The MYSTERY of the MAGI
We Three Kinga of Orient
aro,
Bearing gifta tec traversc
afar
Field and Fountain,
Mour
and Mountain. Following yonder star...
So goes the lovely
hymn at Christ- mastide. Yet how many children, lisping the words on our front porches or at the
by HAROLD WALTON
ON the 13th Day after Christmas they came:
Melchior with the gift of gold, Balthazar bringing incense, and Jaspar, the 'black
Ethiopian, who offered myrrh
East
school's Christmas con- true, says that Wise Men
So how is it, through the cert, ask themselves the from the
to dark, came
dim centuries that. question: Who were the Bethlehem bearing gifts to have passed since that first three Kings of Orient the Christ Child, but even Christmas, there has grown who had thus travelled he did not give their num- up this legend of the three
Kings
legend which so far? And how much ber.
has taken such a powerful held in popular imagination that even today millions of people believe that their homes actually lie in Cologne Cathedral?
is known about them?
Only from the gifts he There is no mention of names gold. frankincense the Kings in Biblical Scrip- and myrrh is it assumed ture. St Matthew, it is Uure were three of them.
ANO
Tantalising
What a tantalising question it is. Let us look back trying to
Bnswer , to all that we know About the beginning of the legend. We may call If the Mystery of the Magi.
for the Magi were pretty cer- tenly the wine men of whom St Matthew wrote. The Mag were the professional wise men of Persia cynics might call them witch doctors, but they were more priests than doctor
who in the earliest t'mes had quite as international reputa-
tion.
THE CHINA “MAIL,
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 13, 1058,"
daughter of our own Old King Cole, the British King Cole what is now Culchester.
of
.
Strange New Cult
and pack-horses. And arrived on
they
the scene of the
Child
Nativity when the thirteen days old.
was
i
All this does not quite squaro up with the story told by St Matthew, who galt the Magi, The Empress Helena, by all after worshipping the Christ accounts, was a very formidablo Child, were warned in a dream that not woman, and she lived in
to return to the court of tremendous fourth century AD., King Herod but "to deport wnto when the strange new cult of their own country another way,"
Wha beginning Christianity seriously
to impress the minds Surely the glittering panoply of men. She herself was bap- of kingship which the Middle itsed somewhere around the ago Ages ascribed to them could not of 70, and she lived to see so cuslly have escaped the detec- (through her non? Christianity tion of the watching Herod! brcome the fletul religion of the Renau Empire. And in her old age, if all is to be belleves, she visited the Holy Land and the Hely places.
Nevertheless, that is the story which Bourished, and when their bones were removed from Con- stantinople to Milan they already firm place in had n
popular esteem.
Sacred Relics
She is credited with discover- ing the true Cross and about the sume tiene (though history ទេ very vague on the subject) she found apparently ia Syria though one version says Persin,
1 1184 when the Emperor the benes of the Three Kings Frederick Barbaressa captured and had them transported to her Milan, he presented the bones to son's Imposing new capital of Archbishop von Dassel of Col- Constantinople.
ogue. The relies were then trans- ported to the point where they seed of the could be brought down the Three Kings planted. The Rhine to Cologne and so, in legend was to grow unii in barges, they reached the place the Middle Ages everything where they sill rest. secrnod to be known about them. Even their nemes were given.
Thus
the was
The castly golden reliquary of Romanesque design, in which the relies were eventually, on- shrined, is the most precious treasure of Cologne Cathedral.
Many of them must often have
They were said to be Melchior travelled in the Holy Land and described as the King of Nubia, whut more natural than that the smallest of the Three, who some of these, their curiosity gave the Christ Child the gift it is in the shape of a church aroused by the stories which of gold; Balthazar, King of Chal- and depicts on its front Christ's must have circuluted about the dea of medtur bulla, who three Epiphanies to the Wisc
offered Incense; and Child who was born in a stable,
Jasper Men as the representatives of the King! of Tarshish, u should want to visit Him?
tull and pagun world, to the Jews at the splendid "black-Ethiopian," who baption of Christ, and to ali gave myrrh.
peoplo on Judgment Day. It contrast to the glory of Christ as shown on the front of the Shrine. His suffering and death are shown at the back.
And there the mailer might have ended, but for an extra- ordinary
wanan--the Empress Helena. She was the mother of Constantine the Great and (if legend is to be believed, though alas I am afraid it is not) the
Give your friend
a crate of San Miguel
PILSEN
for Christmas
A Jolly
Good Beer!"
Nor, it seems from the legend, did they visit the Saviour alone. They were accompanied by all the barbaric splendour of king- ship with crowds of servants and slaves, and trains of mults
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In the lower parts of the roof are scenes from the ife of Christ and on the upper part originally were scenes from Iis resurrection. The front is 'of gold foil, the sides and backc gilded silver; the core is cake. Wrought figures, rich ornaments of precious stones, and Allgree and enamel are the work MADY mediacyal craftsinen. Nicholas of Verdun depicted the Propheta in 1180 but the Shrine was not completed until about 1220.
of
In 1248 the foundation of the present cathedral was laid It was described then as I new cathedral to be built over the golden house of the Wise Men.
But tho bones of the Magi have. not rested entirely in peace. In the fourteenth cen- tury they were removed to a nearby chapel, and in 1794 the Shrine was carried away from Cologne and hidden to save it from the French who used the cathedral as a hay magazine.
Moved Again
In 1030 they were moved again, this nie to the Eiffel Mountains to protect the Shrine from Allied bombing. When the Shrine was returned in 1948 was at the head of a triumphal procession and laid in the high alter of the cathedral. There it is today, in what originally was meant to be the pivotal point of the whole cathedral.
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