The Moor Motif in Switzerland - Origins. The Blackamoor. And Saint Maurice.

Black and white. Not unusual in itself as a motif for coats of arms, but we are interested in the extension of it to the Moor motif we saw in several places in Switzerland.  Our conclusion so far is that the Blackamoors in Switzerland related to St. Maurice, a man of dark skin, but not possibly a Moor because he lived in the 3rd Century, and Mohammed did not arrive until the 600's.  There were no "Moors" in Maurice's time.  Nonetheless, Maurice morphed into a Moor, possibly as the slave trade demanded that blacks be shown in servitudinous garb.  He had been in a higher role, serving as patron to various trades, but without the Moor garb. Follow as we try to figure things out.

Summary of issue:  St. Maurice lived in the 3d Century, leading a Theban Legion (Thebes, Egypt, Africa, black?) under a Roman Commander.  The Commander ordered an attack against an enemy, we understand, that had Christians in it.  Maurice (Moritz, Morris) was Christian, as was the Legion of some 6000+ soldiers, apparently from Thebes, and all black or Egyptian dark perhaps?

Maurice refused to kill Christians, the Commander insisted, and perhaps began to decimate the Legion (kill one of ten), and ended up killing them all for refusal to fight against Christians.   Is that really martydrom, or just disobedience of military orders, discipline, also in there.

The point is that none of these Legions or Maurice himself were Moors - Mohammed was not born until the 7th century.  How could Maurice be a Moor when Muslims did not evolve until three hundred years later?

History.  A mess.  Illogical, but beliefs persist. So we have Maurice now portrayed as a Moor, perhaps a result of the post-medieval slave trade, where blacks were to be in their place.  Is that so?
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St. Maurice (St. Moritz) (St. Mauritius) (St. Morris) in stylized form, Bern. The Blackamoor; Patron to Weavers and others. Is that so? How so a Moor, when Maurice lived 300 years before Mohammed.

And retain your own option to choose what to believe.  As a Third Century soldier-saint, for example, Maurice as a Black Moor would not have worn this outfit, but the Blackamoor is dubbed with it, perhaps influenced by the Renaissance-Reformation era form of slave trade and monarchies obsessing about roles and threats. Symbolism and cultural fancy win over fact every time, even in theology.
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So, see black and white  1) as a pattern, and also, 2)  in human form, as The Blackamoor.  Find Saint Maurice; and other roots leading possibly to  a) Prester John (of legend, but also some fact rootings); b) Roman Catholics vs. Reformists; and  c) back to the Bern cloth guild's use of the Blackamoor as a patron saint of a weaver or clothmaker guild. Then go back further to  d) Sardinia and Corsica. See their coats of arms; with a Black figure head, and different traditions from the Blackamoor.  The roots here are spread.

Wikipedia, that overall orienting source, lists the origins of St. Maurice as the Black Moor, see ://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Maurice/  Apparently there is a carving at the Cathedral at Magdeburg, Germany, from 1240 showing St. Maurice as a Moor. See also Maurice as Egyptian.
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Black and white, coat of arms, motif, Switzerland

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A.  So far, we have found these depictions of Moors in Switzerland:


A.1.  Bern. 

In Bern, there is a statue of a Moor, installed as other statues in the street, at the second story level of the buildings.  The Moor represented the cloth guild. See Statue, Moor, Bern.   Bern is in the German-speaking area of Switzerland.

Bern, Moor, statue, cloth guild

See St. Maurice (St. Moritz) discussion below - is this really St. Maurice.  Note the spear in the Moor's right hand the Holy Lance of Vienna, one of the relics said to have pierced Christ's side?  See that at ://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Maurice/. With Wiki, reliability depends on the contributor, but what else is that spear?

Demotion to a cloth merchant??  Not necessarily. As a patron saint of many things, including soldiers, armies, swordsmiths, dyers, and so weavers are just one of many, including against menstrual cramps, says Wikipedia at ://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Maurice/ A man of many trades.

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Or is it the Spear of Destiny that St. Maurice carried into battle.  See same Wikipedia site.

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A.2.  Avenches.

We also saw a Black figure, a face and head, in Avenches, a Roman-origin town in the French-speaking area.

Look to the right.  There is a banner, and there were many of those banners around, showing a different figure from the cloth guild, but Black, and it even looks like a slave.  Or is it? There is a headband. We asked a waitress about it, and she had no idea.
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Avenches, Moor, motif, associated with banner: liberte et patrie, Switzerland
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Avenches, close-up, Blackamoor motif, Switzerland

This looks like the Sardinian-Corsican form, see below. If the pattern goes through the cloth, then from the other side, the face would (obviously) be reversed, and look like the Corsican one.
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A.3.  At Chillon Castle, Montreux: 

There is what appears to be a Moorish motif on the ceiling, religious figures perhaps, on a coat of arms, camera slipped.
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Moor, motif, closeup near ceiling, Montreux, Chillon Castle. Switzerland

Moor, motif, in context, Montreux, Chillon Castle, Switzerland

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B.  We looked up The Blackamoor in Heraldry.

B.1  Familiar to us already is the "Blackamoor" idea, as in Othello.
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The Moor in Renaissance literature is highly intelligent, a full participant in the society.  Look up this source:  Many coats of arms showed a Blackamoor motif in the 13th-15th Centuries in Europe.  See Frontline,  Sigillum Secretum (Secret Seal) on the Image of the Blackamoor in European Heraldry, at://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/secret/famous/ssecretum.html/. The author is Mario de Valdes y Cocom. This is a site with all the positives of the traditions of the Blackamoor.
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B.2  Blackamoor in Avenches. 

Look back at the Avenches banner with the Black man's head, and the white angled headband. It resembles the Corsican-Sardinian Moor, not the Shakespearean Othello or other Blackamoor.  Should we distinguish from Moor and Blackamoor?
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B.3  Blackamoor in Sardinia. says the site. That same head, in reverse, appears on a coat of arms from the island of Sardinia, and in four separate quadrants, with a cross separating them. Here is Sardinia's symbolism with the four Blackamoors.

This fair use from ://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Sardinia

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There are traditional explanations, serving the interests of the white Christians, and then there are ones emerging historically.  Read some at the Wikipedia site. Then keep going. For example, a traditional white explanation is that the four heads represent four emirs, muslim leaders, defeated by a king of Aragon, Spain, in the 11th Century. From this idea grew another:  that the figureheads represent evil, the things to be overcome. Beginnings of racism, perhaps.

Blackamoor in Corsica:  See this one - from the mid 18th Century, see ://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Corsica/

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B.4  The Blackamoor himself:  Was it St. Maurice. St. Moritz.


Is St. Maurice Roman Catholic, or Coptic?  Does it matter?? His story was laid out by one St. Eucher.  He was Bishop of Lyons, France, in 494 AD.  See site ://www.copticchurch.net/topics/synexarion/maurice.html
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The historical research, however, suggests that the head is not a negative precursor of racism, but represents a saint, a Christian saint, Saint Maurice.  Maurice was the patron saint of the Holy Roman Empire in the 10th Century, a "soldier saint."  Apparently he chose martyrdom, retaining his faithfulness to Christ, and refusing to kill Christians as Emperor Maximian demanded. He died along with a (isn't this a highly symbolic, magic number? *) number, 6666, of his fellows, Christians from Upper Egypt, see ://www.copticchurch.net/topics/synexarion/maurice.html - his "Theban Legion". PBS says they were Ethopian. Thebes is Egypt or Ethopia?  Where were boundaries then? Either way, the race symbolized Christ's universality.  St. Maurice, the soldier, the armed warrior.

The massacre of them all occurred at St. Maurice, Switzerland, then known as Aquanum.  If that is St. Moritz,Maurice in the German name way rather than the French tilt, then it is the ski resort.

Read at the Coptic site the names and circumstances, including these: There is an altar at St. Peters' for St. Maurice, many churches bear his name (he was new to us) and St. Maurice's lance (see a lance in the Blackamoor's hand, Bern) was bargained in exchange for a Swiss canton. Also read about his sword. There are not separate iconography in the Coptic Church, except in Canada.  Maurice is venerated in the Roman Catholic. For 500 years, a service with chant called Tasbeha has been performed at St. Maurice in Switzerland for 24/7, without stop.

Yes.  Without stop, 24/7 for 500 years, says ://www.copticchurch.net/topics/synexarion/maurice.html/ site.  So,  Maurice and Switzerland.  Clear connects.

Maurice later symbolized the authority of the old Roman church against the reformers.
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C.  Then we looked up other uses or symbolisms related to Black and White


Black and White and Reformation / Counter-Reformation.
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The symbolism of black and white developed in important ways for the Germans, and for the Pope.  Reformation vs. Counter-Reformation.  The concept of the black and the white came to represent the old order versus the reformers.  Luther, Calvin et al.

Reformers - Farel, Calvin, Beza, Knox: Geneva, Switzerland

So, look back at the symbolism on the coat of arms here, at the top, with half the lion rampant in white, and half in black. Reformation, Counter-Reformation. Is that so? All this about black and white representing those two forces is from the PBS Frontline site above.

D.  Other uses of the Blackamoor in Contemporary Heraldry

D.1.  Pope Benedict XVI has the Blackamoor, Crowned, on his coat of arms:

This includes the Blackamoor, but a crowned one (allusion to the perhaps not so mythical Prester John?  Or to Saint Maurice?).  This depiction was first on the coat of arms of Otto of Friesing. See ://www.erzbistum-muenchen-und-freising.de/EMF207/EMF020624.asp/,  This is a site of the Archdiocese of Munich.

Here is a fair use copy of the Pope's coat of arms, with the Blackamoor, crowned.  It also has on it the (Bern?) Bear, it looks like; bearing (pun) the burden of office; and the traditional Pilgrim's Scallop shell. It is called "The Friesing Moor" at the site. The "Head of the Ethiopian" is also used on other coats of arms.

D.2. Friesing.

The Head of the Ethiopian is also on the coat of arms of the German district of Friesing, fair use of it here, see ://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freising_%28district%29 /
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That site, only as reliable as the people putting stuff in, says the head could be saints traditionally known as Moors:  St. Mauritius (Maurice?), St. Sigismund of Burgundy (no connection that we can see, except he was involved with starting the abbey at Aguanum, see ://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Maurice), or St. Zeno of Verona, who may have been from North Africa, Mauritania; even St. Corbinian who is associated at the Pope Benedict site with the bear, but the Wikipedia site says the only reason they bring Corbinian up in the context of the Moor idea is that Corbinian's face could have darkened over time.  Lame.

Maurice:  add spellings Moritz, and Morris, and Mauritius. See://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Maurice/  Wikipedia's contributors so far call the Theban Legion "legendary."  From legend, or so find that their stuff is worthy of legend?  Wiki?
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E.   Ideas.

• Now, if the black symbolized the old Roman church and its teachings; and the white symbolized the reformers, no wonder the reformers were offended at the prominence given St. Maurice, as the PBS site says.  Is that why, in Bern, then, in Protestant Bern, the figure appears as a mere cloth guild "union member" symbol.  Religion idea expunged.  That would be so if the representation did not mean "patron saint of".  Is that is?

So, the practicalities of the marketplace take over 1) if the use of the Saint not as just a Corsican style head as seen in Avenches is rejected; and on purpose, to demean him perhaps, he is shown in Bern as 2) the nearly naked Blackamoor kind. Protestant Bern and commerce, with a religious dig.  Avenches, in the Catholic French-speaking area, retained it as St. Maurice.

• St. Maurice, the Town:  Switzerland's connection.  St. Maurice of Theba/. See Coptic Church site, at ://www.copticchurch.net/topics/synexarion/maurice.html/  So - Maurice was Coptic. That is its own research into earliest Christianity.  No time here.  

 If it is the same as St. Moritz, the resort, we intentionally passed it by.  Enough of resorts, but we'll go next time to see the Abbey.
Either way, all considered, Switzerland clearly has close ties with St. Maurice. Look again at the town named for him, the contemporary use of the banner.

St. Moritz-St.Maurice is just past Martigny where the Grand San Bernardino Pass leaves us off, after coming from Italy and Aosta.  Famous pass. Historic road. See it at http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&sa=N&tab=li&q=st.+maurice+switzerland/.  It is right there, on the road to Montreux.  At the southern end, it goes to Rome. We must have passed it because we went across that pass (so did Napoleon) coming from Italy back to Switzerland. That site says 6600 of his soldiers died with him.  Not the fateful 6666.  Read the Golden Legend about him at ://www.catholic-forum.com/saints/golden277.htm

F.  PRESTER JOHN.

Fancy flying. There could be another connection.  Prester John was ruler of Ethiopia (legend, or with which facts, as these do not appear to have been checked out much - go back to the East, not just to Ethiopia, as some sites are doing now), and was both priest and king. ruling wisely and in a land that prospered under him.  He came to symbolize, as a Black figure with crown, the ideal state. See ://www.dacb.org/stories/ethiopia/prester_john.html/
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Is he legend, partial legend, real, what is what. How impossible is it and was it for White Europe to imagine a Black revered head of state. We are supposed to look up the coat of arms of the see of Friesing to see the motif of the Black crowned king.  It is later on the same site.

St. Maurice and his Legion became associated with Prester John, the ideal, and - here we go, white Christians, the only ones who could claim a bloodline with Jesus because they descended from Solomon. This gets beyond my ken, so go to the site and read.  Only Prester John had the right to carry the cross, the crucifix.  Look at the earring on the Blackamoor - a symbol of that privilege. Blackness as an allusion to God. To Wisdom.

This gets beyond a mere tourist in Switzerland noting themes. FN 1

And all rounds back to the Sardinian heraldry. And now, we see, Corsican as well.  FN 2.

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FN 1  For your own research:

The PBS site continues with many possible connections, tracing the tradition of the earring, with the legitimacy of the line from Solomon, and the Black Madonna, noting the earliest stories of the Grail being in Ethopia (story still strong), the Black Wise Man of the Epiphany, Balthazar (later treated as a King), and ultimately the symbolism of sun, moon and six-pointed stars on mythical heraldry developed for the Wise Men. And the black St. Dismas, thief on the cross who recognized Jesus.  These are Christian allusions, Biblical, but they stem not from a religious bent here, but on research about who the Blackamoor in Switzerland represents through these many centuries. Also find the Black double-headed Eagle of Justice,

Jumping ahead, is that connection between the traditions of St. Maurice, and Balthazar, and Prester John and all, an explanation why there is the six-pointed star, the hexagram, "Solomon's Seal", "Star of David", on the roof tiles as a pattern on the church in the medieval city of Murten, also in Switzerland? Experts, on your marks.

Church tiled roof, hexagram, Solomon's Seal, Star of David, Murten, Switzerland

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FN 2.  More on the symbolism.  There are also negative allusions to Blackamoors, but these appear to be uses of the term as a reaction, to denigrate, intentionally, regardless of historical roots.  See literature at a cursory site, ://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/blackamoor/

A Blackamoor also appears in Scots heraldry, with varying explanations, one being the killing of a black man (like the Sardinian coat of arms once said to represent the conquest of the four emirs); and a reference to Sardinia's originally showing blindfolded figures (at PBS that meant a symbol of justice, not captivity), and later the blindfold is moved up to become a headband, see ://wapedia.mo/en/Blackamoors_%28decorative_arts%29?t=2/. 

The Maur, or Maure:  This is a term for the single head.  See ://wapedia.mobi/en/Maure/.  Does that not sound like Maurice, as in St. Maurice in the PBS account?  But why the Greek and Phoenician origins suggested, without supporting information.

Corsican coat of arms shows the Maure. "U Moru".  But it was a female, blindfolded. Much more there. Clearly, the Moor is not anywhere by accident, but has meanings that by now blend and evade.

Now, after all the fair use thumbnails, meet the man in the public domain: at ://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hochstift_Freising_coat_of_arms.png

See of Friesing, Crowned Moor, Coat of Arms