An oil chandelier in the eleventh-century church of St Demetrius in Avlonari, Evia (Euboea), Greece. When Nicholas (270-343) was young, an attempt was made by the Roman authorities to force Christians into acknowledging that the various religions of Rome were of equal value to their own. The pressure was intense, and many performed such perfunctory rites as were required by law, rationalising coercion as tolerance. Like Nicholas, others stubbornly declared that “among the gods there is none like unto thee, O Lord; neither are there any works like unto thy works”, and dismissed all other gods and their fables as fair dress for foul spirits. In return they were labelled prejudiced and hateful, and often prosecuted; but the last of these crackdowns ended in 306.
Introduction
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.
DURING his time as Bishop of Myra, St Nicholas was very successful in drawing the local population away from the worship of Roman gods, and most of all from Artemis or Diana, whose well-organised and lucrative cult was centred on nearby Ephesus.* Hers was the largest and grandest of all the Roman temples in Myra too; but Nicholas not only emptied it of worshippers, he drove out the dark spirits that lurked within, and had the temple dug up by its foundations.
When he died in 343,* a steady stream of pilgrims came to Myra from all over the Mediterranean world, eager to beautify bishop Nicholas’s tomb in gratitude for delivering them from such fictitious religions.* One morning, a party of pilgrims ready to sail for Myra was joined on shore by a woman (or so she seemed)* who, lamenting that she was unable to accompany them, nonetheless begged them to take a jar of sweet-scented oil for use in the lamps of the church where Nicholas lay buried. Touched by her devotion, the sailors took the jar aboard and set sail for Myra.
* The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus (near Selçuk in what is now Turkey), some 180 miles northwest of Myra (modern Demre), was accounted one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. This Artemis (Diana to the Romans) was little like the Artemis of the ancient Greeks. She was a throwback to something much older and darker: Artemis and other Roman religious figures had been layered onto her, yet her statues still savoured more of Egypt than of Greece. Her Spring festival brought thousands to the city for weeks of processions, sports, ceremonies and matchmaking, and all year round her temple brought profit and employment. Nicholas was not the first Christian to be a thorn in their flesh: see Acts 19:23-41, where Luke describes how Paul’s preaching hit the town’s brisk trade in Artemis-themed silver charms. The Temple at Ephesus was still open in the time of St Nicholas, though it was closed down early in the fifth century. Soon almost nothing of it remained.
* The date of 343 is the traditional one. The contemporary lists of bishops attending the Council of Nicaea in 325 do not wholly tally with one another, but some include Nicholas, bishop of Myra.
* Some archaeologists today believe that the first resting place of St Nicholas was not in Myra itself (Michael says only that he was buried “in the church of that district”) but further west, on an island some seventy miles round the southern coast of what is now Turkey, and about twenty miles from his birthplace in Patara. The island was for a long time called St Nicholas Island, though it is known today as Gemiler Adası. According to this theory, Nicholas was moved back to a monastery in Myra by about 650 as Arab raids became more serious. On the same convenient grounds, St Nicholas’s remains, or at any rate most of them, were then snatched from the protesting monks by the Church of Rome in 1087, and taken to Bari in Italy, while the authorities in Constantinople were still reeling from defeat by the Seljuk Turks at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071. In 1100, the four monks who still kept the shrine watched on helplessly as Venetian crusaders plundered what remained. We may be grateful they did not suffer the fate of The Holy Table of St Sophia.
* Michael asserted that the ‘woman’ was “a wicked and mischievous demon, who had formerly dwelt in the temple of Artemis, but who had been chased out of it together with his companions by our holy and wonder-working father Nicholas”.
Précis
Shortly after St Nicholas, bishop of Myra, died in 343, Christians from across the Mediterranean made pilgrimage to the town in Asia Minor, in gratitude for Nicholas’s bold stand against Roman paganism. One lady regretted that she could not travel, but nonetheless entrusted a ship with a jar of scented oil to be burnt in the lamps around the tomb. (60 / 60 words)
Shortly after St Nicholas, bishop of Myra, died in 343, Christians from across the Mediterranean made pilgrimage to the town in Asia Minor, in gratitude for Nicholas’s bold stand against Roman paganism. One lady regretted that she could not travel, but nonetheless entrusted a ship with a jar of scented oil to be burnt in the lamps around the tomb.
Variations: 1.increase the length of this precis to exactly 65 words. 2.reduce the length of this precis to exactly 55 words. 3.introduce one of the following words into the precis: about, because, besides, may, must, or, unless, whether.
Word Games
Sevens Based on this passage
Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.
Variations: 1.expand your answer to exactly fourteen words. 2.expand your answer further, to exactly twenty-one words. 3.include one of the following words in your answer: if, but, despite, because, (al)though, unless.
Jigsaws Based on this passage
Express the ideas below in a single sentence, using different words as much as possible. Do not be satisfied with the first answer you think of; think of several, and choose the best.
Post Box : Ask Nicholas
Grok : Ask Grok
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