On their return they cast this into
their sacred fire; though wrapt in the flame it remained unhurt.
We may add that there was a Christian tradition that the Star descended
into a well between Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Gregory of Tours also relates
that in a certain well, at Bethlehem, from which Mary had drawn water, the
Star was sometimes seen, by devout pilgrims who looked carefully for it,
to pass from one side to the other. But only such as merited the boon
could see it.
(See Abbott in J. R. G. S. XXV. 4-6; Assemani, III. pt. 2, 750;
Chardin, II. 407; N. et Ext. II. 465; Dict. de la Perse, 2, 56, 298;
Cathay, p. 51; Mas'udi, IV. 80; Greg. Turon. Libri Miraculorum,
Paris, 1858, I. 8.)
Several of the fancies that legend has attached to the brief story of the
Magi in St. Matthew, such as the royal dignity of the persons; their
location, now in Arabia, now (as here) at Saba in Persia, and again (as in
Hayton and the Catalan Map) in Tarsia or Eastern Turkestan; the notion
that one of them was a Negro, and so on, probably grew out of the
arbitrary application of passages in the Old Testament, such as: "Venient
legati ex Aegypto: AETHIOPIA praevenit manus ejus Deo" (Ps.
