Nicholas used his inheritance to help three vulnerable girls escape a life of exploitation.
St Nicholas (d. 330) came from Patara in Lycia, now in south east Turkey. The following story is the basis of the ‘Santa Claus’ legend, but there is nothing whatever improbable about it; on the contrary, it fits perfectly with the society and values of pagan Rome at the time.
After surviving a terrible storm, a crew-member on St Nicholas’s ship met with a tragic accident.
St Nicholas (d. 343), who became Bishop of Myra in Asia Minor, is known as the patron of seamen, and it is a pity that a sea-faring nation such as Britain should have largely forgotten about him. Here is one of many miracles attributed to him.
The saintly Bishop helped the captain of a merchant ship to cut through the red tape, and save his town from starvation.
St Nicholas (d. 343) was Bishop of Myra, a town in the Roman Province of Lycia, on the southwest coast of Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey). According to his 9th-century biographer, Michael, one miracle in particular gained him a reputation in the Imperial capital itself.
Three highly decorated officers in the Roman Army fall victim to a campaign to discredit them.
From 331, the Praetorian Prefect of the East was Ablabius, making him the most important man in the eastern Roman Empire after the Emperor himself. Originally a pagan from Crete, he became a Christian and was a close confidant of Emperor Constantine. Later, under Constantius, he lost his place and his life for supporting the Orthodox party in the Arian crisis.
Trouble comes to the town of Myra when Imperial soldiers are despatched to put down a revolt.
In February 313 the new Roman Emperor, Constantine, and Licinius his junior in the Balkans, decreed religious liberty across the Empire. With astonishing speed, formerly persecuted Christian bishops gained public respect, and if this tale is anything to judge by, deservedly so.
The Bishop of Myra’s ceaseless toil to put an end to the worship of Artemis made him some dangerous enemies.
By the 320s, Christians in the Roman Empire were no longer discriminated against, but that did not mean life was easy. As this story shows, the warm-hearted yet combative Bishop of Myra (now Demre in Turkey) made himself some dangerous enemies by continuing to insist that there was one God and one Truth, and that the popular and profitable religions of Rome were the delusions of a dark power.