Who Was St. Moses the Black? From Robber to Desert Father

On 28 August the Orthodox Church remembers a man who began adult life as a household slave, was thrown out for immorality and robbery, led a band of robbers along the Nile, and ended as a priest of the desert of Scetis, honored as one of its great fathers. The Church calls him the Venerable Moses the Ethiopian. In English he is usually known as St Moses the Black.

His story is loved because it gives hope: if a hardened robber could become gentle and humble, no one is beyond the reach of grace. It also raises questions: how much is history, was he really killed by raiders, and what should we make of texts that dwell on his skin color, sometimes cruelly? This article tells his life as the Church remembers it and then looks honestly at the sources.

In brief

St Moses is better attested than many early saints. Palladius, who lived among the monks of Cellia near Scetis in the 390s, wrote a short account of him in 419 to 420, within a generation of his death: an Ethiopian, black-skinned servant expelled by his master, a robber chief, a monk who fought long against old habits under the guidance of Isidore the priest, and a priest of Scetis who died at seventy-five leaving seventy disciples. Sozomen repeats this in the 440s, and John Cassian, who was in Scetis in the late 390s, knew of a monk Moses who had come to the desert after a murder. The famous sayings come from the alphabetical collection of the Sayings of the Desert Fathers, which reached its present form in the sixth century after a long period of oral telling. Only that collection says Moses was killed by barbarian raiders; Palladius and Sozomen say nothing about how he died. One historian dated the first raid on Scetis to 407 or 408. The stories about his color were shaped by ancient attitudes to dark skin and cannot show us directly how Moses himself felt.

Thesis: St Moses was very probably a real former robber who became a respected monk and priest at Scetis, and the Church's memory of his repentance rests on early evidence, while his sayings, his ordination scene and his martyrdom come from later monastic tradition that should be received with gratitude and read with care.

The life as the Church tells it

The Orthodox Church in America's life gives the story as most Orthodox Christians hear it. Moses was an Ethiopian, the slave of an important man, banished after committing a murder, who became leader of a band of robbers because of his strength and bad character: "People trembled at the mere mention of his name." Then, through God's mercy, he repented and came to a desert monastery, weeping and begging to be admitted.¹

Palladius tells the most vivid story of the robber years. Moses once plotted to kill a shepherd whose dogs had foiled a raid. The flock was across the Nile, then in flood, so he put his sword in his mouth and his shirt on his head and swam over. The shepherd escaped by burying himself in the sand, so Moses killed the four best rams, swam back, ate the best of the meat, sold the skins for wine, and walked fifty miles to rejoin his band. Palladius explains himself: "I am compelled to tell his wicked acts in order to show the virtue of his repentance."²

The turn came when Moses was "conscience-stricken as a result of one of his adventures" and gave himself up to a monastery. Later four robbers broke into his cell, not knowing whose it was. He tied them together, carried them "like a truss of straw" to the church, and asked the brethren: "Since I am not allowed to hurt anyone, what do you bid me do with these?" When the robbers learned who had caught them, they too became monks.³

His old passions did not leave quickly. Isidore, the priest of Scetis, told him that a dog used to being fed at a butcher's shop stops coming once the shop is closed. Moses lived on a little dry bread, prayed fifty prayers a day, and for six years stood through the night in prayer. He began secretly filling the water jars of the older monks from distant wells. One night, Palladius says, the demon struck him with a cudgel at the well, and he lay ill for a year. Isidore finally told him to stop provoking the demons and come to Communion with confidence: he had been allowed to suffer "that you should not boast of having overcome passion." After that his struggle was over.⁴

The Sayings of the Desert Fathers show an older Moses, gentle and humble. When the monks met to judge a brother who had sinned, Moses came carrying a leaking jug of water: "My sins run out behind me, and I do not see them, and today I am coming to judge the errors of another." The council forgave the brother.⁵ When a magistrate came to see the famous monk, an old man fleeing to the marsh told his party that Moses was a fool; it was Moses himself, avoiding the honor.⁶ At his ordination the archbishop said, "See, Abba Moses, now you are entirely white." He answered: "It is true of the outside, lord and father, but what about Him who sees the inside?"⁷

At the end, the Sayings tell us, he warned the brethren that barbarians were coming and told them to flee. He would stay: "I have been waiting for this day for many years," that Christ's word might be fulfilled, "All who take the sword will perish by the sword." Seven brothers were with him when the raiders came in and killed them; one who fled and hid saw "seven crowns" coming down on them.⁸

The primary historical evidence

Palladius, Lausiac History 19 (419 to 420)

Palladius was born in Galatia around 363, came to Egypt in 388, and spent about nine years at Cellia, near Scetis, before leaving around 400. He wrote the Lausiac History in 419 to 420 for Lausus, a chamberlain of Theodosius II.⁹ {{strong: Palladius wrote within a generation of Moses' death, after living in the neighboring desert during Moses' lifetime.}}

He is careful about his sources. The robber material comes with "he was said" and "they used to say," while the account of the temptations comes "as he himself testified." He calls Moses "an Ethiopian by race and black," and says he "died in Scete seventy-five years old, having become a priest," and "left seventy disciples."¹⁰ He does not mention a violent death.

Sozomen, Church History 6.29 (440s)

Sozomen gives a shorter version clearly dependent on Palladius: a slave driven from his master's house, a robber leader who "dared some murders," the fasting and water carrying, the four robbers, ordination as "presbyter over the monks at Scetis," and death at seventy-five.¹¹ He adds nothing independent.

John Cassian

In Conferences 3.5 Cassian mentions an "Abbot Moses, who lived in a spot in the wilderness called Calamus," who fled to the monastery "through fear of death, which was hanging over him because of a murder," and turned that forced conversion into a free one.¹² The historian Hugh Evelyn White judged him "certainly identical" with Palladius's Moses.¹³ Cassian's first two Conferences are discourses by an Abbot Moses of Scetis on the monk's goal and on discernment. That this teacher is the same man is often assumed but cannot be proved: the name was common, and Cassian does not call him an Ethiopian or a former robber there.

The Sayings of the Desert Fathers

Most quotations of St Moses come from the alphabetical collection of the Apophthegmata Patrum, which has thirteen sayings and stories under his name plus seven instructions sent to Abba Poemen.¹⁴ Benedicta Ward, its English translator, explains that the sayings circulated first by word of mouth and were freely rearranged by copyists, and that the collection "seems to have been rearranged in its present form at the end of the sixth century." Her caution applies here: "It would be rash, therefore, to deduce too much about a Father from the Sayings under his name."¹⁵ Other scholars place it in the early sixth century.¹⁶ Either way, the written form is a century or more after Moses.

Even the best-known story varies. Ward's translation has a leaking jug of water; Evelyn White's translation, and Ward's own foreword, have a broken basket full of sand.¹⁷

Later tradition

A tenth-century life works the contrast between his dark skin and bright soul very hard.¹⁸ The Coptic Synaxarium for 24 Paoni says he had served people "who worshiped the sun," was baptized by St Macarius, became father of five hundred brothers, and was martyred with seven others, an eighth joining them after seeing an angel holding a crown. It records that his body rests in the Monastery of El-Baramous in Wadi El-Natrun.¹⁹

What can we actually verify?

(a) Contemporary or near-contemporary evidence

• A former slave and robber named Moses, remembered as an Ethiopian and black, was a monk and priest at Scetis and died there at about seventy-five, leaving many disciples. Palladius, who lived nearby in the 390s, says so, and Sozomen repeats most of it.
• Palladius reports his long struggle with temptation under Isidore, his fasting and his water carrying, partly on Moses' own testimony.
• Cassian independently knew of a monk Moses who came to the monastic life after a murder.
• Scetis was raided by barbarians early in the fifth century. Evelyn White argued for 407 or 408, citing a letter of St Augustine of about 409 and the historian Philostorgius, against an older date of 395.²⁰

(b) Later hagiographical tradition

• The individual sayings, including the jug, the magistrate and the ordination scene, were written down a century or more later. They may preserve real memories; they cannot be checked.
• The ordaining "archbishop" probably reflects later usage. Brian Noell, following Roger Bagnall, notes that the title first appears in Egyptian sources in the second half of the fifth century.²¹
• The martyrdom is found first in the Sayings. Evelyn White thought Palladius, then in exile at Syene, had "not heard the full story," and noted that this is the only recorded killing of monks by the raiding Mazices in the period.²² {{moderate: That Moses was killed in the first raid on Scetis is plausible, but it rests on a single later source.}}
• The Coptic details and the OCA's "fifteen years" as a priest appear only in much later tradition. The OCA says the four robbers came from his own former band; Palladius says only that they did not know whose cell it was.

(c) Reported miracles and visions

• Isidore's vision of demons and angels, the demon's blow at the well, the rain cloud over Petra and the seven crowns: historians can say that monks told these stories, not test them.

Ethiopian, black, and how to read the color language

In Greek, Aithiops was a general word for a dark-skinned African, not a citizen of the modern country of Ethiopia.²³ Moses' homeland is unknown. The Ethiopian Church also keeps his memory, on Sanê 24.²⁴

The Sayings do not hide the contempt he met. At one council the fathers, "in order to test him," asked, "Why does this black man come among us?" He said afterward, "I was grieved, but I kept silence." After his ordination the clergy drove him out with "Outside, black man!" and the story has Moses tell himself his skin is "as black as ashes."²⁵ Monastic texts of the period also picture demons as black Ethiopians; Cassian's Abbot Moses of Scetis tells two such stories.²⁶

Scholars read these passages differently. Frank Snowden thought Moses applied the old symbolism of spiritual blackness and whiteness to himself and found it "inoffensive"; Lloyd Thompson and Phillip Mayerson saw evidence of wounding prejudice.²⁷ Vincent Wimbush argued that every version uses Moses' blackness as a literary device for the lower life the ascetic leaves behind.²⁸ Noell's caution seems wise: the stories tell us about the people who told them, but "the voice of Moses of Scetis is irrecoverable."²⁹

Two mistakes are worth avoiding. One is to treat the insults as harmless because the story calls them a test; they record attitudes that hurt real people. The other is to make Moses speak the language of modern debates about race. The texts are about repentance, humility and not judging, told in an ancient world with its own prejudices.

His memory has rightly become a gift to Black Orthodox Christians. The Fellowship of St Moses the Black grew out of a 1994 conference on "Ancient African Christianity and African America," meant to show "how Africa has been a part of the Christian story" from the beginning.³⁰ That is not anachronism. Moses really was an African saint in an African desert, and the monasticism of Egypt belongs to every Christian (see how Christian monasticism began).

The Orthodox position

Nothing about St Moses is dogma. The Church holds that he is a saint, glorified in God, whose prayers may be asked and whose life is a pattern of repentance. The Byzantine calendar keeps him on 28 August as "Venerable," a holy monk; Evelyn White noted that the Greek and Latin calendars both use that day.³¹ The Coptic Church keeps 24 Paoni as his martyrdom. The details of his life are common tradition.

The OCA troparion reads him this way: "You abandoned the Egypt of the passions, O Father, / ascending the mount of the virtues with fervent faith." The kontakion says he "drove away the darkness of the passions, being richly illumined with divine light."³² The darkness is the passions, which every Christian shares, not skin.

His life illustrates the Orthodox understanding of salvation as healing. His sins were forgiven, but the habits they formed took years to heal, and the struggle was cooperation with grace, never a way of earning it. Isidore says so: Moses was allowed to fail so that he would not "boast of having overcome passion," and then was sent to Communion. That is synergy, grace first and human response following, aimed at the union with God described in our article on theosis. His habit of opening his thoughts to an elder also belongs to the tradition of spiritual guidance that later shaped the Church's practice of confession.

His teaching on not judging may be his most lasting legacy: "When someone is occupied with his own faults, he does not see those of his neighbour."³³ It echoes the Lord's word that there is "more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine just persons who need no repentance" (Luke 15:7, NKJV).

The strongest objections

"Moses is a literary type, not a real person"

Wimbush suggests that Moses as a black man was "much too important a symbol" of ascetic superiority for us to be sure he was historical at all.³⁴

Response. A symbol can also be a person. Palladius wrote within a generation of Moses' death, had lived beside Scetis in his lifetime, and separates what was "said" from what Moses "himself testified." Cassian independently knew of a monk Moses converted after a murder. The Sayings tie Moses to particular people and places: Isidore, Macarius, Zacharias, Poemen, the retreat at Petra.³⁵ The person is probable; the portrait is shaped.

"The sources are prejudiced, so venerating him through them repeats the prejudice"

Response. The main point deserves agreement: the insults are wrong, and the Church does not venerate them. It honors his humility under insult and his refusal to judge, which judge his insulters too. Naming the prejudice plainly is better than hiding it or explaining it away.

"Fasting, vigils and demons: this is salvation by effort"

A Protestant reader may welcome a robber's conversion while worrying that the long ascetic struggle looks like earning salvation, and may hesitate over asking a saint's prayers.

Response. The story resists that reading. Moses' own efforts fail; healing comes when Isidore tells him to stop striving and come to Communion, so that he will not boast. His repentance is the fruit of mercy, not payment for it. On the saints' prayers, see why Orthodox Christians pray to saints, and on how the Church recognizes a saint, see how someone becomes a saint in the Orthodox Church.

"He was an apostle of nonviolence"

Response. His refusal to harm the robbers or resist the raiders is real tradition, but the texts frame them as monastic obedience ("I am not allowed to hurt anyone") and as accepting a death Christ's word foretold for a former man of the sword, not as a program about politics or war.

What we can say confidently

• A former slave and robber named Moses, remembered as an Ethiopian and black, became a monk and priest at Scetis and died there at about seventy-five, leaving many disciples.
• Palladius, who lived near Scetis in the 390s, recorded his long struggle against old passions under Isidore, partly from Moses' own testimony.
• Scetis was sacked by barbarian raiders early in the fifth century.
• The Orthodox Church commemorates him on 28 August; the Coptic Church on 24 Paoni.

What remains disputed

• {{debated: Whether Moses was killed by the raiders, which only the Sayings report.}}
• The year of his death: about 400 (OCA), 395 (older scholars) or 407 to 408 (Evelyn White), which would put his birth around 332.
• Whether Cassian's Abbot Moses of the first two Conferences is the same man.
• How far the sayings preserve his words, and whether the ordination scene reflects his own time.
• How to read the color language of the sources, and whether anything of Moses' own feelings can be recovered.

Conclusion

St Moses comes to us through a handful of short texts written by people who admired him, and who did not share his skin or, often, his story. Some of what they tell is close to the events, and some grew in the telling. Through every version stands a man who had done great harm, was forgiven, needed years of patient struggle and an elder's help to be healed, and then refused to sit in judgment on anyone else.

That is why the Church keeps his memory: not because every detail is documented, but because in him the mercy of Christ is visible. For more lives told with the same care, see Lives of the Saints and another great penitent, St Mary of Egypt. Holy Father Moses, pray to God for us.

Notes

1. Orthodox Church in America, "Venerable Moses the Ethiopian of Scete" (Lives of the Saints, 28 August), oca.org. ↩
2. Palladius, Lausiac History 19.1-3, in The Lausiac History of Palladius, trans. W. K. Lowther Clarke (London: SPCK, 1918), 86-87. ↩
3. Lausiac History 19.3-4, Clarke trans., 87-88. ↩
4. Lausiac History 19.5-11, Clarke trans., 88-90. ↩
5. Sayings of the Desert Fathers, Moses 2, in The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection, trans. Benedicta Ward, rev. ed. (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1984), 138-39. ↩
6. Moses 8, Ward trans., 140. ↩
7. Moses 4, Ward trans., 139. ↩
8. Moses 10, Ward trans., 140. Matthew 26:52 in the NKJV reads: "Put your sword in its place, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword." ↩
9. W. K. Lowther Clarke, introduction to The Lausiac History of Palladius, 16-17, following the chronology of Cuthbert Butler. Vincent L. Wimbush likewise dates the work to about 420 ("Ascetic Behavior and Color-ful Language," 85). ↩
10. Lausiac History 19.1, 5, 11, Clarke trans., 86-90. ↩
11. Sozomen, Ecclesiastical History 6.29, trans. Chester D. Hartranft, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd series, vol. 2 (Buffalo: Christian Literature Publishing, 1890), revised at newadvent.org. Wimbush dates Sozomen's work to about 443-448 ("Ascetic Behavior," 85-87, where he also notes the dependence on Palladius). ↩
12. John Cassian, Conferences 3.5, trans. C. S. Gibson, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd series, vol. 11 (Buffalo: Christian Literature Publishing, 1894), revised at newadvent.org. Conferences 1 and 2 are the two conferences of Abbot Moses of Scetis. ↩
13. Hugh G. Evelyn White, The Monasteries of the Wadi 'n Natrun, part 2, The History of the Monasteries of Nitria and of Scetis, ed. Walter Hauser (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1932), 155 n. 5. Clarke's note to Lausiac History 19 records that Butler distinguished between the various monks named Moses. ↩
14. Moses 1-13 and the seven instructions to Poemen, Ward trans., 138-43. ↩
15. Ward, translator's note, xxvii-xxx. Ward translates the Greek text in PG 65. ↩
16. Brian Noell, "Race in Late-Antique Egypt: Moses the Black and Authentic Historical Voice," Eras 6 (November 2004), calls it an "early-sixth century collection." Wimbush ("Ascetic Behavior," 85-86), like Ward, dates it to the late sixth century. ↩
17. Ward trans., 138-39 (jug) and foreword, xxv (basket of sand); Evelyn White, History of the Monasteries, 156. ↩
18. Wimbush, "Ascetic Behavior," 87-88, discussing the tenth-century life in the Acta Sanctorum as translated by Kathleen O'Brien Wicker. ↩
19. Coptic Synaxarium, 24 Paoni (Baounah), "Martyrdom of the Great Saint Anba Moses the Black," hisvine.com Coptic Synaxarium. ↩
20. Evelyn White, History of the Monasteries, 154-55, citing Augustine, Letter 111, and Philostorgius, Church History 11.8. ↩
21. Noell, "Race in Late-Antique Egypt," citing Roger Bagnall, Egypt in Late Antiquity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 285. ↩
22. Evelyn White, History of the Monasteries, 155 and n. 8. Ward's headnote to the Moses sayings also says he "was martyred with seven others by barbarian invaders" (138). ↩
23. Noell, "Race in Late-Antique Egypt," describing "the Ethiopian" as "a generic term for black man in the antique Mediterranean." ↩
24. Evelyn White, History of the Monasteries, 155 n. 3 and 156 n. 6, citing the Ethiopic Synaxarium for Sanê 24; Richard K. P. Pankhurst, "Musa," Dictionary of African Christian Biography (reproduced from the Dictionary of Ethiopian Biography, 1975). ↩
25. Moses 3 and 4, Ward trans., 139. Noell notes that the Greek word behind "black man" in the expulsion is Aithiops. ↩
26. Cassian, Conferences 1.21 and 2.13, Gibson trans. On the wider theme see David Brakke, "Ethiopian Demons: Male Sexuality, the Black-Skinned Other, and the Monastic Self," Journal of the History of Sexuality 10, nos. 3-4 (2001): 501-35. ↩
27. As quoted and summarized in Noell, "Race in Late-Antique Egypt": Frank M. Snowden, Blacks in Antiquity (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1970), 211; Lloyd Thompson, Romans and Blacks (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989), 45-47; Phillip Mayerson, "Anti-Black Sentiment in the Vitae Patrum," Harvard Theological Review 71 (1978): 304-11. ↩
28. Vincent L. Wimbush, "Ascetic Behavior and Color-ful Language: Stories about Ethiopian Moses," Semeia 58 (1992): 81-92, esp. 86. ↩
29. Noell, "Race in Late-Antique Egypt," conclusion. ↩
30. Fellowship of St Moses the Black, "Our History Since 1993," mosestheblack.org. ↩
31. Evelyn White, History of the Monasteries, 155 n. 3, citing the Synaxarium of Constantinople (ed. Delehaye, col. 929) and the Acta Sanctorum for August. ↩
32. Orthodox Church in America, "Venerable Moses the Ethiopian of Scete: Troparion and Kontakion," oca.org (troparion, tone 1; kontakion, tone 3). ↩
33. Moses, seven instructions to Poemen, no. 3, Ward trans., 141. ↩
34. Wimbush, "Ascetic Behavior," 89. ↩
35. Isidore: Moses 1, Ward trans., 138; Macarius and Petra: Macarius the Great 22, Ward trans., 132, and Moses 13, 141; Zacharias: Zacharias 2-5, Ward trans., 68-69; Poemen: the seven instructions, 141-43. ↩

Bibliography

Primary sources

• The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection. Translated by Benedicta Ward. Cistercian Studies 59. Revised edition. Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1984.
• Palladius. The Lausiac History of Palladius. Translated by W. K. Lowther Clarke. London: SPCK, 1918. Text at tertullian.org.
• Sozomen. Ecclesiastical History. Translated by Chester D. Hartranft. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd series, vol. 2. Buffalo: Christian Literature Publishing, 1890. Revised at newadvent.org.
• John Cassian. Conferences. Translated by C. S. Gibson. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd series, vol. 11. Buffalo: Christian Literature Publishing, 1894. Revised at newadvent.org.
• The Holy Bible, New King James Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982.

Orthodox and patristic sources

• Orthodox Church in America. "Venerable Moses the Ethiopian of Scete" and "Troparion and Kontakion." Lives of the Saints, 28 August. oca.org.
• Coptic Synaxarium. 24 Paoni, "Martyrdom of the Great Saint Anba Moses the Black." hisvine.com.
• Pankhurst, Richard K. P. "Musa." Dictionary of African Christian Biography. dacb.org. Reproduced from Dictionary of Ethiopian Biography, vol. 1. Addis Ababa: Institute of Ethiopian Studies, 1975.
• Fellowship of St Moses the Black. "Our History Since 1993." mosestheblack.org.

Other scholarship

• Evelyn White, Hugh G. The Monasteries of the Wadi 'n Natrun. Part 2, The History of the Monasteries of Nitria and of Scetis. Edited by Walter Hauser. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1932.
• Noell, Brian. "Race in Late-Antique Egypt: Moses the Black and Authentic Historical Voice." Eras 6 (November 2004). Monash University.
• Wimbush, Vincent L. "Ascetic Behavior and Color-ful Language: Stories about Ethiopian Moses." Semeia 58 (1992): 81-92.
• Brakke, David. "Ethiopian Demons: Male Sexuality, the Black-Skinned Other, and the Monastic Self." Journal of the History of Sexuality 10, nos. 3-4 (2001): 501-35.
• Mayerson, Phillip. "Anti-Black Sentiment in the Vitae Patrum." Harvard Theological Review 71 (1978): 304-11.
• Snowden, Frank M. Blacks in Antiquity: Ethiopians in the Greco-Roman Experience. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1970.