By Stephen Enzweiler
Special to the NKyTribune
The stories of Christmas are ever present to us this time of year. No matter our ages or backgrounds, most of us can remember those wee days growing up with stories told to us about the mysteries of Christmas and the coming of the Christ child. As young children, who among us didn’t gaze upon a Nativity scene with an empty manger and feel a sense of expectation? Who didn’t look forward to staying up late the one night of the year we were allowed so we could go to Midnight Mass? Or what youngster, in their wide-eyed innocence, didn’t look up into the winter sky on a Christmas night and hope to see the star of Bethlehem? Young or old, there is still mystery in Christmas, and one doesn’t have to go very far in Covington to find it.
“The Adoration of the Magi” window by Mayer of Munich, 1906. (Photo by Stephen Enzweiler)
In the Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption is a stained-glass window that tells of one of the more puzzling episodes of the Christmas story. The window measures 21-feet high by 9-feet wide and can be found in the nave’s south wall above the fifth Station of the Cross. Called “The Adoration of the Magi,” it is one of a grouping of four windows that illustrate the early life of Christ. Its story is taken from a passage of Matthew’s gospel (Mt 2:1-11) and illustrates the moment when “magi from the east” arrive in Bethlehem and pay homage to the Christ child with gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
“The Adoration of the Magi” window is the creation of the studio of Mayer & Company of Munich which produced stained glass for Covington’s cathedral from 1905 to 1922. Like all Mayer windows of the period, it is made in the Munich Style which became popular a century earlier during the reign of Bavaria’s King Ludwig I. The window itself is a “four-light” window, meaning it contains four vertical panels across its central width. The tracery in the top portion is curvilinear in its styling, a kind of intersecting pattern elaborated with ogees (double curves) creating a complex reticular or net-like pattern. Red-winged seraphim play instruments amid the blazing stars of heaven to announce the birth of the new king. Surrounding them are ornamental windows of red roses that are the symbol of the shedding of Christ’s blood.
Below the tracery is the main scene. The eye is immediately drawn to the center of the window—to the Virgin Mary and Christ child on her lap. We immediately notice that the Virgin and child are the brightest figures in the entire window, as if they are the source of the light. The artists chose this visual dominance over the other figures for two symbolic reasons. First, it communicates the close bond of mother and son, reminiscent of what Pope Pius IX described in his encyclical Ineffabilis Deus: “To her did the Father will to give his only-begotten Son. It was she whom the Son himself chose to make his Mother.” Secondly, their brightness communicates both the purity of the immaculately conceived Virgin Mary and the sinless purity of the child born from her.
The window’s main scene telling the story of the magi’s visit. (Photo by Stephen Enzweiler)
Mary’s gaze is directed downward in humility. She draws back his swaddling clothes to reveal the baby messiah. He looks directly at us and blesses us. His hand gesture is a part of a visual ecclesiastical language that often conceals metaphors and expresses dogmatic truths. In this case, the extended thumb and two fingers represent the unity of God in the Holy Trinity, and the other two symbolize the Incarnation and the two natures of Christ as both human and divine.
Eight-pointed stars—a symbol of resurrection and eternal life—decorate the child’s swaddling clothes. His mother has a halo with seven stars, a number representing perfection. Notice that the light source in the scene is from the Christ child himself, a reference to Jesus’ own words, “I am the light of the world . . . ” (John 8:12). Above the Virgin and child is the star seen by the magi who have come to offer him their gifts.
Detail of Mayer’s masterful Virgin and child. (Photo by Stephen Enzweiler)
Matthew’s account doesn’t specify how many magi there were or give any names or details of their origin except to say they were “from the east.” The East at the time of Christ’s birth meant Media, Persia, Assyria, or Parthia (formerly Babylonia). The first three centuries of Christian art consistently present only three Magi. The oldest known image depicting them is from a third century Roman catacomb which shows three men in Phrygian (Persian) caps approaching Mary and the child with their gifts.
By the fifth century as Christianity continued to grow, interest in the magi story also grew. Old Testament Scriptures were identified as foretelling their visit: “The kings of Tarshish and distant shores will bring tribute to him. The kings of Sheba and Seba will present him with gifts. All kings will bow down to him and all nations will serve him” (Psalm 72:10,11). By the eighth century, texts like the Excerpta et Collectanea elaborated even further on the tradition of the three magi, making them kings and going so far as to give them names. By the ninth century, their identities and roles had become well-established in Christian art and tradition, and apart from their names, they developed distinct characteristics in the Christian tradition.
Casper, Balthasar and a fourth magi in his Phrygian (Persian) cap. (Photo by Stephen Enzweiler)
There is Caspar (or Gaspar) the King of Tarsus, land of merchants, bringing gold, the traditional gift for kings. He is an old man with a long white beard who is the first to remove his crown and kneel before the Christ child. Then there is the middle-aged Melchior whom tradition says was the King of Arabia, bearing frankincense, the perfume of praise and adoration. Balthasar, the King of Ethiopia, was the youngest. He is swarthy (sometimes depicted as black-skinned) and bore the gift of myrrh, a medicinal aloe used for making medicines and also used as an embalming agent. Myrrh was also viewed throughout Christianity as a prefigurement to Jesus’ death and burial—an interpretation made popular in the well-known Christmas carol “We Three Kings.”
Artists through the centuries have been known to add their own interpretations and artistic variations to the traditional magi story, and Mayer & Company was no exception. In this window composition, the Mayer artists have depicted four magi rather than the traditional three; they have also introduced two other figures. In the center is Caspar, traditionally the first to kneel, his crown removed and set upon the ground in a gesture recognizing the Christ child’s kingship over his own. Just beyond in the green turban is the black-skinned Balthasar carrying myrrh in a fluted perfume flask. In the far right of the frame are two unknown figures, the upper one in a red Phrygian (Persian) cap carrying a small chest of pearls, the Christian symbol for the Kingdom of Heaven and a possible allusion to the parable of the pearl of great price (Mt 13:45). The other is an unknown figure, without crown or regalia, presenting a simple blue box of unknown contents.
The mysterious Egyptian-clad figure with the fan of peacock feathers. (Photo by Stephen Enzweiler)
At far left is the turbaned Melchior, depicted as dark-skinned and on his knees holding a thurible of fragrant frankincense. Standing just behind Melchior is a mystery figure—pale-skinned, attired in a striped Egyptian “nemes” headdress and bearing a fan of peacock feathers. The “nemes” is a well-known symbol of Egyptian sovereignty and the peacock a Christian symbol representing resurrection. Note how the Egyptian stares directly at St. Joseph, and how St. Joseph stares back uncomfortably. Here the Mayer artists have inserted yet another story for us to ponder, using these figures and their gazes to foreshadow the family’s imminent flight into Egypt to escape King Herod’s wrath.
The entire scene is supported beneath by a foundation of ornamented grisaille work typical of the Mayer style. It is decorated throughout with white roses, violets, and fig leaves arranged as flower blossoms. In Christian art, white roses represent the Virgin Mary. Because of its three leaves, violets were called “the herbs of Trinity” or “flowers of Trinity” by medieval monks. It is also said that violets symbolize the Virgin Mary’s humility and purity. The lowly fig had always been a symbol of Israel and foretold the health of the nation both spiritually and physically. “When I found Israel, it was like finding grapes in the desert; when I saw your ancestors, it was like seeing the early fruit on the fig tree.” (Hosea 9:10).
The Adoration of the Magi will always remain one of the most intriguing and mysterious chapters of the Christmas story. Borne out of history, with details filled in over two thousand years by Christian artists and writers, it continues to fascinate us even today. It teaches us about the kingship of Jesus, of how the Father so loved the world that he sent his only son so that man might have life, and that even in the darkest of times, there is always a reason to have hope. We can always be reminded of these things each time we visit the Cathedral Basilica and spend a little time with this window, or perhaps when we let the child in us look up into the winter sky on a Christmas night and hope to see the magi’s star.
Stephen Enzweiler is a writer, Cathedral Historian, and a docent at Covington’s Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption.
Seraphim in the tracery announcing the birth of the new king. (Photo by Stephen Enzweiler)
