Feast, Iconography, and Patronage

The living veneration of St. Nicholas in the Orthodox Church: his two feasts — the principal commemoration on 6 December (19 December on the Gregorian calendar) and the feast of the Translation of his relics on 9 May (22 May) — his distinctive iconographic type and the image of the Nicaea vision, the hymnography that hails him as a rule of faith and an image of meekness, and the remarkable breadth of his patronage, from sailors and children to the wrongly condemned and the whole nation of Russia.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Wonderworker; Great Hierarch)

The Feasts

The Orthodox Church keeps two feasts of St. Nicholas, and together they frame the rhythm of his veneration.

The principal feast is his repose, commemorated on 6 December — which on the Julian calendar followed by some Churches falls on 19 December of the civil (Gregorian) calendar. This is the day the tradition assigns to his death (c. 343), and it is one of the more prominent saints’ days of the December calendar, falling within the Nativity fast and pointing forward, in the popular mind, to the season of Christmas (English 2012). It is from this feast — the gift-giving on St. Nicholas’s eve and day — that the whole Santa Claus custom ultimately derives, before it migrated to Christmas itself (see The Making of Santa Claus).

The second feast is the Translation of the relics, kept on 9 May (22 May Gregorian), commemorating the arrival of the relics at Bari on 9 May 1087 (see The Translation to Bari (1087)). This feast is observed with particular warmth in the Slavic Churches; in Russia it became a major popular celebration — “Nikola Veshny,” the spring Nicholas, paired with “Nikola Zimny,” the winter Nicholas of December — marking the two poles of the agricultural and devotional year (Jones 1978). That a Latin translation of 1087 should be kept as a feast in the Orthodox calendar is itself a witness to the universality of the cult across the divided Church. These commemorations stand within the wider Orthodox liturgical year (see The Great Feasts).

The pairing of the two feasts gave the Russian devotional year two of its fixed points, and the popular names — Nikola Zimny, the winter Nicholas of 6 December, and Nikola Veshny, the spring Nicholas of 9 May — register how deeply the saint was woven into the agricultural calendar (Jones 1978). The winter feast falls in the depth of the Nativity fast, a season of preparation and abstinence, and its placement there gave Nicholas a natural association with the approach of the Nativity — an association that the Western branch of the cult would, by a long route, draw out into the Christmas gift-bringer, even as the saint’s own day stayed fixed on 6 December (English 2012; see The Making of Santa Claus). The spring feast, by contrast, fell at the opening of the working season and gathered to itself the concerns of sowing and the land. Between them the two Nicholases marked the turn of winter to spring, so that the saint stood, in the popular imagination, almost as a guardian of the year’s rhythm — a measure, once again, of how far his veneration had penetrated the ordinary life of the Orthodox peoples (Jones 1978).

The Iconography

St. Nicholas is among the most recognizable figures in Orthodox iconography, and his type is highly stable. He is depicted as an elderly bishop: balding, with a high domed forehead, a short rounded white beard, and a grave, gentle expression. He is vested as a hierarch, wearing the omophorion (the bishop’s stole marked with crosses), and is shown either holding a closed Gospel book and raising his right hand in blessing, or with both hands engaged in his episcopal office. The face is one of the most individualized in the iconographic tradition — so much so that the forensic reconstruction from the Bari skull, an elderly broad-faced man, was widely noted as consonant with the received iconographic type (English 2012; see What the Relics Tell Us). This consonance should be received with care and not overstated. That the reconstructed face — an aged, broad-featured man — agrees in broad terms with the iconographic type is genuinely striking, and it is fair to note the agreement; but it proves nothing about identity, and the resemblance is of a general kind that many elderly men would share. The icon, moreover, is not and never claimed to be a portrait: it is a theological image governed by the canons of its type, faithful to a received likeness rather than drawn from life. The convergence of the reconstruction with the icon is therefore a point of interest and even of devotion, not a forensic confirmation; it tells us that the venerated bones and the painted tradition are not at odds, no more (English 2012; see What the Relics Tell Us).

A distinctive variant shows Nicholas flanked by two small figures in the upper corners: Christ presenting him the Gospel book and the Theotokos laying the omophorion upon his shoulders. This image depicts the vision by which, in the developed tradition, Nicholas was restored to his episcopal dignity after being deposed for striking Arius at Nicaea — the heavenly vindication of his zeal (see The Nicaea Tradition). The composition is theologically precise: the two heavenly figures restore exactly the two emblems of the episcopal office of which the saint had been stripped — the Gospel he is charged to preach, returned by Christ, and the omophorion that marks the shepherd of the flock, replaced by the Theotokos. The icon thus reads at a glance as the reversal of a deposition and the divine confirmation of the bishop, condensing the whole legend of the slap and its aftermath into a single stable image. As the Nicaea section showed, the slap and its vision are a late hagiographic development, but the iconographic type became standard and is among the most beloved depictions of the saint; it is reported here as the established image, with its legendary basis noted. Icons also frequently surround the central figure with scenes from his life and miracles — the dowry, the rescue of the generals, the sea-rescues — in a border of vignettes, a visual catechism of his deeds.

The Hymnography

The liturgical texts of the feast crystallize the Church’s understanding of the saint. The apolytikion (dismissal hymn) hails Nicholas in terms drawn from the great teaching hierarchs: he is proclaimed to his flock “a rule of faith and an image of meekness, a teacher of temperance,” whose humility won him exaltation and whose poverty won him riches — the paradoxes of the Gospel embodied in the merciful bishop (apolytikion of St. Nicholas, Byzantine liturgical tradition). The phrase “rule of faith” (kanona pisteos) places him among the defenders of orthodoxy and undergirds his anti-Arian standing independent of the slap legend (see Nicholas and Arianism). The kontakion and the other hymns of the feast develop the same themes: his wonderworking, his almsgiving, his protection of those in danger, and his boldness for the faith. The hymnography, more than any single legend, conveys the saint the Church venerates — the union of mercy and zeal traced throughout this collection.

It is worth observing what the hymnography does not do, because the omission is itself a kind of evidence. The liturgical texts dwell on the saint’s character — his mercy, his temperance, his orthodoxy, his protective power — rather than on a connected narrative of his life; they presuppose a venerated persona, not a documented biography, and they invoke him for what he does for the faithful now rather than recounting what he did at Patara or Myra long ago. This is consistent with everything the source-criticism of the earlier sections found: the firm thing is the cult and the persona it venerates, and the hymnography is the cult’s own voice, praising the saint as the faithful know him in prayer (see Reading the Nicholas Tradition). The hymns thus stand, in their own way, as primary evidence not for the events of Nicholas’s life but for the shape and antiquity of his veneration.

The Patronages

Few saints carry so wide a range of patronage, and the breadth itself expresses the reach of the cult (see The Cult East and West). Among the principal patronages:

Sailors and all who travel by water, from the sea-miracles — one of his oldest and most universal patronages, invoked across the Mediterranean and beyond (see Rescuer of the Condemned and Sailors).
The wrongly accused, prisoners, and the condemned, from the rescue of the three generals — the saint of those facing unjust judgment.
Children, from the gift-giving tradition and the Western tale of the restored schoolboys — the patronage that flowered, distorted, into Santa Claus.
The poor, brides, and the unmarried, from the dowry of the three daughters (see The Three Daughters).
Merchants, bankers, and pawnbrokers, from the three bags of gold.
Russia, where his veneration grew so deep that he became almost a national patron, his icon in every church and countless homes; and Greece, where as patron of sailors he is honored throughout the maritime nation; and the cities of Bari and Myra themselves.

This profusion of patronage is the cult made practical: across sixteen centuries and the whole Christian world, the faithful have brought to Nicholas the full range of human need and danger — the storm, the prison, the empty purse, the unmarried daughter, the sick child — and have found in him a father, a rescuer, and a friend. It is on this living veneration, not on the documentary record, that his place in the Church finally rests — the point the closing assessment draws out (see Legacy and Assessment).

References

English, Adam C. The Saint Who Would Be Santa Claus: The True Life and Trials of Nicholas of Myra. Waco: Baylor University Press, 2012. (The feasts; the iconography and the facial reconstruction; the patronages.)
Jones, Charles W. Saint Nicholas of Myra, Bari, and Manhattan: Biography of a Legend. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978. (The two feasts, Nikola Zimny and Nikola Veshny; the Russian cult; the patronages.)
The Festal and Saints’ hymnography of St. Nicholas — the apolytikion (“a rule of faith and an image of meekness”) and kontakion, Byzantine liturgical tradition (Menaion, 6 December).
METHODOLOGY.md §3.5, this repository.