Chapter CXXXI: Section III: The Epiphany

The twelfth day after Christmas was the great day with the Eastern Church, by whom it was called Θεοφανεία, from Θεός and φαίνω (to make known, _i.e._, God’s manifestation), or Ἐπιφάνεια (forth showing).

The ancient Greek Church celebrated on the 6th of January the birth of Christ, His manifestation to the Gentiles, and the baptism in the Jordan. Their titles, Theophania and Epiphania, were adopted by the Latins, and when the Latin feast of the Nativity was accepted by the Greek Church, _this_ latter was frequently called Epiphania, while the true manifestation-day was called by a name meaning the lights, from the multitude of candles in the churches in honour of the Light of the World and the Light of Baptism.

But in the West, it was the visit of the Magi that gave the strongest impress to the festival. Early did tradition fix their number at three, probably in allusion to the three races of man descended from the sons of Noah, and soon they were said to be descendants of the Mesopotamian prophet Balaam, from whom they derived the expectation of the Star of Jacob, and they were promoted to be kings of Tarsus, Saba, and Nubia, also to have been baptized by St. Thomas, and afterwards martyred. Their corpses were supposed to be at that store-house of relics, Constantinople, whence the Empress Helena caused them to be transported to Milan by an Italian, from whom a noble family at Florence obtained the surname of Epiphania. Frederick Barbarossa carried them to Cologne.

By the eleventh century, these three kings had received names, for they are found written over against their figures in a painting of that date, and occur in the breviary of Mersburg. Though their original donor is unknown, their Oriental sound makes it probable that he was a pilgrim-gatherer of Eastern legends. Gaspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, are not according to European fancy, and are not easy to explain. The first may either be the Persian, _gendshber_ (treasure master), or else be taken from the red or green stone called _yashpah_ in the East, ἵασπις in Greek, _jasper_ in Latin. This was the only one of these names ever used in England, where it was once common. Gasparde is the French feminine; in English the masculine is Jasper. It is extremely common in Germany; and has suffered the penalty of popularity, for Black Kaspar is a name of the devil, and Kaspar is a Jack Pudding.

┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐
│ English. │ French. │ Spanish. │ Italian. │
│Jasper │Gaspard │Gaspar │Gaspare │
│ │ │ │Gaspardo │
│ │ │ │Casparo │
├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤
│ German. │ Bavarian. │ Illyrian. │ Lett. │
│Kaspar │Kaspe │Gaso │Kaspers │
│ ——————— │Kasperl │ ——————— │Jespers │
│ Frisjan. │Gaspe │ Lusatian. │ │
│Jaspar │Gappe │Kaspor │ │
│ │Kapp │Kapo │ │
│ │Kass │ │ │
└───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘

Melchior is evidently the universal Eastern Malek, or Melchi (a king); but he is in much less favour than his companion; though sometimes found in Italy as Melchiorre, as well as in Germany and Switzerland in his proper form, and in Esthonia contracted to Malk.

Balthasar may be an imitation of Daniel’s Chaldean name of Belteshazzar (Bel’s prince). Some make it the old Persian Beltshazzar (war council, _or_ prince of splendour). It is not unlike the Slavonic Beli-tzar, or White-prince, called at Constantinople Belisarius; but indeed it is probably a fancy name invented at a period when bad Latin and rude Teutonic were being mixed up to make modern languages, and the Lingua Franca of the East was ringing in the ears of pilgrims. However invented, Balthasar flourished much in Italy, and in the Slavonic countries, and very nearly came to the crown in Spain.

┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐
│ Italian. │ Spanish. │ Portuguese. │ Polish. │
│Baldassare │Baltasar │Bathasar │Baltasar │
├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤
│ Slovac. │ Bavarian. │ Swiss. │ Illyrian. │
│Boltazar │Hanser │Balz │Baltazar │
│ │Hansel │Balzel │Balta │
├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤
│ Lusatian. │ Lett. │ Hungarian. │ │
│Bal │Balsys │Boldisar │ │
│Balk │ │ │ │
│Baltyn │ │ │ │
└───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘

Some of the Italians devoutly believed that Gaspardo, Melchiorre, and Baldassare, were the three sons of St. Beffana, as they had come to call Epiphania; but, in general, Beffana had not nearly so agreeable an association.

In Italy the Epiphany was, and still is, the day for the presentation of Christmas gifts; and it is likely that the pleasant fiction that la Beffana brought the presents, turned, as in other cases, such as that of St. Nicholas, into the notion that she was a being who went about by night, and must therefore be uncanny. Besides, when the carnival was over, there was a sudden immolation of the remaining weeks of the Epiphany; and whether from thus personifying the season, or from whatever other cause, a figure was suspended outside the doors of houses at the beginning of Lent, and called la Beffana. It is now a frightful black doll, with an orange at her feet, and seven skewers thrust through her, one of which is pulled out at the end of each week in Lent; at least, this is the case in Apulia, where she is considered as a token that those who exhibit her, mean to observe a rigorous fast.

Some parts of Italy account for the gibbeting of the unfortunate Beffana, by saying she was the daughter of Herod, _i.e._ Herodias; and Berni (as quoted by Grimm) says in his rhymes:

“Il di Befania, vo porla per Befana alla finestra,
Perchè qualcun le dia d’una ballestra.”

At Florence, however, the story was told in an entirely different way. There it is said that Beffana was the Christian name of a damsel of the Epifania family before-mentioned: that she offended the fairies, and was by them tempted to eat a sausage in Lent, for which transgression she was sawn asunder in the piazza, and has ever since been hung in effigy at the end of the carnival, as a warning to all beholders.

In fact, Beffana is the Italian bugbear of naughty children; and it is no wonder that this strange embodiment of the gift-bringing day should not be followed as a Christian name, though the masculine form, Epiphanius, once belonged to a Father, born near Mount Olympus, in whose honour is named Capa Pifani, a headland on that coast, and from whom Epifanio sometimes is found at Rome.

The other form of the name of the day, Theophania, has been much more in favour; indeed, in the days of Christine de Pisane, the feast-day was called la Tiphaïne.

Theophano was a name in common use among the Byzantine ladies, and we hear of many princesses so called—one of whom married the German Emperor, Otho II., in 962, and was then called Théophania. Probably she made the name known in Western Europe, but it is curious that its chief home in the form of Tiphaïne, was in Armorica, whence, as the grumbling rhyme of the Englishman, after the Conquest, declared,

“William de Coningsby,
Came out of Brittany,
With his wife Tiffany,
And his maid Manfas,
And his dog Hardigras.”

Tiffany took up her abode in England, and left her progeny. The name occurs in an old Devon register, within the last two hundred years, but seems now extinct.

The high-spirited wife of Bertrand du Guesclin, was either Theophanie, or Epiphanie Ragueuel, but was commonly called Tiphaïne la Fée, on account of the mysterious wisdom by which she was able to predict to her husband his lucky and unlucky days—only he never studied her tablets till the disaster had happened. Could she have first acquired her curious title through some report of her namesake, the Fairy Beffana? In a Cornish register I find Epiphany in 1672; Tiffany in 1682.

In an old German dictionary, the feast Theophania is translated “Giperahta naht” (the brightened night), a curious accordance with its Greek title. Indeed, before the relic-worship of the Three Kings of Cologne had stifled the recollection of the real signification of the day of the Manifestation, the festival was commonly termed Perchten tac, Perchten naht (bright day, or bright night). Then went on in Germany much what had befallen Beffana in Italy. By the analogy of saints' days, Perahta, or Bertha, was erected into an individual character, called in an Alsatian poem, the mild Berchte; in whose honour all the young farming men in the Salzburg mountains go dancing about, ringing cattle bells, and blowing whistles all night. Sometimes she is a gentle white lady, who steals softly to neglected cradles, and rocks them in the absence of careless nurses; but she is also the terror of naughty children, who are threatened with Frau Precht with the long nose; and she is likewise the avenger of the idle spinners, working woe to those who have not spun off their hank on the last day of the year. Can this have anything to do with distaff day—the English name for the 7th of January, when work was resumed after the holidays? Herrings and oat-bread are put outside the door for her on her festival—a token of its Christian origin; but there is something of heathenism connected with her, for if the bread and fish are not duly put out for her, terrible vengeance is inflicted, with a plough-share, or an iron chain.

That Frau Bertha is an impersonation of the Epiphany there seems little doubt, but it appears that there was an original mythical Bertha, who absorbed the brightened night, or if the bright night gave a new title to the old mythical Holda, Holla, Hulla, Huldr (the faithful, or the muffled), a white spinning lady, who is making her feather-bed when it snows. She, too, brings presents at the year’s end; rewards good spinners, punishes idle ones, has a long nose, wears a blue gown and white veil, and drives through the fields in a car with golden wheels. Scandinavia calls her Hulla, or Huldr the propitious; Northern Germany, Holda, probably by adaptation to _hold_ (mild). Franconia and Thuringia recognized both Holda and Berchta; in Alsatia, Swabia, Switzerland, Bavaria, and Austria, Berchta alone prevails.

Some have even tried to identify Holda with Huldah, the prophetess, in the Old Testament, but this is manifestly a blunder. And, on the other hand, Bertha is supposed to be a name of the goddess Freya, the wife of Odin; but it appears that though Huldr may possibly have been originally a beneficent form of this goddess, yet that there is no evidence of Bertha’s prevailing in heathen times, and therefore the most probable conclusion is that she is really the impersonation of the Epiphany, with the attributes of Holda.

Tradition made her into an ancestress, and she must have absorbed some of the legends of the swan maidens, for she is goose-footed in some of her legends; and she is sometimes, as in Franconia and Swabia, called Hildaberta or Bildaberta, either from the Valkyr, or as a union of both Hilda and Bertha. The goose-foot has been almost softened away by the time she appears as _Berthe aux grands pieds_ (wife of Pepin, and mother of Charlemagne); and the connection with the distaff is again traceable in the story of Charlemagne’s sister Bertha, mother of Orlando, who, when cast off on account of her marriage, and left a widow, maintained herself by spinning, till her son, in his parti-coloured raiment, won his uncle’s notice by his bold demeanour.

Proverbs of a golden age when Bertha spun, are current both in France and Italy, and in Switzerland they are connected with the real Queen Bertha.

Be it observed that Bertha is altogether a Frank notion, not prevailing among the Saxons, either English or Continental, nor among the Northern races. It is therefore quite a mistake to use Bertha, as is often done, as a name for an English lady, before the Conquest. One only historical person so called was Bertha, daughter of Chilperic, King of Paris, and wife of Ethelbert, of Kent, the same who smoothed the way for St. Augustine’s mission. She was probably called after the imaginary spinning ancestress, the visitor of Christmas night, but though bright was a common Saxon commencement or conclusion, we had no more Berthas till the Norman conquest brought an influx of Frank names.

The name was, indeed, very common in France and Germany; and in Dante’s time it was so frequent at Florence, that he places Monna Berta with Ser Martino, as the chief of the gossips. Since those days it has died away, but has been revived of late years in the taste for old names; and perhaps, likewise, because Southey mentioned it as one of the most euphonious of female appellations. One of the early German princesses, called Bertha, marrying a Greek emperor, was translated into Eudoxia, little thinking that she ought to have been Theophano.[91]

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Footnote 91:

_Church Festivals and Household Words_; Maury-Essaisin; _Les Légendes
Picuses du Moyen Age_; _Die Stern du Weisen_; Routh; _Reliquia Sacra_;
Grimm; Brand; Stanhope, _Belisarius_.