Epiphany (of another kind)

Today is the Feast of the Epiphany in the Roman Catholic Church (and other religions and cultures), the commemoration of the Christ revealing himself as man as well as the visit of the Magi (Wise Men) or more familiarly, the Three Kings (they weren't kings but astrologers, seers, holy men). There is much written about the Magi, better and more intelligently than I could without extensive research. What I did want to talk about is one of the wise men who is described and represented in literature and art as an African. Although there is no evidence that one of the magi was African (often considered either Abyssinian, Ethiopian), black Baltasar, bearing either frankincense or myrrh (both of which are found on that continent) has made an appearance at Jesus's crib from around the 12th century A.D. . Since the Magi themselves were said to have been Persian, it's a bit of mystery as to how Baltasar (whose name has roots in ancient Phoenecia and means "save the life of Ba'al" or "save the life of the king") is a black man. Scholars note that had become a tradition to represent Europe, Africa, and Asia in literature and art, hence Baltasar.

All that backstory aside, I have one of my own. In 2004 I visited the Alsace, Lorraine, and Franche-Comté regions of France to research French abolitionists against slavery. At one point the group I was with found itself in a tiny town in the foothills of the Jura Mountains called Champagney. The tale I finally wrote follows:


The Church of Champagney, built in 1788, was a meeting place for millers, loggers, and peasants-people who knew what it was like to eke out an existence, pay crippling taxes, and have no say. One day after Mass, they gathered to discuss what they would enter in the cahier de doléances—notebooks of grievances—to be presented, along with many others, to King Louis XVI. Among the congregation was a man of some fortune and good education, Jacques Antoine Priqueler, a captain of the king's guard. He spoke of the evils of slavery in the French colonies. But the peasants, most of whom had probably never traveled more than a mile or two from their village, had never seen a black man. Priqueler went home to his chateau, which still stands a block or so from the church, and brought back a sixteenth century painting of the Adoration of the Magi.


At this point in the story [our guide] Madame Olivier produces a reproduction of one such work, and we all crowd around to look at it. We see a richly dressed African magus presenting a gift to the Christ Child; he is hardly kin to the suffering slaves, but Priqueler's point was to show the peasants what an African looked like. He then told his fellow villagers terrible stories about slavery. It didn't take long for them to understand. They immediately drafted their grievance:

"The inhabitants of the community of Champagney are unable to think about the suffering of Negroes in the colonies without it piercing our hearts with a deep pain," it said in part. They wrote that they could not imagine using any exports from the colonies, "when one realizes that they will be sprayed with the blood of their fellow creatures: they feared that future enlightened generations will accuse the French of cannibalism."



Madame Olivier takes us on a brisk walk up the same path the villagers, led by Priqueler, walked more than 200 years earlier. We stop in front of a small white building. We are on the exact spot, Madame Olivier tells us, where the peasants stood to have their grievance entered into the book (by Priqueler or perhaps the parish priest, I presume). Because most of the townspeople could not write, they marked their names with an X. Among the many doléances given to the king in March 1789, only that of the peasants of Champagney, these poor white folks from the mountains of northeastern France, spoke of the abolition of slavery.

I know I kind of backed into this topic of early French abolitionists. If you're interested in more info, here's a link to France's Abolition trail It's in French, Spanish, and Portuguese but I can give you a copy of my article if you'd like.