St Nicholas

6^th December is the saint’s day for someone that everybody in the western world has heard of, but under a corrupted form of his name.

Nicholas was born in about the year 300 in Patara on the south-west coast of what is now Turkey. He converted to Christianity and became bishop of Myra, which is not far from Patara. He was imprisoned during the widespread persecution of Christians under Emperor Diocletian but was released when Emperor Constantine became a Christian and ordered all persecutions to stop.

Nicholas was noted for his saintly deeds, and various legends grew up around him in later years.

One story that could well be true is that he prevented the execution of three innocent men after the governor of Myra had taken a bribe to have them condemned. Nicholas is said to have shamed the governor into begging for forgiveness.

A less likely story is that he brought back to life three children whom a local butcher had killed and cut up ready to sell as spring lamb.

A story that was to have later consequences involved Nicholas saving three sisters from having to sell themselves into prostitution by dropping bags of gold coins down their chimney so that the money landed in the stockings that had been hung by the fireplace to dry.

After his death, on 6^th December 343, a cult grew up around Saint Nicholas that spread across Europe. He was depicted as having a full white beard and wearing red bishop’s robes. The cult died down in most places as the centuries passed, but not in Holland, where Saint Nicholas (or Sinter Klaas) continued to be revered. Dutch settlers took the legend with them when they emigrated to the New World and established New Amsterdam (now New York).

Sinter Klaas, together with his white beard and red robe, has been doing the rounds ever since, including dropping gold coins (now made of chocolate) down chimneys and into stockings!

© John Welford

St John of the Cross

14^th December is the saint’s day of St John of the Cross, a 16^th-century Spanish mystic who was an important reformer of the Carmelite Order.

Born in 1542 into a family of converted Jews in central Spain, Juan de Yepes y Álvarez was educated by Jesuits and entered a Carmelite monastery in 1563. He found the Carmelites to be too lax in their religious observances for his liking and gave serious though to transferring to the much stricter Carthusian order.

However, a meeting with Teresa of Avila made him have second thoughts. She was a Carmelite nun who was intent on reforming the Order, and she inspired John to join her in this quest. When Teresa established a reformed nunnery, John (who now adopted the name John of the Cross) followed suit with a monastery for Carmelite friars.

The reforms that Teresa and John favoured involved going back the original principles of the Order, which included allowed more time for prayer and contemplation and, for friars, more work outside the monastery evangelising local people.

However, the reforms were not universally popular, and in 1577 John was arrested on the instructions of the general of the Carmelite Order in Spain and imprisoned in a tiny cell in conditions that were little short of torture. He escaped in 1578 and was able to resume his work alongside Teresa in developing what would become a new branch of the Carmelites known as the “Discalced Carmelites”. “Discalced” meant “barefoot”, which was one of the characteristics of the movement towards asceticism that John favoured.

John spent the rest of his life travelling and founding new religious houses, for both men and women. He died in 1591. He was beatified in 1675 and canonised in 1726.

While in prison, John of the Cross wrote a poem entitled “Spritual Canticle” that details the journey of the soul from the moment of death to its union with God. He wrote many other poems and prose works that developed his mystical philosophy, in which he envisioned a process by which every individual undergoes a form of crucifixion before entering God’s presence.

St John of the Cross is revered as being a “Doctor of the Church” because of his writings.

© John Welford

St Viviana

2nd December is the saint’s day for Viviana (sometimes spelled Bibiana), a Christian martyr in 4^th century Rome.

Viviana and Demetria were members of a Christian family, their parents being Flavian and Dafrosa. When the governor of Rome, Apronianus, accidentally lost an eye he reckoned that the Christians must have been to blame and he used the incident as an excuse to persecute Flavian and his family.

Flavian was killed by having his face burned with a red-hot piece of metal, later dying from his injuries, and Dafrosa was beheaded. All the family’s property was confiscated and the two daughters, who were presumably in their teens at the time, lived in extreme poverty as a result.

Apronianius had assumed that these privations, plus the shock of losing their parents, would have turned the girls away from their faith, but in this he was completely wrong. After five months he had them put on trial.

Demetria boldly professed her Christianity in court, but fell down dead immediately afterwards. Apronianus ordered that Viviana should be placed in the care of a pagan woman named Rufina, who was instructed to force Viviana to change her ways, by any means that Rufina saw fit.

Despite all the tortures that Rufina could devise, nothing would persuade Viviana to recant. Instead, Apronianus condemned her to death by flogging. She was tied to a pillar and scourged with whips that were weighted by lead. Her body was left in the open, with the intention that it would be eaten by wild animals but, when none had done so, it was buried two days later.

Viviana, for reasons that seem somewhat obscure, is the patron saint of hangovers, among other things!

© John Welford

St James Intercisus

Anyone who enjoys reading horror stories that involve ingenious ways in which people can inflict pain on their fellow humans can do no better than to read accounts of how early Christian martyrs were done to death. There seems to be an endless variety of terrible things that can be done to give someone a lingering death, as the following story should make clear.

27^th November is the saint’s day of James Intercisus, the latter name meaning “cut to pieces”, which is apparently how he met his end.

James was a courtier, in the early 5^th century, of the Persian King Yezdigerd. James was a Christian, but when King Yezdigerd started persecuting Christians, James changed sides and renounced his faith.

This action did not go down well with James’s parents, who castigated him for being an “apostate”. This shamed him into leaving the royal court (now presided over by Yezdigerd’s successor Bahram) and turning back to Christianity.

However, he was now regarded as a turncoat by the new king, who, after his capture, sentenced James to receive a particularly unpleasant punishment.

This was that he should be hung from a beam and his body slowly cut to pieces until he once again recanted his faith. This was done in public and many Christians in the crowd urged James to save himself. However, having recanted once before, and been ashamed by his deed, James was determined not to do so again and the removal of digits and limbs continued, each one being offered to God by James as a personal sacrifice.

Eventually James’s head was cut off, by which time 28 separate pieces were scattered on the ground. It is a particularly unpleasant story.

© John Welford

St Gildas

29^th January is the saint’s day for Gildas, a British saint who also has a claim to fame as an early historian, although his judgments on the evils of his time should probably not be taken at face value. He is an important source for the legend of King Arthur.

Gildas was born in about the year 500 in Scotland but moved south to Wales, where he became a hermit at Llanilltud. However, he did not stay put for long, and his travels took him to many places, including Ireland and Rome.

At one time in his life he married but was then widowed. At another, he lived on the island of Flatholm in the Bristol Channel. He founded a religious house at Ruys in Brittany, which is where he died in the year 570.

He was clearly very well read, and his travels brought him into contact with many different people of all levels of society. He became disenchanted with the morals of his fellow men, particularly the clergy and those in power, and one purpose of setting pen to paper was to contrast the laxity of his age with the purity of the rulers of past times. His stated aim was to chronicle “the miseries, the mistakes and the downfall of Britain”.

The history that he wrote (entitled “De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae” or “On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain”) reads more like a sermon than a historical document, but it is still a valuable contribution for understanding a period that is often referred to as the “Dark Ages” that followed the withdrawal of the Romans from Britain in the early 5^th century.

However, it was written with a specific moral purpose in mind, and Gildas may well have exaggerated some of the details of the evils of his time.

© John Welford

St Vincent of Saragossa

22nd January is the saint’s day for Vincent of Saragossa, one of many victims of persecution under Emperor Diocletian at the beginning of the fourth century.

Vincent had been ordained by the bishop of Saragossa (in Spain) and was working in the region when the persecution began, the chief perpetrator being the Roman governor Dacian. A number of local Christians were killed and Vincent was arrested.

Dacian appears to have taken a distinct dislike to Vincent. Whereas the bishop was banished, Vincent was put through a horrific series of tortures in an attempt to make him reveal the whereabouts of the sacred books that he was protecting.

Vincent was stretched out on a rack while his flesh was hacked at with hooks. He was then “cooked” on a heated gridiron. However, he would not give in or recant his faith.

Dacian gave up and ordered that Vincent be thrown into a foul cell. Despite the attention of fellow Christians who tried to treat his wounds, Vincent died.

Dacian was not finished with Vincent. He ordered that his body be thrown into a bog where it would be fed on by wild animals. However, the legend is that a raven protected the body and drove away any beast or bird that tried to attack it.

© John Welford

St Severinus of Noricum

8^th January is the saint’s day for a 5^th century ascetic and missionary named Severinus. He is known as “Severinus of Noricum” to distinguish him from another saint with the same name – Noricum is the Roman province in which Severinus did much of his work, the area covering parts of modern Austria and Slovenia.

He was probably born in Egypt in around the year 410. His early desire was to live as a hermit in the desert, but he became convinced that he would do more good by converting non-believers to Christianity so he travelled northwards until he reached the River Danube in Noricum.

His efforts were not successful at first, but he persevered and set up a string of monasteries to which people came when they were in need. He was able to persuade people to change their ways, these including a rich woman whom he encouraged to give huge quantities of food to the poor. He also gained a reputation as a miracle worker, including the driving away of a plague of locusts.

As time went by, Severinus became more successful in his conversion rate, and he can therefore be credited with having brought Christianity to the region, which has remained strongly Roman Catholic ever since.

Severinus was at heart a reclusive individual and he often shut himself away for long periods of time to meditate and pray. He lived an extremely simple life, never eating during the hours of daylight and going everywhere barefoot.

He died of pleurisy on 8^th January 482, singing a psalm as he slipped away.

© John Welford