The coat of arms for Bad Sulza, an obscure German town, features a black skinned man in a suit of armor. Why?

by ObsidianSquid

Is this a common motif? What is it in reference too? Why would a small town in Germany choose that image to represent itself?

WelfOnTheShelf

It's St. Maurice, also the namesake of the town's church. So how did St. Maurice end up being depicted as a black African and why was he so popular in Germany? Well there are a couple of older answers that tackle this question:

If there was an African population (Ethiopians) in Rome, albeit a smaller population, what happened to them in Europe throughout the medieval age? And what happened to Europeans’ collective perception of Africans by u/sunagainstgold

Did non-white nobility/knights exist in medieval europe? by u/SpartiateDienekes