Nicholas of Myra
This piece was written exclusively for Socrates+ by Blaine Eldredge.
In the sixth century a renowned Byzantine scholar named Theodore the Lector included a name in a catalogue of attendees at the Council of Nicea: Nicholas, Bishop of Myra.
The presence of that name on Theodore’s list represents something of a riddle, because its owner was never mentioned by the great recorders of Nicea itself nor indeed, by any ancient historian.
Even so, many scholars agree with Theodore: Nicolas was there.
And so here is the riddle: why would a bishop who attended early Christianity’s defining event fade from the records, and who was he anyway?
The second part is easily answered: His name was Nicholas; he was the bishop of Myra; he is the patron saint of sailors, brewers, merchants, repentant thieves, archers, toymakers and especially children; he is the reality from which the legends of Santa Claus come.
The first part is harder; its answer may lie in the remarkable events of the life of Saint Nicholas.
Nicholas was the only son of noble parents. He was born in Patara, on the southern coast of modern-day Turkey, in 270 AD. He grew up in a church that was planted by Paul the Apostle (Acts 21:1). At a young age, he entered the priesthood. When his parents died they left Nicholas considerable wealth and at that point his unusual character became apparent.
Nicholas was generous in the extreme. According to the legends, Nicholas once overheard a neighbor explain to his daughters, between sobs, that they were bankrupt. There were, therefore, no marriages to be arranged. In all likelihood their futures lay in the brothel. Of course, Nicholas would have none of that. On three occasions the young priest secreted a bag of gold through an upper window to serve as a dowry. The women were married; the family was saved. “Nicholas,” wrote Michael the Archimandrite, “did not cease to continually hand over his abundance — to store it up in the secure treasure-houses of heaven.”
His reputation must have been sterling, because Nicholas was still a young man when the Church made him the Bishop of Myra.
He must have had an iron spine, too, because Nicholas ascended just in time to face the last and greatest of the Roman tribulations.
In 303 AD Rome’s four emperors revoked the legal standing of Christians across the empire. Churches were burned, sacred texts were destroyed, and many Christians were tortured and killed. Nicholas was thrown into prison. In all likelihood, he was tortured. In all likelihood, he spent seven years waiting for the executioner’s knock.
No reliable account describes Nicolas’s time in prison. But something must have happened in that cell because when Nicholas emerged he was a changed man. His generosity remained. But alongside that generosity there rose a zeal that was to define the rest of his life.
During the Diocletian persecution Rome’s emperors had restored the pagan cults; temples rose, idolatry spread, and the old sacrifices resumed. When Nicholas returned to Myra, he challenged those institutions directly. “Now when he discovered that many of the shrines of the idols still existed and that the great broods of demons dwelt therein and were disturbing some of the citizens of Myra,” wrote Simeon the Metaphrast, “incensed in mind he set out with force and holy zeal to rage through the whole infested region. Wherever he found such a shrine, he tore it down, reducing it to dust. In this way he drove the mass of demons away and brought about tranquility for the folk to enjoy.”
That was not the whole of it. Miracles displaying the Holy Spirit’s power multiplied. In one story, Nicholas rescued three falsely condemned men from death, seizing the sword from the executioner’s hand. In another, he warned emperor Constantine in a dream. In another, he made like Christ and quieted a storm.
Of course, those stories are legends and legends are an art unto themselves. Legends take the raw data of history and boil it down; the elements that remain are arranged into highly instructive narrative frames. Legends teach; they do not recite.
Who do we see in those stories? We see a generous leader willing to suffer. We see a man transformed by the Holy Spirit. We see undiluted devotion to Jesus of Nazareth.
All of those qualities are on display is what is of all the actions remembered from the life of Saint Nicholas the most controversial by far.
In 325 AD Constantine called the Council of Nicea; he hoped to resolve several issues of church governance and one theological quandary: was Jesus fully God, or not? To affirm Christ’s full divinity the great scholar Athanasius attended; to argue against it Arius the heresiarch came.
Unfortunately for Athanasius, Arius could speak. He was an outstanding rhetorician. In place of mystery he offered plain logic; in place of paradox he supplied simple answers. At one point, the council seemed almost ready to rule with Arius. The atmosphere was charged, and the attendees were silent.
At that moment an old bishop rose. His hair and beard were very white. His face was wrinkled. But his eyes flashed. It was Nicholas.
Coming forward, he stood before Arius. Appraising the dissenter, he was still. Then without hesitation Nicholas struck Arius across the face and a shout of dismay filled the room.
That slap shook that council. Nicholas was suspended; the council was delayed; in the hallways, bishops conveyed their distress. Even so, Nicolas’s slap was like the breaking of a spell. The defenders of Christ’s divinity regrouped; they crafted language to convey a mystery beyond all words and in the end they prevailed. They properly articulated God’s love, which is so great He can take unto himself a fully human nature without diminishing His divinity a hair.
After the council Nicholas was reinstated as bishop, though his name was not included in the list of attendees at the time. He went home, served well, and died in 343 AD. Within a century, many bishops, popes, and chapels had taken the name “Nicholas.”
It is telling that, given the passage of time, only one of Nicholas’s many qualities survives in the popular imagination. Charity—a generosity so great it can only come from God. In Medieval Europe clergy left anonymous gifts for the poor on December 6, Saint Nicholas’s day. That tradition grew until Nicholas of Myra was associated with the Feast of the Nativity itself, with Christmas.
And perhaps that is fitting. Nicholas was ready to sacrifice his reputation, his role, even his place in history to defend Christ’s full humanity and full divinity. It is proper, then, that he should be associated with the Incarnation, where salvation Himself, a fully God and fully human Messiah, was first introduced to the world.
