Europe’s image of Africans shifted from satanic to beast-of-labor across centuries

Evidence

In England, at first gripped by a combative and often hysterical Christianity—complements of the crusades, the “reconquests,” and the rise of Italian capitalism—medieval English devouts recorded dreams in which the devil appeared as “a blacke moore,” “an Ethiope.” This was part of the grammar of the church, the almost singular repository of knowledge in Europe. Centuries later the Satanic gave way to the representation of Africans as a different sort of beast: dumb, animal labor, the benighted recipient of the benefits of slavery. Thus the “Negro” was conceived. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 117

Categorization

• CANDY: The vivid detail that medieval English clergy dreamed of the devil as ‘a blacke moore, an Ethiope’ is a striking elevator fact.
• XREF: This staged shift from Satanic to subhuman mirrors the treatment of ‘the Negro’ concept in other race-theory genealogies and the ‘benighted recipient of the benefits of slavery’ framing resonates with white-savior logic studied elsewhere.