For Anglophone readers the study of Saint Nicholas has been dominated by Charles W. Jones's 1978 magisterial Saint Nicholas of Myra, Bari, and Manhattan: Biography of a Legend (Chicago: University of Chicago). Jones accepted as a starting point that all scholars can know about Nicholas—if he ever even existed—was a collection of legends, which Jones meticulously traced in his book.
Although scholars praised and used the book, many have felt uncomfortable with Jones's dismissal not just of any historical evidence about Nicholas but also of the possibility of such knowledge. In this new study English makes a case for limited historical knowledge about Nicholas.
English makes it clear that most surviving material is hagiographic if not legendary, but he also makes the case that not all of the material could have been created de novo and thus that there are historical kernels about the saint. But which ones?
English points out that the earliest account of Nicholas, a supposed bishop of Myra in southwest Asia Minor in the fourth century, dates to the mid-fifth century. Proclus of Constantinople (d. 446) wrote an encomium on the saint and his abundant virtues. English argues that Proclus drew from an earlier but now non-extant Eastern source. He also lists several sixth-century sources. But he does not rush to make his case. For example, he accepts that no proof exists that Nicholas attended the Council of Nicea in 325, but also points out that the lists of attendees at the council leave out names of bishops known to have attended. He also makes the overall good point of asking how Nicholas could have become so famous if he had never even existed (37).
This limited-history approach produces some very unusual and positive results. For example, Nicholas's most famous miracle was aiding an impoverished man who lacked the funds for dowries for his three daughters whom he planned to sell into prostitution. Nicholas saves the day and the young women by throwing three bags of gold on three different occasions into the man's window. When the man discovers the identity of the mysterious donor, Nicholas swears him to secrecy.
English does not defend the historicity of this particular tale but does point out that Nicholas helps the daughters to get married rather than encourage them to embrace virginity or even to enter a convent as the pious reader would have expected. English raises the question of whether Nicholas became known in his day as a defender of marriage in a century when many Christian leaders disparaged it as inferior to virginity or just plain horrific. Considering that patristic negativity toward marriage carried over into the Middle Ages, it is possible that Nicholas did have a reputation as a defender of the institution, a reputation that would have made him popular with lay people.
The account of this episode also showcases one of the best aspects of this book: a clear account of the historical circumstances presumed in the accounts of the saint. English demonstrates that fathers did have the right to sell their daughters into prostitution and that records exist of those who did so. English uses this approach equally well in several other parts of the book, which made me wish I could excerpt them for my students.
But these episodes rarely advance the case for the historicity of Nicholas, and there are times when the reader feels this information is there to help the author make a case for history when it does not exist. More problematic, there are sections of the book that do not make it clear whether the author expects the reader to accept the material as historical or is just recounting a legend as, for example, the three innocent men whom Nicholas saves (132).
A strong point of the book is the clarification between Saint Nicholas of Myra and Saint Nicholas of Sion, a tenth-century figure whose historicity is unquestioned. English cites several passages where the hagiographer got the two mixed up or simply took material from the Sion Nicholas and applied it to the one from Myra.
English wisely focuses on the early history of the Nicholas cult, but he does provide a brief account of the translation—actually the theft—of Nicholas's body from Muslim-occupied Myra to Bari in Italy, where the body—whosever it might be—still rests. Since the Saint Nicholas-Santa Claus transition has been heavily worked by many authors, English wisely gives it just a brief mention.
Students of Nicholas and of hagiography will find this book useful. They will also appreciate the author's attempt to vitiate the simplistic equation that medieval hagiography equals untruth. Whether this attempt is successful will vary from reader to reader, but this reviewer was convinced, pace Jones, that some fragments of historicity have survived the medieval elaborations and fantasies.
