Jack Salzman, Cornel West Struggles in the Promised

The Medieval Background \\ 59
Vincent of Beauvais, would have provided the answer. But to do so—and this was
typical—the author had to summon up the counterimage of the Black man. In his
discussion of complexions in the Speculum naturals of the mid-thirteenth century,
Vincent contrasts the Ethiopian with the northern European. The Ethiopian, with
his ftizzy hair and black complexion, lacks spirit; the blond northman is brave and
strapping. As Peter Biller remarks, Vincent was merely repeating statements that
in various forms could be found in "well-known sources, Greek texts, the Latin
encyclopaedic tradition, and Arabic authors" as well. 28
Sometimes the implicit and explicit comparisons evoke, as we saw above in
the story of Saint Margaret, the question of sexual mores, whether biologically
conditioned or not. The manuscript from which Peter Biller cited the Quodlibet on
the boldness of white men contains other topics meant, of course, to display learning
and cleverness but also, it seems reasonable to believe, to titillate the celibate
audience of learned white male clerics who would have followed the debates:
"Whether a white woman has a greatet appetite for men than a black woman."
Or, again, "whether white women have greater appetites for intercourse than
black women." 29
At the outset of this essay it was pointed out that Jews and Blackness, besides
their allegorical evocations of the Devil and their moral interpretation as signs of
evil, were mystically identified with Judgment. In the final gente that I want to
invoke here, sermons, the magniloquent homilies wherein preachers tried to construct
vivid word pictures both to edify their audiences and congregations and to
strike the fear of Doomsday into their hearts, just such evocations of Blackness
occur. A particularly excellent example comes from the works of the great crusade
preacher Eudes of Chateauroux, a papal legate and participant in discussions at
the highest levels of the political system in medieval Europe. Eudes had earlier
helped lead the assault on Jewish books that characterized the mid-thirteenth
century, ordering the tracking down of as many copies of the Talmud as could be
found in order to consign them to fire. 30
Eudes's zeal burned not only against Judaism (or rather, in his view, the perversions
of post-biblical Judaism) but against the venality of those in authority in
the Church. In a stunning set of images preached in a sermon before a group of
cardinals, he described what might befall cardinals (the familiares or associates of
the pope) or even a pope himself who fell from virtue into vice. The passage is a
fitting conclusion to this section on Blackness as a medieval trope.
As a sign of desolation and death [the preacher declaims} men clothe themselves
in black. Demons are depicted in the colour black. The colour black
is appropriated to the devil. Therefore when some great man has black
garments—that is, familiares who are like the devil—it is a sign that he is
dead. The pope, when he is dead, is clothed in black. For you know that
the spirits of demons are named from sins: the spirit of fornication, the
spirit of avarice, of cupidity, of pride,.. .The works of the supreme pontiff