Who stole Santa Claus?
In the spring of 1087, sailors from Bari in southern Italy broke into a church at Myra, on the south coast of what is now Turkey, smashed open a coffin full of liquid, and sailed home with the bones of its bishop, Nicholas. Most of the world knows him as Santa Claus.
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Sources
Sources
- the Greek account of the translation of St Nicholas (trans. McGinley and Musurillo, Fordham Medieval Sourcebook); Charles W. Jones, Saint Nicholas of Myra, Bari, and Manhattan (1978); Gerardo Cioffari and the St Nicholas Center on the Bari sailors, their parchment and their epitaphs, the Lido relics and Luigi Martino's examinations of 1953-57 and 1992; Adam C. English, The Saint Who Would Be Santa Claus (2012), and National Geographic; Encyclopaedia Britannica on the manna; the University of Oxford radiocarbon dating (2017); reporting on Turkey's 2009 request, the 2017 survey and the 2024 sarcophagus at Demre.
Pictures
- paintings by Fra Angelico, Gentile da Fabriano, Bicci di Lorenzo and Jan Steen; Carlo Rosa's ceiling in San Nicola, Bari (1660s); the Peć fresco cycle of the life of St Nicholas (1673-74); a 17th-century icon of the translation (Historic Museum, Sanok), the Zaraysk icon (National Gallery, Oslo) and other Russian icons of St Nicholas; a Russian print of the translation (1903); a 15th-century miniature of Manzikert, a 12th-century miniature of Pope Urban II and a 1232 miniature of Bohemond; Pacichelli's Bari (1703); photographs of San Nicola from 1895 (Brooklyn Museum, Goodyear Archival Collection) and 1930 (Touring Club Italiano), woodcuts and etchings of it (1834, 1888, 1898, 1901); Jacopo de' Barbari's Venice (1500), Brustolon after Canaletto, Guardi and Gabriele Bella's Lido, San Nicolò al Lido in 1904; Charles Fellows's and Charles Texier's Myra; a Matson Collection photograph of Antioch (about 1900); a photochrom of Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Saviour (1890s); Thomas Nast's Santa Claus (1863, 1881); a Sint Nicolaas print (Rijksmuseum, CC0).
Credits (via Wikimedia Commons)
- the church of St Nicholas at Myra by Dosseman (CC BY-SA 4.0), Александр Попрыгин, Sinan Şahin and Elelicht (CC BY 3.0) and Eleroja (CC BY-SA 4.0); the theatre at Myra by Rab Lawrence (CC BY 2.0); San Nicola, Bari, by Berthold Werner (CC BY-SA 3.0), Sailko (CC BY-SA 4.0, CC BY 3.0), Holger Uwe Schmitt, Palickap, Benjamin Smith, Phyrexian, Acquario51 and Ferdinando Traversa (CC BY-SA 4.0); the 1930 Touring Club Italiano photographs (CC BY-SA 4.0); Pacichelli's Bari, Biblioteca de la Universidad de Sevilla (CC BY 2.0); Gabriele Bella's painting by Didier Descouens (CC BY-SA 4.0); San Nicolò al Lido by Necrothesp (CC BY-SA 3.0); Damaskenos's Council of Nicaea by Rigorius (CC BY-SA 4.0); St Martha Catholic Church, Morton Grove, by Nick Number (CC BY 4.0); the St Nicholas reliquary in Rosenheim by Rollroboter (CC BY-SA 4.0); icons of St Nicholas by Vyacheslav Kirillin (CC BY-SA 4.0), Ko Oleg (CC BY-SA 3.0) and Zairon (CC BY 4.0), and the Stockholm icon (CC BY-SA 3.0).