Marco Polo and the Three Wise Men

The Three Wise Men woken by an angel Maestre Gislebertus, h. 1130

In an age when American culture seems to permeate and even obliterate traditions around the world, it's refreshing to local traditions hold strong against the ceaseless tide. Here in Spain they have incorportated Santa Claus and the mass consumerism of America into their Christmas season, but the main event is still the Three Kings Day (Epiphany). The thing is, as with many aspects of Christianity, the Spanish have really turned it into a nativist narrative (the legends of Santiago or Saint James and the pagan inspired Virgin cults). In this week's Camino a Ítaca, a reminder that the foundational myths of the faith looked East before looking West. Click over to the version published in English in Sur in English (PDF p.16) or the Spanish version in the HOY. 

Modern-day Tehran tumbles out of the Elburz mountains like an unspooling roll of chimerical fabric. It starts out fresh and clean but as its splendor runs out, it becomes dustier and more frayed at the edges as it loses altitude and peters out on the doorstep of Kavir, the Great Salt Desert. In a question of 30kms the metropolis plunges 600m down from the modern, wealthy mountain heights in the north, through the dense smog that perennially chokes the megacity and then fades into the humbler, haphazard developments and villages it has swallowed up along the fringes of the desert.

In one of these towns, now engulfed by the metastasizing capital, still stands the ancient caravanserai stop of Rayy. A place where a young Italian named Marco Polo just might have passed through in the XIII century enroute with his destiny with the great Mongol Emperor Kublai Khan.

Further along the Silk Road in Saveh (or Kashan depending on your transliteration), the Genovese youngster encountered a square building housing three sepultures, each boasting an unblemished corpse complete with hipster beards and stylized hair. He asked around but no one was able to tell him who these incorruptible Methuselah were.

It was another three-day journey until he found out that they were three ‘kings’ who had set out from the East to worship a prophet in Judea. With them they carried the classical bling of the day, Gold, Frankincense, and Myrrh. These gifts were in fact chosen to ascertain whether the prophet was a God, an earthly King, or a Physician. If he took the Gold, then he would be your typical Bourbon or Windsor, that is to say an earthly king. If he fancied the Incense he was a God and if he was after the mysterious Myrrh he was a Healer.

After conferring with Herod, these magi finally found the baby prophet. The youngest went in first and found the child apparently just like himself. The middle one entered next, and like the first, he found the prophet seemingly of his own age. Lastly, the eldest went in and wouldn’t you know it, the same happened to him. To clear up this circus trick they agreed to go in together and to their surprise found a baby that was just thirteen days old. Amazed by the miracle, they presented their gifts and in a truly trinitarian move, the child took all three. In return, the child gave them a small, closed box.

We know curiosity kills cats, and the same might be said for camels. The three kings couldn’t wait to get home to open the box and when they finally did, they only found a small stone. In their disappointment, they tossed the stone into a well only to be surprised by a flame bursting up and creating the everlasting light that would become the foundation of another of the monotheistic faiths, Zoroastrianism.

With so many of its followers xenophobically insisting on their faith being the basis of the West, Polo’s account serves as just another reminder that Christianity was not only born in the near East but once looked further in that direction in its foundational stories.