Saint Nicholas in Compostela

Today, December 6, is the feast of Saint Nicholas. After the removal of his relics from Myra to Bari in 1087, his cult became more popular than before as it entered into the geographical ambit of the Latin Church, and thereby became more accessible to Latin Christian pilgrims. I do not yet know of any monographs that explore his cult in a longue durée perspective, and I only have a piecemeal overview of how his cult was received, what impact it made, and where the various parts of his iconography were embraced. In art, there were particularly three aspects that could be employed in the fashioning of statues or paintings, namely seafaring, a golden coin (which he gave to poor women in order to enable them to marry well), and his resurrection of three children that had been killed and placed in a tub. These last two episodes are rooted in his legend, whereas the seafaring might have had more to do with the voyage through which his relics were taken to Bari. Consequently, while several guilds came to embrace Saint Nicholas from the twelfth century onwards, depictions of him in art often appear to draw on his legend (although I should emphasise that this suggestion might be incorrect, and I encourage the reader to correct me if I am wrong).  

Two days ago, I was reminded of the miracle of the tub, since I was attending a guided tour of the cathedral museum of Santiago de Compostela. Among the many treasures of medieval art that have been made and used in the liturgical space of the cathedral since at least the twelfth century, is a fifteenth-century statue that is badly damaged yet completely recognisable thanks to the surviving iconographic feature, namely the tub. The statue shows Nicholas carrying the tub, while one of the three murdered boys climbs out of it. The boy is rendered in diminutive stature, perhaps both to emphasise his tender age, but also the greatness of Saint Nicholas. As this iconography was both widespread and common, it is likely that it has contributed to the metamorphosis of Nicholas towards the modern Santa Claus. Traditionally, the gift of golden coins is more directly linked with this trajectory, but as that story pertains to young girls rather than children more generally, it is tempting to suggest that both these episodes from Nicholas' legend have played their important parts in the eventual making of Santa Claus. 

One of the resuscitated children climbing up form the tub