Gone Medieval - Medieval Origins of Santa Claus: St. Nicholas

Episode Date: December 4, 2023

In many parts of Europe, before Christmas comes, you have first to celebrate one of the medieval period's favourite saints - Saint Nicholas of Myra. It's his legend and celebration that eventually transformed into our own Santa Claus. St Nicolas’s commemoration was a great excuse for medieval people to let down their hair and celebrate while still in the much more sombre and reflective period of Advent.In this episode of Gone Medieval, Dr. Eleanor Janega is joined by experiential archaeologist Caroline Nickolay. They discuss how St. Nicholas’ life has been embellished and commemorated from the late antique period until today and how a relatively unremarkable bishop managed to give birth to the party event of the festive season.This episode was edited by Joseph Knight and produced by Rob Weinberg.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code MEDIEVAL - sign up here.You can take part in our listener survey here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries

with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world, to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. It's early December. And we here in England are settling into the holiday season and starting to wish each other happy Christmas. However, in many parts of Europe, before you get to Christmas, you have to first celebrate one of the medieval period's favorite saints, St. Nicholas of Mirna. It's St. Nicholas's legend in celebration that eventually transformed into our own Santa Clause traditions today. And his commemoration was a great excuse for medieval people to let down

their hair and celebrate while still in the much more sombre and reflective period of Advent. Now, celebrations vary across European countries, but one thing is for certain. Like our medieval ancestors, we still like to make sure that we mark the occasion in a big way. So today, to get suitably festive, I've invited one of my favorite people, the experiential archaeologist Caroline Nicolay, part of the Periogalico team whose expertise runs from the Iron Age to the Tudor era, to talk with me about all things St. Nicholas. We're going to discuss how his life was embellished and commemorated from the late antique period until today, and how a relatively boring bishop managed to give birth to the party event of the festive season. Even better, we're ready to compare

notes on what the festivities look like in our respective regions and see how our celebrations measure up to each other. So get ready for some festive fun with me, Dr. Eleanor Yonaga, today on Gone Medieval from History Hit. Vesley, Michelautosh. Caroline, thank you so much for being here. No problem. Thanks for having me. Okay, so, you know, we're eventually going to get into just geeking out

about what our various cultures do to talk about and commemorate St. Nicholas. But I think we have to start the conversation off by acknowledging that this is an actual historical guy, right? So this is a person who was alive, and we know that that is true, right? He's a historical person. He was the Bishop of Mira. We know that.

Mira's in kind of modern-day Turkey. And we know that he probably lived from about 270 to 343. And this is kind of like right in the era of what we call the church fathers. And this is when Christians are kind of really grappling with what it means to be a Christian. You know, like they're coming up with the rules. They're coming up with all these ideas about meaning. and how you kind of organize yourself, right? Maybe he was at the first council of Nicaea,

which is in 325, but we know he probably wasn't that involved, even if he was there, because sometimes if there's a really long list of everyone who is invited, St. Nicholas is on there. But if you've got, like, shorter ones, he isn't there. And then, like, certain historians

who, like, wrote a history about the early church, they don't mention that he's there, even though they were physically there. So it's kind of, like, maybe, maybe not. And the Council of Nicia, this is so dry. This doesn't feel very Santa Clausy at all, right? But it is a council that was meant to debate the question of Aryanism, okay? And Aryanism is this very specific point in Christianity where it's like the idea of, does the Trinity have like a hierarchy? So God, the Father's at the top, and then Jesus and then the Holy Spirit. Or is it Trinitarian belief,

which is what they settled on? So there's this guy, Arian. who was like, no, no, no, there's a hierarchy. So this is so boring, but that's like what the actual historical guy is, right? Like, not a lot to work with here in terms of the Christmas spirit, I would argue. And I know that it's important to kind of talk about, like, the early church, sure, because that's how we get everything, right? And for medieval people, this is really interesting stuff. Medieval people love to talk about, you know, the church fathers.

They're really into that, okay? And then we have this kind of 200-year gap, and we don't. know what's going on, right? So we know that the Emperor Theodosius II is like, I want a church to St. Nicholas being built and we're going to build it over his tomb. Okay, great. So clearly there's something happening in that time. Like the emperor doesn't say, oh, build me a church over this guy's tomb if people weren't going around saying this guy is a saint. But we don't have any records of what they were saying, right? And then we know that when Justinian becomes emperor, he renovates a church that is dedicated to St. Nicholas and Constance Noble.

So there's a cult, right? That's what we call the groups that big up saints, I guess, is we call them cults. It sounds like it's derogatory, but it's not. That's the actual term. And none of this, again, screams, we need to turn this guy into Santa Claus. Like, this is a church guy stuff.

This is boring stuff. And probably not what any of us thinks about when we think about St. Nicholas, right? So, like, when you think about St. Nicholas, I love to think about the Council of Dicea. Every December 6th, we just get out. and talk about the Aryan heresy. But what you might know, like Caroline,

and I know that we've chatted about this before, right? So we get the first big recorded miracle. And this is in 583, and it's written down by a guy called Eustradius of Constantinople. And this is where the Christmas East stuff starts to get in. But this is called the miracle of the three counts. And have you heard this one? This is the one that involves the dad and his daughters.

No, I did know it was a nerd. miracle like that. We have a very similar but different story about daughters as well and a dad as well. Okay, tell me yours. Tell me yours. So it's very, very rarely mentioned. It's usually about what you will probably mention later, the resurrection and the kids and everything. Or there's that idea floating that Saint then, Nicholas, somehow saves three young girls from prostitution because their dad doesn't have enough money to provide dowries for these girls so they can't get married. And the only way they can get out of their poor family is basically to work in a brothel. Yes, exactly.

And this is such a funny one to me, right? Because this comes up a lot of the time in iconography. Like if you see medieval icons of St. Nicholas, you often see him kind of coming in through a window while there's three girls asleep in bed. And he's putting a big gold coin in or something like that. But from a historical standpoint, this is really interesting, right? Because in the Eastern Roman Empire, especially, you know, what we sometimes call Byzantine, you still have really big and wealthy brothels at the time. So this is kind of like coming out to us in the 6th century. And, you know, this goes back and forth. Like sometimes there are efforts, like especially on the part of the Empress Theodora to shut down brothels and say that you shouldn't do this. But it's a real facet. of life in the Eastern Roman Empire. You know, it's a lot like Rome because it is Rome. So you get a story

like this. Plus on top of that, you get some kind of like standard saints vibes in this story, right? Because they also say, oh yeah, St. Nicholas was a rich kid when he was born. And I mean, yeah, probably he was because he's a bishop, right? And poor people don't end up becoming bishops. Like, spoiler, everyone, you're not going to graft your way up to being a bishop in the fourth century. That's not how it works, right? And they say he's born in this town called Potara. He knew at an early age that he wanted to join the church. His uncle was a high-ranking bishop and was like, yeah, we'll have that happen for you. But then his parents die. And because he's so devout, he decides he's going to redistribute the wealth of his parents. And he hears about this

guy who's a super devout man, right? Like that's very, very important. But according to the legend, He says that he lost all of his money because of, quote, the plotting and envy of Satan. So Satan was on this guy, and he was like, ha-ha, I'm going to get you to sell your daughters off to the brothel because you can't afford dowries. So then St. Nicholas comes in the window one night and he leaves a bag of gold.

The first daughter uses it as her dowry. Second night leaves a bag of gold. Second daughter uses it for her dowry. Third night, the father pretends to be asleep but stays up. and notices that St. Nicholas brings a third bag of gold in to, like, liberate the third daughter. And St. Nicholas goes, oh, but don't you tell anybody. It's a secret miracle. You can't tell anybody about all the gold that I'm bringing about. Clearly, he told someone because we have this story, right? So this is one of the ways that St. Nicholas, as a guy who shows up and gives presents, starts off.

Because you're supposed to be asleep, right? You can't be staying up and waiting for any of this to have. happen, right? And it's this kind of like furtiveness, like that thing that we expect to see from Santa or, you know, these sort of things, this kind of like, it has to happen while people are asleep. Yeah, you're absolutely right. He's definitely associated with giving presents, sometimes money or other precious things, well, things that were precious at the time in the later medieval. Like what are some things that he gives out then? Oranges and gingerbread or spice bread. Stuff from far away that costs a lot of money associated with either Turkey or the East or Venice and Italy.

And that makes a lot of sense, right? Because, well, I mean, first of all, he is Turkish, obviously. Yes. You're going to want to have those things in. But second of all, there is this really kind of specific tie between St. Nicholas and Italy, which is quite interesting. And it has to do with Italians kind of behaving super badly. Uh-huh. Is the thing. So not to be too incredibly shady on them, but it's kind of like a fast forward, right? So you get to the 11th century, and stuff's going kind of badly out on the Anatolian Peninsula, right?

You have the Seljuk Turks are taking over a lot of what had been Eastern Roman land. And there happened to be a group of merchants from the Italian town of Barry. And they were like, oh, things are looking pretty bad. I guess that we'll just steal St. Nicholas's entire skeleton from his church. Okay. And they just run off of it. Okay. They completely run off of it.

And everyone is like, this is bad. This is really, really bad. Like, it's written down in several chronicles and all these things where everyone is like, these guys from Barry have not covered themselves in glory. This is a theft, right? Of relics. Yeah, of relics, which is a realics. which is a really, really big deal, right?

Because all medieval people really want is a relic of a saint, right? Because you need relics for everything, right? So every altar and every church has a relic, which is usually a bone fragment, because those are pretty easy to get hold of. You can have relics if there's someone like Jesus or Mary who ascended into heaven and didn't leave anything behind. So, like, there are numerous pieces of Mary's veil, around. You know, there's something like 15 various foreskins of Jesus around the shop.

But the important thing about relics is that they kind of provide a way of worshiping a particular and making you feel connected to a saint. And so it's kind of like, I always say it's sort of like a telephone line. Like if you go up to a relic, you can talk directly to the saint is the idea. That it's like you're sort of connected to that guy. And then he might do something nice for you, he or she, depending on what they are good at. And so if you can get St. Nicholas's skeleton, you've got a direct line. And then the Venetians take this a step further, okay? Because the Venetians, then they come through during the first crusade, kind of right after.

And they've noticed that Barry's getting some pretty good press about the fact that they've got the skeleton. And so they go into the church and they kind of like sweep up every single remaining bone fragor. that there is, and they take these all back to Venice. So when we then in the rest of Europe start picking up on the cult of St. Nicholas, because people knew who St. Nicholas was. They're like, yeah, that's a big guy. He's a bishop. But in Western Europe, his cult really takes off when you start to get the relics. So you've got now relics in Barry and in Venice as well. And I've got a weird facts from the France, we made it better after the merchants of Barry, apparently just coming back home with an awful lot of bones. It said that we have a cult of St. Nicholas

starting up in Nancy. So that would be the capital of the Duchy of Lauren at the time. In 1090, a knight from Loren called Oberde Varanjeville stole a phalanjee of St. Nicholas inside the basilica in Barry and brought it back to a small town near Nancy supposedly a phalanjy from the right hand of the saint that would be the one

to bless and to do the miracles and it is kept in a small church from the 11th century onwards okay so if this is stealing from the thieves though I guess this is one of these things where the guys in Barry can't really complain I guess you can't say anything yeah

Yeah, you nick a whole skeleton. What's a finger here or there, you know, for the guys back in Nancy, right? But also, this is kind of one of the interesting things about when you get the worship of relics like this, you're kind of almost inviting this, right? Because one of the things that you're doing, when you get a skeleton and you've got relics, you then kind of like start a publicity blitz about it. And so one of the things you're going to want to do is you're going to want to start telling sermons about St. Nicholas. you are going to write lives of St. Nicholas, you're going to start bringing him into the church calendar so that everyone knows when you hit on December 6, bang, it's going to be St. Nicholas Day, right? So you do a big PR blitz because one of the things it also does for you is this is like fodder for pilgrims. So if you're like, hey, everyone, we've got St. Nicholas as skeleton.

Hey, who wants to come take a look at the miraculous skeleton of St. Nicholas? And what that does is it brings people in, and it really does. Medieval people love to go on pilgrimage. That's like their thing, right? It's holiday. But it's holiday where you also can't get in trouble for doing anything wrong because you're on pilgrimage. And you're on pilgrimage, you're probably under what we call plenary indulgence,

which means it's like while you're doing the pilgrimage, you kind of get out of jail-free card. And it's like contrary to popular opinion, people tend to think that medieval people never go anywhere and they just stay in their little village there. But they go on pilgrimage all the time. And maybe it'll only be pilgrimage of like 30 miles or something. Maybe you're just going from like London to Canterbury or something like that. Nothing in particularly huge.

But people do move around in their own areas. And if we're talking about Bari or we're talking about Venice, lots of people go on pilgrimage to Rome. And this is just a little side one. And then you could also see St. Nicholas, right? So you invite all these people to come down because you want the money. and you want the prestige and all of these things, but also what might happen is a knight might steal a finger.

Apparently that happens. Well, so the story goes, but there's definitely bits of bones since that time around. Also, there's these weird miracles that are very specifically associated with Barry even now, because what they say is that there's an ongoing miracle, and that St. Nicholas's bones produce myrrh. And so this is a big selling point in the Middle Ages because, you know, obviously, MIR is this very expensive Anguint, I suppose we would say, right?

It's used for embalming bodies. It smells nice. Yeah. Is it already one of the three prisons? So it has this kind of mystical sales value, I guess. Yeah, yeah, it's like, because, you know, the Magi, when they visit Jesus, they bring gold frankincense and birth. So it's like, oh, so now, hey,

it's more proof that this guy's from the exotic east, right? So they would take like vials of Murr off of his relics, and they have been all over the world for ages. And you can still go to the church and bury and buy it from a store there. And every year on the 6th of December, they go and they basically get a flask of mer that they say comes off of his bones out of the sarcophagus.

And so this is like an ongoing miracle, right? This is really interesting to me because it shows that, you know, we are not actually very different to medieval people. We still have this sort of thing going on where it's like there's this miraculous thing that's still happening and it's still being converted into money for the basilica, right? You could still go buy it. So, hey, this is something that is still galvanizing people all over the world to, I suppose, go gallivanting and go. and go check out Bari and go check out this very weird and particular miracle, right? I had no idea that was still going on. That's so medieval, but that's so modern as...

Yeah, my mind is blown for the moment. Well, that's the thing, right? Because I think that we always try to keep things like this at real arm's length. And even if you're you and me, and you come from cultures where there's really big commemoration of St. Nicholas, there's still all of these things going on where, you might not know every single piece, right? So local commemoration really is still quite local. And so what's going on down in Italy is not what we're doing in Prague or you guys are doing in France, right?

So that I find interesting because we can still even in the information age, we still have these like pockets. Oh, yeah. I mean, if you hadn't told me all over that. And I'm learning like every second of this podcast. I have celebrated St. Nicholas for years. I had never heard of such an ancient, you know, the proper history of it. So if we just fast forward again, when we get especially to the 14th century, we start getting these new and updated miracles. The first one starts kind of graft off of this story about him being at the Council of Nicaea. And suddenly it becomes not only was he at the Council of Nicaea, but Aries, the guy who in

Arianism was also there, and that St. Nicholas either punched or hit him. Like, just absolutely smacked in one, right? And then further, this gets embellished that they say, oh, and the Emperor Constantine is like, now St. Nick, you can't go around punching people at the Council of Nicaa, so I'm afraid you're going to have to hand in your mitre and palim. It's like the equivalent of taking away their badge and gun in like a U.S. cop show. He's a renegade. He's playing by his own rules. And he gets thrown into prison. But then that night he's in prison and Christ and the Virgin Mary appear in front of him and they say, oh, St. Nicholas, why are you in jail? And he's like, oh, I'm here defending you. And they're like,

right, you are. And then they get him out of jail. He's like miraculously freed and they give him back his mitre and palium. So this is interesting because it's very 14th century because they're like, here's these history things that we know, but the legend's growing, right? Like it's becoming more and more exciting. Then you have a kind of boring miracle that hinges on the great famine of Mira, which is involved in the interesting miracle, which I'm going to let you do. But there's a great famine of mirror from about 311 to 312. And there is this miracle where there's a ship at port, and it's got lots and lots of wheat that's going to the emperor and going into Constantinople. And this is because Constantinople at the time used to give a certain amount of wheat to everybody who lived in the city at all times.

It was like you kind of like got given some offset for living in Constantinople. because it was expensive. And so Nicholas kind of goes up to the ship and he's like, hey, I notice you've got an entire ship full of wheat and we're all starving. Do you think that you could help us out? And the sailors are like, well, this is all going to get weighed when we get to Constantinople and we don't want to get in trouble with the emperor. And St. Nicholas says, don't even worry about it, guys. I promise you that you are not going to get any trouble for this and just like tell them St. Nicholas did it. Otherwise, they say, okay. So they give them a bunch of wheat. Then they get back to Constantinople and it's a miracle. The weight. The weight.

of the load hadn't changed. There's still the same amount of wheat in there. But they had taken enough wheat for Mira that they could live for another two years on it and there was enough to sew. Dime. Which is a lot. Fair bit.

Yeah. So here's a story about St. Nicholas where he's doing something good and he's distributing things to the people, right? So that's kind of Santa Clausy. But then... So I was talking about this particular miracle the other day because I saw a really great 15th century

wooden sculpture. of it. And I posted it online and I was just talking about it. And everyone was saying to me, what? Excuse me? What? Because, but it's so important for the story. But I'm going to let you tell it because it got you and I talking about it. It's the absolute only thing I knew or we celebrate about St. Nicholas in a traditional way in and around Nancy, so Alasasas, Lour and the northeast of France, very specifically. The story goes, dance, three little boys. were going gleaning in the fields. So they are either very poor or they are in a time of famine and they're super hungry.

So gleaning is basically going in the fields and picking up the last bits of grain that you can find after the farmers have taken the grain away. So three boys going gleaning. They don't see the time because they don't have watches at this time. And they go on, get a bit lost and they need a place to stay for the night. knock at a door that has all lights lit in the house and it's the local butcher butcher. Boucher, butcher, can we stay in for the night? Yeah, sure, come in and on this, he kills them, chops them up in little pieces and throws the bits in a giant chest barrel tub of salt. So a salient vessel basically.

In France we call that petit sale, it's a piece of the ham that you cut in small pieces and you you salt it. And I find that super interesting or super important because to me, that's a very Germanic, so the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland and the northeast of France seems to share that visual. We salt hams and we salt bits of folk like that. There's a song that goes about it as well. So, chops them up, throws the bits in, closes it. And there's two stories there. St. Nick comes by either a few days later or, according to a song from 1842, comes seven years later,

knocks at the door, the butcher goes, oh, hello there, a merchant or person that seems to be, you know, pretty wealthy and important. What do you want? I need a place to stay for the night, and I need a bit of food. Fabulous butcher welcomes him, sits him at the table, what you want to eat, I have some ham. no, the ham's no good. I have some veal. No, the viz not nice. Do you have any potty salet? Do you have any

salted ham? That is seven years old. On that, the butcher goes, oh no, I've been discovered. Run off. Leaves the house. St. Nick goes to the salting tub or chest, raises three fingers, and three young boys are resuscitating, come back to life from the salting trough. The first one saying, oh, I slept super well. The second saying, oh, what time is it? And the third one going, I thought that was in heaven. So either he does that quickly after it happens, or seven years later, the kids are coming back. They don't have parents anymore.

Everything's different, but that we never talk about. So in essence, he brings back to life three very, very diseased little boys. and that's the miracle that we mainly talk about, present. Projects with sound and light, massive effects on all the buildings in the Central Place in Nancy every single year. It's a weird one actually now, thinking about it when you are not in the kind of close circle of people knowing about St. Nicholas, you visit the town and at about 10 p.m. for about the first week and two weekends of December, You have massive mega spectacles featuring three dead kids, a bodshirt and a weird guy that just wakes them up. And this is the thing, right? Because this is such an incredibly important miracle.

Because, I mean, it shows there's no better way to prove that you are holy than to bring people back to life. Very few saints are able to do this. Usually this is the province of Jesus. But St. Nicholas manages to get this kind of esteem that's like, oh, well, he's got it, right? and it's quite interesting, I think, that we start getting this one especially show up, as you say, in the north of Europe, where salted ham is rather a thing. So they're like, oh, yeah, sure, they're definitely salt and ham over in Mirna. But also, it's 14th century, right? So we have all of these miracles.

You know, you've got the boat one, which is more dull, but you've got this one about the children being murdered. They all hinge on kind of like famine, right? That there are famine conditions and there are these bad things happening. And one of the other big things that happens in the 14th century is, of course, the great famine, which happens from about 13, 16, 13, 17, when you have this incredible loss of life. Basically, we don't have summer for a couple of years. Everything gets waterlogged all across Europe. All the crops die, all the animals die.

And there's real rumors of cannibalism. Now, whether or not cannibalism was actually happening, we don't know, but we do know that they're writing about cannibalism, right? So the fact that in the 14th century, suddenly you have this miracle attributed that's specifically about cannibalism. It's specifically about saving children who have been eaten is really interesting because it tells us a lot about what's going on in people's lives in the 14th century. And it's weird. Okay, this is incredibly wild. And, you know, when people think about Santa, I really doubt they're thinking about salting the corpses of young boys down. But we do think that this story in particular is part of how we get traditions now.

I mean, obviously, and also you've got a direct one where it's like, let's talk about that miracle. We love to talk about it, right? But one thing that kind of happens as this becomes a really popular thing to portray in art across the medieval period is that people see St. Nicholas standing in front of a barrel and there's three kids in the barrel. and they're like, St. Nicholas is the Patriot State of Children. And like, that's the thing they take away from it. You know, whether or not they do the rest of the story about like, these are some kids who are getting salted down for ham. Sure, sometimes that is included, but sometimes it isn't.

But what we do know is that if non-literate people or non-specialist audiences see St. Nicholas and three boys are like, oh, he just loves the kids. And so that kind of goes out. And it's like, oh, well, St. Nicholas, great guy who likes kids. Oh, sometimes he gives money to people through windows at night. Okay. So, you know, you start having these building blocks. And then there's this other kind of bit that is sort of directly linked to the Northern European traditions, right?

Because another thing about St. Nicholas is that he is, in addition to being the Patriot Saint of Chil. I mean, he's the patron saint of everything. I swear to you, this guy, you name it. He's the Patriot Saint. But he's also the Patriot State of Sailors. And this was big in like Baria. and this was big in Venice, right? Because one of his miracles is that after he gets those girls married and out of the brothel or whatever,

he goes on pilgrimage to the Holy Land. And then while he's on a boat to the Holy Land, there's a huge storm, and he manages to calm the waves down. I mean, that's a very Jesusy miracle, once again. You know, this is like one of the classic. So sailors love him, right? So a big way that he was commemorated in the lowlands, so what is now? Belgium and what is now the Netherlands is on St. Nicholas's day, they would have a big feast

where they would go down, every sailor would kind of go down to the harbor and go to their boat, and the boats would be blessed in the name of St. Nicholas, right? And because we're talking to the lowlands, everyone's a sailor, okay? Maybe you're not sailing across the North Sea and trading wool or something, but you've got a little boat that goes down the canals. You've got some kind of maritime thing, right? So everyone's kind of involved in this big celebration. And there, what happens, is you have these big markets that spring up as a result of that. So if everyone's going down to the boats, hey, when they come back, they're going to want a waffle. They're going to want some, you know, meat on a stick just like we want now.

Or, you know, real enterprising sailors, if you come from far away, you will put on sale, you know, oh, the nice things you brought from Italy. So you have these big markets that crop up that they're not Christmas markets. They're St. Nicholas markets, but functionally. it's the same thing, right? Oh, and that explains so much about what we still have in Nancy nowadays. I mean, even this year, if you go on the website, they explain everything that's going to happen. It's always amazing.

But the central point is there's a massive market. It's not called the Christmas market. It's genuinely St. Nicholas's market. It's mainly crafts and stuff from all around the place. same as in the 14th century as St. Nicholas was the same patron of Nancy and of Lorraine Doducci. And a massive new basilica is built in a town just near Nancy that's basically named after him, Saint Nicola de Port, St. Nicholas of the port. And so there's that massive basilica that's built mainly because 1477, here we go.

It's the Battle of Nancy and René, you can't be more French, I love it. Oh, come on, yeah. René II wins. He's the Duke of Lorraine at the time and he wins with the help of a Swiss confederacy against Charles de Bold, Duke of Burgundy. And that's the end of the Burgundy Wars. And he says, Nicholas helped him and the army win and save Lorraine from the ambition of Burgundy. therefore we're going to build that massive basilica and get that phalanjy relic from the other small church that was just a random little church. From there, that town is the financial capital of the duchy, potentially because of St. Nicholas being patron of merchants. We don't have the sea, so instead of the sailors, he's the saint patrons of merchants. Of course he is. He does everything. He's got the cash,

and he comes from far away. Yeah, so he knows all about oranges. So bang, merchants. Obviously. And this is very funny to me because, so in a Czech context, we have a really big tradition of commemoration of St. Nicholas as well. And we're big on the market bit. Our markets would always be set up for St. Nicholas Day.

And now they run through now to Christmas. You know, so like, why take it down? He may as well hang out and mold wine. Everybody wants it, you know. But it kind of all really kicks off. specifically on the 5th of December, because we do kind of like St. Nicholas Eve. Then our thing is that adults will dress up

like St. Nicholas and angels and demons and kind of walk around in threes. And then you bring all the kids out, and then they go up to kids. And then if you're a naughty kid, the demon will spank you. And if you're a good kid, then the angel will give you a sweet or St. Nicholas will give you a sweet. And so there's this kind of like mild peril,

of the demon or whatever. So we've got this whole other tradition on top where we're like, yeah, yeah, an angel and a demon, there you go. That's, I've never heard of that. We've got something similar, but humanized. So, you know, crampus in kind of Germanic and, you know, scary, kind of monster kind of demonish.

We have who we call Per, so father, Fuetar. I don't know if you guys have a donkey, but we have a donkey as well. St. Nicholas never goes around without his donkey. That's a thing. I don't know why. I want a donkey. This is really unfair. Frankly, it's the best. So he's got a donkey

and do you remember the butcher who murdered the three kids that ran off? Right. So to punish him, St. Nicholas, in some stories, he's meant to have caught him, chain him to his donkey and forced him to follow him on his adventures,

turning him into Per Fueta, Father Whip. And his guys wears black. He has long black beard and he's punishing and whipping bad kids, right? Wow. Okay. I come from the east of France, but just south of that Lorenz region. So we don't really, really have St. Nicholas, we have bits of it.

And when I was a kid, you had Father Christmas, right? Oddly early December, Father Christmas always had a donkey with sweets in the paniers. So throwing, you know, ferrociously sweets at the kids. And we always have Perfueira. In black, hood, long beard, scaring the kids with a great big bag on his back. Instead of whipping the kids, he was kidnapping them and taking them away, never to return. That's like a cannibalism threat. Just a friendly Christmas cannibalism.

Now that you mention it. It is. Oh, wow. But that Perfouetat. either that was the butcher that got, you know, enrolled to be punished. But another legend says it comes from Mess, just a big city north of Nancy being besieged in 1552, so later in the late medieval ages. And well enough, it went well and mess didn't fall.

And they stayed for the entire winter. It was besieged by Charles V of. Habsburg. So pretty big lads. So unfortunately for him, Messe doesn't fall and he's taken by basically the King of France, Henry II. So it stays French at that point. And apparently during the siege of Mess, the Guild of Tannes disguised one of their lads into grey, dark clothes and leather, and makes a mockery of Charles V. Who is besieging the town who goes around and whips the young people, basically. Boys or girls, doesn't matter, you just whip people.

And that might be where Perfueita, or father, whip comes from. That's interesting. So that's the very specific anti-Habsberg call out. I love it because when you're looking at the kind of Northern French traditions, it's like, oh, here we don't like the Burgundians, and now we don't like the Holy Roman Empire. I'm like, this is very relatable stuff, you know, the kind of stuff that I would really expect to see from the Northern Rwand.

But I think this is so cool and interesting, right? Because it just shows you how we're still inventing these traditions. You know, we're still so connected to these medieval ideas. And we're still kind of playing them out in different places all over Europe with really different expressions, right? So it's the same guy. But does everyone know about the ham salting? I mean, you and I do.

But the average person on the street in England certainly doesn't. You know, if you are down in Bali, they're going to be like, oh, yeah, the Patriot Saint of Sailor is a really great guy. You know, it's not going to be the same sort of all-out Christmassy festival like we have. And, you know, I don't get a donkey. You don't get angels. You know, you were saying on the 5th of December, so the night before St. Nicholas's Day, normally, very Christmassy, the kids in every house are meant to put out some food for the donkey and something to drink by St. Nicholas. Usually beer, let's be honest. He's not that kind of guy. But you put some hay or some carrots or some grain for the donkey as well. Like the reindeer thing. But with the donkey, which makes more sense. Well, yeah.

To me, at least, you know. Yeah. Look, I mean, donkeys are around the shop, aren't they? That's the thing. So very, very industrious little animals. And I wonder if it's not another connection to Jesus' life and everything. Yeah. We'll have donkeys.

Yeah, exactly. Because you never know when a donkey's going to show up. Occasionally, I will admit, a big future of kind of our Christmas markets in check is that often we will have like petting zoos that are the manger. So you'll have like a donkey and a couple of sheep and a goat. And often there's a donkey in there, you know, so they're not usually getting kind of wandered around, which is probably good because we also have a lot of fireworks. So there's a lot of like lighting off fireworks. And I don't know how well that would go with don'ties. Yeah, that would explain.

I don't think we have fireworks, no. Oh, we do. fireworks is a big part of it, right? So you're going to go out and there's going to be fireworks, everyone's going to be dressed up, these sorts of things. Oh, cool. We don't get to dress up at all. You've got, like, one St. Nicholas, and you have the perfect out,

and yeah, you just enjoy all fear for your life. But apart from that, you know, it's all good. It's very medieval, this kind of memento-mory thing. It's like, you know, sure, enjoy yourself, but there are also scary things out in the world. So, you know, you can't even have a celebration without a little bit of being scared at the same time. I like that worth keeping that going.

Yeah, that's very true, actually. It's always your favorite bit as a kid when you're a bit older. I'm super scared. I'm going to run around. But now, Nancy, I would say maybe in the last five, maybe 10 years, really like upped their game. They want to become, it seems, the capital of St. Nicholas Day in the east of France, but maybe a bit further at all. And it's tens of thousands of visitors every year.

Everybody and their family, plus their friends and people from overseas, are in the streets, at least for the weekend. And everything is free. So it's a week or two of just performances. There's music and concerts and acrobats and things going on everywhere. Everything is just open to the public. You go. And that's not a common thing. So I really, really like that.

I love that. That is basically as medieval a festival as you can get. This idea that there's going to be some kind of like municipal largesse. Everyone can get together. There's all sorts of things that are happening for free. And it's just kind of to attract people in. That is what people were getting at. You know, when you go and you steal St. Nicholas's skeleton,

what you're hoping for is that you're going to be, you know, the center of something like this. And so, hey, look, it works. for Nancey. Steal a finger and hundreds of years later, everybody gets a festival, right? Like, this is the medieval festival at its best, frankly. And I absolutely love to see that it's still going on. I mean, now if I can ever stop myself from going back to check for St. Nicholas, I'm going down to Nancy to see what it's all about. Oh, you have to. It's mad. It's crazy. There's a theme every year. And I think it's a UNESCO world-renowned site. They have three

medieval, late medieval marketplace spaces with superb buildings all around them and they just lead them up. So there's the story of the legend of the three little boys in the salting tubs and St. Nicholas every single year with a different illustrator involved or artists. And the last time it was hypermodern, very cartoony, almost South Park-esque. They jazz it up really and they try it so hard every, every year. And this is a lot. And this is a very modern. And this He's 18th century, so I really want to see what they're doing. All right, okay. We need to leave it there because I need to buy a train ticket to Nancy.

Caroline, I want to thank you so much for coming on and talking to me about one of the coolest saints to ever be commemorated. And thank you, everyone in the audience for listening. I'm Dr. Eleanor Yonaga, and this has been Gone Medieval from History Hit. And if you like what you've heard, don't forget to rate, review, follow the podcast, and tell your friends about it. My co-host, Matt Lewis, will be back on Friday with more medieval goodness, and I'll be back next Tuesday. Until next time!