Dark skin signified sin and animality in Christian theology since the fifth century

Evidence

As early as the fifth century, black skin functioned as a symbol of the devil and other menacing religious frights. Dark skin was understood as a theological consequence of sin. Gregory the Great claimed that Ethiopia was a sign of the fall of mankind, and other Christian writers followed suit, tying dark skin to sin and perdition. Jeremiah surmised that the Ethiopian’s skin could change like a leopard—one of many examples in which Africans were likened to animals. Muslims were often depicted with black, blue, or purple skin. Muslims reportedly worshipped Venus, a black goddess “dressed in a gold robe with a striking red blob for its hellish tongue.” Islam has, from the beginning, been an identity situated in racial, ethnic, and cultural difference. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 103

As early as the fifth century, black skin functioned as a symbol of the devil and other menacing religious frights. Dark skin was understood as a theological consequence of sin. Gregory the Great claimed that Ethiopia was a sign of the fall of mankind, and other Christian writers followed suit, tying dark skin to sin and perdition. Jeremiah surmised that the Ethiopian’s skin could change like a leopard—one of many examples in which Africans were likened to animals. Muslims were often depicted with black, blue, or purple skin. Muslims reportedly worshipped Venus, a black goddess “dressed in a gold robe with a striking red blob for its hellish tongue.” Islam has, from the beginning, been an identity situated in racial, ethnic, and cultural difference. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 103

Categorization

• CANDY: The black goddess Venus “dressed in a gold robe with a striking red blob for its hellish tongue” is a striking, tweetable image of how the West fabricated Muslim idolatry.
• XREF: Gregory the Great and the ‘fall of mankind’ reading of Ethiopia — ties into the reader’s question of image preceding contact, showing the symbolic framework was already in place before any real encounter. — connects to: Theology justified slavery and genocide by marking whiteness as Christian — Andrew L. Whitehead, American Idolatry, 145
• QUESTION: The leap from African skin to Muslim depiction is worth probing: when did the West first map blackness onto actual Arab Muslims, versus onto the theological ‘Saracen’?
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 103