Wikipedia Deep Dive

Saint Nicholas

12 min read

A fourth-century bishop punched a heretic in the face at one of Christianity's most important councils. Or maybe he didn't. The story is almost certainly apocryphal, but it captures something essential about Saint Nicholas of Myra: even the legends we tell about him are fascinating arguments about what really happened.

This is the man who became Santa Claus.

The Problem with Ancient Saints

Here's the uncomfortable truth about Saint Nicholas: we know almost nothing about him. Not a single word he wrote survives. No contemporary chronicler mentioned him. The earliest detailed account of his life was written nearly five hundred years after he died.

This should not surprise us. Nicholas lived through one of the most chaotic periods in Roman history—persecution under Diocletian, civil wars, the dramatic conversion of Constantine—when record-keeping was hardly a priority. What we have instead are layers of legend, accumulated over centuries like sediment, occasionally containing a fossil of genuine history.

The earliest solid evidence comes roughly two hundred years after Nicholas's probable death, when the Eastern Roman Emperor Theodosius the Second ordered a church built in his honor at Myra. By that point, his cult was already well-established. The Byzantine historian Procopius notes that Emperor Justinian renovated churches dedicated to Nicholas in Constantinople—churches that may have been built as early as 490 AD. A man named Nicholas of Sion, born generations later, apparently took that name specifically to honor the famous saint, and visited his tomb as a pilgrim.

That tomb, incidentally, is important. As historian Jeremy Seal notes, the fact that Nicholas had a tomb that people could visit is nearly our only definitive proof that he actually existed.

What We Think We Know

The traditional story places Nicholas's birth around 270 AD in Patara, a bustling port city on the Mediterranean coast of what is now Turkey. His parents were wealthy Greek Christians—their names vary depending on which account you read, either Epiphanius and Johanna, or Theophanes and Nonna. When an epidemic killed them, Nicholas inherited their fortune and promptly gave it away to the poor.

His most famous act of charity involves three young women whose father had lost everything. Without dowries, the daughters faced a grim future: in the ancient world, a woman without means or marriage prospects often had only one option available to her, and it was not a pleasant one. Nicholas resolved to help, but he had a problem. He was too modest to give openly, and the family would have been humiliated to accept public charity.

So he chose stealth.

Under cover of darkness, Nicholas crept to the house and threw a bag of gold coins through the window. The father immediately arranged a marriage for his eldest daughter. Nicholas returned and did the same thing again. The second daughter was married. But when Nicholas came a third time, the father was waiting. He had stayed awake specifically to catch his mysterious benefactor.

The father fell to his knees in gratitude. Nicholas made him promise to tell no one.

The Evolution of a Legend

This story of secret gift-giving—gold thrown through windows at night—is the seed from which Santa Claus eventually grew. But the transformation took centuries and crossed continents.

First, Nicholas became the patron saint of an astonishing variety of people: sailors, merchants, archers, repentant thieves, children, brewers, pawnbrokers, toymakers, unmarried people, and students. The connection to children and gift-giving was already present in his earliest legends. Over time, his feast day on December 6th became associated with giving presents to children in much of Europe.

In the Netherlands, he became Sinterklaas—a contraction of "Sint Nikolaas." Dutch settlers brought Sinterklaas to New Amsterdam, which the English later renamed New York. There, "Sinterklaas" gradually anglicized into "Santa Claus." The red suit, the reindeer, the North Pole workshop—these accumulated later, mostly in nineteenth-century America, through poems, advertisements, and illustrations.

But at the center of it all stands that fourth-century bishop, tossing bags of gold into the darkness.

The Council of Nicaea and the Slap

Now we arrive at that famous punch.

In 325 AD, Emperor Constantine convened the First Council of Nicaea to settle a theological dispute that was tearing Christianity apart. The central question concerned the nature of Jesus Christ: was he truly divine, equal to God the Father, or was he a created being, subordinate to the Father? A priest named Arius championed the latter view. His opponents, led by Athanasius of Alexandria, argued for the former.

The council ultimately sided with Athanasius, producing the Nicene Creed that most Christians still recite today. But according to late legends, Nicholas got so frustrated with Arius during the debates that he walked across the room and slapped him in the face.

The other bishops were horrified. Striking a fellow cleric at a holy council was a serious offense. Nicholas was stripped of his bishop's vestments and thrown in prison. But then—according to the story—Jesus and Mary appeared to the imprisoned Nicholas in a vision, returning his vestments and his book of gospels. The other bishops, recognizing this as a divine endorsement, released him.

It's a great story. It almost certainly isn't true.

Nicholas does appear on one early list of council attendees, compiled by Theodore the Lector sometime between 510 and 515 AD. But Athanasius, who was actually there and knew every significant bishop of his era, never mentions Nicholas. Neither does the historian Eusebius, who attended and wrote extensively about the council. When scholars examined the various attendance lists, they found that Nicholas's name only appears on the longer, less reliable versions.

The slapping story itself surfaces only much later, after Nicholas was already a beloved figure. It may have been invented specifically to make a theological point: even the saints recognized heresy when they saw it.

Miracles and Parallel Lives

The stories told about Saint Nicholas present historians with a curious puzzle. Many of them closely resemble stories told about Apollonius of Tyana, a philosopher who lived in the first century AD.

Apollonius was a Neopythagorean—a follower of the mystical teachings attributed to Pythagoras. He traveled extensively, performed miracles, and gathered disciples. A Greek writer named Philostratus composed an eight-volume biography of him in the early third century, roughly a hundred years before Nicholas lived.

In Philostratus's biography, Apollonius gives money to an impoverished father. In Nicholas's legend, he gives money to an impoverished father. In Philostratus's biography, Apollonius prevents the execution of an innocent man. In Nicholas's legend, he prevents the execution of three innocent men. Apollonius was from Tyana, which wasn't far from Myra.

Did the stories migrate from one figure to the other? It wouldn't be unusual. Early Christian hagiographers—people who wrote the lives of saints—frequently adapted older stories from pagan cults. A miracle attributed to one wonder-worker could easily become attached to another.

But there are differences too. In Apollonius's story about the impoverished father, we never learn what happened to the daughters. Apollonius is motivated purely by sympathy for the man. In Nicholas's version, the focus shifts: Nicholas explicitly wants to save the daughters from prostitution. This concern for women, some scholars argue, is more characteristic of fourth-century Christianity, when women played prominent roles in the early church, than of either Greco-Roman paganism or the Christianity of later centuries.

The truth is probably complicated. Some kernel of historical reality may have existed, but it accumulated legendary elaborations as it passed from generation to generation, picking up motifs from other stories along the way.

Storms, Soldiers, and Resurrection

Nicholas was also, according to legend, a man of considerable personal power.

On a voyage to the Holy Land, his ship encountered a terrible storm. Nicholas rebuked the waves—in the manner of Jesus calming the Sea of Galilee—and the storm subsided. This miracle made him the patron saint of sailors and travelers, which helps explain why a bishop from inland Anatolia became so important to maritime cities like Bari and Venice.

Another story concerns three Roman generals named Ursos, Nepotianos, and Herpylion. Emperor Constantine sent them to suppress a rebellion in Phrygia, but a storm forced their ships to shelter at Myra. While the generals waited in the harbor, their soldiers went ashore and began fighting with local merchants, looting and destroying property. Nicholas confronted the generals about their soldiers' behavior and shamed them into restoring order.

Almost immediately afterward, Nicholas heard that the local governor Eustathius had condemned three innocent men to death, having accepted a bribe. Nicholas rushed to the execution site, pushed the executioner's sword to the ground, and released the prisoners from their chains. He then publicly chastised the corrupt juror.

The three generals witnessed this and were impressed. But their troubles were only beginning. After successfully putting down the rebellion in Phrygia, they were promoted to higher positions—which made their enemies jealous. These enemies went to the consul Ablabius, told him the generals hadn't really suppressed the revolt but had encouraged their soldiers to join it, and bribed him to have them imprisoned and executed.

The generals were in desperate straits. But then Nicholas appeared to Constantine in a dream, revealed the truth, and simultaneously appeared to Ablabius, frightening him with visions of hellfire. The consul released the generals, and everyone learned not to accept bribes.

Perhaps the strangest legend involves three children who had been murdered by a butcher during a famine. The butcher, planning to sell their flesh as pork, had pickled them in brine. Nicholas somehow discovered this horror and resurrected all three children. This grisly tale became enormously popular in medieval Europe, appearing in countless works of art. Its connection to the historical Nicholas is essentially nonexistent, but it demonstrates how his legend continued to grow long after his death.

The Journey of His Bones

Nicholas died around 343 AD and was buried in Myra. The Church of Saint Nicholas was built over his tomb under Emperor Theodosius the Second, and for seven hundred years, pilgrims came to venerate his relics.

Then, in 1087, everything changed.

By that time, Myra had fallen under the control of the Seljuk Turks, Muslim conquerors who had swept through Anatolia. The Greek Christian inhabitants of the region found themselves subjects of a new empire. Meanwhile, the Christian church itself had just experienced a traumatic split: in 1054, the Pope in Rome and the Patriarch of Constantinople had excommunicated each other, creating the East-West Schism that divided Catholic from Orthodox Christianity.

A group of merchants from Bari, an Italian port city, saw an opportunity. They sailed to Myra, entered the Church of Saint Nicholas, broke open his sarcophagus, and removed most of his bones. They did not have authorization. This was, essentially, a holy theft.

The merchants brought the bones back to Bari, where they were installed in a new church built specifically to house them: the Basilica di San Nicola. The basilica still stands today, and Nicholas's relics remain its most treasured possession.

But the merchants from Bari didn't get everything. They left behind smaller bone fragments, which were later collected by Venetian sailors during the First Crusade and taken to Venice. So today, if you want to venerate the relics of Saint Nicholas, you can visit either Bari or Venice, each claiming to possess the true remains.

In Myra itself—now called Demre, in Turkey's Antalya Province—the original Church of Saint Nicholas still stands, though it has been much altered over the centuries. The empty sarcophagus remains as well, a reminder of the night the merchants came.

Why Nicholas Matters

There is something poignant about the distance between the historical Nicholas—a bishop in a troubled time, about whom we know almost nothing—and the Nicholas of legend, who became one of the most beloved figures in Christian history and eventually transformed into a secular icon of generosity and joy.

We cannot verify the stories about him. We cannot be certain he attended the Council of Nicaea, let alone that he slapped Arius. We cannot prove he threw bags of gold through windows or calmed storms at sea. The one thing we can say with confidence is that, less than two centuries after his death, people were building churches in his name and telling stories about his miracles.

Something about this man—or at least something about the idea of this man—captured the imagination of the ancient world and never let go.

Perhaps it was the emphasis on secret generosity. The Nicholas of legend doesn't want credit. He gives at night, through windows, and asks his beneficiaries to keep quiet. This stands in contrast to the public philanthropy of wealthy Romans, who inscribed their donations on monuments for all to see. Nicholas represents a different ideal: charity as an act of love rather than an advertisement.

Perhaps it was his protection of the vulnerable. Again and again, the legends show him saving people from terrible fates: young women from prostitution, innocent men from execution, sailors from storms, children from death itself. He is the saint who shows up at the last moment, when hope is lost.

Whatever the reason, his influence spread far beyond Myra. He became important in Byzantine Constantinople, in medieval Russia, in the maritime cities of Italy, in the Netherlands, and eventually in the shopping malls of North America. Along the way, he acquired reindeer and a workshop and elves, transformations that would surely have puzzled the fourth-century bishop from Anatolia.

But the core remains. On cold December nights, someone leaves gifts for children. The gifts appear mysteriously, given by someone who asks nothing in return. Across seventeen centuries and countless cultures, that simple story endures.

Saint Nicholas would probably approve.