Saint Nicholas, from Myra to Lorraine

A bishop about whom almost nothing is known

Nicholas was born, according to tradition, at Patara in Lycia, around 270, into a Greek Christian family; he became bishop of Myra, the neighbouring city, and died on a 6 December, around 343. That is about all — and even that is not certain, for no document of the 4th century names him. The oldest surviving account, the Praxis de stratelatis, which specialists date between the end of the 4th and the 6th century without managing to agree, already shows him as an intercessor: three of Constantine's officers, condemned after being denounced, are saved because the bishop of Myra appears to the emperor in a dream. The rest was added slowly, by Michael the Archimandrite in the 9th century, by Symeon Metaphrastes at the end of the 10th, then by the Latins. Part of what is attributed to him in fact belongs to another man: Nicholas of Sion, an abbot near Myra in the 6th century, whose life became confused with his.