The Magi 
- Name:
- The Magi
- Dates:
- Attivitą:
- wise men, astronomers
- Places:
- the East (Persia ?)
- Biographical information:
-
The Gospel according to Saint Matthew
Figures belonging to the Christian tradition, the Magi were wise men of Eastern origin, experts in astronomy. They were the first pagans (the “Gentiles”) who came from afar to acknowledge and meet the Messiah, who was instead rejected by the political and religious echelons of the Jews. Guided by a star, they follow not Biblical revelation but human knowledge.
The Gospel of Saint Matthew is the only Biblical source that tells their story (Mt 2:1-12). Guided by a star, the Magi set off in search of the new-born King of the Jews and arrived in Jerusalem. They went to Herod, the king of Roman Judea, to ask for information. Disconcerted, the sovereign summoned the chief priests and scribes and asked them where the Messiah announced by the prophets should be born (Mic. 5:1). Herod thus sent the Magi to Bethlehem, exhorting them to return and tell him exactly where they had found the child. In Bethlehem, still guided by the star, the Magi found the infant Jesus with his mother Mary in a “house”. They prostrated themselves before him, adored him and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. When they were ready to leave, they were warned in a dream not to return to Herod, the Magi went back to their own country by another route. Herod then ordered all children under the age of two to be killed (the so-called Slaughter of the Innocents).
The Gospel does not mention the number of the Magi, nor how old they were, nor precisely where they came from. The term “Magi” comes from the Greek μάγοι, the plural of μάγος, which means wise, sagacious. It was a title specifically attributed to the priest-kings devoted to Zoroaster, in the last phase of the Persian empire. Therefore it seems probable that the Magi were Persian.
The Christian tradition
The story of the Magi has circulated widely over the centuries, playing a particularly important role in the Christian tradition. Despite the brevity of the canonical Gospel account, from as far back as the first-second centuries these figures were assigned a series of characteristics and attributes that elaborated their physiognomy and their significance, transforming them into the protagonists of an intriguing legend. The tradition of the Magi is based, on the one hand on various references to the prophetic books, and on the other on numerous apocryphal texts expanding the story. Then there were further contributions from the Fathers of the Church and the hagiographers, which enhanced the Magi with an extensive symbolism.
The codification of the Magi - of their number, their physical features, their names and their origin - passed through a centuries-long process and materialised fairly late.
Already portrayed in the catacombs (catacomb of Priscilla, 2nd-3rd century) in the act of bearing gifts and wearing the costumes of Persian origin belonging to the worshippers of Mitra - consisting of a short tunic, tight-fitting trousers and Phrygian cap - in the Byzantine period the Magi assumed the connotation of “kings”. This interpretation, already prevalent in the East in the 6th century, and in the West from at least the 11th, may have derived from the prophecies that announced the adoration of the Messiah on the part of certain kings (Is 60: 3; Psalms 72:10 and 68:29). It was never called into discussion until the time of the Protestant Reformation (16th century).
Another aspect that has interested the exegetes is the number of the Magi. According to an oriental chronicle of 774-775 the Magi were twelve in number, while in some of the catacombs they are portrayed in greater or lesser numbers. However, the Christian tradition established the image of the three kings, known in the west by the names of Melchior, Caspar and Balthasar. In the eighth century the venerable Bede described Melchior as an old man with white hair with a thick beard and long curly locks, Caspar as a beardless youth and Balthasar as olive-skinned with a substantial beard. Around 1270 Marco Polo in Il Milione recounted that he had visited the tomb of the three kings in the city of Saveh, to the south of Tehran in Persia, and also recorded their names as Beltasar, Gaspar and Melquior.
The theory of a common provenance for the Magi (whether they were Chaldeans, Arabs or Persians, or even Tartars, Indians or Ethiopians) was gradually replaced by the tradition of three different homelands. Even in the Armenian tradition the Magi were considered to be respectively the kings of Persia, India and Arabia, representatives of the three different races descended from the three sons of Noah. Following the first geographical discoveries, and in relation to their contact with distant cultures, the western exegetes came to consider that the three kings originated from the three then known continents: Europe, Asia and Africa. This is why the Magi are often portrayed with the physical features and clothing pertinent to such origins.
The Christian tradition of the Magi thus formulated in the West became definitively codified between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries by the hagiographic texts of Jacopo da Varazze (the Golden Legend) and Giovanni da Hildesheim (Historia Trium Regum).
Symbols of the Magi
From as far back as the 4th century, a hymn by the Iberian poet Prudentius attributed precise meanings to the gifts of the Magi: the gold was a reference to Jesus’ royal status, the incense used in the religious ritual to his divinity, and the myrrh - an unguent which was used to embalm bodies before burial - to his human essence.
Over time, moreover, the trio of the Magi has assumed innumerable other meanings, which are frequently underscored in the pictorial representations of the Adoration or the Procession of the Magi, especially from the fourteenth century on: thus the three figures became symbols not only of the three known continents, but also of the ages of man (youth, maturity and old age), of the stages of the day (dawn, midday, evening) and of cosmic time (past, present and future) as well as other metaphorical interpretations.
Death, burial and celebration of the Magi
The Magi died in the East. Their bodies were found by Helena, the mother of the Emperor Constantine. Helena ordered the remains to be transferred to the church of St. Sophia in Constantinople.
Eustorgius, bishop of Milan (4th or 6th century) obtained permission from the Eastern Emperor to translate the relics to his city. These were then set inside the Roman sarcophagus that is still present in the Chapel of the Magi in the Milanese church.
In 1164, after defeating the Milanese, Federico Barbarossa transferred the remains of the Magi to Cologne (23 July), where they are still conserved in the thirteenth-century reliquary on the high altar of the Cathedral. In 1904, the archbishop of Cologne gave back some fragments of the relics of the Magi to the church of Sant’Eustorgio in Milan.
In the Catholic liturgical calendar, and that of other Christian churches, the arrival of the Magi in Bethlehem is celebrated on 6 January, the Feast of the Epiphany. The Orthodox church and other oriental churches instead celebrate the event on the same day as Christmas.
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