Saint Nicholas of Myra

Saint Nicholas was bishop of Myra in Lycia, on the southern coast of present-day Turkey, and lived in the fourth century. In the West he is also called Nicholas of Bari, because his relics have rested there since 1087. He is among the most venerated saints of East and West. The Church commemorates him on December 6.

History has preserved very little about him. Really the only certain thing is that in the fourth century he was the shepherd of the Church in Myra, today’s Demre. The stories of his life were written down long after his death, and reports about another Nicholas, abbot of the monastery of Sion near Myra, who lived two centuries later, became mixed with them. Almost everything told about him is therefore tradition.

According to tradition, he was born in Patara, a port city of Lycia, into a well-to-do Christian family. He lost his parents early and used the wealth he inherited to help the poor and the sick. The accounts say that, already a bishop, he was imprisoned during the persecution under Emperor Diocletian and, after his release, took part in the Council of Nicaea in 325. His name, however, does not appear in the old lists of those who attended the council.

The best-known story tells of an impoverished father of three daughters who had no means to give them in marriage. Nicholas is said to have secretly thrown money for a dowry into his house by night, three times. Other accounts say that he saved three men unjustly condemned to death, that a storm at sea was stilled at his prayer, and that he restored three murdered young men to life. From these stories grew his veneration as protector of children, of sailors, and of people in need.

He died in Myra and was buried there. We do not know the year of his death; various dates are given, most often between 335 and 352. The Byzantine and Coptic rites mark December 6 as the day of his death and burial. His tomb early became a place of pilgrimage, and in the sixth century Emperor Justinian built a church in his honor in Constantinople. In 1087 sailors from Bari took the relics from Myra to their own city. Two years later Pope Urban II placed them beneath the altar in the crypt of the new basilica, where they rest to this day.

Nicholas has been venerated as a saint since antiquity, without a formal canonization. In the West his memorial spread from the tenth century onward. John Paul II, celebrating Holy Mass in Bari in 1984, said that history has recorded few facts of the saint’s life, but that his witness to God, the source of all good, has endured in the memory of the Church. Three years later he called him a sign of reconciliation between East and West. In 2018 Pope Francis, together with the heads of the Churches of the Middle East, venerated his relics in Bari and prayed for peace. From the custom of giving gifts to children on the eve of his memorial grew the figure known today as Santa Claus, who brings presents.