(Secret Seal)
On the image of the Blackamoor in European Heraldry (a preliminary proposal for an iconographical study) by Mario de Valdes y Cocom
Considering the deep roots of Christianity in the cultural experience of the African American community, it is only natural that even in the most cursory of discussions on Black history, the hope always is raised of discovering Christ as a man of colour. Moreover, in this global village of television and transatlantic travel, the standard Euro-centric portrayal of Christ is both anomalous and anachronistic, particularly in these racially sensitized times.
It might therefore prove a great source of spiritual strength and psychological affirmation for those of us of African descent if a relatively unknown and forgotten medieval European tradition regarding the image of the black was reconstructed for all to see and share.
What I am referring to are the coat of arms of the blackamoor which proliferated in both the private and civic European escutcheons (coat of arms) throughout the 13th,
14th and 15th centuries.
Due likely to the tradition attached to Sardinia's arms, these insignia have been all too facilely explained as the grizzly prize of some crusader conquest. The four African heads each displayed in one of the four quarters created by the cross on the shield are referred to by an early motto associated with this island's crest as 'trophea.' The traditional explanation is they represent the four Moorish emirs who were defeated by a king of Aragon sometime in the 11th century. (The possibility of a more probable approach to these insignia will be raised further on.) Such an interpretation would, of course, be more than welcome today, especially in the face of establishment attempts to portray as white the Islamic power that was able to withstand three successive waves of European invasions.
And, a common corollary to this negative view was the African figure became a symbol of evil, universal or personal, that had to be subjugated or vanquished. Given the economic/political positions of those with the right to bear arms, the hold that heraldry has had on the imagination of the West has been a very powerful one and this particular perception of the blackamoor as a symbol of the negative has undoubtedly played an enormous part in the propagation of racism.
The Imagery of St. Maurice
Modern specialists in the science of heraldry suspect, however, that this blazon (coat of arms) of the blackamoor is instead the very opposite of a negative symbol. In the last decade or two it has been pointed out that the moor's head quite possibly could have referred to St. Maurice, the black patron saint of the Holy Roman Empire from the beginning of the 10th century.
Because of his name and native land, St. Maurice had been portrayed as black ever since the 12th century. The insignia of the black head, in a great many instances, was probably meant to represent this soldier saint since a majority of the arms awarded were knightly or military. With 6,666 of his African compatriots, St. Maurice had chosen martyrdom rather than deny his allegiance to his Lord and Saviour, thereby creating for the Christian world an image of the Church Militant that was as impressive numerically as it was colourwise.
Here, no doubt, is a major reason why St. Maurice would become the champion of the old Roman church and an opposition symbol to the growing influence of Luther andCalvin. The fact that he was of the same race as the Ethiopian baptized by St. Philip in Acts of the Apostles was undoubtedly an important element to his significance as well. Since this figure from the New Testament was read as a personification of the Gentile world in its entirety, the complexion of St. Maurice and his Theban Legion (the number of which signified an infinite contingent) was also understood as a representation of the Church's universality - a dogmatic ideal no longer tolerated by the Reformation's nationalism. Furthermore, it cannot be coincidental that the most powerful of the German princes to remain within the Catholic fold, the archbishop Albrecht von Brandenburg, not only dedicated.
practically all the major institutions under his jurisdiction to St. Maurice but in what is today one of the most important paintings of the Renaissance, had himself portrayed in Sacred Conversation with him. Even more blatant was the action taken by Emanual Philibert, Duke of Savoy. In 1572 he organized the order of St. Maurice. The papal promulgation published at its institution declared quite unequivocally that the sole purpose for this knighthood was to combat of the Reformation. The order still exist exists although it has now combined with the Order of St. Lazarus. The white trefoiled cross of the combined order belongs to the former.
The particular symbol of St. Maurice's blackness that must have most antagonized the Protestant faction, however, was the one regarding the mystery of Papal authority. Scholars have been able to show, for example, that in the theological debates of this period, even the abstract adjectives, black and white, were defiantly acknowledged by apologists of both stripes to represent the Church and the Reformers respectively.
Prester John
In addition to St. Maurice, there is also another figure connected to the blackamoor coat of arms. It is the semi-mythical Negus (emperor) of Ethiopia, Prester John. To Otto von Freising an Imperial Hohenstauffen Prince Bishop of the 12th century who was tired and torn by the endless struggle between Church and State, this black man who was both priest and king and ruled a land of peace and plenty at the edge of the world became the personification of the ideal state. To this day the arms of the see of Freising is the bust of a crowned blackamoor.
Because of their ethnic and geographic origins, it is likely that St. Maurice and his Theban Legion became associated with Prester John as the ideal soldiers for the ideal state. It should be pointed out, furthermore, that, heraldically, since he was the only monarch who could claim the 'Sang Real' or the 'Royal Blood' of Christ because of his descent from Solomon, Prester John was the only individual deemed worthy of the right to bear as arms the image of the Crucifix. Even the earring traditionally worn by the blackamoor is a reference to this sacred privilege.
The Golden Ring in the Blackamoor's Ear
To understand how these two objects are related to each other--the earring and the image of the Crucifix--we must refer back to the Old Testament. In the Book of Leviticus can be found an ordinance describing the ritual ear piercing of any slave who chooses to continue in his master's service after being granted his freedom. Since one of the most important of all Ethiopian royal titles was "Slave of the Cross," the golden ring in the blackamoor's ear was probably meant to be interpreted as a deeply devotional and--considering the belief in the Bible as the Word of God--a highly rhetorical symbol.
The Persian Empire .
Ethiopia Under the Achaemenid [Persian] Dynasty .
By: Philip Huyse.
The Achaemenid dynasty - was a dynasty in the ancient Persian Empire. At the height of their power, around 500 BC, the Achaemenid rulers of Persia ruled over territories roughly encompassing parts of today's Iran, Iraq, Armenia, Afghanistan, Turkey, Bulgaria, small part of Greece, Egypt, Syria, Northern India/Pakistan, Jordan, Israel/Palestine, Lebanon, Caucasia, Central Asia, Arabia, and Libya.
Ethiopia, Elam, was located on the western fringe of the Achaemenid Empire. The Ethiopians are named among the peoples of the Persian Empire and are included at the end of Herodotus' satrapy list (3.97, 2f.). Their country was probably not part of a satrapy in the Achaemenid Empire and they did not pay regular taxes; they rather seem to have exchanged biennial gifts only like gold, ebony, boys, and elephant tusks (Herodotus, 3.97, 2) such as the ones shown on the Apadâna reliefs at Persepolis on which they are depicted last in the series of the tributaries of the Persian Empire. The use of Kushite ivory is confirmed on one of the building inscriptions at Darius' palace at Susa [Kent, Old Persian, p. 143]).
Soon after Cambyses had succeeded his father Cyrus in 529 B.C.E. he led his army to the eastern borders of Egypt. The expedition against the "long-lived" Ethiopians (Herodotus, 7.17-22) was ill-prepared and hasty, however, and ended in disaster with heavy losses of manpower due to lack of food; Cambyses himself is said to have gone mad after the campaign had failed. This invasion by Cambyses has been a matter of constant dispute within Nubian studies: Decisive in the matter of its authenticity is the answer to the question whether the ruler named Kmbswdn in the so-called stela of Nastasen can be identified with Cambyses or not (cf. Morkot, pp. 323, 326f., 330f. for an analysis of this stela). A possible allusion to the Cambyses campaign may be seen in the Aithiopika‚ of Heliodorus of Emesa (3rd century C.E.), which is a romance at the background of a conflict between a Meriotic king (Hydaspes) and the Persian satrap Oroondates.
Colossi of Memnon
Kolossen van Memnon Aan de andere kant van Luxor 1375.
From the time of the early Greek literary sources until the Hellenistic period Ethiopia was idealized by the Greeks, who considered the Ethiopians to be a semi-mythological people. Memnon, the ruler of the Homeric Ethiopians, they identified with the Great Persian King (cf. Georges, pp. 48f., 68f., 267 n. 1) and even at a time when the Greeks had come to know the Persians a little better, they continued to link the two Eastern peoples: e.g., for Herodotus Achaemenid Susa remained the Memno‚neion a‚sty (5.54, 2).
According to Herodotus the Ethiopians, clad in leopard or lion skins, wearing long bows and painted with vermilion and chalk provided one of the most colorful, as well as warlike, contingents in the army with which Xerxes invaded Greece in 480-79 B.C. (Herodotus, 7.69, 2; cf. also Head, p. 53. For a description of Kushites on Greek pottery cf. Morkot, pp. 328-30). A delegation from the Ethiopians is included in the lists of Arrian (7.15, 4-5) and Diodorus (17.113, 1-2) amongst those which awaited Alexander on his return to Babylon in the spring of 323 B.C.
During a lengthy conflict in the 6th century C.E. between Byzantium and the Sasanians, with South Arabia at stake as an object of obvious economic interest for control over the lower Red Sea and trade with India, Persian and Ethiopian armies clashed again; at the request of Justinian, the Ethiopians landed in Yemen in 525, in order to help their Monophysite Christian co-religionists (for the background and evolution of this conflict cf. Bosworth, pp. 604-7 and Frye, pp. 156f.).
Bibliography:
F. de Blois, "The 'Four Great Kingdoms' in the Manichaean Kephalaia," in P.O. Scholz, ed., Orbis Aethiopicus: Studia in honorem Stanislaus Chojnacki natali septuagesimo quinto dicata, septuagesimo septimo oblata, Albstadt, Germay, 1992, pp. 221-30 (esp. pp. 227-29 on the Ethiopians in Manichean literature). C. E. Bosworth, "Iran and the Arabs before Islam," Camb. Hist. Iran III/1 (1983), pp. 593-612. R.N. Frye, "The political history of Iran under the Sasanians," Camb. Hist. Iran III/1 (1983), pp. 116-80. P. Georges, Barbarian Asia and the Greek Experience: From the [i]Archaic Period to the Age of Xenophon, Baltimore and London, 1994. D. Head, The Achaemenid Persian Army, Stockport, England, 1992. J. Leroy, "Les 'Éthiopiens' de Perse‚polis," Annales d'Éthiopie 5, 1963, pp. 293-95. R. Morkot, "Nubia and Achaemenid Persia: Sources and Problems," in H. Sancisi-Weerdenburg and A. Kuhrt, eds., Achaemenid History VI. Asia Minor and Egypt: Old Cultures in a New Empire, Leiden, 1991, pp. 321-36.
Mighty Memnon
De "Koning van de Ethiopiërs," die kwam om de hulp van Priamus in Troje, Memnon Μέμνων.
The African Presence in Greek & Roman Mythology By Runoko Rashidi
The fabled story of the ancient and stupendous African general and warrior-king Memnon and his display of courage and prowess at the Greek siege of Troy was one of the most widely circulated and celebrated epics in the annals of Greek and Roman mythology. Memnon, described as "black as ebony, and the handsomest man alive," is mentioned repeatedly in the works of such early writers as Hesiod, Ovid, Pindar, Diodorus Siculus, Strabo and Virgil. Arctinus of Miletus composed an epic poem entitled Ethiopia in which Memnon was the leading figure. Quintus of Smyrna credits Memnon with "bringing the countless tribes of his people who live in Ethiopia, land of the black man," to Troy in support of its war against the hostile coalition of Greek city-states. It was written that: "Memnon came to help them. Memnon was lord over the dark Ethiopians, and the host he brought seemed infinite. The Trojans were delighted to see him in their city."
Memnon Μέμνων, king of the Ethiopians and conqueror of the East. 3110: Memnon's statue.
Bernard Picart (1673-1733), Fabeln der Alten (Musen-Tempel), 1754.
According to Homer, "To Troy no hero came of nobler line, Or if nobler, Memnon, it was thine." In more recent times (late in the nineteenth century), Dr. Rufus Lewis Perry pronounced that:
"The distinguished Cushite whom Homer calls Memnon came and went like a meteor in the galaxy of illustrious Ethiopian monarchs. But the poet in classic song and the historian in legendary tradition, have preserved enough of his brightness to indicate his rank and power among the contemporary potentates of the earth. He was king of the Ethiopians. He fought against the Greeks in the Trojan war; and after he had slain Antilochus, son of Nestor, was killed by Achilles."
Dr. Perry concluded that, "Through slain by Achilles, Memnon is so embalmed in verse and prose by Homer, Hesiod, Virgil and others, that his name will last as long as the writings of these imperishable authors."
An Ethiopian. 9905: Busto de etíope. Anónimo italiano, siglo XVII. Museo Nacional del Prado.
Ethiopia and the Holy Grail
Due also to the age-old belief that the Ark of the Covenant had been hidden in Ethiopia, the great epics of the Arthurian cycle transformed the Ethiopian emperor into the founder of the Grail dynasty and the ancestor, nine generations later, of the only knight of the Round Table who would achieve the Quest, Sir Galahad.
It would appear that the long-standing confusion over whether the Holy Grail was a cup or a stone was a deliberate one. Considering the opportunity afforded by these Ethiopian traditions, medieval writers were able to theologically fuse together the symbols of both the Old and the New Testament: the Tablet of the Law and the Chalice.
