St. Maurice and The Moors of Europe

The Moors

By RUNOKO RASHIDI
 

It would not be inaccurate to say that the Moors helped reintroduce Europe to civilization.  But just who were the Moors of antiquity anyway?  As early as the Middle Ages, and as early as the seventeenth century, "The Moors were," according to the Oxford English Dictionary, "commonly supposed to be mostly black or very swarthy, and hence the word is often used for negro."  Dr. Chancellor Williams stated that "The original Moors, like the original Egyptians, were Black Africans."

At the beginning of the eighth century Moorish soldiers crossed over from Africa into Spain, Portugal, and France, where their swift victories became the substance of legends.  To the Christians of early Europe there was no question regarding the ethnicity of the Moors, and numerous sources support the view that the Moors were a black-skinned people.  Morien, for example, is the adventure of a heroic Moorish knight supposed to have lived during the days of King Arthur.  Morien is described as "all black:  his head, his body, and his hands were all black."  In the French epic known as the Song of Roland the Moors are described as "blacker than ink."

William Shakespeare used the word Moor as a synonym for African. Christopher Marlowe used African and Moor interchangeably.  Arab writers further buttress the Black identity of the Moors.  The powerful Moorish emperor Yusuf ben-Tachfin is described by an Arab chronicler as "a brown man with wooly hair."

Black soldiers, specifically identified as Moors, were actively recruited by Rome, and served in Britain, France, Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, Poland, and Romania.  St. Maurice, patron saint of medieval Europe, was only one of many Black soldiers and officers under the employ of the Roman Empire.

After the invasion of 711 came other waves of Moors even darker.  It was this occupation of Portugal which accounts for the fact that even noble families had absorbed the blood of the Moor.

 

From that time onwards, racial mixing in Portugal, as in Spain, and elsewhere in Europe which came under the influence of Moors, took place on a large scale.  That is why historians claim "Portugal is in reality a Negroid land," and that when Napoleon explained that "Africa begins at the Pyrenees," he meant every word that he uttered.  Even the world-famed shrine in Portugal, Fatima, where Catholic pilgrims from all over the world go in search of miracle cures for their afflictions, owes its origin to the Moors.  The story goes that a Portuguese nobleman was so saddened by the death of his wife, a young Moorish beauty whom he had married after her conversion to the Christian faith, that he gave up his title and fortune and entered a monastery.  His wife was buried on a high plateau called Sierra de Aire.  It is from there the name of Fatima is derived.

The Moors ruled and occupied Lisbon and the rest of the country until well into the twelfth century.  they were finally defeated and driven out by the forces of King Alfonso Henriques, who was aided by English and Flemish crusaders.  The scene of this battle was the Castelo de Sao Jorge or, in English, the Castle of St. George.  Today it still stands overlooking the city of "Lashbuna"--as the Moors named Lisbon.

 The 13th century Middle Dutch Arthurian tale Morien tells the tale of a son of a Knight of the Round Table. As the folklore goes, Aglovale–one of King Arthur’s knights–travels in the Moorish lands while searching for Lancelot. There he falls in love with a Moorish princess who gives birth to a son, Morien. Years later, while searching for the Holy Grail, Arthur’s knights encounter a grown Morien:

On the ninth day there came riding towards them a knight on a goodly steed, and well armed withal. He was all black, even as I tell ye: his head, his body, and his hands were all black, saving only his teeth. His shield and his armour were even those of a Moor, and black as a raven….[he] bared his head, which was black as pitch; that was the fashion of his land–Moors are black as burnt brands.

Unlike other depictions of black-a-moors as threatening, Morien’s blackness, though frequently mentioned, is not used as a negative qualifier. In fact, as if making this point to medieval readers, the epic states: “But in all that men would praise in a knight was he fair, after his kind. Though he were black, what was he the worse?”
Even more popular than Morien, was Saint Maurice-the Knight of the Holy Lance. Said to be a member of the Theban Legion in ancient Rome, Maurice attains knighthood when he refuses to massacre a group of Christians. It’s likely the tale of St. Maurice was a fabrication of Theodore, Bishop of Octodurum, sometime around the late 4th century. Maurice appears as a religious figure and is revered as early as 460AD. By the 10th century, he is a patron saint of the Holy Roman Emperors. Whatever the case of his existence, his depiction in the medieval world was variable. In some artwork he is European; in Coptic Egypt he is brown-skinned; but in other works, he is distinctly a black-a-moor. A black Saint Maurice can be found in the Cathedral of Magdeburg, Germany, next to the grave of the 10th century Holy Roman Emperor, Otto I. As late as the 16th century, the German painter Matthias Grünewald in his work the “Meeting of Saint Erasmus of Formiae and Saint Maurice,” depicts the saint as a black-a-moor in medieval European armor.