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«Why Does A Black Man Appear On Pope's Shield?»

Saturday, November 21, 2009

Pope Benedict XVI’s coat of arms (adopted from his archdiocese in Freising, Germany) features a very interesting and “controversial” image, the significance of which is lost on everybody, even Freising officials and the Pope himself. Amid the other heraldic symbols on the papal shield is the head of an Ethiopian king, known only as “the Moor of Freising” or Caput Aethiopum. But who is “the Moor of Freising”?

The portrait is a caricature of an African male, with pronounced ruby-red lips which suggest the blackface makeup of the minstrel era. ”It’s not good,” says Holy Cross professor of religious studies Matthew Schmalz, who has written about the crest for the Catholic magazine Commonweal. Whoever it is, the Pope has himself chosen to let the symbol serve as an expression of his commitment to the growth of Catholicism in Africa.

Another Coat of Arms Rendering of the Moor of Freisling‘For me, [the African king] is an expression of the universality of the Church,” the then-Cardinal Ratzinger wrote in his 1998 book Milestones: Memoirs 1927-1977. But the Pope also wrote that he did not know where the African image came from, though it was prominently featured on his coat of arms when he was archbishop of Munich-Freising. Unofficially, the Vatican has said the image is meant to rally worshipers in Africa, conceding that the African king appeared on the original crest of Benedict XVI when he was a Bishop.

“I do not know its meaning,” the Pope wrote in his memoirs as a Bishop. “The church knows no distinctions of race or class since all are one in Christ.”

‘It probably strikes people as being really odd,” Schmalz says. ”They look at it and think, ‘What is going on here?’ “

Mario Valdes, a researcher for WGBH’s ”Frontline,” strongly believes the black king can be one of only two people: Balthazar, one of the three kings from the ”Orient,” who brings myrrh to the newborn baby Jesus, or Prester John, the mythological king of the ”three Indias,” or, alternatively, Ethiopia. Prester John is a legendary monarch-priest who possessed supernatural powers in ruling over an Eden-like paradise. Though explorers looked for Prester John for three centuries beginning in the medieval period, he and his kingdom were never found.

Pope Alexander III is said to have written a letter to Prester John in 1177, although the Catholic Encyclopedia casts doubt on this event.

But there are two other possible identities for the unknown Moor. He could be St. Maurice, a Roman commander from Africa whose Christian soldiers refused to sacrifice to the pagan gods after an important victory, and were themselves massacred. (Valdes discounts this, noting that Maurice is usually depicted wearing a centurion’s helmet.) And there is a more grisly possibility. At the time of the Crusades, some Christian kings displayed a severed Moor’s head on their flags or crests to symbolize victories over their Islamic enemies. It is conceivable that the king evolved from such an image, if one takes into account the ragged neck, the color of which matches the red lips.

‘It’s certainly one of the possibilities,” Schmalz says.

As for us, the image only further suggests to us that Jesus may have been black, if not an Ethiopian like Adam was, as genetic science and the migration of the first homo sapiens sapiens from Ethiopia — with all races originating from one man — have suggested. Admittedly, this is a stretch, but coupled with the mystery of the Black Virgin and Child (see post below) whom the Knights Templar believed to be the Virgin Mary and Jesus (based on thousands of statuettes brought back from the Holy Land), this image is arguably an important one — though no one knows what it means.

According to the website of the Pope’s former Archdiocese: “The shield, which is divided into three sections, displays the ‘Moor of Freising.’ The Moor’s head, facing left and typically crowned, appeared on the coat of arms of the old principality of Freising as early as 1316, during the reign of the Bishop of Freising, Prince Konrad III, and it remained almost unchanged until the ‘secularization’ of the Church’s estates in that region in 1802-1803. Ever since that time the archbishops of Munich and Freising have included the Caput Aethiopum, the head of an Ethiopian, in their episcopal coat of arms.”

This explanation, in our view, is inadequate. Why did the Bishop of Freising Prince Konrad III choose to display Caput Aethhipum, “the Moor of Freising,” an Ethiopian king, on the coat of arms or shield of the archdiocese? We intend to dig a little deeper to find out. It’s notable that upon the “secularization of the church’s estates” in Munch and Freising in 1802 that the Moor of Freising reportedly did not appear on the coat of arms of the archdiocese. If the Moor of Freising then has some religious significance … who is the Moor of Freising and who might he represent: One of the Magi, a black Saint, St. Mauritius, St. Zeno, St. Sigismund, St. Corbinian, as have been suggested? Prester John? Or King Solomon … or perhaps Jesus?