In his chapter titled El santo negro Rosambuco de la ciudad de la Palermo, o el negro sumiso, Baltasar Fra Molinero explores the dichotomy of race and religion in Lope de Vega’s hagiographic play. Fra Molinero begins by addressing the titular paradoxes of a black protagonist Rosambuco possessing a saint’s humility, and of Rosambuco being connected with Palermo, a “white” city and not a fantastical, exaggerated version of Africa. It is through this contemporary lens of the contrasting ideologies of Europe and Christianity versus Africa and Paganism that Fra Molinero tackles the issue of blackness and representation in this text.
Firstly, Fra Molinero contends that the use of the ‘aunque’ refrain throughout the text signals not only that an established judgmental perception of black people and characters from the contemporary audience, but also said refrain functions to separate Rosambuco from other black characters; his humility and his actions present him as an ‘exceptional’ black character: “su valor militar es excepcional para un negro, como lo es su forma de hablar – castellano estándar” (p.80). Furthermore, Fra Molinero adds that by making Rosambuco an exceptional figure, Lope entrenches the dehumanisation of other black figures. Fra Molinero employs the example of the slave Lucrecia speaking in habla de negros while Rosambuco speaks Castilian, arguing that the difference serves not to elevate Rosambuco, but rather to further degrade and dehumanise Lucrecia, in a time when black people were viewed as promiscuous sinners in Spain.
Fra Molinero explores the attitudes towards Islam and Christianity by analysing the conversion of Rosambuco; arguing that the colour of his skin is the remnants of his past as a Turkish soldier of the Ottoman Empire before willingly accepting his role as a slave and subsequently converting to Christianity. Fra Molinero’s core argument is that colour expresses a ‘orden natural‘ (p.93), with Spanish audiences equating blackness and Islam with sin, disorder and rebellion. The permanence of skin colour serving as a reminder that, although exceptional in his behaviour, Rosambuco is still beneath the white Spanish audience member in terms of social hierarchy.
Finally, Fra Molinero examines religious and ideological implementations of the white/black colour dynamic. Black being considered the inherent colour of sin and disorder, while white symbolises the purity of the soul and heavenly bodies. Fra Molinero explores the relationship between colour and divinity, looking at the whiteness of heaven contrasted with the black skin of Rosambuco. Fra Molinero presents Rosambuco as a vehicle through with the interplay of white and black is expressed; unable to exist together due to their clashing ideologies. Rosambuco is the meeting point of clashing ideologies throughout the play according to Fra Molinero; white and black, Spanish and Turkish, Christian and Muslim, Divine and Sinner. The core of his argument is that the two clashing ideologies cannot inhabit one space, one body: one ideology (in this case blackness, and Islam) must perish in order for whiteness to prevail in the ‘orden natural’.
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