The life of this extraordinary man is given to us with much detail by two
eye-witnesses of his doings. Bartholomew, a monk, who associated himself
with Nicolas, travelled with him, admired, and after his death worshipped
him, wrote one of these lives. He had heard from the lips of Nicolas the
account of his childhood and youth, and he faithfully recorded what he
heard. Therefore Nicolas himself is our authority for all the earlier part
of his history, whilst he was in Greece. For the latter part we have the
testimony of Bartholomew, his companion night and day.
Secondly, we have an account of the close of his strange career by a
certain Adalfert of Trani, also an eye-witness of what he describes; thus
there is every reason for believing that we have an authentic history of
this man.[15]
Nicolas was the child of Greek parents, near the monastery of Sterium,
founded by St. Luke the Stylite. His parents were poor labouring people,
and the child was sent, at the age of eight, to guard sheep. About this
time he took it into his head to cry incessantly, night and day, “Kyrie
eleison!” The mother scolded and beat him, thinking that she might have
too much even of a good thing. But as he did not mend or vary his
monotonous supplication when he had reached the age of twelve, she angrily
bade him pack out of the house, and not come near her again till he had
learned to keep his noisy cries to himself.
The boy then ran away to the mountains, where he turned a she-bear out of
her cave, and settled himself into it, living on roots and berries; and
climbing to dizzy heights, spent his days in yelling from the crags where
scarce a goat could find a footing, “Kyrie eleison!”
His clothes were torn to tatters, so that scarce a shred covered his
nakedness, his feet were bare, and his hair grew long and ragged.
The poor mother, becoming alarmed at his disappearance, offered a small
sum of money to any one who would find the boy and bring him home. The
peasants of the village scattered themselves among the mountains, caught
the runaway, and at the mother’s request took him to the monks of St.
Luke’s monastery to have the devil exorcised out of him, for she believed
he must be mad. But Nicolas in his cave had one night seen come to him an
old man of venerable aspect, with long beard and white hair, stark
naked,[16] who bade him be of good cheer, and pursue his admirable course
of conduct. The monks of Sterium brought him into the church and
endeavoured to exorcise the demon, first with prayers, and afterwards with
kicks and blows. Nicolas rushed from the gates of the church shrieking,
“Kyrie eleison!” He was brought back and shut up in a tower, with a slab
of stone against the door, to keep him in. During the night the sleep of
the monks was broken by the muffled cries of “Kyrie eleison!” issuing from
the old tower. A thunderstorm burst over the monastery at midnight, and
Nicolas dashed the door open, threw down the stone, and leaped forth,
shouting between the thunder crashes, “Kyrie eleison!” The monks caught
him, put shackles on his wrists, and thrust him into a cell. As they sat
next day at their meal in the refectory, the door flew open, and in
stalked Nicolas with the chains broken in his hands; he clashed them down
on the table before their eyes, and shouted “Kyrie eleison!” till the
rafters and walls shook again. The monks rose from table, and thrust him
forth, whilst they proceeded with their meal.
Nicolas ran to the church, scrambled up the walls--how no one knew; his
biographer Bartholomew thinks he must have swarmed up a sunbeam--reached
the dome, and mounting to the apex, began to shout his supplication,
“Kyrie eleison!”
In the meantime the monks had retired for their nap after dinner, when the
reiterated cries from the top of the church cupola roused them and made
sleep impossible. They came forth in great excitement. One, by order of
the hegumen, or abbot, took a stout stick, and ascending to the roof by a
spiral staircase, crawled after the boy, reached him, dislodged him, and
with furious blows drove him off the roof.[17]
The monks now thought the best thing they could do would be to get
summarily rid of the maniac by drowning. Papebroeck, the Bollandist, at
this point appends the curious note: “If amongst ourselves, better
instructed, it is customary to suffocate those who have been bitten by a
mad dog--an atrocious custom--lest they should bite and hurt others, and
this is regarded as a rough sort of mercy, is it any wonder that these
rude monks should have supposed it proper to make away with a madman upon
whom exorcism had failed to produce any effect?”
The monks accordingly tied the hands and feet of Nicolas, drew him down to
the shore, threw him into a boat, rowed some way out to sea, and flung him
overboard.
But Nicolas broke his bonds,[18] as he had shivered the shackles, and
swimming ashore, reached land before the monks, and mounting a rock,
roared to them as his greeting, “Kyrie eleison!”
The monks despaired of doing anything to him, and abandoned him to follow
his own devices. He ran wild among the mountains, and constructed a
little hut of logs and wattled branches for his residence. One day he
descended to his mother’s house and carried off a hatchet, a knife, and a
saw, and amused himself fashioning crosses out of the wood of the cedars
he cut down, and erecting them on the summit of rocks inaccessible to
every one else.
On another occasion he carried off his brother; but the boy was so
frightened at the wild gestures and cries of Nicolas, that he refused to
remain more than a night in his cell and ran away home, to the
inexpressible relief of his mother.
Nicolas rambled over the country, dirty, dishevelled, and naked, asking
and enforcing alms. He was well known to the monks of the monasteries
throughout the neighbourhood as an importunate beggar at their doors. The
lonely traveller hastily flung him an offering, glad to escape so easily.
On one occasion Nicolas waylaid the steward of the monastery of Sterium,
and arresting the horse he rode, reproached him with stinginess. The monk,
who was armed with a cudgel, bounded from his saddle, fell on Nicolas, and
beat him unmercifully, then mounted and joyfully pursued his road.
Nicolas picked himself up, and followed him at a distance with aching
bones to the village where the steward slept that night. Then, stealing to
his bedside in the dark, he roared into his ear, “Kyrie eleison!” and woke
him with a start of terror.
The monk jumped out of bed, called up the house; the watch-dogs were let
loose, and Nicolas fled from their fangs up a tree, where he crouched
till daylight.
On the Feast of SS. Cosmas and Damian, Nicolas went to the monastery of
Sterisca to receive the Holy Communion, but was repulsed as being in an
unsound state of mind, and driven out of the church, where his religious
emotions found noisy vent, to the confusion of the singers and the
distraction of the congregation. Nicolas was much distressed at the
treatment he had received; he cried bitterly, and then resolved, as he was
despised in the Greek Church, to secede to the Roman obedience; and
according to his own account this excommunication was the reason of his
flying from his native land to visit Italy.
But he makes an admission which gives this pilgrimage West quite another
complexion. He started on his journey with a very pretty girl as his
companion, whom he seduced from her home, whose hair he cut short with his
own hands, and whom he disguised in male costume. But the parents of the
damsel, anxious at her loss, made search for her, and found her, to their
dismay and disgust, in company with Nicolas, dressed as a boy, sharing his
bed and board, yelling “Kyrie eleison!” with him through the Greek
villages, and making the best of their way to the sea to escape to Italy.
It is not difficult to see through this incident as it comes to us with
Nicolas’s own explanation. The motive which Nicolas gave afterwards to
Bartholomew to account for his running away from his native land was an
afterthought. He had formed this discreditable connection, and the couple
were escaping when caught by the parents and brought before the
magistrates. Nicolas was tried for the seduction of the young girl.
According to the young man’s own account, the girl took all the blame on
herself, and Nicolas was allowed to depart unpunished. How far this is
true we cannot say.
Greece was now too hot for Nicolas, and he hurried to Lepanto, to take
ship for Italy. There he met Brother Bartholomew, who was so edified by
his frantic piety and the odour of sanctity which pervaded the vagrant,
that he attached himself to the young pilgrim as an ardent disciple.
Nicolas and Bartholomew took ship and crossed over to Otranto. Before
entering the port, however, Nicolas cried, “Kyrie eleison!” and jumped
overboard. Every one on board ship supposed he would be drowned, and
Brother Bartholomew tore his beard with dismay.
But Nicolas was not born to be drowned. He came ashore safely, and
declared that he had seen a beautiful lady draw him out of the water by
the hair of his head.
One day at Otranto a procession was going through the town, bearing an
image of the Virgin, when Nicolas, who had walked for some time gravely in
the train, suddenly started out of it to make humble obeisance to an old
man who attracted his respect.
“See! he is worshipping a Jew!” exclaimed the people; “this strange fellow
is no good Christian. Bring hither the image.”
Then the Madonna was brought before Nicolas, and he was told to bow before
it. He refused. Then the people fell on him with their fists and sticks,
and beat and kicked him into a ditch.
Papebroeck suggests that his reason for refusing to worship the image was
humility, hoping to draw on himself the indignation of the multitude, and
thereby acquire the merit of enduring insult and suffering wrongfully.
Perhaps, as a Greek, Nicolas was unaccustomed to images other than
pictures; perhaps he did not understand the language of his assailants;
but probably he was actuated by no reason but a mad freak. In the Italian
versions of the _Life of St. Nicolas_ sold at Trani, this incident is
omitted for obvious reasons.
Leaving Otranto, Nicolas came to Lecce, which he entered bearing a cross
on his shoulders, and uttering his usual cry. He spent the alms given to
him in the purchase of apples, which he carried in a pouch at his waist,
and these he threw among the boys who followed him in crowds and shouted
after him, “Kyrie eleison!”
The noise he made in the streets, the uproar caused by the children, were
so intolerable that two brothers named John and Rumtipert seized Nicolas,
and binding him hand and foot, locked him into a room of their house. But
he suddenly disengaged himself from his bonds, and was again in the
street, calling, “Kyrie eleison!”
Early in the morning he went under the windows of the bishop, and broke
his slumbers by his shouts. The bishop ordered him to be severely beaten
and driven out of the city. Nicolas went forth triumphantly bearing his
cross, shouting, “Kyrie eleison!” followed by a train of capering boys
roaring, “Kyrie eleison!” and then bursting into peals of laughter.
Nicolas gravely turned, cast a handful of apples among them, and passed
out of the gates.
He took up his abode outside the town, and continued to astonish and edify
the peasants who came into Lecce to market.
One day an officer of the prince was issuing from the gate, followed by a
troop of servants. Nicolas rushed before his horse brandishing his cross
and howling, “Kyrie eleison!” The horse plunged and threw his rider, and
Nicolas was well beaten for his pains.
At St. Dimitri he was locked up in the church, heavily ironed; but at
midnight he broke off his chains, and entering the tower pealed the bells.
Thence he went to Tarentum, where he stationed himself outside the
bishop’s palace, under his bedroom window, and through the night yelled,
“Kyrie eleison!” It was the duty of the bishop to watch and pray, and not
to sleep, thought Nicolas. But the prelate differed from him in opinion,
and sent his servants to dislodge Nicolas. He returned to his post, and
continued his monotonous howls. The bishop could endure it no longer, and
revenged his sleepless night on the back and ribs of Nicolas, already blue
with the bruises received at Lecce and St. Dimitri; and he was
ignominiously expelled the city.
He proceeded thence to Trani, which he entered on 26th May 1094, carrying
his cross and distributing apples among the boys who crowded about him and
made a chorus to his cry.
The archbishop, hearing the disturbance, had him apprehended and brought
before him. He asked Nicolas what he meant by his eccentric conduct. The
crazy fellow replied, “Our Lord Jesus Christ bade us take up our cross and
follow after Him, and become as little children. That is precisely what I
am doing.”
The archbishop began a long discourse, but Nicolas impatiently shook
himself free from his guards, and without waiting for the end of it,
bounded out of the hall to the head of the steps leading into the street,
crying, “Kyrie eleison!” which was responded to by a shout from the boys
eagerly awaiting him without.
At the head of a swarm of children he rushed madly through and round the
city, making the streets resound with his monotonous appeal, and bringing
the wondering citizens to their doors and windows.
But the blows he had received at Tarentum had done him some serious
internal injury, and he now fell sick at Trani. There was hardly an
inhabitant of the city who did not visit his sickbed, that he might hear
the poor madman howl, “Kyrie eleison!” with his fevered lips, and depart
marvelling at his sanctity.
The boys who had run after him and partaken of his apples came to see him,
and the dying man gave them his cross, and bade them march about the
dormitory of the hospital where he lay, bearing the cross, and
vociferating, “Kyrie eleison!” Night and day the dormitory was crowded,
and the excitement of the fevered man kept constantly stimulated. He died
on 2nd June 1094, and till his burial his body attracted ever-increasing
crowds.
He was buried at Trani with considerable ceremony, for already the notion
had spread that the crazy Greek was a great saint, and the infatuated
Brother Bartholomew did his utmost to fan the growing popular enthusiasm
into a flame. Almost immediately after the burial highly imaginative
individuals began to believe they had been miraculously healed of diseases
at his tomb. He appeared in visions, cured cripples, uttered forebodings.
The Archbishop of Trani made formal investigation into the miracles, after
the manner of ecclesiastical investigations, and pronounced them genuine.
Trani was without a patron; no blood of martyrs had reddened its soil, no
saint had occupied its episcopal throne. It was discreditable to be
without a patron, and the good people of Trani were not nice as to whom
they had as patron so long as they had one whom they could claim as
peculiarly their own.
A statement of the virtues, acts, and miracles of Nicolas was forwarded
with gravity by the Archbishop of Trani to the Pope and Council at Rome in
1099. Urban II. with equal gravity, by special bull, canonised this
pitiable fool, and hoaxed Christendom into worshipping a man in whose
career no single spark of godliness appears; a man driven, to all
appearance, from his own country for having led astray an innocent girl,
whom he persuaded to elope with him from her home, and join him in his
vagabond life.