#the council of nicaea is the one where santa claus went around punching heretics

[tanadrin]

@maaruin

Hinduism is probably a good example for how Roman-Platonist Monotheism would look like without the Jewish origin of Christianity: the theology is monotheist but to an outside observer the rituals look like they are honoring various gods, because polytheist practices have been re-interpreted in a monotheist way. Christianity is unusual not in its monotheist beliefs, but in that it required its followers to stop performing the traditional (polytheist) rituals.

I want to expand on this bc it touches something else McClellan mentions--how being the organized faith of the Empire really changed Christianity, or at least Nicene Christianity. Before it became institutionalized, there was a lot of room in early Christianity for different, contradictory Christologies (like Arianism, which was basically mainstream at one point); it's only with the Council of Nicaea that a compromise form of all these Christologies has to be hammered out (because the institutional church needs dogmatic harmony), and the boundaries of orthodox theology have to be policed--and can be, eventually with the full backing of state power. Before the most you could do was expel members of your church who disagreed with you, maybe refuse association with other churches whose theology differed too much. Once you have state backing you can use that authority to exclude heretics; and, later, once you are the official religion of the Empire, you can have heretics punished by the state.

I think this harsh ideological boundary maintenance really becomes a part of every state-backed church, but of course it's the Roman one that is by far the most powerful and most widespread; and even post-Great Schism and the fall of the western empire, the need for Catholic rulers to be in good with the Pope, and thus to enforce Christian orthodoxy within their territory, has the same boundary-maintenance effect.

McClellan contends that without this forced institutional compromise--which is what the Trinity is; "three persons with one substance" and stuff like "100% divine and 100% human" is not just "a mystery," it's functionally a nonsensical contradiction, and the reason why so many attempts to explain the Trinity fall into heresies like modalism or partialism is because the Trinity is wording-by-committee aimed at producing phraseology that most people at this one ecumenical council could tolerate, even if they didn't like it.

And by "most people" here we mean a very particular kind of educated Greco-Roman elite; a lot of early theology is shaped by what is conceptually acceptable to these guys, steeped in stuff like Neo-Platonism, and maybe doesn't have all that much to do with the peasant religion version of Christianity elsewhere (indeed, get your average theologically-untrained Christian of any era to try to explain something like the Trinity and I guarantee ninety-nine times out of ten they will produce an explanation that is technically a heresy).

All of which is to say I agree; a counterfactual "monotheistic" late-antiquity religion in a world without Christianity, but with the same Greco-Roman influences, would look very much like Hinduism; it would have a big split between, like, the everyday version of the religion and the theologically elucidated elite version of the religion; and I think it's the latter that would resemble Nicene Christianity on a lot of points. But then, folk Christianity often is very different from "orthodox" Nicene Christianity in the world we do inhabit, also.

[mask131]

Cold winter: Saint Nicholas

SAINT NICHOLAS

Category: Christianity / European folklore

Saint Nicholas’ Day is the second biggest December holiday in Europe after Christmas, and everybody knows how Saint Nicholas was “Santa Claus before Santa Claus”. But it is a much more complex and fascinating world to explore than you might think… Because through Saint Nicholas, three different “layers” of identities pile up on each other.

I) The historical Saint Nicholas

Because some people seem to forget that Saint Nicholas was a real, historical figure. He was Saint Nicholas of Myra, also known as Nicholas of Bari, a Greek Christian bishop of the city of Myra, in what used to be Asia Minor (now Demre, in Turkey) under the Roman Empire. We don’t know much about his historical life but we could piece up clues and elements together.

Tradition says he was born in 270 and died in 343, at 73 years old. He was born in the city of Patara (Asia Minor) from a wealthy family of Greek Christians – some accounts claim that if he became priest, it was because his uncle was already a bishop (of the city of Myra) and recognized the “call of the Christ” in his nephew, so ordained him himself.

After the death of his parents and a travel to the Holy Land (a pilgrimage passing by Egypt and Palestine), Nicholas returned to Myra: his uncle had died, leaving the position of bishop to another, but this second bishop also died – and the priests of the city decided that they would make bishop the first priest that would walk through the city doors. It was good old Nicholas, who thus inherited by luck (as the legend claims) his uncle’s position. Under the rule of the emperor Diocletian and the latter’s heavy persecution of Christians, Nicholas was imprisoned and tortured – but he was released by order of emperor Constantine the Great. In 325, Nicholas attended the First Council of Nicaea (which was a big reunion of all the Christian bishops at the time) where he opposed Arianism, defended Trinitarianism, and signed the Nicene Creed (a lot of Christian technical stuff you can look on your own if you are curious). Though note that there is a big debate concerning whether Nicholas truly participated to the Council or not. Now, a thousand years AFTER the Council, around the 14th century, a legend arose concerning his time there: story told that he lost his temper there and slapped a supporter of Arianism in the face, which led to emperor Constantine taking away Nicholas’ miter and pallium (staff and hat). As time went by this anecdote was embellished so that Saint Nicholas actually punched Arius himself (the leader of Arianism, considered today as an heretic) in the face – and that while he was imprisoned, Jesus and the Virgin Mary appeared to him in his cell and set him free from his chains.

  Now, the thing with the life of saints is that it is always hard to split historical facts from attributed legends – and with Saint Nicholas it is especially hard as, while we have little historical info (just enough to know he truly existed), we have a TON of miracles stories and legendary facts. To the point that one of Saint Nicholas’ official nicknames is “Nicholas the Wonderworker” due to the enormous amount of miracles attributed to him. So I’m going to put a few things there mixed:

After the death of his parents but before his trip to the Holy Land, Saint Nicholas was said to have distributed a lot of his personal and family wealth to the poor. One of his most famous “charity stories” explains how one day he met a faithful Christian man who was once rich but had lost all of his wealth through plotting and the jealousy of others, and thus he could not afford the dowries of his three daughters anymore – which meant that at best they would be unmarried, at worst they would become prostitutes. When Nicholas heard the despair of the girls, he decided to help – and either due to being too modest at the time (he was just an unknown priest) or to avoid the humiliation tied to public charity, he went near their house each night and threw into it a purse filled with gold. With the first bag he received the man arranged a marriage for his eldest daughter, and with a second the same for his second daughter ; but the father stayed awake two whole nights to finally spy who was throwing the bags – and upon giving its third bag, Nicholas was caught. The father thanked him a lot, and Nicholas begged him to not tell anyone about these secret gifts.

It is said that when he went to the Holy Land, during his boat trip there was a huge storm, which nearly destroyed the ship: but Saint Nicholas used his divine powers to calm down the waves and stop the storm. This legend explains why Saint Nicholas is considered today the patrons of sailors and travelers.

A third legend claims that soon after becoming bishop of Myrna he saved three innocent men from being executed by order of a local governor: he threw the sword of the executioner to the ground, cast away the chains, and chastised with anger the juror which had condemned them, revealing that he had taken a bribe. Another variation of this legend claims that a consul had taken a bribe to put to death three faithful generals, and saint Nicholas appeared to both the corrupt consul AND Emperor Constantine in their dreams, to inform Constantine of the truth of the situation, and to threaten the consul with the menace of Hell.  (Later these two versions were woven together into a more complex story).

A fourth legend speaks of how during a great famine upon Myra, between 311 and 312, a ship stopped at the city’s port, filled with wheat for the Emperor in his capital of Constantinople. Nicholas asked the sailors to offer a portion of their cargo to the hungry city – they refused at first, out of fear the emperor would punish them, but the Saint promised they would not suffer any consequences for their actions. Now, to check if the cargo was still intact the people of Constantinople had to weigh it, and thanks to Nicholas’ miracle powers, despite the cargo being less than originally planned, it apparently still weighed the same!

As for the final and most well-known of the stories: in another great famine, an evil butcher lured three children into his home, then promptly killed them and kept their bodies with his meat as if they were animals, “pickling” them in a barrel full of brine and planning to sell them as if it was pig meat. Nicholas, who was around at the time taking care of the hungry people, stopped by the butcher’s house and immediately saw through his lies: with a sign of the cross, he resurrected the corpses of the dead children. It was a VERY popular legend across the Middle-Ages, to the point that people think this story is the reason Saint Nicholas is considered today to be the patron of children.

These are just his most famous legends however – there are many more deeds given to him (including one memorable story where he chopped down a tree possessed by a demon).

  II) The worship of Saint Nicholas

Now, every Christian saint has a specialty, specific domains over which they are the most active and powerful, and Nicholas has a lot of “patronage”. His most important one in Greece and Italy is his patronage of fishermen and sailors, protectors of ships and boats, patron saint of harbor-cities. It is to the point that in Christian Greek folklore he is known as “The Lord of the Sea” and many point out that he basically replaced/fused with Poseidon from Ancient Greece. In the Eastern Orthodox Church, he is so important that he is put at the same level as the Apostles, and together they are celebrated every Thursday. Thanks to his “secret gift-giving”, Nicholas is also recognized as the patron saint of unmarried people, and the butcher episode made him the saint of all children. Additional functions also made him the patron saint of students, archers, merchants, repentant thieves, brewers and pawnbrokers.

Saint Nicholas was apparently first buried in a church at the highest point of the Turkish island of Gemine, which was known in Antiquity as “Saint Nicholas’ Island”, and is known today in Turkish as “The Island of Boats” (again, highlighting Nicholas’ link to boats). But in the middle of the seventh century, due to attacks by Arab boats, the remains of Nicholas were moved by Christians to the city of Myra. In Myra, legend said that each year the saint’s relics produced a clear liquid that smelled of rose water and had miraculous properties. When the Byzantine Empire lost control of most of Asia minor to the Turks (after the battle of Manzikert, 1071) and the Catholic Church of the West declared a schism with the Greek Church that was the official one of the Byzantine Empire, Italian sailors took advantage of the politico-religious confusion to steal away a part of Saint Nicholas remains from Myra – they brought back the remains to the city of Bari in Italy in 1087, and two years later Pope Urban II opened up a new church, the Basilica di San Nicola, to place himself the holy relics in it. It happened on a 9th of May and since then the “translation”/arrival of the Saint’s relics is still celebrated (despite this being a “holy robbery” by Catholics onto the Orthodox). Even today the Turks and the Orthodox Christian claim it was a theft, where Bari Catholics claim it was a rescue mission.

In 1096 the Norman and Frankish soldiers preparing themselves for the First Crusade stopped at Bari to worship Saint Nicholas as the patron of travelers and seafarers – it is believed that it was this worship by the Crusaders that caused a surge in popularity of Saint Nicholas, who previously wasn’t very well-known or well-liked in Europe, a bit too foreign for people’s taste. The relics of Bari apparently continued to produce the same perfumed clear liquid they did in Myra, called “myrrh” or “manna”. It was collected and sent all around the world – still today at the Basilica the sacred “manna/myrrh” is collected on every feast day of Saint Nicholas, as it leaks from his sarcophagus.

Now the Italian sailors had actually only taken the “big” and “main” bones of Saint Nicholas, leaving at Myra all the “little” bones: but soon, the Italian city of Venice decided they needed to have for themselves these leftover bones. So in 1100, as Venetian ships passed by Myra with a bishop named Henri onboard, they took the leftover Saint Nicholas bones (as well as other bones of other Myra bishops) and brought them back to Venice to place them in the local church dedicated to Saint Nicholas: San Nicolo al Lido. Now, as with every Christian relics, there was a huge trade and market as everybody wanted a piece of the saint and the corpse was completely broken down. We know that a Norman knight, William Pantulf, managed to obtain one tooth and two sarcophagus fragments, and brought them back to his town of Noron in Normandy ; we know that a count of Flanders obtained several bones from the duke of Apulia (the region of Bari) that he placed in the abbey of Watten ; and the thing is that Bari, to promote the cult of Saint Nicholas, actually gave away – not kidding there – “bone samples” of Saint Nicholas. Originally all these “bone samples” were kept in Constantinople, but after its sack during the Fourth Crusade the samples were scattered throughout Europe.

Two other important point I can talk about are: 1) Port. A French city near Nancy.  In 1101 saint Nicholas appeared to a French man who was visiting Bari, and told him he needed to take one of his bones back to his hometown of Port. The man took a bone finger and did so. Port became a BIG center of devotion for Saint Nicholas in Western Europe, to the point a church was built around the finger in the fifteen century, the Basilique Saint-Nicolas, and the town itself was renamed “Saint Nicolas de Port”. 1) San Nicola in Carcere. This Roman church is literally named Saint Nicholas in Chains, because it hosts a hand that belonged to Saint Nicholas and was built over what used to be a former municipal prison. Legend then arose that Saint Nicholas, during the Christian Persecution, had been held prisoner in this very prison before it became a church: as a result, a specific cult formed itself there, where mothers would come and pray for their jailed sons to be released, and where repentant criminals would leave offerings to the saint. This is how in Rome Saint Nicholas became the patron saint of prisoners, and of those falsely accused.

What else to say? Oh yes, some iconography. Saint Nicholas always appears in a bishop outfit (Orthodox or Catholic depending on which side of the world you’re on), and as an old man with a big, long white beard and a balding head – his depictions from Bari insists on him having a dark skin tone, to emphasize his foreign origin (after all he was what we would consider Greco-Turkish) but you have a lot of “whitewashed” versions around the world (because as the saint got adopted by "whiter" countries like France, Germany, the Netherlands, he also got represented with the skin tone of the locals to make it clear it was "our" saint and not some foreign idol). As a patron of mariners he is often depicted on a boat or rescuing sailors who are drowning ; as a saint patron of children he is often depicted helping the freshly-resurrected children climb out of the barrel the butcher had placed themselves in ; and in memory of his episode with the three poor daughters he is often shown holding three coins, three purses or three balls of gold. In an ironic twist, in the medieval “Low-Countries” (today’s Netherlands), due to the belief that Saint Nicholas lived in Spain, the three balls of gold were reinterpreted as… three oranges. Which is notably why oranges became a “Christmas fruit” back in Northern Europe – but that’s a different story.

III) Saint Nicholas: the holiday

And now we reach our December tradition… Saint Nicholas Day! Celebrated on the 5th or 6th of December if you are Catholic, 19th if you are Orthodox. A day of the Christmas season where Sant Nicholas, the “gift-giver”, comes to reward good children with lovely toys!

In the French regions celebrating him (which are mostly Northern and Eastern France), he arrives on the 6th of December with his little donkey, and baskets filled with biscuits, sweets and gifts that he offers to children, visiting them in their home or in nursery schools. In the Netherlands, Saint Nicholas arrives on the 5th of December or on the morning of the 6th (well technically he arrives on a steamboat to the country mid-November but he is only active at the beginning of December), with his horse: children put their shoes in front of their chimneys for Saint Nicholas (or Sinterklaas as he is known in Dutch) to give gifts ; and alongside they leave a carrot or some hay for his horse – usually, Sinterklaas will leave a big bag filled with toys either in front of the house or into the living room, and bang on the door or windows to warn them of the delivery. In Slovenia, Croatia, Hungary, Ukraine or Romania, children leave their boots, all cleaned, by the windowsill on the St Nicholas Eve so that Nikolaus/Miklavz as he is known there, would leave them candies and gifts. In Northern Germany children put a special boot outside of their house on the evening of the 5th, the “Nikolaus Boot”, which will be filled with sweets and gifts during the night if the children were good, polite and helpful, and if not they will have a stick in the boot (for their parents to beat them with). He can also visit the children at their school, directly asking them if they were good or not ; he usually rides in a grandiose way through town on his horse. He is also present in Switzerland as “Samichlaus”.

Mind you, despite these strong traditions of Saint Nicholas appearing himself as a gift-giver to the children on his feast day, they aren’t unanimously celebrated throughout Europe. Every European country celebrates in a form or another Saint Nicholas’ Day, yes, but in a lot of other countries it is just a more “regular” Saint celebration with no visit from the folkloric figure: In Bari for example they celebrated the saint between the 7th and 9th of May, with its relics being carried on boat during the 8th for everyone to admire, while the 6th of December is rather the “Rito delle nubile”, a special morning Mass very early in the morning where unmarried women can go to wish for a husband, and to make their wish come true they need to turn around a column seven times. In Greece, his feast day is rather a celebration occurring on all ships and boats, as he is there mostly known as the “saint of sailors and fishermen”, not so much as a gift-giver, and thus his festivities are limited to ports ; and in Bulgaria, even though the 6th of December is a time for people to gather their neighbors, families and colleagues around one big fish meal, it is not a gift-giving day either.

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Of course, something that needs to be talked about, in the “gift-giving tradition”, is how Saint Nicholas usually appears with what is considered a “dark companion” or “threatening servant”, a figure that embodies the punishment where Saint Nicholas is the gift, an entity that “rewards” naughty and disobedient children while Nicholas takes care of the good ones.

I already talked of Krampus, who manifests himself (or themselves as there could be several krampuses) in South Tyrol, Udine, Austria, Bavaria ; and of the Père Fouettard in France and Belgium. But I can also mention Schmutzli in Switzerland, Knecht Ruprecht in Poland, Zwarte Piet in the Netherlands… But more interestingly, in other traditions Saint Nicholas is also accompanied by an angel, who assists him in his duty – and often the angel and the demon, the kind supernatural child and the wicked man-punishers, form a duo who actually do all the gift-giving/punishment-giving job while Saint Nicholas oversees it all: the “angel assistant” notably appears in Czechia, Slovakia, Poland, Alsace or Slovenia.