Beating St Nicholas
This December – more than ever before – many families discuss financial issues. Christmas is an expensive event, after all, but pandemics brought a global crisis and a huge inflation. So, we all worry about the money.
As it happens, St. Nicholas – a figure that evolved into Santa Claus – was very much involved in money-related affairs in his medieval legends.
I have written about St Nicholas earlier (post available HERE), summing up the most popular episodes of his legend. His attribute is three balls of gold, because he anonymously dropped gold in the middle of the night through the window of three poor girls, providing them with dowry, so they all could marry. I also wrote about how St Nicholas was a marvellous child: he stood up by himself in his bath right after he was born, and he decided to keep fast on Wednesdays and Fridays already as a newborn.
Today I decided to write more about the legend of St Nicholas; this time it is going to be about financial issues. As it happens, in the medieval legends whenever it is about the money, a Jew must appear. For example, a Jew beating St Nicholas: just as in the panel dating back to the first half of the 16th century, today in the Czartoryski Collection (the National Museum in Cracow):
Panel from the altar from the church in Rzepiennik Biskupi; the National Museum in Cracow; https://zbiory.mnk.pl/pl/wyniki-wyszukiwania/katalog/181145
The most popular source for the pictorial cycles dedicated to St Nicholas was the 13th-century “Golden Legend” by Jacopo de Voragine; we can read there about certain adventures of Jews. Apparently, one wealthy Jew, having heard about St Nicholas’ prowess when it came to money, placed his image in his home. Every time he left the house, he would tell St. Nicholas: take care of my belongings, because if you don’t, I’ll beat you.
(By the way: what a weird idea! A Jew, who did not believe in Christian saints, decided to have an image of St Nicholas, but instead of praying to him, he threatened him.)
Well, of course a burglary took place. The thieves stole everything except for the image of St Nicholas. The Jew did as he said before: he flogged the image.
Interestingly, the legend does not specify what kind of image it was: a picture or a sculpture. In most depictions of that story we may see the Jew beating a statue of St Nicholas, but for example the 13th-century ceiling paintings in St. Maria Lyskirchen church in Cologne depict the Jew tormenting something that rather resembles a picture. To the left we see the thieves plundering the Jew’s house, and to the right – punishing of the image of St Nicholas:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:St_maria_in_lyskirchen_fresken_noerdl_seitenkapelle.jpg
And what happened later? Well, while the thieves were sharing what they stole, suddenly they had a vision: heavily beaten St Nicholas appeared to them, and told them that it was their fault that he got flogged. He also said they would be hanged for theft.
The thieves were pious people, after all; they got scared by this vision, and so they returned all the stolen goods to the Jew. And the Jew decided to convert to Christianity.
The other story is even weirder; in that one the Jew is not a villain in any way. A rich Jew lent money to a man, who swore by the altar of St Nicholas that he would pay back as soon as possible, and that was the only guarantee given for the loan. Then it turned out that the borrower was not going to give the money back, so the lender sued him. The borrower came to the court with a staff, which he handed the Jew to hold. Then he swore that he gave back all the money, and even more than required. Subsequently, the borrower took his staff back from the lender and walked away.
It is difficult to say why exactly the borrower was found innocent; was it just enough that he swore in the court, or did everyone assumed he must had been right, as no thunder struck him? Anyway, as he did swear, and nothing bad happened, he was free to go. But he used a trick – the staff was in fact hollow and filled with coins. Thus, theoretically, if only for a moment, he did give the money back to the lender, handing him that staff.
But the justice triumphed in the end; the deceitful borrower died at the crossroads, being hit by a running cart. The staff was broken and the coins fell out of it. The Jew, called up to the scene, was able to collect his loan. And that could be the end of this story – but for some unfathomable reason the Jew refused to take the money. He said he wants to see the borrower resurrected by the power of St Nicholas first. And that is what happened – of course then the Jew decided to baptise.
The compilation of two aforementioned legends appeared in two 13th-century stained glass windows in Chartres Cathedral – the story about the deceitful borrower was juxtaposed there with an image of the Jew beating image of St Nicholas:
https://www.stnicholascenter.org/who-is-st-nicholas/stories-legends/image-cycles/medieval-glass-4
(Above: on the bottom – scenes depicting loan and promise made in front of the image if St Nicholas; on the top – the Jew beating image of St Nicholas and deceitful borrower killed in a road accident; in the middle: baptism of the Jew.
Below: on top – the Jew beating statue of St Nicholas, and then subsequently, to the right: the loan, the promise, and the death of the deceitful borrower)
https://www.stnicholascenter.org/who-is-st-nicholas/stories-legends/image-cycles/medieval-glass
In our reception many stories from „The Golden Legend” are wildly antisemitic, and that refers to the other saints’ lives as well. In case of St Nicholas, one thing is certain: the legends teach us that he is good, in fact, in the business of getting back money. Perhaps the only thing that we may do now, in the light of a current worldly crisis and inflation, is to pray to St Nicholas. But perhaps let’s not beat him (or anyone else) if our prayer doesn’t work.