The New Coat of Arms
of Pope Benedict XVI has been released by the
Bavarian diocese of Munich and Freising, of which Joseph Cardinal
Ratzinger was once archbishop. The three-sectored shield has three
personal elements: a shell, the "Moor of Freising" and "St. Corbinian's
bear."
There are also two novelties: the substitution of the miter instead of
the tiara, and the addition of the white pallium with black crosses
draped below the shield.
The shield has symbols introduced by then Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger of
Munich and Freising, and later as cardinal, but the composition is new.
The central element, the shield's most noble point, has a large gold
shell, whose meaning Ratzinger explained in his autobiography
"Milestones, Memoirs: 1927-1977": It is "above all the sign of our being
pilgrims, of our being on a journey."
But it also recalls to legend in which St. Augustine came across a boy
on the seashore who was scooping water from the sea and pouring it into
a small hole he had dug in the sand. When the saint pondered this
seemingly futile activity, it struck him as analogous to limited human
minds trying to understand the infinite mystery of the divine.
Two other symbols, from the tradition of Bavaria, where the new Pope
comes from, are also included in the shield.
The upper left-hand section depicts a brown-faced Moor, crown and
collar. This element is not rare in European heraldry, and it is very
frequent in the Bavarian tradition. It is called "caput ethiopicum" or
"Moor of Freising."
As Ratzinger himself explained in his autobiography, this element has
been included in the shields of the bishops of Freising for some 1,000
years.
"I do not know its meaning. For me it is it is an expression of the
universality of the Church, which knows no distinctions of race or class
since all are one in Christ (Galatians 3:28)," he wrote.
On the upper right-hand section of the shield is a brown bear with a
pack on its back. It is "St. Corbinian's bear."
The bear is tied to an old Bavarian legend about St. Corbinian, the
first bishop and patron saint of the Diocese of Freising.
According to the legend, when the saint was on his way to Rome, a bear
attacked and killed his horse. St. Corbinian punished the bear by making
him carry the saint's belongings the rest of the way to Rome.
The bear symbolizes the beast "tamed by the grace of God," and the pack
he is carrying symbolizes "the weight of the episcopate," said Cardinal
Ratzinger in his autobiography.
"The bear with the pack, which replaced the horse or, more probably, St.
Corbinian's mule, becoming, against his will, his pack animal, was that
not, and is it not an image of what I should be and of what I am?"
continues the cardinal in his book.
On the back of the shield are the keys, in remembrance of Christ's words
to Peter: "I will give you the keys of the kingdom of Heaven, and
whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you
lose on earth shall be loosed in heaven" (Matthew 16:19).
Benedict XVI decided not to include the tiara that traditionally
appeared at the top of each Pope's coat of arms, and replaced it with
the pointed miter.
The papal miter, represented in Benedict XVI's shield, is silver and has
three gold stripes, symbolizing the Supreme Pontiff's three powers:
order, jurisdiction and magisterium.
An absolute novelty in Benedict XVI's shield is the pallium, the woolen
stole symbolizing a bishop's authority, and the typical liturgical
insignia of the Supreme Pontiff, indicating his responsibility to be the
shepherd of Christ's flock.
During the first centuries the Popes wore a real sheepskin on their
shoulders. Later they began to use a white woolen band.
On the image of
the Blackamoor in European Heraldry
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 and Calvin. 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.
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.
Part II Divine Darkness
In the middle of the 14th century, one of the most
profound examples of the symbol of the blackamoor can be seen in the use
of this image to represent Christ. It is clear from the documentation we
have for the city of Lauingen in Germany, for example, that at about
this time, the city's seal with the head of Christ wearing a crown of
thorns is transformed to the head of a blackamoor wearing a golden
crown. That the latter insignia is meant to represent the former is
quite obvious from the accompanying inscriptions. One of the earlier
ones read: "Sigillum civium de Lougingin" (seal of the city of Lauingen),
while a later version clearly explains itself as the "Sigillum secretum
civitatis palatinae Lavgingen (secret seal of the palatinate city of
Lauingen)."
A German heraldic scholar writing before World War
II offered two other reasons for a similar coats of arms. He pointed out
that Ethiop (sun burnt) the black was a sun sign and therefore a symbol
of divinity that could alternately be used for the Son of God or the Son
of Man. He also pointed out that from what we know of the cult of the
Black Madonna, the blazon of the blackamoor queen was a reference to
Mary, the Queen of Heaven or her prefiguration as the Queen of Sheba and
that the male versions of these insignia were therefore references to
her Son.
The discovery of this particular seal was
especially surprising to me since I had taken for granted that it was
either another reference to Prester John or, even more likely, to
Balthazar, the black Wise man of the Epiphany who has, iconographically,
almost always been treated as a king. Because his gift of myrrh
prophesied not only Our Lord's death but, most importantly, His
Resurrection and the proof, therefore, of His divinity, the awe
Balthazar's blackness inspired must have had a powerful impression on
the science of heraldry. A coat of Arms that is apparently derived from
the same theological source as that of the city of Lavingen belongs to
the Cruse or Cross family of France. Since cockle shells are so
liturgically associated with the sacrement of baptism, their number here
probably signifies the three nails of the Crucifixion while the women,
in all likelyhood, are representations of Mary and the Queen of Sheba.
The Arms of King Balthazar
No more graphic a demonstration of the African
figure as a symbol of the sun is to be found than in the arms ascribed
to King Balthazar. Initially this had posed a problem for me since the
ethnic background of this Wise Man, to my mind, was simply not enough of
a reason for this heraldic device. It was not until coming upon an early
text describing his coat of arms as that of the sun that I at last
realized what the blackamoor on Balthazar's livery signified. Since King
Melchior bore a field of stars and King Kaspar, the moon, it is fairly
obvious that as an allusion, no doubt, to the celestial phenomenon which
had guided them to Bethlehem, the original arms of the Magi had been the
sun, the moon and the stars. I do not think it would be unreasonable to
suppose that for whatever theological line of reasoning, the heraldic
insignia of both Balthazar and the city of Lauingen had been changed at
the same point in history.
Blackness as an Allusion to God
Perhaps even more remarkable, especially from our
perspective today, is evidence which would suggest that in the language
of heraldry, the blackamoor could be an allusion to God Himself. The
most obvious of these examples are to be found in the arms of the city
of Coburg, the Kob family of Nuremberg and the Pucci of Florence. Since
these three names are derived from that of Jacob (Coburg=Jacoburg, Kob=Jakob,
Pucci=Jacopucci), the clue is to be found in the Book of Genesis. Very
much along the lines of the old Hebrew injunction against uttering the
Holy Name, it was the second century theologian, Dionysius the
Aereopagite, who first alluded to God as, "The Divine Darkness".
In the passage relating the changing of his name
to that of Israel, Jacob discovers that the dark spirit he has wrestled
with all night long is none other than God in the impenetrable image of
His infinite Self. The fact that the name, James, is nothing other than
a variant of Jacob, might well provide us with the significance for the
arms of Sardinia I described earlier since it is to the Aragonese king,
James 1, that their use can first be traced.
Blackness as Wisdom
One of the most dramatic and, certainly, most
graphic uses of blackness as wisdom can be seen in the portrayal of the
Good Thief from a number of 15th century Flemish masterpieces depicting
the Crucifixion. For the ability to recognize his Saviour's spiritual
supremacy beneath the harsh reality of the Cross, St. Dismas is not only
painted as an African, he is painted blindfolded as well. The blindfold
on certain blackamoor coat of arms, therefore, is not a mistakenly
placed headband or torse, the standard headpiece of this specific symbol
when a crown is not called for. This blazon is, instead, an exhortation
or, more precisely, a divine demand that we not only respond to the
weakest and most helpless of our neighbours as we would Our Lord but,
like St. Dismas, that we do so even while in the death throes of our own
personal crucifixions. Interestingly enough, a number of early
theologians writing on this subject, have attributed to the Black Wise
Man's colour the same kind of reasoning from which St. Dismas would
derive his doubly dark imagery; his ability to recognize the Messiah in
a lowly manger.
The social gospel so strikingly symbolized by this example of the
blackamoor blazon is also, interestingly enough, quite implicit in even
its most negative use-- that of the vanquished infidel. From what is
known regarding the popularity of the Charlemagnian epics during the
latter middle ages, we can assume that this image was, in all
probability, associated with Marsile, the black heathen king who, as the
enemy of all Christendom, was Charlemagne's paramount opponent. Offered
baptism at his defeat, Marsile had instead chosen death rather than
accept a faith whose adherents he scornfully mocked and condemned for
their immoral and reprehensible treatment of the poor. An image that was
so scathing a reminder of a community's responsibility to its less
fortunate could, therefore, have only been perceived as a positive one.
The relationship of the black image to the concept
of justice was nowhere more politically utilized than with the Holy
Roman emperors of the Hohenstauffern dynasty. Indeed, it would appear
that the sable blazon of the imperial eagle and that of the moor's head
were meant to be perceived as synonymous. The simple headbands worn by
both are, as a matter of fact, identical and, interestingly enough,
nothing less, despite the simplicity of the design, than the imperial
diadem' of ancient Rome. Also interesting is the fantastic coat of arms
attributed to Ethiopia by the heralds of the middle ages. For like the
bicephalic bird of the Holy Roman Empire, Ethiopia bore a 'v' shaped
emblem with a blackamoor's head 'torsed' at the end of each arm.
This parallelism between both sets of heads can,
of course, be explained by the "rex / sacerdos" argument which occupied
the very centre of the political stage during this particular period of
history. To both the Pope who preached the imperial nature of his
sanctified position and the emperor, Frederick II, who believed in the
priestliness of his own power, the figure of the African priest king,
Prester John, became an almost magical icon politically. If we can
interpret the double-headed eagle represented the claims of both the
church and the state, it would be quite logical to surmise that the
reason why Ethiopia's arms were conceived as double-headed is due to the
belief already mentioned that the Negus (emperor) exercised the
prerogatives of both priest and king.
As Joseph Campbell has pointed out, it was to this African figure that
European literature first attributed the very concept of popular
justice. Indeed, while the Church showed off his famous letter of
introduction and circulated copies of it to the Christian world, rumors
in Frederick's own lifetime made him an intimate friend of this
semi-mythical king. According to popular belief, for instance, Prester
John had presented him with armor made of asbestos, the elixir of youth,
a ring of invisibility and, most precious of all, the philosopher's
stone.
Because they are described in the 'Tristam und
Isult' cycles, the arms of Sir Pallamedes, the Moorish prince who
becomes a knight of the Round Table, have received a certain amount of
scholarly attention. Chequered in black and white, this highly
contrasting design would appear to be nothing more than perhaps the most
abstract icon of those dualities already pointed to, such as God and
Jacob (Jacquelado is the word for checkered in Spanish), or Church and
State. Instead of his coat armour, it is the body of Sir Fierfitz
Angevin, the black knight from Eschenbach's 'Parzival' that is patterned
in a piebald motif. The fact that the poet likens Fierfitz's skin to a
parchment with writing is what expands this symbol to its most
encompassing parameters.
To the Greeks, Pallamedes, the mythological figure
from whom Sir Tristam's Moorish companion derives his name, was
commemorated as the inventor of writing, counting, weighing and
measuring and the games of the chessboard. Since his name translates as
'Ancient Wisdom', it has been suggested that all dualistic tensions were
intended to be nuanced; from the most simple 'yes or no', 'O or I' to
the most sophisticated of Parmenedes' models regarding 'The I and the
Thou' or 'The One and the Many'. Obviously playing with the same kind of
bifurcated symbolism as the Hohenstauffern eagle or the two headed
branch of Ethiopia, the writer of the prose Tristam recounts that of all
the knights of the Round Table, Sir Pallamedes was the only one who wore
two swords. Whether as a reference to Pallamedes' name or the political
wisdom Prester John stood for, or, perhaps, as a conflation of both, it
is interesting that the blackamoor's head was one of the earliest
watermarks in the history of paper making. Examples collected date from
about 1380 to 1460.
Another possible reason for the imagery of Sir Pallamedes could well
have been a rather ironic geo-political one. During the dark ages the
culture of the Roman empire had, for the most part, been fairly
obliterated. During the Crusades, western intellectuals became all too
aware that it was their adversaries they would have to turn to for any
advance in their educational systems since the moslem world had become
the reservoir of classical Greco Roman learning. Due to the Saracen
sages with which Frederick II surrounded himself, for example, Sicily
developed into one of the most important intellectual centers of Europe,
spreading the scholarship that had been derived from Arab translations.
His court was so Islamic in its splendor that not only in the Midde East
but throughout Europe he was referred to as 'Sultan.'
Since the Fatimid dynasty of
Egypt during the 11th and 12th centuries had been of Sudanese
extraction, and because their armed forces during this period had been
augmented by a compliment of fifty thousand black troops a year, it
should not be too difficult to understand how the image of the African
had come to be associated, like Sir Pallamedes, with "ancient wisdom."
Part III Sable
Besides this possible reference to Prester John,
another reason for the black blazon of the imperial eagle is to be found
in the rules and regulations governing the use of 'metals' and
'tinctures' in coat armour.
Following the classical Greek analysis of light
and colour, black and white were considered the two primaries since the
interplay between light and dark is what was held to produce the
spectrum. Furthermore, white, or more accurately, light, was not defined
as a colour or 'tincture' but as the gold or the silver which, to this
day, are still the only options for the term 'metal' in the language of
heraldry. Black, therefore, was considered the most important of colours,
ranking above the red, blue and green standardly referred to as
'tinctures'.
Thirteenth century texts explaining the imperial
insignia go even further. Because of medieval conceptions of the
absorption of light by darkness, the writers theorized that within the
color black was contained all the light or the white it had displaced.
This is obviously the reason why when the ruby is
substituted for red or 'gules' and the emerald for green or 'vert'
according to the traditions of gemnological blazonry, it is nothing
other than the diamond that stands for 'sable'. In all probability, it
is also this line of reasoning that contributed to the cult of the Black
Madonna. For, having borne the Light of Creation within her very womb,
the devotion to the Mother of God as the (coal) black Queen of Heaven is
a superb example of how this law of physics was at one time interpreted.
According to the early heralds, the black eagle on
a field of gold translated quite literally to, "As God is in Heaven so
is the Emperor on Earth". The colour of its outspread wings was
explicitly said to symbolize the embodiment or the materialization of
light. Furthermore, since it was also held that the dark, by its
interaction with the light is what produced the spectrum, the colour
black apparently came to represent the intermediary position a divine
rights monarch maintained between his God and his people. If the eagle,
therefore, was the zoomorphic symbol of these ideas, the blackamoor in
Hohenstauffern Europe could only have been interpreted as their
anthropomorphic equivalent. Indeed, there is another explanation for the
imperial eagle's blackness that bears this out. As the most powerful of
birds flying so close to the sun, it, like the Ethiop, was regarded as a
solar symbol.
Perhaps because it is so recent and therefore so
comparatively easier to interpret, one of the more exciting examples of
the blackamoor as a symbol of the Redeemer is the one to be found in an
insignia designed by Pope Pius VII in the early part of the last
century. Commonly referred to as the Moretto, it was awarded to the
Princes of the Academy of St. Luke, a class of nobles created
exclusively for artists by the Holy See in recognition of their life's
work and contributions to the field. It is in the age old tradition that
St. Luke once painted a portrait of the Infant Jesus where the key to
the symbolism of this Papal decoration can be found. The fact that St.
Luke is also an evangelist, is evidence enough that at least,
allegorically, he had succeeded in the challenge which, as a true
artist, he would, of course, have had to confront--that of conveying in
his painting the divine reality incarnate in the form of a human child.
As clearly then as the Moretto or, in English, the Little Moor is a
metaphor for the incarnate God St. Luke portrayed, so too is the implied
challenge to the artist: to portray for the world the Divinity nascent
in it.
It is this last example in particular which leads
me to think that the blackamoor figured candelabra dating back a century
or two earlier was meant to be seen in this light. Instead of another
embarrassing icon like the lawn jockey or the Aunt Jemima cookie
jar--those examples of main stream Americana which many of us find so
embarrassing--this classic European 'object d'art' was probably intended
either as an injunction or a blessing. And, from what I have already
pointed out regarding the imagery of St. Maurice, perhaps the most
negative significance they might have had is that they were also
intended as Counter-Reformation propaganda.
