Balthasar

A name from Babylon

In the Excerpta Latina Barbari (the Latin translation of a lost Greek chronicle that gives the oldest known names of the three Wise Men), he’s called Bithisarea. That’s still a long way from the name we know; it later became Balthassar, then Balthasar (or Balthazar).

The name itself is Babylonian. It shows up in the Book of Daniel, where Belshazzar is a king of Babylon. That tells us nothing about who the Wise Man really was; tradition gave him the name later. But it shows how people pictured him: the Wise Men came from the East, and for the people writing these texts, the East started at Babylon.

Around the same time, the three names made their way into art: the 6th-century mosaic in the Basilica of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna, Italy, shows the three walking, with their names written above their heads. It’s very likely the oldest place those names appear in Christian art.

Myrrh, the unsettling gift

Gold points to a king, frankincense to God. Myrrh is a bitter resin that was used to anoint the dead, so it says this Child will die. In a scene about a birth, that’s a somber note, and it’s meant to be.

This reading is very old and has been passed down steadily. It gives the three gifts their balance, each saying something about the same Person: he is King, he is God, and he is a man who will die. The full list of the gifts and their meaning is on the Three Wise Men page.

Since when he’s been shown as Black

Not from the start, and the timeline is well known. In early Christian art, the three Wise Men look alike: in Ravenna, you tell them apart by age and clothing, not skin color.

The change came in two steps, mostly in Northern Europe. Starting in the 13th century, African servants begin to appear in paintings of the Adoration of the Magi. Then, in the 15th century, Balthasar himself is painted as Black. This quickly became the norm in Flemish and German painting, and then spread further.

Tradition’s own explanation fits with the rest of the story: the three Wise Men stand for the three ages of life and for the three parts of the world as people knew it then, Europe, Asia and Africa. Making one of them an African king completes the message: all of humanity comes to the Child.

Art historians also point out that this spread at the same time as Portuguese voyages along the African coast and Northern Europe’s first broad contact with Africa. What that timing means is still debated. We mention it without trying to settle it; it’s not a question one line on a page about nativity figures can answer.

There’s also a tradition in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church that links Balthasar to a king of Aksum, the ancient Ethiopian kingdom. It grew up on its own, separate from Western art.

His figure

In Provençal nativity scenes, as in most nativity sets sold in the United States, Balthasar is the Black king. It’s one of the most consistent customs there is: nearly every maker shows him that way. He stands, richly dressed, holding a jar or a closed container; unlike the gold, the myrrh itself isn’t shown.

For how to set up the three Wise Men, who don’t arrive on December 24 but move a little closer each day until Epiphany, see the Three Wise Men page.

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