The Three Kings of Cologne: Edited from London, Lambeth Palace MS 491. Edited by Frank Schaer. Middle English Texts, 31. Heidelberg: C. Winter, 2000. Pp. 203. EUR 46; SFr 79.

In its various forms the story of the visit of the Magi to the infant Jesus is a grand, chronologically vast, panhistorical narrative. It unites Biblical and apocryphal incidents with accounts from foreign lands, saints' lives, and various other items of religious and scientific lore, such as the noises made by the rising sun in the land of the Magi. The great names appear: Melchior, Balthazar, Caspar (the African Magus), Prester John, Balaam, Alexander, Constantine, Helena, Julian the Apostate, Thomas, Mohammed, Origen. Likewise, we find the history of the thirty pennies as they make their way from Ninus to Terah to Abraham to the Ishmaelites to Joseph's brothers to Joseph to the queen of Sheba to Solomon to the king of Araby to Melchior to Mary to an anonymous Bedouin to the Priest of the Temple, to Judas Iscariot. The narrative demonstrates the medieval penchant for accretion and copious synthesis as well as the medieval conviction that all histories are providentially entwined.

James H. Morey
Emory University