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4 January 2024

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The Three Kings in Renaissance Florence

Alison Harpur explores the significance of Epiphany in Italian Renaissance art and how it reflects the life of the city.

Alison Harpur

Alison Harpur is an art historian, specialising in Italian Renaissance art, her further interests include theological methodologies for the history of art.

A round nativity scene depicts a procession of visitors including the Three Kings.

The Adoration of the Magi, Fra Angelico and Fra Filippo Lippi.

National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.

We’re nearly at the end of the first week of January, as I am writing this, and the festivities of Christmas feel like a distant memory already. Although the traditional Twelve Days of Christmas run from Christmas Day until 5 January, by now we have probably put our Christmas jumpers back in the wardrobe and returned to the usual routine. But while sparkling decorations may already have been consigned to the cupboard until next Christmas, it is in these early days of the new year when Christians traditionally celebrate three of the most memorable characters of the Christmas story: the Magi, also known as the Three Kings or the Three Wise Men.

We associate the Magi with children’s nativity plays in the joyful days of December, and with gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh that look very much like they were cardboard boxes before they were covered with gold paint and sprinkled with glitter. But celebration of the Magi and their presentation of gifts to the newborn Jesus is actually commemorated on 6th January, the feast of Epiphany, when the light of God’s revelation breaks through the dreary January days.

The Magi were interpreted as symbols of the Three Ages of Man (youth, middle age, and old age) and, before the discovery of the Americas, of the three known continents (Africa, Asia, and Europe).

Epiphany

In the Bible, Matthew says that news of Jesus’s birth was revealed to wise men in the East, who interpreted the appearance of a star as a symbol that the King of the Jews had been born. They travelled to Jerusalem in search of the newborn King, where they encountered Herod, the King of Judea, who was (perhaps not surprisingly) concerned to learn of the birth of an apparent rival to the throne. Herod sent the wise men on to Bethlehem, with instructions to inform him when they found the newborn King, so that he could also go and worship him. We later discover, of course, that Herod’s real intention had been to find Jesus and kill him, in an attempt to remove the threat to his own power. As the wise men proceeded to Bethlehem, the star they had seen went ahead of them and rested over the birthplace of Jesus. There they discovered the newborn Jesus, with his mother, Mary, and they worshipped him, presenting him with gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Warned in a dream not to return to Herod, the wise men left Bethlehem and returned home.

Matthew doesn’t specify how many wise men visited Jesus, but Christian tradition has settled on three, corresponding to the number of their gifts. We are probably very familiar with these gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh from nativity plays and thousands of Christmas cards. But we may be less familiar with their traditional symbolism in relation to Jesus: gold for his kingship, frankincense for his divinity, and myrrh to foreshadow his sacrificial death. Stories about the Magi also developed in later literature, and the wise men were given the names of Caspar, Balthasar, and Melchior. The Magi were interpreted as symbols of the Three Ages of Man (youth, middle age, and old age) and, before the discovery of the Americas, of the three known continents (Africa, Asia, and Europe).

The Washington Adoration of the Magi is not a serene depiction of the biblical kings’ devotion, but the exuberant splendour of a busy Renaissance court.

We are familiar with representations of Epiphany from paintings such as the Adoration of the Magi in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., which was painted in Renaissance Florence around the middle of the fifteenth century. It was probably painted by Fra Angelico (c.1395–1455) and Fra Filippo Lippi (c.1406–1469), two of the most important Florentine artists of this period, who were also friars in the convents of San Marco and Santa Maria del Carmine respectively. The circular painting, or tondo, represents the Virgin Mary seated in a rocky but verdant landscape, tenderly supporting the Christ Child on her lap, with Joseph standing at her side. Behind them, a bulky ox lies in front of the stable where Christ was born and an ass eats hay from the manger where we presume Christ was laid. Kneeling among the delicately painted flowers in the foreground are the three Magi and their attendants, presenting their gifts to Christ in adoration. Sumptuously dressed in robes of blue, bright red, and pale lilac, decorated with gold, the Magi wear costumes that would have been understood in fifteenth-century Florence to allude to the exoticism of the East.

But the Magi are not the only ones who have come to worship Christ in this painting. Behind them, crowds of people stream downhill through an archway, many of them holding out their hands in gestures of awe and reverence. Some of them look upwards towards the star that was said to have rested over the birthplace of Christ. The Washington Adoration of the Magi is not a serene depiction of the biblical kings’ devotion, but the exuberant splendour of a busy Renaissance court or, in the case of fifteenth-century Florence, a bustling mercantile republic.

Florentine citizens would perform as the Magi and their retinue, processing across the city in elaborate costumes, a rare opportunity to diverge from the strict regulations... that dictated who could wear what in everyday life.

The Magi and the Medici in Renaissance Florence

Epiphany was a hugely significant celebration in fifteenth-century Florence. This was partly because the feast of the Magi on 6th January coincided with another religious celebration, the Baptism of Christ by St John the Baptist, who was Florence’s patron saint. But Renaissance Florence was also a prosperous centre of banking and trade, and the manufacture of luxury goods, and it was populated by wealthy and powerful men who sought to articulate religious devotion through association with the Magi. The Washington Adoration was probably in the collection of the powerful Medici family, who established their position in Florence through banking. They were prominent devotees of the Magi, and they were enormously influential, not least through their cultural patronage.

Cosimo de’ Medici (1389–1464) spent vast amounts of money on artistic and architectural projects in Florence. He sponsored the renovation of San Marco during the 1430s and 1440s, commissioning Fra Angelico to paint frescoes throughout the Dominican convent where he was based. Cosimo even had his own personal cell in San Marco, which was painted with an Adoration of the Magi, perhaps by a young Benozzo Gozzoli (c.1421–1497), who was then an assistant to Fra Angelico. San Marco was dedicated, as we might expect, to St Mark, and also to the early Christian martyrs Cosmas and Damian, who were patron saints of Cosimo de’ Medici. But the newly renovated building was ceremonially dedicated not on the feast of St Mark, but on the feast of the Magi, on 6 January 1443.

The Confraternity of the Magi

San Marco was the centre of devotion to the Magi in Renaissance Florence. The confraternity of the Magi, which met at San Marco, was a lay religious group whose members included the Medici family. Confraternities would meet regularly for worship and prayer, and would often perform charitable works. Their membership transcended some of the traditional divides of Renaissance Florence, with artisans and tradesmen meeting together alongside bankers, doctors, and lawyers.

One of the most important activities of the confraternity of the Magi was the organisation of festive processions in honour of the Magi on Epiphany. Florentine citizens would perform as the Magi and their retinue, processing across the city in elaborate costumes, a rare opportunity to diverge from the strict regulations known as sumptuary laws that dictated who could wear what in everyday life. The architectural fabric of Florence was also incorporated into the procession. Herod’s palace was represented by the Baptistery, opposite the Cathedral, or by the Palazzo della Signoria, the seat of Florentine government which was later known as the Palazzo Vecchio. The ceremonial route of the procession wound its way through Florence, past the Medici palace on the Via Larga (now Via Cavour), to its destination in “Bethlehem”, which was (of course) San Marco.

Epiphany was not the only time when Florentine citizens took part in processions honouring the Magi. They were also incorporated into the elaborate festivities associated with the feast of St John the Baptist, Florence’s patron saint, which lasted for several days in late June and often included extravagant processions. A Florentine chronicler, whose writings were published and discussed by the art historian Rab Hatfield, recounted the procession of the Magi during the feast of St John the Baptist in 1428, describing “eight horses, covered with silk, with eight pages dressed in silk and with pearls and heraldic ornaments and with shields, their faces angelic, riding one after the other with their livery. And after them, on a great and beautiful horse, came an old man with a white beard, dressed in a gold brocade of crimson and a peaked cap of crimson full of large pearls and with other ornaments of the greatest value, like a king such as those among the Christians.”

Similarly, celebration of the feast of the Magi on Epiphany also embraced broader aspects of Florentine civic devotion. The same chronicler who recounted the feast of St John the Baptist described a multitude of performative themes during the celebration of Epiphany in 1429: “And after lunch there were about seven hundred costumed men on horseback, among whom were the three Magi and their retinue, honourably dressed. And of the striking things they had with them, there were three giants and a wild man and, upon a car, a man impersonating David, who killed the giant with the sling.” It is hard not to read the description of this procession, with giants and a representation of David riding a festive float, and not imagine a scene like the Triumph of David by Pesellino (1422–1457), currently in the National Gallery’s exhibition devoted to this Florentine artist.

Given the traditional association of the Magi with the Three Ages of Man, it is no coincidence that Gozzoli portrayed three generations of the Medici family among the followers of the Magi.

The Journey and Adoration of the Magi

The broader visual and material culture of these festive processions informed how Florentine artists designed their paintings, and how contemporary viewers responded to them. There are many fifteenth-century Florentine paintings of the Adoration of the Magi in our galleries and museums. In the National Gallery in London, there are similar bustling scenes of devotion in Botticelli’s Adoration of the Kings (another tondo) of around 1470–1475 and an Adoration by Botticelli and Filippino Lippi (the son of Filippo) from the same period.

One of the most well-known paintings of the Magi from Renaissance Florence was painted on the walls of the Medici Palace chapel in 1459 by Benozzo Gozzoli, the same artist who probably painted the Adoration of the Magi in Cosimo’s personal cell at San Marco. Gozzoli’s frescoes in the Medici Palace chapel represent not the Adoration of the Magi, but the Journey of the Magi, with Caspar, Balthasar, and Melchior on horseback, winding their way towards Bethlehem through the landscape depicted on the walls of the chapel. The Magi are accompanied by a vast retinue of followers, which includes portraits of the Medici family and their allies, including Cosimo de’ Medici, his adult son, Piero (1416–1469), and his grandson, Lorenzo (1449–1492). Given the traditional association of the Magi with the Three Ages of Man, it is no coincidence that Gozzoli portrayed three generations of the Medici family among the followers of the Magi, tying the religious narrative to the contemporary realities of Florentine life.

The altarpiece in the Medici Palace chapel was painted by Filippo Lippi, who painted at least part of the Washington Adoration of the Magi. The original altarpiece is now in Berlin, and the painting currently displayed in the chapel is a fifteenth-century copy. It represents the Adoration of the Christ Child with the Infant St John the Baptist (Florence’s patron saint) and St Bernard of Clairvaux (the medieval saint to whom the chapel in the Palazzo della Signoria, the seat of Florentine government, was dedicated). Although the altarpiece had a definitive religious function, the inclusion of those two saints was also distinctly political. But the Magi are not shown in adoration before the Virgin and Child in Filippo Lippi’s altarpiece, nor does Gozzoli show them at their destination in his frescoes. We are left with their journey towards Christ. Perhaps the place of the Magi in adoration before the Virgin and Child was taken by the Medici family themselves during the performance of liturgy in the chapel.

When we look at the processions and sumptuous costumes of the Magi in these paintings, we may recall the descriptions of contemporary processions by Florentine chroniclers. When the original viewers of these paintings looked at them, they would probably have seen them through the lens of the religious festivities that they observed and participated in on their own streets. Many of the artists who painted the works we see today in our galleries and museums also designed the ephemeral decorations for Florentine civic processions, and the relationship between art and performance would probably have been reciprocal.

The feast of Epiphany was hugely important in fifteenth-century Florence. Delving into the history of its celebration sheds light on Renaissance paintings of the Magi, reminding us that the visual and material culture of religious imagery in this period expanded with exuberance beyond churches and palaces throughout the city’s streets. As we consider the significance of Epiphany in these cold, dark days of early January, we can remember the festivities that accompanied the feast of the Magi in Renaissance Florence, and the ways in which the paintings of the Magi that we see in our museums, galleries, churches, and chapels reflect a much broader visual and material culture of civic devotion.

Further reading:

Cristina Acidini Luchinat, The Chapel of the Magi: Benozzo Gozzoli’s Frescoes in the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi, Florence (London: Thames & Hudson, 1994)

Diane Cole Ahl, Benozzo Gozzoli (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1996)

Rab Hatfield, ‘The Compagnia de’ Magi’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, vol.33, 1970, pp.107-161

Dale Kent, Cosimo de’ Medici and the Florentine Renaissance: The Patron’s Oeuvre (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000)

Jeffrey Ruda, ‘The National Gallery Tondo of the “Adoration of the Magi” and the Early Style of Filippo Lippi’, Studies in the History of Art, vol.7, 1975, pp.6-39

The Patriarch and the Caliph

Medieval Baghdad was an entangled world for the Christians and Muslims who lived and even partied together.

Benjamin Sharkey

Benjamin is a DPhil student in the Faculty of History at the University of Oxford. He is researching the experience of Christian communities in medieval Central Asia.

A painting of a Sultan's court gathering round as a ambassador is presented.

Receiving the Ambassador.

Dionisio Baixeras Verdaguer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

As we seek to understand and grapple with the nature of Muslim-Christian relations in today’s world, we should not imagine that we have to reinvent the wheel. Throughout their shared history, many millions of Christians have lived within Muslim societies and alongside Muslim neighbours, and their experiences, absent from the history of western Europe, offer valuable perspectives for understanding and navigating our current global landscape.

In 782 Patriarch Timothy was summoned for an audience with the Muslim Caliph al-Mahdī at his court in Baghdad. Timothy, just two years into his tenure as Patriarch, was one of the youngest to so far hold the title. As the head of the Church of the East, he oversaw communities scattered across an immense distance, from Syria to China, Sri Lanka to the Kazakh steppe; more believers, indeed, than the Pope in Rome. He himself came from a village near Erbil in northern Iraq, a region that was then, and for a long time after, majority Christian but which also lay near the heart of the Islamic Caliphate. Only twenty years before, the previous Caliph, al-Mahdī’s father, had founded Baghdad, intending it to be the great capital at the centre of the Islamic empire. It had since grown to an enormous size, soon eclipsing any city in Europe, its population over three times that of Constantinople or Rome. Among those who had newly settled in Baghdad was Timothy, who decided to similarly recentre the Patriarchate in the Caliphate’s capital. As such, Timothy was not an unusual sight at court. However, this day’s audience was something out of the usual.

Baghdad was home to more than five monasteries at this time. They served both Christians and Muslims as cool retreats and beauty spots within the bustling city.

Timothy entered the Caliph’s presence and made his courtesies and blessed him.

“Since you are wise,” the Caliph asked, “why do you say that God ‘begat’ a son?”

Over the next two days, al-Mahdī proceeded to ask him questions on the differences between Christianity and Islam: Do you believe in three Gods? Do you not believe that the Qur’an was given by God? Why do you not accept Muḥammad?

Yet, for a Christian in the early Islamic world, to respond to such questions was not without trepidation.

Generally, the Muslim state was not an active persecutor of Christians. Instead, Christians were expected to abide by certain social restrictions. These followed the precedent of a supposed agreement drawn up in the early seventh century between the second Caliph ‘Umar) and the majority Christian populations of the near east during the conquests of the region. Its historicity is doubted, but it came to have a great impact on the rights and responsibilities that Muslim authorities held to exist between themselves and their Christian subjects.

Accordingly, Christians were restricted in their behaviour and dress. They had to distinguish themselves by their clothing, such as wearing a distinctive belt called a zunnār, and they were forbidden from taking Muslim names. They were not allowed to build or restore churches, nor to encourage Muslims to convert, let them in their churches, carry out services in their hearing, or serve them wine. In this way Muslims and Christians would be kept visibly distinct, Christians would be socially subordinated, and Muslims prevented from being led astray, with conversion kept strictly one-way. In return, Muslim authorities would guarantee freedom of belief and extend the protection of the state to Christians. Such was the law in theory.

In the shade of the garden

On Easter day the Christians of Baghdad would come from throughout the city to the monastery of Samālū to take communion. With them too came many of Baghdad’s Muslims to join in the festivities that followed. In the cool shade of the monastery’s beautiful gardens and palm groves they drank wine, danced with young Christians and listened to the sounds of the services, the chanting of monks and priests. This was not an unusual occurrence. Baghdad was home to more than seven monasteries at this time. They served both Christians and Muslims as cool retreats and beauty spots within the bustling city, while their frequent feasts and festivals always attracted many Muslims.

A level of life otherwise invisible in the historical records, such revelries were a source of inspiration for many Muslim poets. Many of their longing verses on the joys of monastery gardens, the sound of Christian services, and the smells and tastes of wine, made their way into poetry collections, such as the tenth-century collection of monastery-themed poems and anecdotes compiled by the Iraqi Muslim al-Shābushtī. For these poets and the leisure class they represented, the transgressiveness of these themes was clearly part of the appeal, but in the background many ordinary Muslims too were freely attending Christian festivities and frequenting monasteries where they were overhearing services and rubbing shoulders with Christians.

While rules existed to stop this mixing they were evidently not enforced. Indeed, the Muslim polymath al-Jāḥiẓ, in his Reply to the Christians written in the mid-ninth century, decried this regular flouting of the rules. The Christians rode highly bred horses and played polo, he complained. They gave themselves Muslim names, failed to wear their zunnārs or hid them beneath their clothes, and draped themselves in fashionable silks. Throughout most of the Muslim ruled near east and Mediterranean, Christians daily rubbed shoulders with their Muslim neighbours, generally without mishap. Christians worked with Muslims and many had Muslim relatives, as individuals and family branches slowly converted. Still these mixed environments could be hazardous for Christians to navigate.

A party in Damascus

At a party in Damascus, a few years prior to Timothy’s audience with the Caliph, a young Christian named Elias mixed alongside Muslim and Christian guests. He had been hired to wait at the party by the Muslim host, the owner of the saddle shop at which Elias worked, and found himself subjected to the taunts and mockery of some of the Muslim guests because of his distinctive dress. As the night wore on they warmed to him and he was invited to join the dancing, for which he laid aside his zunnār. Come morning, however, he was informed by some of the Muslim partygoers that they took this as a sign of his conversion. Terrified of being accused of apostacy from Islam if he was seen continuing to practice Christianity in public, he approached the manager of his workshop, a recent Muslim convert, who assured him that none of this would be reported. Sometime after this, Elias’ family confronted the manager over unpaid wages, and he threatened to report Elias for apostacy. Elias fled back to his home village. However, a few years later he returned, again requesting his unpaid wages. Enraged, the manager reported him to the authorities. He was charged with apostasy and executed.

So relates the account of his martyrdom, written not long after his execution, when he was already being commemorated as a martyr. We can’t be sure on the details. It is possible for instance that the narrative of being tricked at a party covers a more consensual conversion. Yet, parties could be hazardous as well as fun settings. Muslims and Christians freely mixed but there was still an underlying imbalance in social status. We see this in the poetic verses on monastery parties where young Christians often seem to have had little recourse in fending off the advances of older guests. Christians also had to be cautious in how they responded to possible mockery and questioning. Still, many of those executed for apostasy in this period had converted perfectly willingly before later recanting. Conversion to Islam was, in theory, very easy, requiring only the declaration of the shahāda, the Islamic expression of faith, acknowledging that there was no God but God and that Muḥammad was the messenger of God. Once witnessed, leaving Islam was legally impossible. However, again, this was not something that the state was active in searching out. Elias’ story rings true. Had he stayed in the village, he would probably have been fine, but it was a personal workplace conflict that provided the catalyst for his denouncement, at which point the state was compelled to act.

The streets of Córdoba

One of the other great cities of the early Islamic world was Córdoba, which lay at the heart of the Islamic emirate at the other end of the Mediterranean. Like Baghdad it dwarfed all the other cities of Europe and was home to many Christians and Muslims. Here, in 850, a country priest, while on an errand in the city, was approached by Muslims who asked him what Christians believed about Jesus and Muḥammad. The priest, named Perfectus, freely confessed Christ to be God but he was reluctant to offer an opinion on Muḥammad. However, further assured that there would be no repercussions, he did not hold back. He declared Muḥammad to be a false prophet, an adulterer deceived by demons. Enraged, his questioners nevertheless kept their promise and let him go. When, however, he was next in the city, word of his statements seemed to have spread. A crowd seized him, and he was taken before the city’s judge and imprisoned. Several months later he was beheaded.

Perfectus’ death sparked a wave of deliberate blasphemy in the city. Over the next nine years, 33 Christians confronted the judge, stood in the city’s market forum, and even entered the grand mosque, denouncing Muḥammad and provoking the state to execute them. Their actions were immensely controversial among the local Christians. Actions of deliberate provocation intended to lead to martyrdom had been condemned by the early church, and many also saw them as imperilling the freedom they enjoyed from social restrictions. However, like al-Jāḥiẓ, it was a frustration with precisely this lack of distinction between Christians and Muslims that had at least partly inspired the martyrs, concerned that the distinction between Christianity and Islam would be lost too. Yet, there were also 11 individuals executed in these years who had not sought martyrdom. Executed for apostacy, some had converted to Islam and then changed their minds, or been supposedly tricked like Elias, others were the children of Muslim parents who had converted through the influence of a Christian relative. All came from mixed families, many the children of mixed marriages, and, unlike the blasphemers, all had been hunted down by the state after being denounced by relatives or neighbours.

In the early Islamic world, blasphemy and apostacy were the main reasons Christians found themselves facing execution. However, in this too the state was not proactive but acted mainly in response to denouncers, who were often motivated by personal grievances.

Back in Baghdad

Standing before the Caliph, Timothy was fully aware of the perils. In answering al-Mahdī’s questions he was walking a tightrope between blasphemy and conversion. If he responded too stridently in his answers he could find himself, like Perfectus, charged with blasphemy. At the same time though, the Caliph’s questions on the oneness of God and the status of Muḥammad drove at the key elements of the Islamic confession of faith. Al-Mahdī had apparently tried to persuade Timothy’s predecessor to convert during a similar audience, while Timothy’s opponent in the election for patriarch supposedly later converted to Islam under the Caliph’s influence. If Timothy answered too deferentially, he perhaps risked claims of inadvertent conversion, like Elias.

Asked why he believed God had begotten a son, he responded:

“O God-loving King, who has uttered such a blasphemy?”

"Do you not say that Christ is the Son of God?"

"O King, Christ is the Son of God, but not a son in the flesh, he is the word of God.”

He continued to answer the Caliph’s questions with much care and respect.

Did the Qur’an come from God?

“It is not my business to decide whether it is from God or not.”

“What do you say about Muḥammad?” This was the area of greatest sensitivity.

“Muḥammad is worthy of all praise by all reasonable people, O my Sovereign. He walked in the path of the prophets and trod in the track of the lovers of God. All the prophets taught the doctrine of one God, and since Muhammad taught the doctrine of the unity of God, he walked therefore in the path of the prophets. Because of this God honoured him and brought low before his feet two powerful kingdoms. Who will not praise, O our victorious King, the one whom God has praised? These and similar things I and all God-lovers utter about Muhammad, O my Sovereign.”

“You should, therefore accept the words of the Prophet.”

“Which words?”

“That God is one and that there is no other one besides Him.”

“I believe in one God, O my Sovereign, I have learned from the Torah, from the prophets and from the Gospel. I stand by it and shall die in it.”

“We children of men are in this perishable world as in darkness,” declared Timothy. “The pearl of the true faith fell in the midst of all of us, and it is in the hand of one of us, while we all believe we possess it. The signs wrought in the name of Jesus Christ are the bright rays and shining lustre of the precious pearl of faith.”

“We have hope in God that we are the possessors of this pearl,” declared the Caliph.

“Amen, O King,” Timothy replied, “but may God grant us that we may share it with you, and rejoice in the shining lustre of the pearl!”

“We pray,” he concluded, “that the King of Kings would preserve the throne of the Commander of the Faithful.”

Whether this interaction happened, or happened the way Timothy reported it in his letter cannot be known. Certainly he had regular audiences with al-Mahdī and his successors. Earlier in the year he had appeared several times before the Caliph on the matter of restoring various churches along the western border. In Baghdad he was also known as a willing opponent for debate and a well-regarded expert on Aristotle, at a court in which people still regularly engaged in such interreligious debates. But either way, his reason for circulating this letter was clearly instructional, showing others how to avoid the hazards implicit in everyday encounters and conversations. It offered a vision of how to navigate safely between the twin dangers of apostacy and blasphemy, neither compromising Christian beliefs nor recklessly offending Muslim beliefs. While circulated primarily among the leading bishops and schools of the region, these were the individuals and institutions tasked with training priests, monks and teachers, who, like Perfectus, might find themselves the most frequently on the end of similar questions, while they further offered instruction to laity. Originally written in Syriac, the dialect of Aramaic primarily used by Christians, it was soon translated into Arabic and in this form remained popular in the region into the modern-era.

Yet, still, Timothy felt keenly his own weakness and the imperfection of his answers, his inability to explain or persuade.

“I feel repugnance,” wrote Timothy in his introduction to the letter, “on account of the futility of the outcome of the work. But love covers and hides all these weaknesses as the water covers and hides the rocks that are under it.”

Further reading

Full translation of Timothy’s Dialogue with the Caliph al-Mahdī, translated by Alphonse Mingana (1928): Link.

Sahner, Christian C., Christian Martyrs under Islam: Religious Violence and the Making of the Muslim World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University press, 2018).