The Prester John letter functioned as a utopian critique of Europe.

Evidence

Rogers goes on to remind us of the rich utopianism contained in the letter presumably written by Prester John in 1165 and its great popular acceptance for the next 300 years or so. The letter whatever its origins (some scholars have argued that it was written by or on the authority of Frederick Barbarossa; others that its author was an anonymous Levantine Christian monk) described the realm of Prester John in terms that put contemporary Europe to shame, in material as well as social terms. The letter was consequently a critique of Europe, its decay, its chaos, its corruption, and its moral dissolution. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1780

Categorization

• CANDY: A medieval Christian European ‘utopia’ that shamed contemporary Europe, endured 300 years, and may have been forged by Barbarossa — great dinner-table material.
• SEED: Could be an essay angle: the medieval ‘luxury’ of imagining a superior non-European realm, and how utopian counter-narratives functioned as political critique before the Atlantic era.