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During the 1160es, a decade or so after the christian armies suffered warious defeats and lost much of palestina, during a period of relative peace, the chatolic church under the leadership of pope Alexander III began spreading a "letter" wich the pope himself is said to have compiled based on preexistant legends and scarce informations from former diplomatic relations with asian states

in this letter, wich was claimed to be a genuine piece of corespondence betveen the pope and the said priest John, there was described a large christian kingdom, of huge military and economic power, with descriptions of palaces, peoples, christian armies with huge golden crosses, pilars of diamonds etc... all in superlatives
this kingdom was said to be ruled by this priest John and offering its complete suport for the crusading armies, both in sending large armed forces, and large amounts of weapons equipment etc...

it is safe to asume this piece of propaganda was an important factor in raising political support for the later crusades
offcourse this was far from being the olnly reason for the third crusade but it did have a large influence on european courts, as well as mideval european culture on the whole, and also influenced ideas on geografy, political atitudes thovards asian and african nations, and ideas about geografic exploration

so the question is what if theres no "letter of priest John", or it doesnt have any real sucess
how does this influence european history during the 12th century and later, as in what does this do to the crusades, but also general european culture and atitude thowards the rest of the world
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