THE STORY OF ST. NICHOLAS

Nicholas was born around AD270 at Patara in what is now southern Turkey, at a time when the entire Mediterranean was under Roman rule. To be caught at Christian worship risked death and as if the risks of an illegal religion were not enough, he was orphaned at an early age by the plague. The one advantage he did possess was inherited wealth, which he pledged to spend for the benefit of others.

The favourite story of his generosity led to the idea of Santa Claus but also to the traditional Christmas orange and the three-ball symbol of the pawnbroker's shop.

Once upon a time, it goes, a man had three daughters. So poor was he that he could not afford their marriage dowries; so poor, indeed, that prostitution seemed to be the girls' only career option, and their recruitment could not be long delayed. But a miracle occurred. On each of three consecutive nights, a bag of gold sailed in through the poor man's window, a dowry for each of his daughters. On the third night, anxious to learn the identity of his benefactor, the father lay in wait. The next day, in his gratitude, he did not hesitate to let the town know of Nicholas's generosity. In paintings, the saint is traditionally identified by these same three bags, represented as golden balls held in his hand, a device later adopted by the pawnbroking trade as an emblem of their own. In common with sailors, merchants, children and Russia, they also adopted him as their patron saint.

Nicholas later moved from Patara to nearby Myra, where, by popular demand, he was made bishop and continued to bestow gifts upon the poor. By some accounts he saved the town from starvation and earned a reputation as a miracle-worker. This enhanced his popularity further, and popularity gave him power. In AD306, followers of Christ began to emerge from the shadow of persecution when Constantine I became Rome's first Christian emperor, a shadow finally removed by the Edict of Milan in AD313. A further act of Nicholas's Christian charity led him to another famous adventure when he heard that three innocent men were about to be beheaded. He raced across town and dashed the executioner's sword to the ground, even as it was being raised to strike.

He is also credited with bringing back to life three children who had been salted down for an innkeeper's larder, and resurrecting the daughter of his landlady at Myra, who had fallen into the fire and been burnt to ash while her mother attended the bishop's enthronement. Nicholas is reckoned to have died in the early or mid-340s, when he was buried inside the Orthodox church at Myra. Soon afterwards he was declared a saint.

Possession of Nicholas's relics secured Myra commercially and made it the envy of its rivals. You could say that saints' relics were the earliest tourist attractions, whose possessors competed for business. In Nicholas's case there was added value in an oily goo apparently exuding from his bones, which the church sold as "manna" for curing disease. A healthy export trade spread the saint's name from country to country around the Mediterranean and turned him into an international cult. The "sweet scent" of the oil encouraged perfumiers also to claim him as their patron.  

Belief in the power of relics grew over the centuries into a kind of medieval mania. The relics of the saints were important because they encouraged believers to keep going in the Christian life and hence eventually to reach this heaven. So the past, physical memories and the bodies of saints were seen as an aid to the faith which eventually will bring you to heaven.

In the meantime, possession of a high-value saint was the quickest passport to a thriving local economy, and a subject of unholy envy. In Italy, for example, Venice grew fat on the relics of St Mark, while towns like Bari had little to offer their visitors but bread and olives. Is it any wonder that covetous eyes were turned towards Turkey?

In early May 1087, a group of 63 Italian mercenaries and sailors slipped into the Byzantine harbour town of Myra in southern Turkey, smashed their way into a shrine and made off with the bones of Nicholas, the 4th-century Orthodox saint whose paternalistic present-giving later metamorphosed into the modern-day image of Santa Claus. The thieves were from Bari, where they arrived with their trophy on May 6, the date still celebrated there as the feast of St Nicholas. After the theft of Nicholas's bones 750 years after his death, the perceived power of holy relics intensified from the simply supernatural to the frankly miraculous.  

The anniversary of his death, December 6, had long been celebrated across Europe as a feast day. It was some innocent French nuns in the 12th century who were the catalysts in a process that, centuries later, would put a stocking at the end of every child's bed. Inspired by Nicholas's compassion for the dowryless girls, on St Nicholas Eve they began to deliver stockings packed with nuts, oranges and other fruit to the homes of the poor. The idea caught on, leapt over national boundaries and soon became a Europe-wide tradition. By the 16th century, Nicholas's popularity led to the St Nicholas Day celebrations being moved to festival of Christmas and the legend was developed during the 19^thC in the United States that has led to the modern day Santa Claus.

In the 1950s repairs to the crypt in Bari's Basilica di San Nicola meant that Nicholas's bones had to be moved temporarily out of the workmen's way. This was, and still remains, the only time the body has been disturbed since it was stolen and brought to Bari 900 years ago, though a pinhole camera was inserted into the tomb in the mid-1990s to make a visual check on the bones condition. The physical examination 50 years ago showed them to be badly degraded, and the insertion into the tomb of a pinhole camera in 1995 confirmed that they were deteriorating rapidly. As so often throughout this story, the problem is shot through with irony. If the "manna" has contributed to the saint's profitability, then it might also be accelerating his decay. The tomb is below sea level; conditions inside it are wet, and there are suspicions that the main ingredient of the "manna" - which is still collected annually, and diluted for sale to pilgrims — is seawater.