Prester John () was a legendary Christian patriarch, presbyter (elder), and king. Stories popular in Europe in the twelfth through to the seventeenth centuries told of a Christian (Nestorian) patriarch and king who was said to rule over a Christian nation lost amid the pagans and Muslims in the Orient, the lands in which the patriarch of the Saint Thomas Christians resided. The accounts are varied collections of medieval popular fantasy, depicting Prester John as a descendant of the Three Magi, ruling a kingdom full of riches, marvels, and strange creatures.