St Nicholas the Wet
Two frantic parents implore St Nicholas’s help in rescuing their baby boy.
1091
Introduction
This post is number 7 in the series Miracles of Nicholas
St Nicholas (d. 330), Bishop of Myra in Asia Minor, is known as the patron of those at sea. He is not normally given the soubriquet ‘the wet’: that belongs strictly to an icon of St Nicholas, sadly lost during the Second World War, associated with a remarkable miracle from the late 11th century.
IN the year 1091, a man took his wife and their baby son from Kiev to Vyshgorod a few miles up the River Dnieper for the feast of St Boris and St Gleb on July 24th.*
On the return journey, the little boy’s mother dozed off in the boat, and her child fell into the river. After a long but fruitless search, the desolate parents went home praying fervently to St Nicholas.
Next morning, the sacristan of the Cathedral of Holy Wisdom in Kiev was startled by the sound of a baby crying inside the church. The door-wardens, as much at a loss as he was, unlocked the great doors and tracked the cries to their source. There, at the foot of an icon of St Nicholas, they found a baby boy, bawling lustily, and sopping wet.
Inquiries soon brought our man and his wife running to the cathedral, to claim the tiny, dripping bundle plucked by St Nicholas from the swift river of Kiev.
Acknowledgements to Ten Miracle-Working Icons of St Nicholas, on the ‘Icon Reader’ blog.
Boris and Gleb were the favourite sons of Vladimir the Great, the Grand Prince of Kiev who had brought Christianity to Russia in 987. Kiev’s ruler in 1091, Vsevolod, was their nephew. The two brothers were martyred in 1015, and the cathedral in Vyshgorod was consecrated to them.