Category:Black King (subject)

Black King

Abstract

According to the Gospel of Matthew, wise men (Magi) from the East come to Jerusalem seeking “the king of the Jews.” The term “magus” (plural magi) was generally applied to dream interpreters, astrologers, or sorcerers from the area of Persia (modern Iran). Accordingly, on sarcophagi, in frescoes, or within by mosaics, these Persian magi were distinguished by red Phrygian caps ascribed to those from the East.

Although the biblical text does not specify how many magi were present, they were thought of as the three kings or the three wise men because they brought three gifts to Jesus. By the 6th century CE, they had been named Caspar (or Jaspar), Melchior, and Balthazar.

While magi were understood to be wise men from the East, one magus became regarded as “black.” As early as the 8th century CE, an Irish text described Balthazar as fuscus, a Latin word meaning “dark” or “swarthy.” Yet, this may have been a description not of his skin color but only his hair and beard.

By the 13th century in European Christian art, Balthazar began to be depicted as a "Black King." (In the Cologne tale of the relics of the Three King, however, it is Jaspar rather than Balthazar who was Ethiopian.) Balthasar did not represent an inclusive, positive standard for viewing Blackness. Rather, he served as a metaphor for the spread of Christianity as extending throughout three continents. By the 15th century CE, within Europe, the three kings were regarded as representative symbols of Africa, Asia, and Europe, and they were frequently depicted within Renaissance and Baroque art with Balthazar as a black king.

See "Balthazar: A Black African King in Medieval and Renaissance Art", an exhibit curated by Kristen Collins and Bryan Keene at The Getty Center in Los Angeles, CA in 20019-2020.

Bibliography

• Geraldine Heng. The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages. New York, NY - Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2018.

In The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages, Geraldine Heng questions the common assumption that the concepts of race and racisms only began in the modern era. Examining Europe's encounters with Jews, Muslims, Africans, Native Americans, Mongols, and the Romani ('Gypsies'), from the 12th through 15th centuries, she shows how racial thinking, racial law, racial practices, and racial phenomena existed in medieval Europe before a recognizable vocabulary of race emerged in the West. Analysing sources in a variety of media, including stories, maps, statuary, illustrations, architectural features, history, saints' lives, religious commentary, laws, political and social institutions, and literature, she argues that religion - so much in play again today - enabled the positing of fundamental differences among humans that created strategic essentialisms to mark off human groups and populations for racialized treatment. Her ground-breaking study also shows how race figured in the emergence of homo europaeus and the identity of Western Europe in this time.--Publisher description.

• Cord J. Whitaker. Black metaphors : how modern racism emerged from medieval race-thinking. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019.

"This book's aim is to investigate the relationship between the idea of blackness and the notion of sinfulness in the literature and culture of the English Middle Ages, with influences from continental European texts as well. Though the main target of Black Metaphors is the Middle Ages, the book also asserts the profound implications of the historical nexus of blackness and sinfulness for modern life and culture"--Publisher description.

• Erin Kathleen Rowe. Black Saints in Early Modern Global Catholicism. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2020.

"From the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, Spanish and Portuguese monarchs launched global campaigns for territory and trade. This process spurred two efforts that reshaped the world: missions to spread Christianity to the four corners of the globe, and the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade. These efforts joined in unexpected ways to give rise to black saints. Erin Kathleen Rowe presents the untold story of how black saints - and the slaves who venerated them - transformed the early modern church. By exploring race, the Atlantic slave trade, and global Christianity, she provides new ways of thinking about blackness, holiness, and cultural authority. Rowe transforms our understanding of global devotional patterns and their effects on early modern societies by looking at previously unstudied sculptures and paintings of black saints, examining the impact of black lay communities, and analysing controversies unfolding in the church about race, moral potential, enslavement, and salvation."--Publisher description.

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