The character of the star which was seen by the Magi has been the source of many conjectures. While some consider it to have been an absolutely miraculous appearance, others have tried to connect it with some recognized form of celestial phenomenon. Some have held that it was a comet [the Greek word for the 'star' is applied to comets], and if such a comet as Donati's of 1858, which the present writer remembers well, had been visible at the time of the Nativity, it would have fulfilled the conditions of the narrative, and the difficulties about the star standing over 'where the young child was' (Mt 2:9) would have been lessened. None such, however, seems to have been recorded. Others, noting that there were conjunctions of two of the brighter planets, Jupiter and Saturn (b.c. 7), and Jupiter and Venus (b.c. 6), have tried to connect this appearance with one of these. Others, again, have explained the appearance as that of what is known as a stella nova, i.e. a star which suddenly flashes out with great brightness in the firmament and then either dies out again altogether, or diminishes in the magnitude of its brightness, so as to be scarcely, if at all, visible to the naked eye. The difficulty connected with all these interpretations is due to the necessity that has been felt for giving a literal interpretation to the account that 'the star