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Saint Nicholas of Myra, Bari, and Manhattan: Biography of a Legend
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558 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1978
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About the author
Charles W. Jones
6 booksLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads data base.
1905-1989
1905-1989
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December 9, 2023
A DETAILED AND AUTHORITATIVE ACCOUNT OF NICHOLAS, AND THE GROWTH OF ‘SANTA’
When this book was published in 1978, Charles W. Jones was Professor Emeritus of history at the University of California at Berkeley. He wrote in the Prologue, “With the Nicholas legend we run the least chance of confusing imagination with fact… throughout the book I call the legend, with all its attributes, ‘N,’ thereby distinguishing it from any historic, i.e., organic, Nicholas… N is a legend rather than a myth or image or symbol according to both technical and general definition… The oldest WESTERN artifact of N to survive is one frescoed figure among many in the basilica of ninth-century Santa Maria Antiqua in Rome… May the reader find on this world’s stage a humane personality who became such… in intercourse with men, things, and gods, in the passion of life… and never without suffering… though I have tried to interpret the evidence without bias… but this biography may well suggest to readers that … we have attributed too much creative power to the ‘folk,’ to the denigration of art… no conclusion can be reached whether folk or poets created the images which I call N, but I have from this study come to thank the poets, both the known and the unidentified.”
He states in the first chapter, “The common belief is that Saint Nicholas lived at Myra in the first half of the fourth century, but there is no evidence or document before the reign of the emperor Justinian in the mid-sixth century. The church’s authorities, the Bollandists, conclude that they know nothing of the man named Nicholas… a most scholarly N student, Gustav Anrich, concluded: ‘To dispute the historicity of a bishop of Myra named Nicholas would be a methodological error. We can grant a bishop of that name who had a great impact on his homeland. We can also accept December 6 as the day of his death and burial. These are all the facts we can hold to.’” (Pg. 7)
He recounts, “‘Three Daughters’ is one of the best-known actions of N… It has no clear antecedents in pagan or Christian lore; it belongs to N alone… According to Symeon: ‘There was a man, once famous, who had fallen into obscurity and from riches to poverty… When the day came that he lacked the very essentials of life… he determined to sell into prostitution… his three beautiful daughters… It was impossible for him to marry them off; for because of their excessive poverty, all beaux disdained them… Nicholas was striving to live up to the evangelic precept that a good deed must not be identified as the act of a Christian lest the Christian use his beneficence for his own gain… So, after he had bagged a sum of gold, in the dead of night he went to that man’s house. The minute he had thrown the bag through the window, he hastily returned to his home, disquieted at the thought of being seen. When the poor man arose… he found the gold… He married off one of his daughters… providing as dowry for her the mysterious gold… the man was preparing to … sell the second of his daughters… Nicholas threw an equally valuable bag of gold through the same window… [The poor man] arranged for the marriage of his second daughter. He was now consumed by a firm belief … that the same evil occasion would not arise with respect to the third daughter… he waited, watchfully, night after night on guard… he would learn from that person who he was and why he was distributing gold in this way… Nicholas came to the now-customary spot… and now again threw a tied bag of gold through the same window, swiftly retreating… The girls’ father … ran after the man. When he caught up with him and recognized who it was (…Nicholas could not hide his identity), he dropped to Nicholas’s feet… with tears of joy and in the warm glow of faith. Then Nicholas… bound the man by an oath never … to relate to others … the benevolent act…” (Pg. 53-57)
He records, “The First Ecumenical Council, Nicaea A.D. 325, is possibly the most famous ever in postapostolic Christian history … It seems clear that since N’s presumed ‘floruit’ was the time when the Council was held, so exemplary a Christian must have been present, active, and influential during those discussions. This form of historical association, so common in legends, is the bane of factual historians… The lists of bishops who did attend… are fragmentary and unreliable, but N appears on no such list except as a name inserted after the thirteenth century, under the influence of the legend itself.” (Pg. 63-64)
He reports, “Pagans though they were, the Turks had no desire to destroy N’s relics. Sanctity in relics know no sects: a good corpse is efficacious, whatever his communion… [N] still lived in Myra, but precariously, for the Turks but loosely policed the land… Hence outsiders needed no exceptional incentive to plan the … stealing of N’s bones….” (Pg. 173-174)
He notes, “The saints declined in the Renaissance and Reformation, and N, who represents the quiddity, declined the most; but to make Renaissance and Reformation sufficient reason for decline would be circuitous. N’s decline MADE the Reformation, for what is an age but a totalization of its biographies?” (Pg. 283)
He observes, “But the epithets Saint and Bishop of the legend induced mild images of benevolence. Early corruptions of N’s name (Samiklaus, Sinterklaes, Klaus, der Niklas, etc.) betoken friendliness, even familiarity. Hence the corporate mind very quickly came to visualize N the pedant as two persons… The second person assumed a personality, usually black to balance N’s increasing white… At first in Holland the black boy was called Nicodemus, who rode a donkey as N rode a horse. But then came Black Peter, who travelled from Moorish Spain with the Hapsburg N and would carry bad children back to Spain in a burlap sack…” (Pg. 310)
He states, “We would expect N to be brought to America, and so he was---before the Reformation… But the colonizing of North America and the Reformation concurred in time, and the American colonists were predominantly reformers. Hence in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries N did not add to the American land or language. True, European immigrants have sporadically brought N customs in North America with their families. When they combined in ethnic groups, the customs sometimes survived as long as the group.” (Pg. 326-327)
He argues, “Without [Washington] Irving there would be no Santa Claus. [Irving’s ‘Knickerbocker History’] contains two dozen allusions to him, among them the most delightful flights of imagination in the volumes. Here is the source of all the legends about N in New Amsterdam… here is the description of Santa Claus bringing gifts, parking his horse and wagon on the roof while he slides down the chimney—all sheer fictions produced by Irving’s [imagination]. Santa Claus was a local joke with an anti-British sting until 1809; after 1809 the spritely SC spread like a plague….” (Pg. 344-345)
He recounts, “the Anglicans eschewed New Year as a pagan orgy, whereas many continentals reserved Christmas for reverence. Eventually Christmas won out… because of the most popular verses of all, composed by a staunch Anglican, Clement Moore…[his verses] were composed for his six children at Christmas 1822. The following autumn a house guest showed them to someone ... [who sent] them anonymously to [the] …. Editor of the Troy Sentinel, who printed them ... December 1823 under the foreword: “We know not to whom we are indebted for the following description of that unwearied patron of Children---that homely but delightful personification of parental kindness---Santa Claus, his costume and his equipage, as he hops about visiting the firesides of this happy land… but from whomsoever it may have come, we give thanks for it.’” (Pg. 347)
He concludes, “[In 1969] the Papal Court pronounced that N is no longer of general interest, whether alive or dead. The universal legend had conformed with universal man’s experience in its time, but man and legend grow frail when their days are numbered. There is a reality in images, a life and perhaps a death, lacking in the truth of propositions. N walked beside humanity and was ‘with it.’ In the year that the Pope pronounced N moribund, an Associated Press dispatch … read in part: ‘The pastor and parishioners of a Greek Orthodox church say an icon of Saint Nicholas is forming what appear to be tear drops. The pastor said he had assured parishioners who feared the phenomenon was a bad omen that ‘it’s just an act of God.’” (Pg. 373)
This detailed book will be “must reading” for anyone seriously studying Saint Nicholas, and the growth and development of Santa Claus.
When this book was published in 1978, Charles W. Jones was Professor Emeritus of history at the University of California at Berkeley. He wrote in the Prologue, “With the Nicholas legend we run the least chance of confusing imagination with fact… throughout the book I call the legend, with all its attributes, ‘N,’ thereby distinguishing it from any historic, i.e., organic, Nicholas… N is a legend rather than a myth or image or symbol according to both technical and general definition… The oldest WESTERN artifact of N to survive is one frescoed figure among many in the basilica of ninth-century Santa Maria Antiqua in Rome… May the reader find on this world’s stage a humane personality who became such… in intercourse with men, things, and gods, in the passion of life… and never without suffering… though I have tried to interpret the evidence without bias… but this biography may well suggest to readers that … we have attributed too much creative power to the ‘folk,’ to the denigration of art… no conclusion can be reached whether folk or poets created the images which I call N, but I have from this study come to thank the poets, both the known and the unidentified.”
He states in the first chapter, “The common belief is that Saint Nicholas lived at Myra in the first half of the fourth century, but there is no evidence or document before the reign of the emperor Justinian in the mid-sixth century. The church’s authorities, the Bollandists, conclude that they know nothing of the man named Nicholas… a most scholarly N student, Gustav Anrich, concluded: ‘To dispute the historicity of a bishop of Myra named Nicholas would be a methodological error. We can grant a bishop of that name who had a great impact on his homeland. We can also accept December 6 as the day of his death and burial. These are all the facts we can hold to.’” (Pg. 7)
He recounts, “‘Three Daughters’ is one of the best-known actions of N… It has no clear antecedents in pagan or Christian lore; it belongs to N alone… According to Symeon: ‘There was a man, once famous, who had fallen into obscurity and from riches to poverty… When the day came that he lacked the very essentials of life… he determined to sell into prostitution… his three beautiful daughters… It was impossible for him to marry them off; for because of their excessive poverty, all beaux disdained them… Nicholas was striving to live up to the evangelic precept that a good deed must not be identified as the act of a Christian lest the Christian use his beneficence for his own gain… So, after he had bagged a sum of gold, in the dead of night he went to that man’s house. The minute he had thrown the bag through the window, he hastily returned to his home, disquieted at the thought of being seen. When the poor man arose… he found the gold… He married off one of his daughters… providing as dowry for her the mysterious gold… the man was preparing to … sell the second of his daughters… Nicholas threw an equally valuable bag of gold through the same window… [The poor man] arranged for the marriage of his second daughter. He was now consumed by a firm belief … that the same evil occasion would not arise with respect to the third daughter… he waited, watchfully, night after night on guard… he would learn from that person who he was and why he was distributing gold in this way… Nicholas came to the now-customary spot… and now again threw a tied bag of gold through the same window, swiftly retreating… The girls’ father … ran after the man. When he caught up with him and recognized who it was (…Nicholas could not hide his identity), he dropped to Nicholas’s feet… with tears of joy and in the warm glow of faith. Then Nicholas… bound the man by an oath never … to relate to others … the benevolent act…” (Pg. 53-57)
He records, “The First Ecumenical Council, Nicaea A.D. 325, is possibly the most famous ever in postapostolic Christian history … It seems clear that since N’s presumed ‘floruit’ was the time when the Council was held, so exemplary a Christian must have been present, active, and influential during those discussions. This form of historical association, so common in legends, is the bane of factual historians… The lists of bishops who did attend… are fragmentary and unreliable, but N appears on no such list except as a name inserted after the thirteenth century, under the influence of the legend itself.” (Pg. 63-64)
He reports, “Pagans though they were, the Turks had no desire to destroy N’s relics. Sanctity in relics know no sects: a good corpse is efficacious, whatever his communion… [N] still lived in Myra, but precariously, for the Turks but loosely policed the land… Hence outsiders needed no exceptional incentive to plan the … stealing of N’s bones….” (Pg. 173-174)
He notes, “The saints declined in the Renaissance and Reformation, and N, who represents the quiddity, declined the most; but to make Renaissance and Reformation sufficient reason for decline would be circuitous. N’s decline MADE the Reformation, for what is an age but a totalization of its biographies?” (Pg. 283)
He observes, “But the epithets Saint and Bishop of the legend induced mild images of benevolence. Early corruptions of N’s name (Samiklaus, Sinterklaes, Klaus, der Niklas, etc.) betoken friendliness, even familiarity. Hence the corporate mind very quickly came to visualize N the pedant as two persons… The second person assumed a personality, usually black to balance N’s increasing white… At first in Holland the black boy was called Nicodemus, who rode a donkey as N rode a horse. But then came Black Peter, who travelled from Moorish Spain with the Hapsburg N and would carry bad children back to Spain in a burlap sack…” (Pg. 310)
He states, “We would expect N to be brought to America, and so he was---before the Reformation… But the colonizing of North America and the Reformation concurred in time, and the American colonists were predominantly reformers. Hence in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries N did not add to the American land or language. True, European immigrants have sporadically brought N customs in North America with their families. When they combined in ethnic groups, the customs sometimes survived as long as the group.” (Pg. 326-327)
He argues, “Without [Washington] Irving there would be no Santa Claus. [Irving’s ‘Knickerbocker History’] contains two dozen allusions to him, among them the most delightful flights of imagination in the volumes. Here is the source of all the legends about N in New Amsterdam… here is the description of Santa Claus bringing gifts, parking his horse and wagon on the roof while he slides down the chimney—all sheer fictions produced by Irving’s [imagination]. Santa Claus was a local joke with an anti-British sting until 1809; after 1809 the spritely SC spread like a plague….” (Pg. 344-345)
He recounts, “the Anglicans eschewed New Year as a pagan orgy, whereas many continentals reserved Christmas for reverence. Eventually Christmas won out… because of the most popular verses of all, composed by a staunch Anglican, Clement Moore…[his verses] were composed for his six children at Christmas 1822. The following autumn a house guest showed them to someone ... [who sent] them anonymously to [the] …. Editor of the Troy Sentinel, who printed them ... December 1823 under the foreword: “We know not to whom we are indebted for the following description of that unwearied patron of Children---that homely but delightful personification of parental kindness---Santa Claus, his costume and his equipage, as he hops about visiting the firesides of this happy land… but from whomsoever it may have come, we give thanks for it.’” (Pg. 347)
He concludes, “[In 1969] the Papal Court pronounced that N is no longer of general interest, whether alive or dead. The universal legend had conformed with universal man’s experience in its time, but man and legend grow frail when their days are numbered. There is a reality in images, a life and perhaps a death, lacking in the truth of propositions. N walked beside humanity and was ‘with it.’ In the year that the Pope pronounced N moribund, an Associated Press dispatch … read in part: ‘The pastor and parishioners of a Greek Orthodox church say an icon of Saint Nicholas is forming what appear to be tear drops. The pastor said he had assured parishioners who feared the phenomenon was a bad omen that ‘it’s just an act of God.’” (Pg. 373)
This detailed book will be “must reading” for anyone seriously studying Saint Nicholas, and the growth and development of Santa Claus.
March 16, 2018
I used this book as a source to write a paper about the life stories of St. Nicholas. It was probably my favourite book that I was able to find about him. Jones demonstrates thorough use of source work and explores the topic is a vast number of directions. In comparison to other accounts about St. Nicholas, he offered more, specific information or references, and even introduced new theories.
September 19, 2009
An extremely thorough, densely footnoted, and well cited biography of St. Nicholas of Myra. It's only fault is that it is also scholary and dry.
A caveat for devotees of the saint, don't be shocked when the author irreverently refers to St. Nicholas as "N."
A caveat for devotees of the saint, don't be shocked when the author irreverently refers to St. Nicholas as "N."
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews