At Epiphany the Church remembers the Wise Men coming to Bethlehem. Saint Matthew, the only Gospel in which there is an account, does not mention any specific number, nor does he call them "kings", but instead uses the Greek word magoi, derived from the old Persian language word Majusian. It was only in the sixth century that the number of Magi settles at three.

A little noticed passage in the 13th century travels of Marco Polo says that Messer Polo had seen the tombs of the Magi at Saveh in Persia. He described the Magi as being "in separate tombs, above which is a square house carefully preserved". At Saveh in modern day Iran there is still a building which matches Marco Polo's description, except it contains only two tombs. The building is close to the ruins of a mosque built over the site of a Zoroastrian Temple that, at some point, had also been used for Christian worship. The word magoi used by Saint Matthew is the name of the ancient Zoroastrian priestly class and Saveh was the site of an important Zoroastrian astronomical observatory, eventually destroyed by Ghengis Khan.

The Zoroastrian Magi believed in the coming of a Messiah - Shaoshyan, (which means "a man better than the good man") whose birth would be announced by a bright star. Those staffing the observatory at Saveh would have been looking for such a star and prepared to follow it.

The gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, brought by the Magi to Bethlehem would have been unusual in Palestine and there is no Old Testament precedent for their grouping. However, such a grouping is recorded in Persian temple offerings - gold for a king, frankincense for a priest and myrrh for a healer. Marco Polo says that the Magi carried three offerings, gold, incense and myrrh to know if he were a king, a god or a sage; for, they said, if he took gold, he was a king; if incense, he was a god; if myrrh, he was a sage....They presented to him the three offerings and he took them all, whence they concluded that he was at once god, king and sage.

In the fourth century a church was built over the birth-place of Jesus by the Byzantine Emperors. Three hundred years later the Christian Byzantine Empire was defeated in the Holy Land and Islam swept through Palestine. It was headed by an army from Persia which destroyed every church it came upon. All the great churches of Jerusalem fell in this way. However, the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem was spared and still stands, the oldest church in the world.

It survived because in the seventh century, although not today, over its entrance was a mosaic showing the Magi worshipping the Christ-child. The Magi all wore the pointed hats and tunics of Persia and because the army saw that their own countrymen had been there, the Church was spared.

Marco Polo claims to have seen the preserved bodies of the Magi at Saveh. This would have been contrary to the prevailing Zoroastrian custom where the dead were placed on "silent towers" for the birds to devour. Could it have been, though, that the Magi saw something so wonderful in Bethlehem that it caused them to adopt the burial customs of the Holy Land?

Indeed the Opus Imperfectum in Matthaeum of the sixth century maintains that the Magi - after their return home - were baptised by Saint Thomas and were tireless workers for the Christian cause.

However, in contradiction of Marco Polo's story, the relics of the Magi are said to be preserved in a shrine above the High Altar of Cologne Cathedral. They were discovered in Persia and brought to Constantinople by the Empress Helena. The bones were transferred to Milan in the fifth century and then to Cologne in 1163, where they remain in a gold casket above the High Altar.