The Life And Times Of Saint Nicholas

Should you wish to make a pilgrimage to honour the life of Saint Nicholas you would not be going to Lapland. Firstly because according to popular culture he is still alive and kicking up there in the frozen wastes. Secondly you would be going in entirely the wrong direction. You would need to head south to Bari. No, not Barry, but its almost namesake: the southern Italian port city on the Adriatic.

About the man himself. According to the available literature (ie Wikipedia) he was born in 270AD in Patara on the Mediterranean coast which is now in present day Turkey. His father was an early Christian bishop and following a series of miracles in youth it was inevitable that he would also become a priest. Eventually when a vacancy for a new Bishop of Patara arose, he was the logical shoe in for the role.

Whilst he was Bishop he was credited with various Good Works, the most memorable being the gifts, initially made anonymously, of purses containing gold coins to a father facing penury whose three daughters faced a ruinous future. Which is, children, the reason behind us all gifting presents to each other at Christmas.

But there’s more than just this to his name. A ship he was on was nearly destroyed by a terrible storm but he rebuked the waves. Thus, Nicholas became venerated as the patron saint of sailors and travellers. And in due course also of merchants, archers, repentant thieves, children, brewers, pawnbrokers (hence their Three Golden Balls), toymakers, unmarried people, and students. He died in around 343AD and was buried in Myra which is also in present day Turkey.

And so, back to Bari. Until Italy was unified into one nation in 1861, it was a diverse collection of city states. A rival state was that of Venice, and in the 800s AD, they had stole the body of Saint Mark from Alexandria and this became the focus for highly profitable pilgrimages to Venice. The citizens of Bari were quite jealous of the Venetians and decided that they also needed a Saint for people to come and venerate and generate some revenue.

A group of merchants stole most of his skeleton, ostensibly to prevent it from falling into the hands of an invading Muslim army. They brought them to their hometown, where they are now buried deep underground in that city’s cathedral.

Tony Hodge