Nicholas, whose life can be dated uncertainly between and , originally hailed from Patara, a Lycian port-town on the coast of the Mediterranean about km from Myra. Linguistically, the name ‘Nicholas’ represents a combination of the Greek words for ‘victory’ and ‘people’, meaning something like ‘victory of the people’ or ‘people’s champion’. In the tenth century, the hagiographer Symeon Metaphrastes combined the lives of the two Nicholai, either by accident or on purpose, and created an enduring error (Cioffari 1987: 101–10).
Spreading Popularity
But, what became of the tomb and the church in Myra? From to the present, Professor Sema Doğan of Hacettepe University has led a major effort to excavate, study, and preserve the Church of St Nicholas, known locally as the Aziz Nikolaos Müzesi. Meanwhile, Professor Nevzat Çevik of Akdeniz University has focused on Myra and its port Andriake, culminating in with the opening of new museum facilities and new finds at Andriake (Cevik ; Akyürek ). While the oldest wall of the St Nicholas Church in Myra dates to the sixth century (the time when Nicholas’s popularity began to soar), much of the construction seen today came in the tenth to twelfth century. Tragically, two major misfortunes befell the church around the same time. First, in , sailors from Bari, Italy, arrived in port at Myra and entered the church under the guise of pilgrims. Once inside however, they drew out axes and hammers, smashed open the tomb, lifted the bones, and transferred them to Bari. The event, piously referred to as the ‘translation of the relics’, is commemorated in Italy every May as the Festa di Bari, where Nicholas is known as St Nicholas of Bari (Jones : –; English : –). A dozen years later, in , Venetian sailors also paid a visit to Myra and took the remaining bone fragments left behind by the Barians (Martino ). These are now interned at San Nicolò al Lido in Venice. A second misfortune to visit the Church of St. Nicholas in Myra came less than two hundred years later, in the latter half of the thirteenth century, when the Myros River changed course (Cevik ; Akyürek ). In a short span of time, the rerouted river buried the ancient city and the Church of St Nicholas under six to nine metres worth of deposited silt. Nevertheless, by that time Nicholas’s fame and legend had already spread well beyond Myra and the province of Lycia to all corners of the Christian world.
- On 6 December , John Pintard (–) distributed a pamphlet to the NewYork Historical Society meeting featuring a woodcut image of St Nicholas in bishop’s attire, complete with a halo and the emblem of the cross stitched on his cassock. Pintard, a classic promoter for social causes, solicited the image of Nicholas in order to redirect holiday attention from carousing and boozing toward thoughts of good deeds, rewards and punishments, and the upbringing of children.
- Authorship of ‘An Account of a Visit from Saint Nicholas’
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