Epiphany (6 January)

Greek etymology: the "manifestation"

The term epiphaneia (ἐπιφάνεια) belongs first to secular Greek vocabulary, where it denotes the solemn appearance of a divinity or a sovereign, his public and glorious manifestation before his people^[8]. The first Greek-speaking Christians took up this word to designate, not the appearance of a pagan god, but the visible coming of God made man: the Catechism of the Catholic Church thus defines Epiphany as "the manifestation of Jesus as Messiah of Israel, Son of God and Saviour of the world"^[9]. From the beginning, then, the word covers a reality broader than the episode of the Magi alone: every public manifestation of the divinity of Jesus — his birth, his baptism, his first miracle at Cana — may legitimately be called an "epiphany".

One feast, two emphases: Magi in the West, baptism and Cana in the East

The word "epiphany" is broad enough to cover several manifestations of Christ, and from antiquity the feast celebrated several of them: his birth, the adoration of the Magi, his baptism in the Jordan, the first sign at Cana^[10]. Depending on the Churches, the emphasis was not the same. The Apostolic Constitutions, a Syrian compilation from the end of the 4th century, already distinguish the Nativity, celebrated on 25 December, from Epiphany, celebrated on 6 January; they ask that slaves be allowed to rest on that day, "because on this day was manifested the divinity of Christ, the Father bearing witness to him at his baptism"^[11]. At Jerusalem, on the contrary, the feast had a strong Nativity colouring: on the night of 5 to 6 January, a procession set out for Bethlehem and returned only in the morning^[12]. In Egypt, John Cassian still testifies in the 5th century that 6 January celebrates together the baptism of the Lord and his birth according to the flesh^[13].

Saint Epiphanius of Salamis (c. 315-403) likewise holds that Christ was born on a 6 January, and that it was around the same day, thirty years later, that he changed water into wine at Cana. He sees the trace of it in a wonder of his own time: every year, on this date, springs are changed into wine, at Cibyra, "the principal city of Caria", as at Gerasa — "I myself drank from the one at Cibyra", he writes, and his brethren from the one at Gerasa^[14]. Saint Jerome, who lived at Bethlehem, holds on the contrary that the day of the Epiphanies is venerable for the baptism, when the heavens opened over Christ, "not, as some think, for his birth in the flesh": then, he was still hidden^[15].

When the Roman date of 25 December wins over the East — at Antioch in the time of Saint John Chrysostom, later at Jerusalem and Alexandria — the Nativity leaves 6 January, which becomes, in the Byzantine tradition, the feast of the baptism of the Lord: the Theophany^[16]. The Armenian Apostolic Church never separated the two feasts and still celebrates on 6 January the Nativity and the Baptism of Christ, as recalled in the article Christmas (25 December).

The Latin West puts the episode of the Magi in the foreground. The eight sermons of Saint Leo the Great for Epiphany deal "almost wholly with the Magi", and one of them states that their visit is the mystery for which the feast was instituted^[17]. The Roman liturgy has nevertheless never forgotten the two other manifestations. It sings them together in the antiphon of the Magnificat at Second Vespers, to which the Catechism of the Catholic Church refers^[18]:

"We celebrate a holy day adorned with three miracles: today the star led the Magi to the manger; today water was changed into wine at the wedding; today Christ willed to be baptized by John in the Jordan, to save us, alleluia." — Liturgy of the Hours, solemnity of Epiphany, antiphon of the Magnificat at Second Vespers^[19]

The following table summarises the two emphases of the same 6 January feast, Western and Eastern:

Rank and date: 6 January or the Sunday between 2 and 8 January

Epiphany has the rank of solemnity, the highest in the calendar, and the table of precedence of liturgical days places it in second place, together with the Nativity, the Ascension and Pentecost, just after the Easter Triduum^[23]. With the Annunciation and Christmas, it belongs to the cycle of the Incarnation, of which the Catechism says that it commemorates "the beginning of our salvation" and communicates to us "the first fruits of the Paschal mystery"^[24].

Its date is fixed by the General Norms for the Liturgical Year and the Calendar, approved by Paul VI on 14 February 1969 (motu proprio Mysterii paschalis) and promulgated with the new Roman Calendar by the Sacred Congregation of Rites on 21 March 1969, to come into force on 1 January 1970^[25]:

"The Epiphany of the Lord is celebrated on 6 January, unless, where it is not a holy day of obligation, it has been assigned to the Sunday which falls between 2 and 8 January." — General Norms for the Liturgical Year and the Calendar, no. 37^[26]

The criterion is therefore the obligation, not the civil calendar: where the conference of bishops has lifted the obligation on 6 January, the solemnity moves to Sunday, which then becomes its proper day^[27]. This is the case in France and in most French-speaking countries: Epiphany is celebrated there every year on the Sunday between 2 and 8 January, which falls on the 6th only one year in seven^[28]. In France, this usage goes back to the decree of Cardinal legate Caprara of 9 April 1802, issued after the Concordat, which maintained only four holy days — Christmas, the Ascension, the Assumption and All Saints^[29]. The general Roman calendar, which Rome follows, keeps the date of 6 January: Pope Leo XIV thus celebrated the solemnity on Tuesday 6 January 2026 in Saint Peter's Basilica^[30].

A feast of obligation on the same footing as Christmas

Like the solemnity of Holy Mary Mother of God, Epiphany figures among the days of obligation of the universal Church listed by canon 1246 § 1 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law:

"And likewise must be observed the days of the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, of the Epiphany, of the Ascension and of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, the day of Holy Mary Mother of God, of her Immaculate Conception and of her Assumption, of Saint Joseph, of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul and lastly of All Saints." — Code of Canon Law (1983), canon 1246 § 1^[31]

The following paragraph specifies that "the conference of Bishops can, with the prior approval of the Holy See, suppress certain feasts of obligation or transfer them to Sunday"^[32]. It is this faculty which grounds the transfer of Epiphany to Sunday: where it applies, the Mass obligation is fulfilled by the Sunday Mass, and the solemnity keeps its rank intact.

Place in Christmastide

The General Norms thus open the chapter on Christmastide: "After the annual celebration of the paschal mystery, the Church holds nothing more venerable than the memorial of the Nativity of the Lord and of his first manifestations: this is what she does in Christmastide"^[33]. Epiphany is its centre. It follows the solemnity of Holy Mary Mother of God, which closes the octave of the Nativity on 1 January, and it precedes the feast of the Baptism of the Lord, celebrated on the Sunday after 6 January: Christmastide ends with it^[34]. Where Epiphany, transferred to Sunday, falls on 7 or 8 January, the Baptism of the Lord moves to the following Monday^[35]. The overall architecture of these seasons, their colours and their ranks is presented in the article The Liturgical Year.

From the octave of Epiphany to Ordinary Time

Until the mid-20th century, Epiphany was prolonged by an octave: the days from 7 to 12 January kept its liturgy, and the eighth day, 13 January, commemorated the baptism of Christ. The general decree of the Sacred Congregation of Rites Cum nostra hac aetate, of 23 March 1955, keeps only the octaves of Christmas, Easter and Pentecost: from 7 to 12 January, "the octave of Epiphany being suppressed", ferias are now celebrated, and 13 January becomes the commemoration of the Baptism of the Lord^[36]. The Tridentine calendar also knew a season after Epiphany, whose length varied with the date of Easter; the Masses of the Sundays which could not be celebrated before Lent were resumed at the end of the year. The 1969 Roman Calendar merged this season into the thirty-three or thirty-four weeks of Ordinary Time, which begins the day after the Baptism of the Lord^[37]. The history of the 13 January feast up to its present Sunday is retraced in the article Baptism of the Lord.

The earliest dated attestation: the Basilidians and the baptism of Christ

The oldest testimony of an observance linked to 6 January comes not from the Church, but from a Gnostic group in Egypt. Clement of Alexandria, who died around 215, reports in his Stromata, whose first books date from around 202, that the disciples of Basilides, a 2nd-century Gnostic, "hold as a feast the day of his baptism, spending the previous night in readings", and place it on the 15th of the Egyptian month of Tybi in the fifteenth year of Tiberius — some saying the 11th of the same month — that is, 10 or 6 January^[38]. Clement does not present this date as a feast of the Church; he rather implies that the Church of Alexandria did not celebrate it, and Origen, who lists the Christian feasts around 248 in his Against Celsus (VIII, 22), does not mention it^[39]. The feast of the Church appears in the sources in the 4th century, in the East as in the West.

Ammianus Marcellinus and the 4th-century testimony in the West

The oldest dated Western testimony of a celebration of Epiphany comes, paradoxically, from a pagan historian. Ammianus Marcellinus recounts that at Vienne, in Gaul, during the winter of 360-361, Julian — whom his troops had proclaimed Augustus at Paris the previous year — "pretended to adhere to the Christian religion, from which he had long been secretly detached". To further conceal his intentions, "on the day of the festival which the Christians celebrate in the month of January and which they call Epiphany, he went to their church and, after solemnly praying to the divinity, withdrew": it was 6 January 361^[40]. The witness is a pagan, an admirer of Julian, who has no reason to invent a Christian feast: his account attests that in 361 Epiphany was already established enough in Gaul for a prince anxious to appear Christian to have to attend it.

Gaul is thus the first Church of the West where the feast is attested; Rome in turn celebrates it in the second half of the 4th century^[41]. The movement crosses that of Christmas, which travelled from Rome to the East: the feast of 25 December was introduced at Antioch only in the time of Saint John Chrysostom, and later still at Jerusalem and Alexandria^[42]. Saint Augustine, in Africa, retains the consciousness of this origin: the Donatists, he says, refuse to celebrate this day with the Catholics, because they are not in communion with the Church of the East, "where the star appeared"^[43].

The absence of Epiphany from the Roman calendar of 354

The oldest preserved Roman calendar, the Chronographer of 354 (or Philocalian calendar), already attests 25 December as the date of the Nativity of Christ, but does not mention Epiphany^[44]. Rome therefore received the feast after that date: seven years later, it is attested in Gaul, and the 1969 Roman Calendar places its celebration at Rome "since the second half of the 4th century"^[45]. In the following century, Saint Leo the Great preaches on it every year, and describes it as the day "on which Christ was adored by the Magi"^[46].

Where does the date of 6 January come from?

Two explanations compete. The first, proposed in 1889 by Mgr Louis Duchesne, historian of the liturgy, then taken up by the liturgist Thomas Talley, is a calculation internal to the Christian faith: some ancient Christians placed the Passion on 25 March, others, in the East, on 6 April; holding that Christ had been conceived on the very day he died, they obtained, nine months later, a birth on 25 December or 6 January^[47]. This reasoning, which starts from the coherence of salvation and not from paganism, is developed for 25 December in the article Why is Christmas celebrated on 25 December?^[48].

The second explanation links the date to a pagan cult at Alexandria. It rests almost entirely on a passage of Saint Epiphanius: at Alexandria, in the temple of Kore, people kept vigil on the night of Epiphany singing hymns, then carried a wooden statue in procession saying that "on this day, at this hour, Kore, that is, the Virgin, gave birth to Aeon"; the same feast was celebrated the same night at Petra and Elusa^[49]. But the sole witness of this feast gives it the opposite meaning: for Epiphanius, it is the priests of the idols who, "compelled to confess a part of the truth", deceitfully celebrate a great feast "on the very night of Epiphany" to turn the pagans away from Christ^[50]. A coincidence of date does not say who imitates whom; the borrowing hypothesis remains unproven, whereas the calculation hypothesis rests on attested Christian computuses.

The Fathers of the East: Epiphanius, Gregory of Nazianzus, John Chrysostom

At the end of the 4th century, the Greek Fathers show the feast in full movement. Saint Epiphanius calls 6 January "the day of the birth, that is, of the Epiphany" of Christ, and places his baptism on another date, the 12th of the month of Athyr, that is, 8 November, "a full sixty days before Epiphany"^[51]. At Constantinople, Saint Gregory of Nazianzus preaches, probably on 25 December 380, on the birth of Christ, which he still calls Theophany, and announces to his hearers that they will soon see him baptized; on the 6 and 7 January following, his discourses On the Holy Lights and On Baptism celebrate the baptism of Christ, after recalling that his birth and the leading of the Magi by the star have already been celebrated^[52].

Saint John Chrysostom, at Antioch, testifies to the same separation. On 25 December 386, he celebrates the Nativity, a feast "long known to the Western peoples, whose knowledge has recently reached us"^[53]; on the following 6 January, he explains why the day of Christ's baptism is called Epiphany, and not that of his birth:

"For it was on this day that he received baptism and sanctified the nature of water. That is why, on this solemnity, all the faithful go to draw water around midnight and carry home a certain quantity of baptismal water, which they keep for the whole year […]. A manifest miracle even takes place at this spot, for the water thus drawn in no way suffers the harmful action of time: it is seen to keep for the whole year and often for two and three years, equally limpid and clear." — Saint John Chrysostom, Homily on the Baptism of the Saviour and on Epiphany, 2, Antioch, 6 January 387^[54]

This water sanctified by the baptism of the Lord is the ancestor of the great blessing of the waters which the Christian East still celebrates on 6 January.

The controversy of Himerius of Tarragona and the reply of Pope Siricius

The Western adoption of the feast did not happen without friction. The Spanish bishop Himerius of Tarragona complains to Pope Damasus, who died in 384, about a practice of his brethren: celebrating baptisms on the feasts of the Nativity and Epiphany, whereas Roman discipline reserved solemn baptisms for Easter and Pentecost^[55]. His successor, Pope Siricius, replies with a decretale dated 11 February 385: he blames this "confusion" which, "without any authority, by mere rashness", has people baptized "on the feasts of the Nativity of Christ and of his Appearing", and recalls that Easter and Pentecost are the seasons for baptism^[56]. Sixty years later, Saint Leo the Great still reproaches the bishops of Sicily, in a letter of 21 October 447, for "so unreasonable a novelty" (irrationabilis novitas): they baptize more at Epiphany than in the paschal season, "as if there were no difference between the day on which Christ was adored by the Magi and that on which he rose from the dead"^[57]. In the West, the old Eastern association of 6 January with baptism thus fades before paschal discipline — and leaves the first place, in the Latin theology of the feast, to the adoration of the Magi.

Saint Leo the Great and the Western emphasis on the adoration of the Magi

It is the pontificate of Saint Leo the Great (440-461) which gives Western Epiphany its lasting physiognomy. His eight sermons for this feast, preserved among the richest corpus of his preaching, concentrate almost exclusively on the episode of the Magi, developing at length the theological meaning of their adoration as a figure of the entry of the pagan nations into the salvation promised to Abraham^[58]. Leo insists on the paradox of the divine manifestation: the Magi, guided by the brilliance of a star, meet at Bethlehem no dazzling miracles nor signs of power, but a silent child entrusted to his mother's arms —

"When the three Magi had been led by the brilliance of a new star to come and adore Jesus, they did not see him commanding demons, raising the dead, giving sight to the blind, walking to the lame, speech to the mute, nor performing any act pertaining to divine power; no, they saw a child keeping silence, at peace, entrusted to his mother's care; in him appeared no sign of his power, but he offered to view a great marvel, his humility." — Saint Leo the Great, Sermons, VII, for Epiphany, 2^[59]

The pope sees in this the key to the whole Christian theology of salvation: "The whole victory of the Saviour, indeed, the victory which subdued the devil and the world, began with humility and was consummated by humility."^[60]. This insistence on the paradoxical humility of the divine manifestation — a God who reveals himself not by force but by the silence of a child — would become one of the constant themes of Western preaching on Epiphany, down to today.

Fifteen centuries later, on 6 January 2026, closing the last Holy Door of the Jubilee in Saint Peter's Basilica, Pope Leo XIV took up the same paradox:

"The Child whom the Magi adore is a good beyond price and measure. He is the Epiphany of gratuitousness. He does not await us in prestigious places, but in humble realities." — Pope Leo XIV, homily for the solemnity of the Epiphany of the Lord, Saint Peter's Basilica, 6 January 2026^[61]

A single Gospel witness

Unlike the account of the shepherds, reported by Luke alone, the episode of the Magi is told only by Saint Matthew, at the very beginning of his Gospel:

"Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, in the time of King Herod the Great. Now, behold, Magi from the East arrived in Jerusalem and asked: 'Where is the king of the Jews who has just been born? We have seen his star in the East and we have come to prostrate ourselves before him.'" — Gospel according to Saint Matthew 2:1-2^[62]

The account continues with the troubling of Herod and of all Jerusalem, the summoning of the chief priests and scribes who identify, from the prophecy of Micah (Micah 5:1), Bethlehem as the expected place of the Messiah's birth, the secret sending of the Magi with Herod's false promise to come himself and prostrate himself, the reappearance of the star which leads them to the house where the child is, their prostration, the offering of the three gifts, then their departure by another way after a warning received in a dream (Matthew 2:3-12)^[63]. The Catechism of the Catholic Church stresses that in these Magi, "representatives of the surrounding pagan religions", the Gospel sees "the first fruits of the nations which welcome the Good News of salvation through the Incarnation"^[64], and that their coming to Jerusalem to "pay homage to the king of the Jews" means that the pagans cannot discover Jesus except by turning, in the light of messianic revelation, towards the people of Israel^[65].

This account is an account of facts. Against the rationalist readings which rank it among the legends of the infancy, the Catholic Encyclopedia recalled in 1910 that Catholics hold it to be "a narrative of fact", relying on the testimony of all the manuscripts, of all the ancient versions and of the citations of the Fathers; Saint Irenaeus, in the 2nd century, already knows the episode and comments on its gifts^[66].

Who were the Magi? A title, not a number

The Greek word magoi denotes first, according to Herodotus, a priestly tribe of the Medes, which supplied its priests to Persia and kept its religious influence there; in the time of Christ, these priests still sat, according to Strabo, in one of the two councils of the Parthian empire^[67]. The observation of the stars and the interpretation of dreams were part of their learning — which puts them on the road of the star. Elsewhere in the Bible, the word often has the pejorative sense of "magician" (Acts 8:9; 13:6); but Matthew's context imposes the noble sense: they are sages come to adore the announced king^[68].

Nor are they kings in the proper sense. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, no Father of the Church holds them to be such; Tertullian says only that the East held them "almost as kings" (fere reges)^[69]. The title of "Magi kings" comes from the liturgy, which applies to them Psalm 71 (72): "The kings of Tarshish and of the Isles shall bring presents"; this liturgical application ended up, for some, passing as an interpretation of the text itself^[70].

Matthew does not say how many they were either. A few Fathers speak of three Magi, very probably because of the three gifts: Origen, in the 3rd century, already sees in the three visitors who came to Isaac (Genesis 26:26) the figure "of the Magi come from the regions of the East"^[71], and Saint Leo the Great, in the 5th century, speaks of the "three Magi"^[72]; the Eastern tradition counts rather twelve. Early Christian art is not consistent: a painting in the cemetery of Saints Peter and Marcellinus shows two, a monument in the Lateran museum three, a painting in the cemetery of Domitilla four, a vase in the Kircher museum eight^[73]. It is the number three, carried by the Latin liturgy and by art, which prevailed in the West.

The names Caspar, Melchior, Balthazar: a late tradition

The three traditional names — Caspar, Melchior and Balthazar — appear nowhere in the New Testament. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, they are found among the Latins, with slight variants, from the 7th century onwards; the Syrians give the Magi other names (Larvandad, Hormisdas, Gushnasaph…), and the Armenians yet others^[74]. The famous mosaic of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna, made under Bishop Agnellus between 557 and 564, does show three Magi at the head of the procession of virgins, and bears their names today; but the upper part of the figures and the inscriptions were redone during the 19th-century restorations, and therefore cannot serve as an ancient witness to the names^[75]. These names, purely traditional, have never been the object of a definition by the Church: she hands them on through her piety and her art, not as a datum of Scripture.

The star of the Magi: between miracle and astronomical hypotheses

The exact nature of the "star" which guides the Magi (Matthew 2:2, 9-10) has been the object, for several centuries, of competing astronomical hypotheses, which no scientific consensus today allows to settle definitively. The astronomer Johannes Kepler, in his treatise De Stella Nova (1606), proposed a triple conjunction of the planets Jupiter and Saturn, which occurred in 7 BC in the constellation of Pisces on three occasions — in March, in October and in December — a phenomenon rare and spectacular enough to have been able to catch the attention of Babylonian or Persian astrologers familiar with zodiacal symbolism^[76]. Other scholars have advanced the hypothesis of a comet, whose passage could have corresponded chronologically to the supposed period of Christ's birth, or that of a nova star, a sudden stellar explosion visible to the naked eye for several weeks^[77]. None of these hypotheses carries definitive proof, and the Gospel text itself, with the movement of the star which "stops" precisely above the place where the child is (Matthew 2:9), describes a phenomenon whose literary description goes beyond what a natural astronomical object usually accomplishes in the sky^[78]. The Catholic Church has never pronounced doctrinally on the physical nature of this sign, leaving open, as the case may be, a purely miraculous reading, a reading of a real astronomical phenomenon providentially interpreted, or a combination of the two — the theologically assured point being not the mechanics of the celestial phenomenon, but its function as a sign leading pagans to the Saviour.

The massacre of the Innocents and the flight into Egypt: a plausible historicity

The episode which follows the departure of the Magi — the flight of the Holy Family into Egypt, then the massacre, ordered by Herod, of all the children of Bethlehem and its surroundings aged two and under (Matthew 2:13-18) — is reported by no other contemporary source, not even by the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, though verbose on the crimes of Herod the Great^[79]. This silence weighs little, for three reasons.

A crime consistent with everything known about Herod

The episode accords with what Josephus himself reports of the king. Herod had his wife Mariamne executed, then three of his sons: Alexander and Aristobulus, strangled at Sebaste, then Antipater, five days before his own death. Dying at Jericho, he further had the notables of the whole Jewish nation locked up in the hippodrome, ordering that they be killed at the moment of his death, so that the country would be in mourning — an order which his sister Salome took care not to carry out. Josephus judges him "of great barbarity towards all without distinction, and a slave to his passions"^[80]. Having the infants of a village killed to eliminate an announced king is in the exact logic of those last years.

Augustus's quip reported by Macrobius

Roman memory has kept an echo of this cruelty. Macrobius, in his Saturnalia, composed around 430 in the form of a dialogue between pagan aristocrats of Rome, reports among the witticisms of the emperor Augustus:

"Having learned that, among the children of two years and under whom Herod, king of the Jews, had massacred in Syria, was included that king's own son, he said: 'It is better to be Herod's pig than his son.'" — Macrobius, Saturnalia, II, 4, 11^[81]

The quip plays on Greek, where hys, the pig, answers huios, the son: a Jewish king spares the pig, which he does not eat, but not his own children. It brings together two facts of the year 4 BC, as René Laurentin, François-Michel Debroise and Jean-François Lavère note: the execution of Antipater and the massacre of the Innocents^[82]. Voltaire contested this testimony, on the grounds that the empire, having become Christian in the 4th century, made Macrobius necessarily suspect^[83]. The objection proves little: it rejects an author for the sole reason of his period, and the core of the quip — Herod's cruelty towards his own sons — is confirmed by Josephus, who owes nothing to the Christians. Macrobius alone does not suffice to establish the massacre; he shows that nothing, in Roman memory, contradicted Matthew's account.

A local drama, outside the chroniclers' field

Finally, the scale of the event explains the historians' silence. Bethlehem was only a village of Judea: a massacre limited to its infants and to those of its surroundings was no affair of the court. Josephus, who writes nearly a century later, follows dynastic dramas, trials and wars; a village drama at the end of the reign could escape him without his silence proving anything against Matthew's testimony. The Church, for her part, remembers these children as her first martyrs on 28 December, in the feast of the Holy Innocents, within the octave of Christmas^[84].

The symbolism of gold, frankincense and myrrh

The theological reading of the three gifts goes back to the 2nd century. Saint Irenaeus of Lyons writes that the Magi "showed, by the gifts they offered, who it was that they adored: myrrh, because it was he who was to die and be buried for mortal mankind; gold, because he was king, 'and of his kingdom there shall be no end'; and frankincense, because he was God, who 'was made known in Judea'"^[85]. Saint Gregory the Great, pope at the end of the 6th century, gives the formula which Latin preaching retained:

"Gold befits a king; frankincense was offered in sacrifice to God; and it is with myrrh that the bodies of the dead are embalmed. By these mysterious gifts, then, the Magi proclaim the one they adore: by gold, that he is king; by frankincense, that he is God; by myrrh, that he is mortal." — Saint Gregory the Great, Homilies on the Gospel, X, 6^[86]

Gregory immediately draws a lesson of faith from it. Some, he says, offer frankincense without gold: they believe that Christ is God, but not that he reigns everywhere; others offer gold without frankincense; others still offer gold and frankincense, but refuse myrrh, because they do not want him to have taken a mortal nature. The faithful offer all three: he confesses Christ king of all things, God before all ages, and truly mortal in our flesh^[87]. Myrrh thus announces, from the manger onwards, the Passion: it is myrrh again that Nicodemus will bring to bury Jesus (John 19:39). This threefold reading — kingship, divinity, mortal humanity — made the three gifts one of the most fruitful symbols of Christian art, long before popular piety attached to them the names of Caspar, Melchior and Balthazar.

The relics of the Magi: from Milan to Cologne

Devotion to the Magi has left a monumental trace beyond the Rhine. According to the tradition reported by the Catholic Encyclopedia, their remains, discovered in Persia, were brought to Constantinople by Saint Helena, then transferred to Milan in the 5th century^[88]. After the capture of Milan, Emperor Frederick Barbarossa had them removed from the basilica of Sant'Eustorgio and offered them in 1164 to his chancellor Rainald of Dassel, archbishop of Cologne^[89]: the Catholic Encyclopedia, following the Acta Sanctorum, gives 1163 as the date of this transfer^[90].

To house these relics, the goldsmith Nicholas of Verdun began in 1180 a shrine of oak covered with gold and silver, gemstones, filigree work and enamels: the Dreikönigenschrein, completed around 1225, is considered the largest reliquary in the Western world^[91]. After his coronation at Aachen in 1198, Otto IV offered three crowns of gold to adorn the three skulls kept inside, visible every 6 January when the front panel is removed^[92]. The influx of pilgrims soon made the old cathedral too small: the foundation stone of the present Gothic cathedral was laid on 15 August 1248 to house the shrine fittingly^[93].

An older tradition, handed down by the 6th-century Opus imperfectum in Matthaeum from the apocryphal Book of Seth, holds that the Magi, on returning to their country, were baptized by Saint Thomas and worked greatly to spread the faith^[94]. The Catholic Encyclopedia counts this account among the legends: the Church honours the Magi for their adoration at Bethlehem, attested by the Gospel, not for these later traditions.

The Ceremonial of Bishops, the liturgical book promulgated in 1984, thus sums up the place of the feast:

"The ancient solemnity of the Epiphany of the Lord counts among the highest feasts of the whole liturgical year, since it celebrates, in the Child born of Mary, the manifestation of Him who is the Son of God, the Messiah of the Jews and the Light of the nations." — Ceremonial of Bishops (Caeremoniale Episcoporum, 1984), no. 240^[95]

Whether it is celebrated on 6 January or transferred to Sunday, the same number asks the bishop to celebrate it with particular splendour: to multiply the lights, to have the moveable feasts of the year announced after the Gospel, to keep or restore, according to the usage of the place, a special offering of gifts, and to explain in the homily the meaning of this day "adorned with three miracles" — the adoration of the Magi, the baptism of Christ and the wedding at Cana^[96].

The proper readings of the Mass

The Roman Missal assigns to the Mass of the Epiphany of the Lord three readings and a psalm, united by a single theme — the light offered to all nations. The following table gives, for each, its reference and its leading idea:

The first reading, taken from the Book of Isaiah, announces several centuries in advance the scene which Matthew will recount:

"Arise, Jerusalem, shine! Thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee. […] Nations shall walk by thy light, and kings by the brightness of thy rising. […] All they from Saba shall come, bringing gold and frankincense, and announcing the praises of the Lord." — Book of Isaiah 60:1, 3, 6^[97]

The psalm continues: "The kings of Tarshish and of the Isles shall bring presents. The kings of Saba and Seba shall offer gifts. All kings shall prostrate themselves before him" (Psalm 71 [72]:10-11)^[98]. The second reading, taken from Saint Paul's letter to the Ephesians, gives the theological key to the event: the "mystery" hidden from past generations and now revealed is the universality of salvation, offered to all nations in Christ:

"This mystery is that all nations are partakers of the same inheritance, of the same body, and sharers of the same promise, in Christ Jesus, through the preaching of the Gospel." — Letter of Saint Paul to the Ephesians 3:6^[99]

The collect and the liturgical colour

Mass is celebrated in white, the colour which the Missal prescribes for Christmastide and for celebrations of the Lord other than those of his Passion^[100]. It opens with the antiphon Ecce advenit: "Behold, the sovereign Lord comes; he holds in his hand kingship, power and empire." The collect then asks God, who on this day revealed his only Son to the nations "under the guidance of the star", that we who already know him by faith may be "led to contemplate the beauty of his majesty"^[101]: the manifestation of 6 January is already stretched towards its fulfilment, the vision of God face to face.

The Noveritis: announcing the date of Easter

On Epiphany day, the Church solemnly announces the date of Easter and of the moveable feasts of the year. The usage comes from Egypt: John Cassian reports that, "according to an ancient tradition", once the day of the Epiphanies had passed, the bishop of Alexandria sent to all the Churches and monasteries of Egypt letters fixing the beginning of Lent and the day of Easter^[102]. Before printed calendars, this difficult calculation had to be known long in advance: on the date of Easter depend Ash Wednesday, the Ascension, Pentecost and the whole of Ordinary Time. In Gaul, several councils made it a rule — the 4th Council of Orleans in 541, the synod of Auxerre at the end of the 6th century — asking that the paschal feast be announced to the people on Epiphany day^[103].

The announcement bears the name of its first Latin word, Noveritis, "Know ye". The present Roman Missal gives its text and melody: where it is the custom, the moveable feasts are proclaimed after the Gospel^[104]; the Ceremonial of Bishops provides for it in cathedrals^[105], and the Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy (2001) wishes for its restoration, "for it helps the faithful to understand better the link between Epiphany and Easter"^[106]. At the Mass which the pope celebrates at Saint Peter's, the deacon sings it after the Gospel:

"Know, dearest brethren, that, by the favour of God's mercy, as we have rejoiced at the Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ, so we announce to you the joy of the Resurrection of our same Saviour." — Noveritis, announcement of Easter and the moveable feasts, papal Mass of Epiphany, Saint Peter's Basilica, 6 January 2020^[107]

There follow the dates of the year — Ash Wednesday, Easter, Ascension, Pentecost, Corpus Christi, first Sunday of Advent — up to the conclusion: Christ, "to whom be honour and glory for ever and ever"^[108]. The choice of the day says the meaning of the feast: the manifestation of Christ to the nations is already turned towards his Easter, by which the whole year is ordered.

The Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy notes that the very rich content of this solemnity, "whose origin goes back to the first centuries, inspired the development of many traditions and numerous authentic expressions of popular piety". It cites the announcement of Easter, the exchange of "Epiphany gifts", which recalls the gifts of the Magi and, more deeply, the gift which the Father made to humanity in his Son, the blessing of houses, the welcome of those who come, like the Magi, from distant lands, help to the missions — notably through the Work of the Holy Childhood — and, in some communities, the assigning to each person of a patron saint for the year^[109].

The king cake and the tradition of the bean

In France, the solemnity of Epiphany is accompanied by a widespread culinary custom far older than its Christianization: the sharing of a cake in which a bean is hidden, the one who finds it being proclaimed "king" or "queen" for the day and crowned with a golden paper crown^[110].

This practice finds its distant origin in the Roman Saturnalia, end-of-year festivals where the temporary reversal of social roles allowed, by drawing lots, the designating of a "king for a day", including among slaves^[111]. The Christianization of the Empire gradually grafted this custom onto the date of 6 January, the day on which the Church already commemorated the homage paid by kings — the Magi — to the Child-King, without this religious association effacing the playful and popular character inherited from antiquity^[112]. From around 1870, dried vegetable beans were gradually replaced by small porcelain figurines, then plastic or gilded metal ones, while the most widespread filling today, frangipane, owes its name, according to a traditional hypothesis, to the Italian count Cesare Frangipani, who is said to have offered the recipe for this almond cream to Catherine de' Medici on the occasion of her marriage to the future Henry II^[113].

Blessing houses: "Christus mansionem benedicat"

In many countries, especially Germanic and Central European ones, Epiphany is the day on which houses are blessed. On the door, the figures of the beginning year are written in blessed chalk, framing crosses and three letters: for example 20 ✝ C ✝ M ✝ B ✝ 26. The Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy describes the custom thus:

"The blessing of houses, on the doors of which the faithful have placed the cross of the Lord, the number of the beginning year and the initials of the traditional names of the holy Magi (C+M+B), which are also those of the expression: 'Christus mansionem benedicat', written with blessed chalk." — Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy (2001), no. 118^[114]

The three letters thus say two things at once: the names of Caspar, Melchior and Balthazar, and the Latin prayer "May Christ bless this house". The same text notes that these gestures, performed in the presence of many children accompanied by adults, express the desire to receive Christ's blessing through the intercession of the Magi, and are the occasion for collecting offerings for works of charity and the missions^[115]. Chalk, an ordinary and modest material, thus becomes each year the instrument of a domestic blessing.

In Germany, Austria and Switzerland, it is children who carry this house blessing from door to door: disguised as Magi and bearing the star, the Sternsinger, or star singers, inscribe the formula in chalk and collect offerings for poor children. Since 1959, this custom has been organised in Germany by the Kindermissionswerk (the Pontifical Missionary Childhood work, known as Die Sternsinger) and the federation of German Catholic youth: the Aktion Dreikönigssingen is today the largest children's solidarity campaign in the world^[116].

The Italian Befana

In Italy, the eve of Epiphany is associated, in popular tradition, with the figure of the Befana, a kindly old woman who, according to legend, refused to accompany the Magi to Bethlehem for lack of time, before joining them too late and roaming, ever since, every year on the same date, the houses of Italy to leave sweets for well-behaved children^[117]. This folkloric figure, whose name probably derives from a popular deformation of the word epifania, illustrates the way in which popular piety has regularly appropriated, over the centuries, the liturgical solemnity of 6 January to graft onto it local traditions proper to each national culture, without ever effacing its primary theological meaning.

Looking East: Theophany and the great blessing of the waters

The Eastern Churches, Catholic and Orthodox, have kept to this day, under the name of Theophany, the ancient baptismal emphasis of the 6 January feast, celebrated with a proper liturgy of solemn blessing of the waters — rivers, lakes, seas — in memory of the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan^[118]. This Eastern permanence of the baptismal emphasis, alongside the Western emphasis centred on the Magi, concretely illustrates the duality noted above in the ancient patristic sources: one date, two legitimate liturgical traditions, united by the same mystery of the manifestation of Christ. The Churches that have kept the Julian calendar celebrate it on 6 January Julian, which corresponds to 19 January of the civil calendar^[119].

• Christmas (25 December) — the solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord, whose Lucan account directly precedes Matthew's account of the Magi.
• Why is Christmas celebrated on 25 December? — the complete historical debate on the origin of the date of the Nativity, with the retrospective-calculation hypothesis and the Sol Invictus hypothesis, transposable to the discussion on 6 January.
• Holy Mary Mother of God (1 January) — the solemnity which immediately precedes Epiphany in the January calendar.
• Baptism of the Lord — the feast which closes Christmastide.
• The Liturgical Year — the place of Epiphany in the Church's calendar as a whole.
• Holy Days of Obligation — the list and meaning of the days of obligation in the Catholic Church.
• Corpus Christi (The Feast of the Body of Christ) — another great solemnity instituted by the liturgical history of the Latin Church.

Principal sources

• Calendarium Romanum, typical edition, Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1969 (General Norms for the Liturgical Year and the Calendar; historical commentary).
• Caeremoniale Episcoporum, typical edition, 1984, no. 240.
• Code of Canon Law (1983), canon 1246.
• Catechism of the Catholic Church, §§ 528 and 1171.
• Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy, 2001, no. 118.
• Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, I, 21.
• Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, XXI, 2.
• Saint Epiphanius of Salamis, Panarion, 51.
• Saint John Chrysostom, Homily on the Baptism of the Saviour and on Epiphany.
• John Cassian, Conferences, X, 2.
• Saint Leo the Great, Sermons 31-38 and Letter 16.
• Saint Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies, III, 9, 2.
• Saint Gregory the Great, Homilies on the Gospel, X.
• Macrobius, Saturnalia, II, 4, 11.
• Flavius Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, XV-XVII.
• Cyril C. Martindale, art. "Epiphany", The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. V, New York, 1909; Walter Drum, art. "Magi", ibid., vol. IX, 1910.
• René Laurentin, François-Michel Debroise and Jean-François Lavère, Dictionnaire des personnages de l'Évangile selon Maria Valtorta, Paris, Salvator, 2012.