YIL Later Traditions ichich have gathered round the Magi of Matt. ii. — In this instance, as in others, what is told by the Gospel writers in plain, simple words has become the nucleus for a whole cycle of legends. A Christian mythology has overshadowed that which it- self had nothing in common with it. The love of the strange and marvellous, the eager desire to fill up in de- tail a narrative which had been left in outline, and to make cverj^ detail the representative of an idea — these, which tend everywhere to the growth of the mythical element within the region of history, fixed themselves, naturally enough, precisely on those portions of the life of Christ where the written records were the least com- plete. The stages of this development present them- selves m regular succession.
(1) The magi are no longer thought of as simply " \vise men," members of a sacred order. The prophe- cies of Psa. Ixxii; Isa. xlix, 7, 23; Ix, 16, must be fid- filled in them, and they become princes ("regidi," Ter- tull. c. Jud. 9 ; c. Marc. 5). This tends more and mure to be the dominant thought. When the arrival of the magi, rather than the birth or the baptism of Christ, as the first of his mighty works, comes to be looked on as the great epiphany of his divine power, the older title of the feast receives as a synonym, almost as a substitute, that of the Feast of the Three Kings. (2) The number of the wise men, which IMatthew leaves altogether un- defined, was arbitrarily fixed. They were three (Leo Magn. Se7-m. ad Epijjh.), because thus they became a symbol of the mysterious trinity (Hilary of Aries), or because then the number corresponded to the threefold gifts, or to the three parts of the earth, or the three great divisions of the human race descended from the sons of Noah (Bede, De Collect.). (3) Symbolic mean- ings were found for each of the three gifts. The gold they offered as to a king. With the myrrh they pre- figured the bitterness of the passion, the embalmment for the burial. With the frankincense they adored the divinity of the Son of God (Suicer, Thes. s. v. Mdyoi ; Jlrei: Horn, in Kpiph. passim). (4) Later on, in a tra- dition which, though appearing in a Western writer, is traceable probably to reports brought back by pilgrims from Italy or the East, the names arc added, and Gas- par, Melchior, and Balthasar take their place among the objects of Christian reverence, and are honored as the patron saints of travellers. The passage from Bede {De Collect.') is in many ways interesting, and as it is not commonly quoted by commentators, though often referred to, it may be worth wliile to give it: "Primus dicitur fuisse Melchior, qui senex et eanus, barba pro- lixa et capillis, aiirum obtulit regi Domino. Secundus, nomine Caspar, juvenis imberbis, rubicundus, thure, quasi Deo oblatione <ligna.-I)eum honoravit. Terlius fuscus, integre barbatus, Baltassar nomine, per niyr- rham liliura hominis moriturum professus." The trea- tise De Collectantis is, in fact, a miscellaneous collection of memoranda in the form of (juestion and answer. The
desire to find names for those who have none given them is very noticeable in other instances as well as in that of the magi ; e. g. it gives those of the penitent and impenitent thief. The passage quoted aliove is followed by a description of their dress, taken obviously either from some early painting, or from the decorations of a miracle-plaj' (comp. the account of such a perform- ance in Trench, Star of the Wise Men, p. 70). The ac- count of the offerings, it will be noticed, does not agree with the traditional hexameter of the Latin Church : " Caspar fert myrrham, thus Melchior, Baltliasar au- rum."' We recognise at once in the above description the received types of the early pictorial art of Western Europe. It is open to believe that both the description and the art-types may be traced to early quasi-dramatic representations of the facts of the nativity. In any such representations names of some kind woidd become a matter of necessity, and were probably invented at ran- dom. Familiar as the names given by Bede now are to us, there was a time when they had no more authority than Bithisarca, Melchior, and Gathaspar (JMoroni, IHz- ionar, s. v. Magi) ; Magalath, Pangalath, Saracen ; Ap- peUius, Amerius, and Damascus, and a score of others (Spanheim, Dub. Evang. ii, 288).
In the Eastern Church, where, it would seem, there was less desire to find symbolic meanings than to mag- nify the circumstances of the history, the traditions as- sume a different character. The magi arrive at Jeru- salem with a retinue of 1000 men, having left behind them, on the further bank of the Euphrates, an army of 7000 (Jacob. Edess. and Bar-hebrajus, in Hyde, /. c). They have been led to undertake the journey, not by the star only, or by expectations which they shared with the Israelites, but by a prophecy of the founder of their own faith. Zoroaster had predicted that in the latter days there should be a mighty One and a Re- deemer, and that his descendants should see the star which should be the herald of his coming. According to another legend {Opus imjjeif. in Matt, ii apud Chry- sost. t. vi, ed. jMontfaucon) they came from the remotest East, near the borders of the ocean. They had been taught to expect the star by a writing that bore the name of Seth. That expectation was handed down from father to son. Twelve of the holiest of them were appointed to be ever on the watch. Their post of ob- servation was a rock known as the Mount of Victory, Night by night they washed in pure water, and prayed, and looked out on the heavens. At last the star ap- peared, and in it the form of a yoimg child bearing a cross. A voice came from it and bade them iirocced to Jiidffia. They started on their two years' journey, and during all that time tlie meat and the drink with which they started never failed them. The gifts they bring are those which Abraham gave to their progenitors the sons of Ketnrah (this, of course, on the hypothesis that they were Arabians), which the queen of Sheba had in her turn presented to Solomon, and which had found their way back again to the children of the East (Ei)i[)han.e« Comp.Doctr. in Moroni, Dizion. I. c). They return from Bethlehem to their own country', and give themselves up to a life of contemplation and praj-er. When the twelve apostles leave Jerusalem to carry on their work as preachers, St. Thomas finds them in Par- thia. They offer themselves for baptism, and become evangelists of the new faith (Opus imperf. in Matt, ii, 1. c). The pilgrim-feeling of the 1th century includes them also within its range. Among other relics supplied to meet the demands of the market which the devotion of Helena had created, the bodies of the magi are discov- ered somewhere in the East, are brought to Constanti- nople, and placctl in the great church which, as the Mosque of St. Sophia, still bears in its name the witness of its original dedication to the divine Wisdom. The favor with which the people of Milan had received the emperor's prefect Eustorgius called for some special mark of favor, and on his consecration as bishop of that city he obtained for it the privilege of being the rest-