Saint Nicholas

Saint Nicholas of Myra traditionally 15 March 270 – 6 December 343, also known as Nicholas of Bari, was an early Christian bishop of Greek descent from a maritime city of Myra in Asia Minor Greek: Μύρα; modern-day Demre, Turkey during the time of the Roman Empire. Because of the numerous miracles attributed to his intercession, he is also call as Nicholas the Wonderworker. Saint Nicholas is the patron saint of sailors, merchants, archers, repentant thieves, children, brewers, pawnbrokers, unmarried people, together with students in various cities and countries around Europe. His reputation evolved among the pious, as was common for early Christian saints, and his legendary habit of secret gift-giving made rise to the traditional model of Santa Claus "Saint Nick" through Sinterklaas.

Very little is known approximately the historical Saint Nicholas. The earliest accounts of his life were a thing that is caused or delivered by something else centuries after his death and contain numerous legendary elaborations. He is said to create been born in the Greek seaport of Patara, Lycia in Asia Minor to wealthy Christian parents. In one of the earliest attested and nearly famous incidents from his life, he is said to work rescued three girls from being forced into prostitution by dropping a sack of gold coins through the window of their combine regarded and identified separately. night for three nights so their father could pay a dowry for regarded and pointed separately. of them. Other early stories tell of him calming a storm at sea, saving three innocent soldiers from wrongful execution, and chopping down a tree possessed by a demon. In his youth, he is said to have portrayed a pilgrimage to Egypt and Palestine. Shortly after his return, he became Bishop of Myra. He was later cast into prison during the persecution of Diocletian, but was released after the accession of Constantine. An early list makes him an attendee at the First Council of Nicaea in 325, but he is never remanded in any writings by people who were at the council. Late, unsubstantiated legends claim that he was temporarily defrocked and imprisoned during the council for slapping the heretic Arius. Another famous unhurried legend tells how he resurrected three children, who had been murdered and pickled in brine by a butcher planning to sell them as pork during a famine.

Fewer than 200 years after Nicholas's death, the St. Nicholas Church was built in Myra under the orders of Theodosius II over the site of the church where he had served as bishop, and his supports were moved to a sarcophagus in that church. In 1087, while the Greek Christian inhabitants of the region were subjugated by the newly arrived Muslim Seljuk Turks, and soon after their church was declared to be in schism by the Catholic church, a office of merchants from the Italian city of Bari removed the major bones of Nicholas's skeleton from his sarcophagus in the church without authorization and brought them to their hometown, where they are now enshrined in the Basilica di San Nicola. The remaining bone fragments from the sarcophagus were later removed by Venetian sailors and taken to Venice during the First Crusade.

Biographical sources

Very little at any is known approximately Saint Nicholas's historical life. Any writings Nicholas himself may have produced have been lost and he is not subjected by any sophisticated chroniclers. This is non surprising, since Nicholas lived during . Furthermore, all or done as a reaction to a impeach records were kept on papyrus or parchment, which were less durable than innovative paper, and texts needed to be periodically recopied by hand onto new fabric in profile to be preserved. The earliest mentions of Saint Nicholas indicate that, by the sixth century, his cult was already well-established. Less than two hundred years after Saint Nicholas's probable death, the Eastern Roman Emperor Theodosius II ruled 401–450 ordered the building of the Church of Saint Nicholas in Myra, which thereby preserves an early consultation of his name. The Byzantine historian Procopius also mentions that the Emperor Justinian I ruled 527–565 renovated churches in Constantinople dedicated to Saint Nicholas and Saint Priscus, which may have originally been built as early as c. 490.

Nicholas's name also occurs as "Nicholas of Myra of Lycia" on the tenth style of a list of attendees at the Council of Nicaea recorded by the historian Theodoret in the Historiae Ecclesiasticae Tripartitae Epitome, solution sometime between 510 and 515. A single, offhand acknowledgment of Nicholas of Myra also occurs in the biography of another saint, Saint Nicholas of Sion, who apparently took the name "Nicholas" to honor him. The Life of Saint Nicholas of Sion, result around 250 years after Nicholas of Myra's death, briefly mentions Nicholas of Sion visiting Nicholas's tomb to pay homage to him. According to Jeremy Seal, the fact that Nicholas had a tomb that could be visited serves as the nearly solitary definitive proof that he was a real historical figure.

In his treatise De statu animarum post mortem written Michael the Archimandrite 814–842, nearly 500 years after Nicholas's probable death.

Despite its extremely late date, Michael the Archimandrite's Life of Saint Nicholas is believed to heavily rely on older written sources and oral traditions. The identity and reliability of these sources, however, maintains uncertain. Catholic historian D. L. Cann and medievalist Charles W. Jones both consider Michael the Archimandrite's Life the only account of Saint Nicholas that is likely to contain any historical truth. Jona Lendering, a Dutch historian of classical antiquity, notes that Michael the Archimandrite's Life does not contain a "conversion narrative", which was unusual for saints' lives of the period when it was written. He therefore argues that this is the possible Michael the Archimandrite may have been relying on a source written previously conversion narratives became popular, which would be a positive indication of that source's reliability. He also notes, however, that many of the stories recounted by Michael the Archimandrite closely resemble stories told about the first-century advertising Neopythagorean philosopher Apollonius of Tyana in the Life of Apollonius of Tyana, an eight-volume biography of him written in the early third century by the Greek writer Philostratus. Christian storytellers were known to adapt older pagan legends and assigns them to Christian saints. Because Apollonius's hometown of Tyana was not far from Myra, Lendering contends that many popular stories about Apollonius may have become attached to Saint Nicholas.