"Gregory of Nyssa wrote in his Commentarium in Canticum Canticorum that "Christ came into the world to make blacks white ... for in the city of God... Babylonians become Jerusalemites, the prostitute a virgin, Ethiopians radiantly white".
"Ethiopians, in the interpretation of Cyril of Alexandria, are "those whose dark minds are not yet illuminated by divine light... those whose uncleanness is hard to wash out and who remaining in their blackness will feast upon the heads of the dragons and will be exposed to the sword"
"The story is told of Saint Benedict of Palermo who, afraid of temptations by women, prayed to God that he might be made ugly. God obliged and turned him black, thus transforming him into Saint Benedict the Moor. ".
"In the medieval Saint Nicolas celebration, which is still held annually in some parts of western Europe, the benevolent saint is represented by a white bishop riding on a white horse and kindly distributing gifts, while his servant is a black youth on foot carrying a dark sack and a birch. This servant is the purveyor of fear and punishment and carries off naughty children, presumably to practise his cannibalism on them."
"the famous medieval French epic, La Chanson de Roland, while championing the cause of Christianity against the Saracen invaders (Moors), has its hero inveigh against Ethiopia as well: "a cursed land where the black men had great noses and winnowing ears ... a cursed people, blacker than ink, their only whiteness is their teeth".".
"St. Paulinus of Nola who explained that they [Ethiopians] were burned black not by the sun but by vices and sin" (Friedman 1981, 65).
"St. Fulgentius of Ruspe spoke of baptizing an Ethiopian whom he saw as "one not yet whitened by the grace of Christ shining on him".
"In two second-century apocrypha, the Acts of Andrew and the Acts of Peter, devils or demons appear as Ethiopians."
"A third-century apocryphon, the Acts of Xanthippa and Polyxena, has the devil appearing as the King of Ethiopia."
"The church father Ambrose (fourth century) reports meeting an
Ethiopian demon sitting on the scales of a fraudulent merchant."
"Macarius (fourth century), one of the desert fathers, encounters tuny, repulsive Ethiopian boys who torment people in church..."
"desert father, Palladius (fifth century), transmits a report of two demons who appeared as Ethiopian women and committed indecent acts with a monk “
" Origen (d. c. 253). Using the metaphor of blackness as sin, he identified various biblical references to Ethiopia or Ethiopian(s),,
"a demon in him and drive him mad, whichever you want, my lady, it's your choice. She said, I only want him to love me and no one else.
Virginos taught her the spell for that, and it worked! Her husband now loved only her. But using the dark arts had a cost. The woman was now visited in her dreams by an old Ethiopian man ..... Eventually, holy powers and a saint helped her to block these demonic assaults (Life of Saint Andreas the Fool 35).
"Theophilos of Alexandria was involved in the so-called
Anthropomorphite debate in Egypt (ca. 400), basically the question of how literally or figuratively God may be said to be like a human being.
According to a Coptic source, Theophilos had argued that God cannot be like human beings, for the latter include Ethiopians, lepers, cripples, and the blind, who are obviously unworthy of the divine majesty"
"An old hermit in Egypt named Pachon told the story of how, when he was younger, he was tormented by the memory of an Ethiopian girl he had once seen working in the fields. The Devil would take her form and come sit in his lap"
"In many lives of desert ascetics, the Devil appears to the saint in the form of a black man, woman, child, or beast, to test him. Sometimes the saint has to wrestle with these figures in the vision. So while Ethiopians generally enjoyed a positive reputation, in this context their blackness was a sign of evil. The fellow monks of Moses the Ethiopian, for example, would mock him in order to test him spiritually, saying, Why has this Ethiopian come into our midst? Go out, you Ethiopian. You are not a human being, why are you coming here among us? (Sayings of the Holy Fathers, in PG 65: 284)."
"Some say that a woman who fantasizes about an Ethiopian at the time of conception will give birth to an Ethiopian (Theodoros Stoudites,
Letter 380)."
"The emperor Manuel I Komnenos (1143-1180) was dark-skinned. When he was at war with the Venetians near Ithaca in 1149, they cap tured his imperial barge. Taking an Ethiopian, they dressed him up like the emperor and paraded him along the deck, making a mockery of imperial ceremonies and of Manuel for not having blond hair. This reminded the historian Choniates of the verse from the Song of Songs 1:5-6: 1 am black but beautiful.... it's the sun that's burnt me (History 86)
"For the Ethiopian, too, goes black into the bath, and comes out black;
but still the keeper of the bath receives his pay."
-Pope Gregory the Great
''Ye also, O Ethiopi ans, shall be slain by the sword," Jerome notes that those sunk in vice are called Ethiopians in accordance with the words of Jere miah. If the Ethiopian changes his skin, in the conversion of the Ethiopians there is the hope that no one wishing to repent will be without salvation. This is why a soul stained with sin says "I am black" and later, washed and purged through penitence, is greeted, in the Song of Songs: "Who is she that cometh up having been made white?"
"Didymus the Blind (c. 313-98) reports that Ethiopians belong to the cult of the Devil," and "medieval exempla [narrate how] the Devil is fond of disguising himself as an Ethiopian in order to menace the faithful"