Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 304, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 December 1919 — PRIZED RELICS OF THE MAGI [ARTICLE]

PRIZED RELICS OF THE MAGI

Cologne Cathedral Said to Contain the Skulls of the Three “Wise Men of the East.” A British army chaplain celebrated mass recently in the great Cologne cathedral at the altar of the relics of the Magi, the skulls of the three wise men who came from the East to visit the newly born Savior at Bethlehem. Tradition says that the Empress Helene procured the bones and took them to Constantinople, whence they were removed to Milam In 1164 they were presented by Frederick Barbarossa to Archbishop Relnald von. Dassel, who brought them to Cologne. At first they were kept in the chapel' of the Magi, the central chapel of theseven flanking the choir, but since the war they have been put away in the cathedral treasury, near the organ. The bones are kept in a golden reliquary, a costly specimen of Romanesque craftsmanship in the form of a basilica, said to have been made about 1200 A. D. In the Cologne coat-of-arms three crowns are represented, the ownership of the Magi relics having suggested the design.