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4 HILLER COIN DATED 1768
FROM COLOGNE

with the three crowns of the Magi
emblem of the city of Cologne
(Germany, 18th c.)
Magos Foundation Collection

JOURNEY OF THE RELICS
(4th to 12th century)

The bones of the bodies of the Magi are supposed to have been brought back from the East by Empress Helena of Constantinople. The relics were offered in 343 to the Bishop of Milan, where a massive sarcophagus dating from the Middle Ages, which still exists in Milan, was built in their honor. Eight centuries later, the Germanic Emperor Barbarossa, furious at having been excommunicated by the Pope, sacked Milan and transported the relics to Cologne (Germany). An inch was left at the Abbey of Gramont in France on the way. The Marquis de Gramont changed his coat of arms to the emblem of the Magi. The German Emperor, holder of the relics of the Magi, grants himself his Christian legitimacy and presents himself as the heir of the Magi. With the arrival of the supposed relics of the Magi, the city of Cologne became the fourth holy city of Christianity, alongside Jerusalem, Rome, and Constantinople. Cologne bore the crowns of the Magi on its coat of arms and prospered thanks to the crusades. The only historical problem: no Bishop of Milan in the 4th and 5th centuries, no theologian mentions the presence of the relics of the Magi in Milan before the Germanic Emperor Barbarossa declared to have seized them in the 12th century!