ferdinand of Spain as the Encubierto. The Marquis of Cadiz wrote a letter to the high nobles of Castille in 1486 revealing to them the "true" identity of Ferdinand:

"...there will be nothing in this world capable of resisting him...because he is the Hidden One.. and he will subdue all the nations from sea to sea...and he will not only be an Emperor, but he will be monarch of all the world."

To this end, we may find some of the more esoteric motivations for Ferdinand's sponsorship of Columbus and his voyages. The Encubierto was by necessity of connection with earlier prophetic traditions a King of the East (ab ortu solis), an Emperor of the Indies. In earlier ages, Prester John played this role, but for the new European savior it was necessary to establish an eastern empire from which to retake Zion like the angel in Joachim's visions.

Columbus himself was inspired by the works of Pierre d'Ailly, a student of the Albumasar school, and had started but never completed a work entitled the "Book of Prophecies." In this work and his other writings, he outlines the destiny of Spain in the reconquest of Jerusalem, and states that the gold of the East Indies (Tarshish and Ophir) would be used to rebuild Zion.

He saw himself as a divine guide in the "enterprise of the Indies." In the model of his namesake St. Christopher, the dog-headed "bearer of Christ," (Christoferens = 'Christ-bearer') Columbus would carry Christianity to the East. He also noted the same spiritual symbolism in his surname Columbus which means "dove" in Latin.

Abundant evidence exists suggesting that Ferdinand also fancied himself as the Encubierto and never stopped believing that he would conquer Jerusalem before his death.

After Columbus, the messianic expectations continued unabated and were directed strongly at the newly-ascended emperor Charles V.

A "constellation of prophecies" swirled around the new emperor. Writers like Giles of Viterbo helped develop the idea of Charles V as the Last World Emperor. His device Plus Ultra "beyond which" referred to the Pillars of Hercules, the old limit of traditional Europe beyond which he had passed.

Some believe that Nostradamus may have been alluding to Charles V in one of his prophecies when he says:

Chief of the world will the great Chyren be,
Plus Ultra behind, loved, feared, dreaded:
His fame and praise will go beyond the heavens,
And with the sole title of Victor will he be quite satisfied.

Such were the messianic expectations at the time that Charles V had to face insurrections himself from peasant saviors like El Encubierto who led the Germanias revolt of artisans in Valencia. Some of the peasant leaders claimed descent from the old kings of Aragon or other monarchs.

When Charles V sponsored Magellan's circumnavigation, we can say that he was seeking the title of Emperor of the Indies, something rather unofficially used for his son Philipp II, for whom the Philippines were named. The last emperor of the East Indies was the legendary Prester John, but now the European monarchs themselves strived to become the Christian savior king from the East.

Unlike Columbus, Magellan seemed less concerned with his own place in prophecy, but evidence points to a spiritual goal also for his journeys. Notes from this writings indicate he was interested in finding the Biblical lands of Tarshish and Ophir, nations which also figured in apocalyptic thought.

The kings of Tarshish and of the isles
shall bring presents: the kings of Sheba and
Seba shall offer gifts. Yea, all kings shall fall
down before him: all nations shall serve him.

-- Psalm 72

Surely the isles shall wait for me, and the ships of Tarshish first,
to bring thy sons from far, their silver and their gold with them,
unto the name of the Lord thy God,
and to the Holy One of Israel,
because he hath glorified thee.

-- Isaiah 60

Samuel Purchas writing in the early 17th century stressed the need for Britain to involve itself in the "Ophirian navigation" to secure its own self-vision as the chosen messianic nation but with a more mercantile twist:

And this also we hope shall one day be the true Ophirian navigation, when Ophir shall come unto Jerusalem as Jerusalem then went unto Ophir. Meanwhile we see a harmony in this sea-trade, and as it were the consent of other creatures to this consent of the reasonable, united by navigation howsoever by rites, languages, customs, and countries separated.

Magellan appears to have placed Tarshish and Ophir near Ptolemy's Cattigara, the great ancient trading city of the farthest East. When nearing the end of the world circuit, he deliberately set his sights for Cattigara sailing at 12 or 13 degrees North latitude, which he believed to be the proper course for that fabled city.

For Philip II who inherited both his father's empire and that of Portugal, he could not but help continue with this messianic vision. The Spanish monarchy according to Tommaso Campanella writing in 1600 was "founded upon the occult providence of God." The Count-Duke of Olivares declared "God is Spanish and fights for the nation these days."

Philip II is said to have attempted to attain the title of "Emperor of the Indies," of which he was known in his own kingdoms, through an Imperial Vicariate from the Vatican, but those attempts ultimately failed.

Such title ultimately was equivalent to that of the "Hidden King," and its acquisition served as a primary esoteric motivation for the voyages of both Columbus and Magellan.

I see greater things than I had expected and were told me. Verily, this Philip, pious jewel among kings, as a second Solomon mercifully gave both here and elsewhere examples of his wisdom.

-- Viglius van Aytta on the seventh window donated by Philip II and Mary Tudor to Sint Janskerk.


In its riches the scriptural land of Ophir prefigures the Indies of which Luis de Haro is chancellor, and Solomon, associated in late sixteenth-century Spain with Philip II, is a type both of Christ and of the Spanish king.

-- Stephen Rupp in Allegories of Kingship


"....the principle settler of these archipelagoes was Tharsis, son of Japheth together with his brothers, as were Ophir and Hevilath of India..."

-- Francisco Colin speaking of the Philippines in Labor Evangelica, 1663.

In an interesting coincidence when Philip II, the "Second Solomon," dispatched Legazpi to occupy the Philippines, the latter encountered and entered into alliance with one Rajah Soliman, king of Manila, during his invasion of Luzon.

Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento

References

Gruzinski, Serge. "From The Matrix to Campanella: cultural hybrids and globalization," European Review Vol. 14, No. 1, 2006, 111–127.

MacPherson, Ian and Angus MacKay. Love, Religion and Politics in Fifteenth Century, Brill Academic Publishers Spain, 1998, pp. 177-8.

Perry, Mary Elizabeth, and Anne J. Cruz, editors Cultural Encounters: The Impact of the Inquisition in Spain and the New World. Berkeley: University of California Press, c1991 1991. http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft396nb1w0

Reeves, Marjorie. The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages: a study in Joachimism, Oxford University Press, 2000.

Rupp, Stephen. Allegories of Kingship: Calderón and the Anti-Machiavellian Tradition, University Park, 1996.

Subrahmanyam, Sanjay. “Du Tage au Gange au XVle si`ecle: Vne. Conjuncture Millenariste. `a l’é Eurasiatique,” Annales 56 (2001): 51–84.

Wim de Groot et al. (ed.) The Seventh Window. The King's Window donated by Philip II and
Mary Tudor to Sint-Janskerk in Gouda (1557), Hilversum 2005.

King of the East (Glossary)

Jewish, Zoroastrian, Christian and to a lesser extent Muslim traditions all possess a theme of the "King of the East" as a key player in apocalyptic times.

The ultimate origin of this belief in the region may come from the Egyptian concept of the throne on the "Island of Fire" i.e., Ta-Neserser. On this island was found the Primeval Hill from which the Sun and the Bennu Bird rise in the furthest East, and it was here that the dead traveled by ship where they entered the opening to the Underworld.

The food and herbs of Ta-Neserser filled the body with "magic," and at least by the Middle Kingdom period, the aromatics and products of Punt appear connected in some way with the Island of Fire. The throne in the latter location is associated with a serpent or cobra, and the Lord of Punt in the Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor, which in this case refers to the location of spices like cassia and cinnamon, appears as a giant snake. Aromatics like cassia and cinnamon continued to be associated with an eastern Paradise or "Elysian Fields" in regional cultures influenced by Egypt for thousands of years.

The Book of the Dead depicts what might be called a "volcanic apocalypse" of fire and flood after which renewal begins again from the throne of the Island of Fire. As discussed in this blog, the theme of one or a few survivors after a cataclysmic flood repopulating the earth is quite a familiar theme in Southeast Asian mythology.

Concepts of cyclic change that began at least by the Middle Kingdom in Egypt appear to have contributed to Egyptian millennarianism in the first few centuries before the era among gnostic and Jewish apocalyptic sects. Interestingly at about the same time in China to the East, ideas of a future millennarian age initiated by a reincarnation of Laozi also come to fore. This was at about the same time that the Fangshi wizards preached the wisdom of venturing to Penglai, the isle of immortals. During this period, there is evidence of contact between East and West both overland via the Silk Road and by sea via the maritime spice routes.

Concepts of both a savior king and a destructive king of the "antichrist" type are clearly present during this period.

King from the Sun

The Potter's Oracle and the Sibylline Oracles both refer to a messianic "King from the Sun" who conquers Rome, which many interpret to mean a "King from the East," i.e., the direction of the sunrise.

This identification is strengthened by other works of around this time like the Oracles of Hystaspes and Phlegon's account in Mirabilia.

Phlegon tells of how the slain Syrian Bouplagus after the defeat of Antiochus III at Thermopylae appears to the Roman soldiers warning them that an angered Zeus would send a "bold-hearted race" to bring their defeat and contrition. Another prophecy tells of the the Roman general Publius who went into a prophetic frenzy foretelling the destruction of Rome and conquest of the world by peoples coming from "Asia where the sun rises." According to the story, Publius also foretold that he would be eaten by a wolf, which comes true except that his head is left to declare his prophecies about Rome would also come to past.

Hystaspes is mentioned by Lactantius, Justin, Clement and Aristokritos. He is sometimes said to be the father of Darius, but in another account he is a Median who lives before the "Trojans were born." According to Ammianus, Hystaspes went to study with the Brahmins of "Upper India" where he learned about astronomy, astrology and other mysteries. All the sources agree that Hystaspes tells of Rome's descent into a time of trouble, while Justin refers to the destruction of the world by fire before the coming of an oriental savior king.

The Oracles of Hystaspes have so much in common with the apocalyptic Bahman Yasht of Persia that F. Cumont and G. Widengren have suggested an Iranian source for the former. It is worthwhile to note here that the Bahman Yasht more specifically locates the King of the East in the "direction" of China and the Indies, something dealt with in greater detail in Pahlavi and New Persian messianic literature.

The Persian connection is important because it was from Iran that both Zoroastrian and Nestorian Christianity expanded in the Sassanian period. The Nestorian synod of 410 CE mentions a "Metropolitan of the Islands, Seas and Interior of Dabag, Chin and Machin" (Zabag or Insular Southeast Asia, China and mainland Southeast Asia), who was seated at the Iranian port of Bushehr.

King of the East in Christianity

Not surprisingly there arose some counter propaganda to the Jewish, gnostic and Persian oracles against Rome.

One example is the Tiburtine Sibyl of the fourth century CE that prophesied a King of the Romans and Greeks known as Constans who conquers the world for Christianity before the coming of the Antichrist. Such oracles later morphed into beliefs of a French Catholic king who would bring the world to Rome culiminating in the 16th century book of prophecies Mirabilis Liber.

The King of the East was contrarily often associated in Christian millennarian works with the Antichrist, and this concept is not foreign to earlier works like the Potter's Oracle. That both destruction and renewal would be associated with the Orient agrees well with the Egyptian descriptions of the cyclic Island of Fire.

However, Christian millennarian also adopted and adapted the earlier views of the King of the East as savior. Commodian, for example, writes of "Nero redivivus," the reincarnated Nero who brings misery to Rome and the world as the Antichrist but is vanquished by King Apollyon of the East.

The general concept of ex Oriente lux "From the East, the light; from the East, the Saviour," was a powerful theme that helped bring about the latter popularity of Prester John, the King of the Indies.

Sambatyon River and the Ten Tribes

The tales of Prester John were closely associated with a legendary river known as the Sambatyon beyond which supposedly were found the lost Ten Tribes of Israel.

By at least the fourth or fifth century, we find in the rabbinical literature and the Alexandrian Romance of Pseudo-Callisthenes mention of a river of sand and/or stones that ceases flowing on the Sabbath day.

Early Muslim sources also mention the river of sand and connect it with the "people of Moses" (qawm Musa). The people of Moses are mentioned twice in the Quran (7:159, 17:104) as living at the edge of the world and who in the future will be reunited with the other children of Israel.

Latter commentaries on these verses state that Muhammed converted the people of Moses on his trip to heaven, and that they will ally themselves with Muslims against Rome in the end-times. Muqatil b. Sulayman (767 CE) commenting on 17:104 states that the people of Moses live in China on the far side of a river of sand that solidifies on the Sabbath, and gives them the name Ardaf or Ardaq.

Against this tradition, was a version which has Dejjal, the Muslim Antichrist arising in Bartayil (also Bartail, Bratayil, etc.) an island where clove buds are found situated in or near Zabag. Dejjal is supposed to lead an army of renegade Jews in a final war against Muslims. Thomas Suarez believes the strange horse from the sea, a familiar apocalyptic motif connected with Bartayil, is linked with the Chinese sea-goddess Kuanyin who often takes the form of a horse. Kuanyin in her final incarnation as Miao Shan was the daughter of the King of Hsing Lin, whose empire stretched from the western boundary of India eastward and south of Siam through Insular Southeast Asia.

A parallel Jewish tradition to that of the "people of Moses" developed in the beney Mosheh "children of Moses" said to have been transported to the edenic land of Havilah in the East where they live on the east side of the Sambatyon River flowing with sand and rocks but congealing on the Sabbath. To this was added the story that on the Sabbath a great wall of fire formed around the river.

One belief arose claiming the beney Mosheh possessed a written form of the Torah superior to the Rabbanate oral traditions and copied according to some from the stone tablets of Moses himself.

Centuries later, Prester John, in the various letters attributed to him, regularly claims both the river of sand and the Ten Tribes belong to his empire. In the same sense, he lays claim to another apocalyptic people, the biblical nations of Gog and Magog.

The Ten Tribes are sometimes described as vast in number having 10 cities to every one in Prester John's realm. So much so that the king found it necessary to station garrisons at the river of sand to prevent the Israelites from conquering the world. At other times they are said to ally themselves with Prester John in his battles against Muslims and others. They frequently send friendly traders to the king's land.

Jews in the West had various opinions about Prester John, some considering him an enemy holding back the Ten Tribes from reunification with the Jews. Many associated the coming of the lost tribes with the advent of the Messiah.

In the middle of the 15th century, at about the same time we hear of the de Conti's last reports of activity from a Prester John of the East Indies and also a possible embassy from that king to the Vatican, Jewish writings circulated about wars between the Prester John and the Ten Tribes.

In that year [1454], on the third day of the month of Nissan [early spring], there arrived here to the holy city of Jerusalem wise and respected elders from the lands of the Children of the East, and also men from the land of Babylonia, from the lands of Persia and Media, from India, from China, and from Yemen...which is as far from Jerusalem as the place of the Children of the East, five months' journey; and from there to our brothers, the Children of the Sambatyon River, is five months. They brought us letters from the heads of communities in the above-mentioned places...Know that the Sambatyon river stopped flowing altogether in the year 1453, at the beginning of the year, on the very first day of the month of Tishri. Our brothers are there battling the war of the blessed God, and they have a great and pious and exceedingly strong king who fights the battles of the Lord every single day with the great Christian king, Prester John of India. The great and pious king of our people captured many lands from him, and killed many thousands of his people...So gird yourselves and strengthen others in the name of the Lord God, for the Redeemer has been revealed, and he is about to redeem us with the help of blessed God.

Numerous explanations have given for what historical facts, if any, may explain the beliefs in the Ten Tribes and the Sambatyon River. The need to link these motifs with a king in the east may simply relate to the fact that both the Ten Tribes and the King of the East themes are integral to apocalyptic beliefs in the region.

It may be there is some connection with the Jewish communities in the more remote areas of China -- the southern coastal cities of Quanzhou (Zaiton), Canton, Ningpo and Yangzhou. Merchants from Fujian Province and other parts of South China settled at trading posts like the Parian in Manila and other Southeast Asian ports, and it may be these merchants were conflated with the Chinese Jews, if no real association existed.

Although the information on the King of the East as a savior or as antichrist is often confused, a consistent theme linking the monarch with the geography, aromatics, cosmology and other characteristics of the "East Indies" persists through the ages from the earliest times.

Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento

References

Buitenwerf, Rieuwerd. Book III of the Sibylline Oracles and Its Social Setting, Brill Academic Publishers, 2003, pp. 273-5.

Goldfish, Matt. The Sabbatean Prophets, Harvard University Press, 2004, p. 31.

Halkin, Hillel. Across the Sabbath River: In Search of a Lost Tribe of Israel, Houghton Mifflin Books, 2004, p. 109.

MacGing, Brian C. The Foreign Policy of Mithridates VI Eupator, King of Pontus, Brill Academic Publishers, 1986, pp. 103-4.

Mingana, Alphonse, "The early spread of Christianity in India," Bulletin of the John Rylands Library X 1926, p. 455.

Reeves, John C. Trajectories in Near Eastern Apocalyptic: A Postrabbinic Jewish Apocalypse Reader, SBL, 2005.

Werner, E.T.C. Myths and legends of China, Courier Dover
Publications, 1994, p. 253. The manuscript containing the story of Miao Shan was given by the abbot of Hsiang-shan monastery to Chiang Chih-ch'i, the Ju-Chou prefect, in 1100 CE. The abbot had received the work from a monk who had come on pilgrimage to Hsiang-shan.