The Editor begs to remind his readers that he is not responsible for the opinions THE MAGI FROM THE SUN-RISING. SIR, SO many passages of gospel history have come down to us in the briefest and most unexplanatory form of narration, that, while superstitious communions supply the deficiency with old wives' tales and legends, the protestant church must come to the modest conclusion that historical elucidation formed little or no part of the commission given to the disciples and primitive fathers. That remark will apply to the extraordinary character, actions, and unfathomed motives of the unfaithful apostle Judas. It will apply to the life of the mother of the Lord from the hour of his crucifixion to her death, for as the Rhemish bible well observes (upon Acts i. 14), "it pleased not God that there should be any farther note of her life, doings, or death, in the Scriptures." But there is none to which it has a more striking application than to the history of the Magi. No one knows who they were, whence they came, why they were invited to Bethlehem by a sign in the heavens, or can imagine what was the actual or purposed good of this insulated transaction. There is something so surprising in the summons given to a group of pagan fire-worshippers and worshippers of the sun to attend upon the nativity of the Messiah, that it has even deterred our translators from the right-forward discharge of their duty, and induced them to render Magi, by Wise Men; although you might • A word used by Herbert and some other poets of the seventeenth century. exactly as well translate Druid, Dervish, or Mufti, as Magos, by these words. It is an improper deviation from the text, because it presumes to bestow praise, where the original neither commends nor blames. Deep as is the silence of Matthew on all these points, the Rhemish commentator will find elsewhere some "farther note of their life, doings, and death;" as, indeed, he was likewise so lucky as to meet with some account of the resurrection and ascension of Mary, and of the fragrant odours which filled her vacant sepulchre. When they adored the infant, they "opened their treasures, and presented to him gifts, gold, and frankincense, and myrrh," which circumstance the father of Irish poets observes, with possibly something more solid than mere beauty of imagination, "Aurea nascenti fuderant munera regi, Thura dedere Deo, myrrham tribuêre sepulchro.* Their oblation was of three things; therefore the Magi were three in number. That conceit in process of time passed for an acknowledged fact. An inquiry was likewise instituted into their rank and quality. The church would not be contented with anything less than a king to minister unto its infant Lord. Accordingly the "Magi from the sun-rising," of whom St. Matthew spoke, were pronounced to be kings, and that doctrine was accepted by Tertullian, Cyprian, Basil the Great, Athanasius, Jerome, Augustin, Hilary, John Chrysostom, and Leo the Great. The quality, if not the number, of the Magi was partly determined in reference to this verse of Psalms, "the kings of Tarshisht and the isles shall bring presents; the kings of Sheba and Seba shall bring gifts;" than which it is not easy to conceive one more manifestly inapplicable in its context. Ps. lxxii. 10. The 72nd Psalm is in honour of the King's son, and, as David is the Psalmodical King, that is Solomon. It predicts faithfully and with few ambages, the glorious and godly portion of his reign who built the temple. He shall judge thy people with righteousness, and thy poor with judgment. The mountain shall bring peace to the people........He shall judge the poor, he shall save the children of the needy. Yea all kings shall fall down before him, all nations shall serve him.........He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the land. The kings of Tarshish and the isles shall bring presents. The kings of Tarshish and the isles. He shall live, and to him shall be given of the gold of Sheba. And Judah and Israel dwelt safely, every man under his vine and under his fig-tree, all the days of Solomon.1 Kings iv. And Solomon reigned over all kingdoms, from the river unto the land of the Philistines and the border of Egypt.—Ibid. They brought presents and served Solomon all the days of his life.-Ibid. Thy name went far into the islands.— Eccles. xlvii. 16. And she gave the king an hundred and twenty talents of gold.-2 Chron. ix. There is no possibility of a dispute as to the person whose reign is foreshadowed in these "prayers of David, the son of Jesse." I know * Sedulius De Mirab. Divin. ii. 95. + See Tert. adv. Marcion. 3. c. 13. it may be said that Solomon, as well as David, is sometimes a figure or symbol of the Lord. But is it meet that one given book of Scripture (e.g. the Psalms) should have both David and Solomon, his son, for characteristics of Christ? David might as well be intruded into the Canticles. Suppose, however, that these words. have a secondary application to Christ, the explanation of it must be sought in those prophecies which say, "that the nations shall go up from year to year to worship the King, the Lord of Hosts." Critics may settle those predictions as they like, with respect to the allegoric or the literal; but in any case, it is to them they must resort. For if human language ever made anything plain, this is plain,-that the Psalm describes an adult king, doing strict justice, intimidating all his foes, and receiving tributary homage from those who felt his power, and some of whom would fain have shaken it off; and not a new-born babe, addressed in faith and hope. "His enemies shall lick the dust. The kings of Tarshish &c., shall bring presents." But I totally disbelieve any secondary and typical meaning, and interpret "and men shall be blessed in him," or "through him," of the wisdom and piety which were sent by him into Ethiopia, through the medium of its sainted queen. But-to make short of the matter-we have been wasting all these words upon people who esteem that "the Magi from the rising of the sun came from Tartessus, north-west, from Sheba, south-west, and from Arabia, nearly due south. If with certain data of a ship's dimensions, it is possible to discover the captain's name, it were indeed hard, if with all our data, scriptural and traditional, we could not learn the names of the three kings. They were Balthazar,* king of Arabia, Melchior, king of Persia, and Gaspar, king of Saba; but others, being perhaps aware that the sunrising was not in the direction of Arabia or Ethiopia,† said, that Balthazar and his two companions were sovereigns in Cathay and China. Sir John Mandeville learnt on his travels that they came "from a cytee in Inde which men clepen Cassak." But the same author perplexes our faith by informing us that the Greek names for the three kings were Galgalath, Malgalath, and Salaphil, and their Jewish names Appelius, Ammerius, and Damasus. Another aliàs, or two, may be found for these oriental monarchs; not to mention the theory of their being Melchisedech,‡ Enoch, and Elijah. William Postel, in his work De Orbis Concordiâ,§ asserts that "the region which was governed by the Magi used to select twelve men of superior wisdom, to administer its affairs. They again selected three from out of their number each year, to hold the reins of government, and to observe the aspect of the heavens, so that if any urgent matter was impending, they might immediately provide for it. The three who were elected the year in question were consummate philosophers, and true kings, most worthy of the title." Of their subsequent lives Fray Luis de Urreta Hist. de la Etiopia, p. 170. p. 638. + Genebrard. Chronol. fol. 1261. Navarro de Oratione, fol. 335. L. 4. p. 348. there is little or no legend, except that they were baptized by St. Thomas, yet their lives were of a very respectable length, according to the Chronicle which is ascribed to Lucius Flavius Dexter. "In the year of Christ 70, in Arabia Felix, at Sessania, the city of the Adrumenti, the martyrdom of the Three Saints, the Magi kings, Gaspar, Balthazar, and Melchior."* Their bodies were brought to Byzantium by the empress Helena, and removed in her life-time to Milan, according to that lover of sacred truths Jacobus de Voragine. William of Newbridge, a contemporary author, but one of indifferent credit, relates that the emperor Frederic Barbarossa, who entirely destroyed Milan in 1162, discovered in the ruined suburbs of that city the bodies of the three kings, excellently preserved, and compact as to the bones and nerves, with a dry and unputrefied skin, superinduced, as people think, by virtue of balsamum, with which their bodies had been imbued after the Gentile fashion. And a golden circle surrounded those three bodies, that they might adhere together. Together with their bodies, there were found-guess what, pious reader-" there were found manifest indications, by which it was shewn that those men, having honoured and adored the infant Saviour, had returned into their own country, and lived till after the triumph of His passion, and having received baptism from the preaching apostles, departed to him whom they had honoured in the cradle, to be by him honoured in their turn as he sits at the right hand of the Father." Frederic placed the venerable reliques at the disposal of his favourite minister, Rainald, bishop of Cologne, who translated them to that city, where they have reposed ever since. Thence, their vulgar appellation of the Three Kings of Cologne. It is difficult to believe in the historical part of this, because it is not likely that any three bodies of aged men should have been found at Milan, in such preservation as is described, and so totally unknown, as to admit of being converted into Royal Magi. On the other hand it is difficult to suppose that William could have entirely invented a narrative of public events, in his own time, though in a distant country; and it may be said, that Raynald may have played off some trick, by hiding three bodies, in order to find, and canonize them. Upon the whole I believe, that no transaction of the sort ever occurred. A poem written in praise of Milan about the year 930+ enumerates the saints who were reputed to lie buried there and in the environs, but it says nothing of the Magi. Radulphus, who is expressly said to have been auctor synchronus, and who wrote an account of the siege and ruin of Milan, and Radevic of Frisingen, who was but a little subsequent, and details the same transaction in his first book, are entirely silent‡ upon the invention and translation of the kings. Burchard, abbot of Ursperg, (who died no later than 1225, and wrote this part of the Chronicles that usually bears the name of his successor Conrad,) recounts how Frederic, accompanied by Daniel, bishop of Prague, and Reynald, L. Fl. Dexter, p. 13. Saragossa, 1619. Apud Muratori ii. part 2. p. 989. See them both in Murat. tom. vi. bishop of Cologne, besieged and demolished Milan. But not a word of the Magi, their sepulchre, or their translation. This passage of history is neither true, nor simply false, but it is allegorical, according to that conventional language of symbols and substituted ideas, of which Professor Rosetti has shewn that the Ghibellines made frequent if not continual use, in his work Sul Spirito Antipapale, &c., the solid and convincing parts of which are unfortunately much weakened in their effect by attempting to carry his system into puerile and ridiculous minutia. The Prophecies de Merlin (a virulent work of the same anti-papal and, for the most part, anti-christian faction) makes use of the three Magi as a symbol, the precise import of which I leave to those who have more accurately studied this malevolent gibberish. The three kings of Tarsus, Arabia, and Saba, will go to the Dragon of Babylon with gifts, the first with a knife, the second, an olive branch, and the third, a box of ashes. The Dragon will refuse the olive, as being a sign of peace with the believers in FitzMary, which peace he would never make, and the ashes, as being the symbol of his own inevitable death, and will only accept the knife, in earnest that he would slay all who did not believe in him. Then he will bid the three kings return into their own country, but he will cause them to be conducted to the ministers of hell in the desert of Babylon, from whence they shall never return; and ten thousand knights who shall undertake the †quest of the three kings, shall perish in the undertaking. The quest of the Magi shall have more adventures than even that of the saint Greal. The golden girdle which bound the three bodies into one faggot, is an indication of mysticism in the narrative made by William of Newbridge. So much for the legends with which folly, imposture, and an unhallowed curiosity have filled the world. But we may, by a little reflection and sober reasoning, arrive at a moral certainty concerning the Magi. The mission of Christ was not an open and general one. It was addressed unto Israel first, that the chosen children of Abraham might receive it, and be the vehicle for imparting its blessings to the Gentiles, and be to the rest of the world what their own Levi had been to them, "a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people." For the Gospel, said Paul, was "the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth, to the Jew first, and also to the Hellenist" or Pagan; and "it was necessary that the Word of God should first have been spoken to you, § but seeing ye put it from you. . . . . Lo! we turn to the Gentiles." The necessity lay in the covenant with Abraham-"Ye are the children of the prophets and of the covenant which God made with our fathers, saying unto Abraham, And in thy seed shall all the kindreds of the earth be For instance, when he insists that the word tal (i.e. such) wherever it occurs in Dante, or his school of writers, represents the three initials of Teutonico Arrigo Lucemburgese! He might as well, or better, have said Thronus Augusti Latinus, but the best of all is to abstain entirely from such frivolities. Rom. i. 16. + Prophecies de Merlin, xlii. xliii. § Acts xiii. 46. |