Many cultures have folktales that tell of someone (other than the expected entourage of guards, servants,
etc.) who was
supposed to travel with the Magi, but was prevented from doing so, by some circumstance or other, usually with consequences. Such “wannabe” Magi are usually associated thereafter with gift-giving, at either Christmas or Epiphany, in an endless search on their part for the Child.
Along this line, in Italy, one finds “La Befana”, a kindly old witch. Legend says that she lived alone in the hills and noticed a bright star in the night sky. Later, 3 richly garbed men stopped and asked directions of her to Bethlehem. When she told them that she didn’t know of any such a place, they invited her to join them in their search; she declined, as she was too busy.
After the Magi left, Befana suffered regrets about her choice, remembering her own child, who had died very young. She baked cakes and cookies for the Baby, took her broom (to help the Baby’s mother clean), and set out to find the caravan. When she became lost and tired, angels appeared and gave her broom the power of flight, to speed her search. She roamed the world, hunting for the Baby and still does. Each year, on the eve of Epiphany, whenever Befana comes to a house where there is a child, she flies down the chimney to see if it might be the One she seeks. It never is, but she leaves a gift anyway.
Henry van Dyke, an early 20th century writer, crafted a short story, “The Other Wise Man”, which related another legend. In it, Artaban, a fourth Magi, was late in arriving to meet the others, who had already left. By the time he came to Bethlehem, they and the Holy Family had left to flee Herod’s wrath. Artaban wandered the earth for 33 years, searching and using his gifts (jewels) to benefit others. When he encountered Christ, face-to-face, on Golgotha, his fortune was gone and he wasn’t able to ransom Him. As Christ died and earth was shaken by a quake, Artaban was struck by a stone falling from a building. As he lay dying, he heard a voice from Heaven, saying, “What you did for each of these, you did for Me.”
Babushka, an elderly Russian folklore character, appears in two variants of such tales. One mirrors the Italian tale of the initially selfish and later repentant La Befana; the other is a variant on van Dyke’s story, except that Babushka reaches the stable, sorrowing that she has given away all her gifts and is consoled to find that what she did for others, she did for the Baby.
Among both the “Saint Thomas Christians” of India (Malabarese and Malankarese Catholics and Orthodox) and the Chaldeans and Assyrians (where the Magi likely had their roots), legend says that the Magi encountered the Apostle Thomas some forty years later, when he arrived in their lands to evangelize. According to tradition, the three, all then elderly, having been brought together again by a reappearance of the Star, were converted, ordained, and elevated to the episcopate, dying shortly afterwards. According to the Archdiocese of Cologne’s
Proper of the Divine Office for the Feast of the Translation of the Holy Relics of the Sainted Magi, they were buried in “the city of Sewa in the Orient.” The relics of the Magi were brought to Constantinople in the fifth century, transferred to Milan 100 years later, and taken to Cologne in 1164 by the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa.
The feasts of Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar are kept in the Coptic, Ethiopian, Eritrean, Chaldean, Assyrian, Malabarese, and Malankarese Churches on January 1, 6, and 11, respectively.
The magnificent Cathedral of Cologne was constructed specifically to provide a suitable repository for their relics and it is formally styled The Cathedral of the Three Kings.
The reliquary, largest in the Western world, can be seen
here.
(continued)
) that there were 3 Magi. Because there were 3 gifts mentioned in the scripture.
