Although this mosaic set the pattern for the ethnic portrayals of the Magi, it had one big drawback. It did not show them as kings. As the royalist interpretation caught on in the Middle Ages, this Ravenna mosaic played a less influential role, although it still had some effect. When the Spaniards began to explore America and met people with red skin, whom they thought to be Indians, some Spaniards concluded that Caspar had come to Bethlehem from America, a notion supported by the real possibility that Caspar’s name had derived from that of an Indian king mentioned in the apocryphal Acts of
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