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Travel: Cologne's enduring spirit

A saga of biblical bones, British bombs and incredible courage
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A little more than 2,000 years ago three wise men, the Magi of old, mounted their camels and followed a star to the town of Bethlehem. There they knelt down and worshiped a tot in one of the stables, proclaimed him to be "King of the Jews" and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. And that's about all I ever heard of them.

Admittedly my knowledge of things biblical is sadly lacking but, if I thought about it at all, I assumed that the three Magi got back on their camels and rode off into the desert to do whatever wise men did in those days. In all honesty their fate never crossed my mind - until this past October when I was traveling up the Rhine River in Germany and came upon a box purporting to contain their bones. How the mortal remains of three ancient Persian kings ended up in a bejeweled triple sarcophagus behind the Alter of Cologne's magnificent gothic cathedral struck me as curious enough to warrant a bit of research. And this is what I learned.

By being the first to worship the infant Jesus, Gasper, Melchior and Balthasar not only assured that they and their camels would be immortalized on Christmas cards and calendars throughout the Christian world, but also that their mortal remains would be of incalculable religious value. After leaving Bethlehem the magi are said to have stepped down from their kingly roles and devoted the rest of their lives to good Christian deeds. All three lived to be well over 100 and their bodies were respectfully interred somewhere in Persia but their bones were destined to keep moving for several more centuries.

In about 300 AD Roman Emperor Constantine gave his mom, Helena, unlimited access to the Imperial Treasury and instructed her to search for relics of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Helena, who was later sainted for her diligence, pursued the quest with a passion and, among other things, came up with chunks of the "true cross," the nails used in the crucifixion, and the bodies of the three Magi, which she carted off to Constantinople. Shortly after Helena's death in 330 AD Constantine put the holy remains in a heavy marble casket and sent them off to the Bishop of Milan but just short of its destination the ox cart carrying the casket became mired down in mud. Seeing this as a signal from God the Bishop ordered that a basilica to house the remains be built on the very spot where the cart was stuck. And there the bones of the Magi remained until Holy Roman Emperor Fredrich I (Barbarossa) sacked Milan in 1162. Fredrich gathered up the spoils of war and shipped them off to recipients of his choice. Cologne got the bones of the Magi, a gift that profoundly altered the future course of that city's history.

With the arrival of the bones, Cologne, then a modest port city on the Rhine, suddenly became a destination for the entourage of pilgrims that follow the Magi's remains in search of personal salvation. They came by the thousands, bringing with them both prestige and money to the city. The medieval goldsmith Nicolaus von Verdon laboured for 50 years to create an elaborate shrine worthy of holding the remains and when his gold embossed triple sarcophagus was finished in 1225 the city decided that a grand new church was needed to house it.

Work on Cologne's magnificent twin-towered Cathedral began in 1248 AD. Including several long work stoppages it took 632 years to complete but in 1880, when the last stone was mortared into place, the city's new resting place for the Magi's bones was the largest Gothic structure in northern Europe.

I am generally baffled by the logic that has guided the Church throughout history but as things turned out the adulation lavished on the Magi's bones proved to be not only an act of reverence but a pretty good business deal as well. About 15 million modern-day pilgrims (tourists) visit Cologne Cathedral each year and while they no longer bear gifts of frankincense and myrrh they leave behind a lot of Euros.

As I stand among the crowd admiring von Verdon's Shrine of the Three Kings with its deeply embossed images of biblical scenes and then look up at the vaulted ceiling of the cathedral towering 140 feet above the alter my thoughts turn to another, darker chapter of Cologne's history. In 1942 the shrine and the stained glass windows behind it were gone, safely locked away in some place safe from the ravages of war, and the floor where we are standing was littered with broken stone.

In the early hours of May 31, 1942 1,048 heavy bombers lifted off from 53 airfields in southern England and converged on Cologne. For months "Bomber" Harris, the man in charge of RAF Bomber Command, had been trying to persuade Churchill to sanction saturation bombing of civilian targets as a means of breaking German morale and Churchill had finally agreed. Operation Millennium, the largest single air strike ever assembled, was a masterpiece of military organization and logistical timing that saw 1,455 tons of bombs dumped on Cologne in a mere 75 minutes. When it was over the central, residential section of the city had been reduced to burning rubble. Forty bombers were lost, 5,500 civilians were killed or injured and more than 45,000 people were rendered homeless. But the twin towers of Cologne's Cathedral still towered above the wreckage.

Conspiracy buffs speculate that a secret high-level, tit-for-tat agreement saved both Cologne's Cathedral and London's Westminster Abbey from serious structural damage. Some pilots and their bomb aimers reported that the twin towers were spared because they provided a convenient reference point within the surrounding sea of flames, while those of a more religious persuasion credit God for sparing His Church. Whatever the reason the cathedral received only superficial blast damage and it has now been fully restored.

In his book Operation Millennium, Eric Taylor examines the bombing of Cologne from many different perspectives - the young men who faced the fear of the mission and the nagging guilt that later plagued them; the terror of those on the ground and the misery of the aftermath; and the moral dilemma faced by Churchill when dealing with "Bomber" Harris. Whether the blanket bombing of civilians was morally or strategically justified is still a matter of debate, but one thing is certain - the morale of Cologne's citizens never broke. When the bombing stopped they buried their dead, learned to live beneath the rubble that had once been their homes and when the war was over they rebuilt.

Before returning to the river I paused to look back at the cathedral. The statues of saints above the entrance and the intricately carved open stonework of the towering spires bear no hint of war damage. Most of the people crowding the shops and cafes of the Old City have no memory of the destruction wrought during that terrible night in 1942. For them "Bomber" Harris, like the Magi, is just a name from the past. But Cologne's great cathedral is an enduring tribute to those who lived through the carnage and went on to rebuild their city for the next generation.