“At last when the dragon could not even thus overthrow Antony, but saw himself thrust out of his heart, gnashing his teeth as it is written, and as it were beside himself, he appeared to Antony like a black boy, taking a visible shape in accordance with the color of his mind.” - Life of Antony
Let me begin with a parable made famous by the author David Foster Wallace: two young fish are swimming along when they suddenly meet an older fish swimming the other way. The older fish nods and says, “Hi there boys. How’s the water?” The two young fish continue swimming and never reply. After a long pause, one of them turns to the other and says, “What the hell is water?”[1]
This post is about trying to see the waters of anti-blackness that Christians have been swimming in for a very long time. Here I will look at what is considered to be the earliest instance of the devil being depicted as a black boy in Christian literature.[2] This occurs in Athanasius’ Life of Antony, a text from the middle of the fourth century which would have wide influence on the development of both Eastern and Western monastic spirituality.
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| Unknown, Saint Anthony and the Lobster Devil (c 1470), illustration in Jacobus de Voragine (1228-1298), La Légende Dorée (Legenda aurea), France, British Library, Yates Thompson 49 vol. 1, fol. 34, British Library, London. Wikimedia Commons. |
While this post is a slight departure from my usual focus on wealth and poverty, I think it is important in laying the groundwork for looking at how poverty has been racialized. For now, I simply wish to explore the ways that Life of Antony and the subsequent monastic literature it inspired essentially baptized prior Roman and Egyptian stereotypes about black Ethiopians as dangerous, hypersexual, and in need of spiritual reform. Egyptians had been both repelled and fascinated by their darker-skinned Ethiopian neighbors, and writers like Athanasius employed prior Egyptian stereotypes to illustrate the Desert Fathers’ struggle of Christ’s light against demonic darkness. As we will see below, a disturbingly consistent theme that emerges is a focus on the monk’s power to banish or even violently destroy the black-skinned devil who has come to tempt and taunt them.
As Episcopalians, many of us attend churches in which we are surrounded by stained-glass depictions of a distinctly blonde and Anglo-Saxon Jesus. We may even occasionally be asked to open our 1982 Hymnal to sing “Fairest Lord Jesus” which praises Jesus for being fairer, purer, and brighter than even the moon. Christianity’s association of good with whiteness and evil with blackness is so ubiquitous that it becomes as hard to see as the water the two young fish are swimming in. Yet like that water, it continues to exert a powerful force.
Christianity aligned darkness, evil, and black skin from a very early stage in its development and the reality of this alignment continues to bear tragic fruit. Over and over again, Christianity and U.S. society at large places a high value on power over blackness, and I will return to my overall blog theme of wealth and poverty by looking at an example from 2016 in which U.S. society placed a literal monetary value on a symbol of deadly power over a black adolescent.
Demons in the Desert
The demons who visit Antony in Athanasius’ fourth century biography came in various forms including wild animals, a seductive woman, and finally as the black Ethiopian boy described above. Prior to this encounter, Athanasius described Antony’s childhood fascination with the ascetic and solitary Christians who lived outside his Egyptian village. This fascination with the emerging movement of Christian hermetic asceticism continued to inspire Antony through his young adulthood. Following the death of his parents when he was twenty, Antony decided to follow Jesus’ commandment to the rich young man found in Matthew 19:21: “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor…”; he sold portions of his family’s land and gave the money to the poor. He then set out for the desert wilderness to become a ‘hermit’, a word derived from the Greek term for wilderness itself.[5]
Antony remained in the desert in solitude for twenty years during which he wrestled with the devil in various forms. This period would serve to inspire the theme of the temptation of St. Antony in the Desert found in literature and art. Despite his solitude, Antony became renowned for his spiritual powers and people were drawn into the desert to build their own hermitages around him. They were likely both inspired by Antony’s example and were fleeing the Roman Emperor Diocletian’s persecutions of Christians.[6]
In his book A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, historian Diarmaid McCullough states that Athanasius’ biography of Antony was addressed to the monks beyond Egypt and was intentionally written as “a triumphant assertion of Egypt’s spiritual prowess, providing a model for all monastic life.”[7] Athanasius’ efforts to elevate Antony and Egypt’s Desert Father tradition overall proved so successful that still today there is a fascination with the spiritual insights gained in the Egyptian wilderness. Through its many translations - including the Latin by Evagrius of Antioch - the Life of Antony would come to play a major role in the development of Eastern and Western monasticism and would remain one of the best known works of Christian spiritual literature through the Middle Ages. McCullough notes, however, that even as Athanasius’ biography spread the seeds of monastic spirituality across Christendom, its illustration of the devil as a black Ethiopian boy was also imitated broadly. “Many early monks in imitation came to use the same image for the Prince of Darkness, with a conscious racism directed toward Africans: a backhanded compliment to the success of Athanasius’ work and not the best of stereotypes for promoting good relations with the Church of Ethiopia.”[8]
Another church historian, David Brakke of Ohio State University, has written extensively about the influence and impact of Athanasius’ black boy in his journal article Ethiopian Demons: Male Sexuality, the Black-Skinned Other, and the Monastic Self, and in many respects what follows is simply a reflection on his scholarly work in that essay. In a passage I’ll quote in full, he summarizes the lasting influence and particular anti black images Athanasius’ work spawned:
“[Life of Antony] was not the last time the devil or one of his demons would appear with black skin to an Egyptian monk, according to tales preserved in the monastic literature from the fourth and fifth centuries. A young monk beset by thoughts of sex encountered an Ethiopian woman with a foul smell. An older monk found an Ethiopian girl he remembered seeing in his youth sitting on his knees; driven mad, he struck her, and a foul odor adhered to his hand. Afflicted by pride, another monk was divinely instructed to reach for his neck, where he found a small Ethiopian, which he cast into the sand. A monk who disobeyed his elder discovered an Ethiopian lying on a sleeping mat and gnashing his teeth. Ethiopian or black demons continued to tempt or frighten Christian ascetics into the medieval period.”[9]
How Blackness Functioned in Monastic Literature
David Brakke argues that Athanasius’ depiction of the devil as a black boy drew on the dualistic emphasis asceticism placed on the biblical imagery of light and darkness, as well as prior Egyptian stereotypes about their darker-skinned, Ethiopian neighbors. He notes that the unconquered, black Ethiopians had long been a source of both fascination and fear for the Roman Empire generally and Egyptians, in particular, although Egyptian stereotypes about Ethiopians tended to be more distinctly negative as they were founded in immediate fears. “While persons elsewhere in the Mediterranean may have been able to romanticize the mythic military power of the Ethiopian people, Egyptians had a more palpable sense of an ‘Ethiopian threat’ and thus were more likely to scapegoat darker-skinned persons in their midst.”[10] The black-skinned Ethiopians became depicted as both dangerous and hypersexual, themes which Athanasius would pick up and baptize in his writing of the Life of Antony.
Surveying the monastic literature that followed, Brakke argues that the blackness of Ethiopian demons came to serve three important functions. First, the blackness of Ethiopian demons became a useful means to emphasize a monk’s ability to discern evil in a morally complicated situation. “The blackness of the demons, by providing an unmistakable sign of evil at work, confirms the clarity of vision given to the ‘man of God.’”[11] In the Dialogues of Gregory the Great, for instance, Benedict is shown as possessing unique powers of discernment through his ability to perceive a black demon when no one else could. Whereas other monks struggled to understand why one of their brothers was never able to make it through his prayers, Benedict alone was able to see a black boy pulling on the monk’s cloak during worship.[12]
Second, monastic stories regularly relied on the stereotype of Ethiopian hypersexuality. When Athanasius depicted the black boy in the Life of Antony as ‘fornication’s lover’ and the ‘spirit of lust’, he was building on longstanding Roman fears and fascinations about the erotic power of Ethiopian men and women. There was, apparently, an oft-repeated joke among Roman soldiers announcing “another married Roman woman has given birth to an Ethiopian,” a line that speaks to both the soldiers’ anxieties about their wives and the sexual threat they saw Ethiopian men representing. The ascetic tradition incorporated these fears and fascinations by making the erotic power of black demons a key component of monastic stories.
Third, in a step that strikes me as critical for the eventual association of whiteness with good, blackness became a useful means to demonstrate the power and possibility of Christian transformation. These stories hinge on the notion that even dangerous blackness can be tamed through the powers of monastic spirituality with great influence on darkness becoming light and blackness becoming as white as snow. The early church historian Sozoman’s record of Moses the Black (330-405), also known as Moses the Robber, is illustrative of this point. Moses is described as beginning his spiritual journey as an Ethiopian slave dismissed by his master on account of his many thefts. Moses is said to have then become a leader of violent bandits roaming the Egyptian wilderness. His first encounter with monks occurred after he had attempted murder, and his story is one of of eventual transformation.
When Egyptian monks complained about his presence among them, Moses said to himself “They have acted rightly concerning you, you ash-skinned one, you black one. You are not a human being, so why do you go among human beings?”[13] Later, in a scene that could just as easily come from that genre of American movies that revels in the reformation of blackness (e.g. Dangerous Minds, The Blind Side, Freedom Writers), the abbot of the monastery takes Moses to the roof to watch the first rays of dawn come over the dark horizon. There the abbot tells him, “Only slowly do the rays of the sun drive away the night and usher in a new day, and thus, only slowly does one become a perfect contemplative.”[14]
There is a fourth function which historian David Brakke does not specifically mention in this portion of his essay -- namely, the way that these stories emphasize power over blackness. In cases like the story of Moses the Black, it is the power of the Egyptian monks to reform or transform blackness, but more often than not the focus is on the monk’s power to banish or even violently destroy the black demon. Demons often appear in ways that suggest utter powerlessness. They are depicted as little boys, or “foul-smelling” women, or they are even held down in chains. In Athanasius’ tale, Antony tells the boy “You are very despicable then, for you are black-hearted and weak as a child. Henceforth I shall have no trouble from you, ‘for the Lord is my helper, and I shall look down on my enemies.’”[15]
A particularly graphic example of this theme comes from the apocryphal collection of stories called the Acts of Peter and Paul. Composed in the latter half of the fourth century, these tell of Peter and Paul’s journey to Rome, their activities there, and of their subsequent martyrdoms. Told from the perspective of a man named Marcellus, the text relates Peter’s various spiritual contests with a contending spiritual leader named Simon Magus. Marcellus has a dream in which he sees “a very ugly woman, according to her appearance an Ethiopian, no Egyptian, but very black, clad in filthy rags, but with an iron chain about the neck and a chain on her hands and feet; she danced.” In this dream, the apostle Peter tells Marcellus to behead the woman but Marcellus objects saying that as a senator of noble race he has never even killed a sparrow. Peter then calls out to “our true sword, Jesus Christ” to “cut off not only the head of the demon, but break all her members in the presence of all these, whom I have tested in thy service.” At once an angel came “with a sword in his hand and knocked her down.”[16]
By the fourth century, a disturbing transformation in Christianity had already taken place. Biblical imagery in both the Old and New Testament that contrasted light and darkness and God’s declaration that “light was good” (Genesis 1:3-4) had resulted in regular associations of the color black with evil.[17] It is, however, in Athanasius’ Life of Antony and the early monastic literature that this work inspired where we see the earliest Christian examples where evil is affixed to a people’s black skin. Egyptians’ pre-existing stereotypes about black Ethiopians were readily incorporated into the tales of spiritual prowess of monks, and then exported as this monastic literature inspired new generations of monastics across Eastern and Western Christianity.
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There is a bitter irony in the fact that so many of these fourth century depictions explore discerning and confronting evil itself. Whereas Athanasius described evil’s true nature as a black boy, today we can see that the demonic actually lies in the illustration itself. Could Athanasius have imagined the way this image would take on a life of its own, or how it would continue to shape our language for good and evil? Could he have ever imagined the lasting power and influence of his image?
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| Photo of an ad currently running on NYC buses about widespread discrimination in taxis and ride-sharing services. |
After the murder of George Floyd, a colleague lamented that racism in the U.S. is a deep spiritual sickness, a sickness in our souls. As such, it is rooted in some of the most profound symbols and language we use to describe good and evil, and an honest assessment of where this language comes from must include the vicious anti-blackness found in the Life of Antony and the monastic literature and spirituality it inspired.
What remains clear is that even seventeen centuries later, we are still deeply invested in depictions of blackness as evil and particularly in expressions of power over blackness. I’ll end with a story that has disturbed me since I first saw it appear in the news in 2016 and which has similarities with the depiction that appears in the Life of Antony. I’ve reflected and have spoken with colleagues about it often in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis, as it suggests just how deeply rooted and tenacious the signs and symbols of anti-blackness are.
In 2016, the murderer of Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman, placed the pistol he used to kill the seventeen year old up on auction. As you’ll recall, Zimmerman shot and killed Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida, because he perceived Martin as looking and acting suspiciously, a characterization that the media embraced by calling Martin a “thug” and by saying Martin was wearing “thug wear.”[18] Like the Ethiopian boy who appears in the Life of Antony, it proved impossible for U.S. society to see Trayvon Martin as anything other than evil and dangerous. As theologian Kelly Brown Douglas notes in her book about Trayvon Martin's death Stand Your Ground, “Despite the fact that he had no prior encounters with the criminal justice system, unlike his killer, Trayvon was repeatedly portrayed as a delinquent looking for trouble. He was depicted as a ‘gangsta wannabe.’” Of course, there was no evidence of a weapon found on Trayvon Martin; he was only a kid in a hoodie with a bag of skittles and an iced tea. Nevertheless, the perception of Trayvon as a dangerous threat contributed greatly to Zimmerman not being immediately arrested and his ultimate acquittal in July 2013.
In 2016, Zimmerman’s placing of the pistol he used to kill Trayvon Martin on auction caused headlines around the world. While the make and model of this pistol normally sells for $350, the bidding of this particular gun began at $100,000 and was ultimately sold for $250,000, more than 700 times its original estimated value.[19] The fact that this auction was able to take place and that there were enough buyers to drive the price of this pistol up to $250,000 reveals a great deal to me about our values as a nation. We literally value the signs and symbols that represent the power to kill black people with impunity.
On the day after the auction, as if to tie Christianity and ongoing police brutality together, Zimmerman gave “glory to God for a successful auction” and said that he would dedicate a portion of the proceeds to “fight Black Lives Matter violence against law enforcement officers.” While Zimmerman refused to release the name of the winning bidder, he did say that it was sold to a mother who bought the gun as a birthday present for her son.[20]
While we do not know the name of the person who purchased Zimmerman’s gun, what I do know is that one day her son will have to either embrace or reject his horrific inheritance. In a similar way, Christians today - including those of us whose patterns of prayer and spirituality are rooted in monastic traditions - have to decide what to do with our own hateful inheritance of anti blackness. These traditional ways of seeing good and evil continue to warp us profoundly, a fact that shows up in surveys that consistently find white evangelical, mainline Protestants, and white Catholics to be more racist than the general population.[21] This speaks to Christianity's origins, spirituality, and the racialized ways we’ve depicted goodness and evil itself.
Today, in many Episcopal churches, one can still hear congregations singing out “fair is the sunshine, fairer still the moonlight” but “Jesus shines brighter, Jesus shines purer” this “fairest Lord Jesus, ruler of all” and we often do so under the blonde and blue-eyed gaze of an Anglo-Saxon Jesus. That so many continue to be comfortable with this arrangement represents a tragic failure to see the waters of anti-blackness that have surrounded us for a very long time. The early symbolic alignment of blackness with evil, the subsequent identification of whiteness with goodness, and the emphasis placed on retaining power over demonic blackness helped plant the seeds for a bitter crop we are still harvesting today.
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[1] This joke/parable was made famous by David Foster Wallace in his 2005 graduation speech at Kenyon College. Text here: https://fs.blog/2012/04/david-foster-wallace-this-is-water/
[2] Historians Diarmaid McCullough in A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years and David Brakke in Ethiopian Demons: Male Sexuality, the Black-Skinned Other, and the Monastic Self describe the this occurrence in The Life of Antony as the earliest known instance of the devil depicted as black.
[3] David Brakke’s translation of Athanasius Vita Antonii 6. Section 6. “Ethiopian Demons: Male Sexuality, the Black-Skinned Other, and the Monastic Self” in Journal of the History of Sexuality Vol. 10, No. 3/4, Special Issue: Sexuality in Late Antiquity (Jul. - Oct., 2001), pp. 501-535.
[4] McCullough, Diarmaid. A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years. Page 205
[5] Diarmaid McCullough, A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years. 203
[6] Diarmaid Mcullough, A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years. 203
[7] McCullough, A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years. 205
[8] McCullough, A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years. 205
[9] Brakke, David. “Ethiopian Demons: Male Sexuality, the Black-Skinned Other, and the Monastic Self” in Journal of the History of Sexuality Vol. 10, No. 3/4, Special Issue: Sexuality in Late Antiquity (Jul. - Oct., 2001), pp. 501-535.
[10] Brakke, David. “Ethiopian Demons: Male Sexuality, the Black-Skinned Other, and the Monastic Self” in Journal of the History of Sexuality Vol. 10, No. 3/4, Special Issue: Sexuality in Late Antiquity (Jul. - Oct., 2001), pp. 501-535.
[11] Brakke, David. “Ethiopian Demons: Male Sexuality, the Black-Skinned Other, and the Monastic Self” in Journal of the History of Sexuality Vol. 10, No. 3/4, Special Issue: Sexuality in Late Antiquity (Jul. - Oct., 2001), pp. 501-535.
[12] Dialogues 2.4
[13] Brakke, David. “Ethiopian Demons: Male Sexuality, the Black-Skinned Other, and the Monastic Self” in Journal of the History of Sexuality Vol. 10, No. 3/4, Special Issue: Sexuality in Late Antiquity (Jul. - Oct., 2001), pp. 501-535.
[14] https://web.archive.org/web/20110829205900/http://stmosestheblackpriory.org/about_history.html
[15] Athanasius Vita Antonii 6. Section 6
[16] Acts of Peter 22 - Apocryphal Acts of Paul, Peter, John, Andrew & Thomas, American Theological Library Association Historical Monographs, 1909.
[17] Brakke highlights Gen. 1:3-4, 1 Thess. 5:5, Revelations 6:11, 7:13
[18] Brown, Kelly Douglas. Stand Your Ground (pp. 188-190). Orbis. Kindle Edition.
[19] BBC, “Gun that killed Trayvon Martin ‘makes $250,000 for Zimmerman’” - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-36354206, May 22, 2016
[20] Stanlin, Doug. “Auction ends for gun that killed Trayvon Martin” - https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/05/18/auction-ends-gun-killed-trayvon-martin/84547144/
[21] Robert P. Jones “Racism Among white Christians is higher than among the nonreligious. That’s no coincidence.” - “While most white Christians think of themselves as people who hold warm feelings toward African Americans, holding racist views is nonetheless positively and independently associated with white Christian identity.”https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/racism-among-white-christians-higher-among-nonreligious-s-no-coincidence-ncna1235045?fbclid=IwAR0kqPqcmr0JCXQ5ka6jZ2azyAPMCJXK7PGr1nacItkLjt8E0QLSN-st2bM
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