Saint Nicholas of Myra

St. Nicholas of Myra is one of those legendary figures in the church for whom it is difficult to distinguish truth from legend.  While it’s hard to sort through the legend, even the mythical stories which have persisted can potentially tell us something about the person.

He was born to wealthy Christian parents around the year 270 AD in the city of Patara, in Lycia, on the Southern Mediterranean coast of modern-day Turkey.  His parents died when he was a young man, and he inherited the entire estate.  In one of the most famous stories of his life, he gave up a great deal of his wealth by dropping sacks of gold in the windows of three young women who were about to be forced into a life of prostitution because their devout father could not afford a marriage dowry for them.  Nicholas, by this point a professing Christian himself, was known for his generosity and ended up giving away his entire inherited fortune via secretive acts of charity like this.

He went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and returned to the nearby coastal city of Myra.  According to tradition, the Bishop of Myra had recently died and the church leaders had determined that the first pious man to enter the church the next morning would be made Bishop.  That person happened to be Nicholas, who had entered the church for his personal morning prayers.

Nicholas apparently proved an able bishop, on at least one occasion intervening in a travesty of justice, involving the bribing of a jury, to save three innocent men from execution.  Nicholas was later imprisoned under the Christian persecution of the Emperor Diocletian, but was released in 306 AD by Constantine the Great.

Nicholas was in attendance at the Church Council of Nicea, held in 325 AD, to debate the doctrine of Arianism – which held that the person of Jesus was a created being and of a lesser substance that God the Father.  Some accounts record Nicholas actually slapping the face of an Arian who had come to debate.  The council determined Arianism to be a heresy and denounced it in strong terms.

Nicholas died in the year 343, from unknown causes, and was buried in a sarcophagus in Myra.  A shrine was built over his burial site which became a very popular pilgrimage site.  In the year 1087, the inhabitants of Myra were facing being conquered by Muslims so a group of Italian merchants from the city of Bari, without authorization, removed his bones and brought them to a shrine in their hometown.  Later crusaders visited the site and found that a number of Nicholas’ smaller bones remained, so they were brought to the city of Venice.  Today, the Turkish government is negotiating with Italy for the return of the remains of Nicholas to its original burial site.

The story of Nicholas was very popular throughout Europe and was the basis for may legends.  During the Reformation most of these stories died out, except in Holland where the story of “Sinterklaas” remained popular for children.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Nicholas

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Nicholas

https://www.christianitytoday.com/history/2008/august/real-saint-nicholas.html