The Life of the Blessed Virgin Mary by Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich

4. THE HISTORICAL COLORS AND NAMES OF THE THREE HOLY KINGS.

I now saw all the three holy kings together. The last arrival was the one who lived farthest away, Theokeno. His face was of a beautiful yellowish color. (I recognized him as the one who was lying ill in his tent, when thirty-two years later Jesus visited the kings in their settlement nearer the Promised Land.) Each of the three kings had with him four near relations or friends of his family, so that, counting the kings, there were fifteen important people of the party, besides the crowd of servants and camel-drivers that followed them. Amongst the many youths in their retinue, who were quite naked from the waist upwards, and were astonishingly agile in leaping and running, I recognized the young Eleazar, who later became a martyr and of whom I possess a relic. [118][In the afternoon, when her confessor again asked her for the names of the three holy kings, she answered, Mensor, the brown-faced one, after Christ's death received the name of Leander on his baptism by St. Thomas. Theokeno, the old, yellow-faced one, who was ill when Jesus visited Mensor's camp in Arabia, was baptized Leo by St. Thomas. The brown-skinned one, who was already dead when Jesus made His visit, was called Seir or Sair.' Her confessor asked her: How then was he baptized?' She answered smiling and without hesitation: He was already dead and had received the baptism of desire.' Her confessor then said: I have never heard these names in my life: how then did they get the names of Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar?' She replied: They were called this because it goes with their character, for these names mean: (1) He goes with love; (2) He wanders about, he approaches gently and with ingratiating manners: (3) He makes rapid decisions, he quickly directs his will to the will of God.' She said this with great friendliness, and expressed the meaning of the names by making pantomimic gestures with her hand on the bed-coverlet. It must remain for the language experts to decide how far these words can be made to bear these meanings. [119] ]

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