1000-1500 English

What were Black experiences in Europe like before the arrival of the transatlantic slave trade? How did medieval Europeans view the continent of Africa? Where did the Black St. Maurice and the Black Magus come from, and why have they persisted into the present? Discover the travels and lives of Africans in German-speaking Europe as they interacted with painters, writers, emperors, and priests. Often labeled as “Moors,” many Black figures stood at the intersection between religion (Islam and Christianity) and culture. Coming from “exotic” lands full of riches and the promises of new alliances, the Moor in the European imagination symbolized the ambitions of Christian universalism and the expansion of European empires.

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CULTURE

•   Iwein goes mad and takes on the appearance of a Moor (ca. 1200)

•  Interracial romance in Parzival (ca. early 1200s)

•  Parzival: A mixed-race knight joins the Round Table (ca. early 1200s)

•  Parzival: A mixed-race knight takes Christianity to the world (ca. early 1200s)

•  Black devils and demons (before 1240)

•  An Ethiopian among the demons (before 1240)

•  Duel Between Parzival and the Pagan Feirefiz (1443-1446)

•   Hermann von Sachsenheim, The Lady Moor (1453)

•   A dancing “moor” (1480)

POLITICS

•  A letter from Prester John (ca. 1165-1170)

•   The emperor’s retinue (1194)

•  Abuissac concludes a ten-year free trade treaty with Emperor Frederick II (likely 1221/1222)

•  Emperor Frederick II rules over a cosmopolitan empire (ca. 1230s)

•  Emperor Frederick II impresses with his processions (ca. 1230s)

• Black servants and enslaved musicians at Frederick II’s court (1239-1240)

•  Moors on crests

•  Johannes dictus Morus (d. 1254)

•  Crowned Moors on crests (ca. 1263-1400)

• The Black chamberlains of the “false Frederick” in the Rhineland and Hesse (1284)

•  The “Coburg Moor” (ca. 1380-present)

•  Wild Men and Moors (ca. 1431)

Black Saintly Figures

Queen of Sheba