The most numerous traces of the cult of St. Nicholas date back to the sixth century. Among the most important, the Vita Nicolai Sionitae, composed in 564, tells the story of a monk of Sion, a monastery not far from Mira. In the text, rich in information on Christianity in Lycia, is given certain testimony...
Saint Nicholas was venerated in different ways on the European continent. The Orthodox churches saw in him a defender of the faith and depicted him next to the great fathers of the Eastern Church. In the southern West, Nicholas was the saint of charity and attention to the needy. In central-northern Europe he was considered...
The first news of the cult of St. Nicholas in Russia can be found in a text written in 1110 which refers to a church of St. Nicholas built in the year 882. A further testimony comes from the Cathedral of St. Sophia in Kiev, built in 1037 in which there was an image of...
The body of St. Nicholas remained at Mira about 750 years while his cult spread universally. The translation took place in 1087 by a group of sailors and merchants from Bari who broke the tomb of the saint and stole his body to take him to the port of Apulia. This event caused great enthusiasm...
The transfer of Saint Nicholas to Bari had great repercussions in Russia, as attested by numerous contemporary manuscripts and the fact that the feast dedicated to it is already attested in a mesjaceslov (calendar of the feasts of the saints) of 1144. The pilgrimages from Russia to Bari, which began at least in the second...
The cryptogram of St. Nicholas, still not understood, is one of the mysteries present in the Nicolaian Citadel. In the right transept of the Basilica of St. Nicholas there is a silver altar that originally covered the tomb of the saint. The altar dates back to 1319, a gift from the Tsar of Serbia Uroš...
The Nicolaian Citadel is one of the places that houses some fragments of the so-called “Instruments of the Passion”, found according to tradition by Helen, mother of the Emperor Constantine. These relics, particularly venerated and historically controversial, would be the objects used for the crucifixion of Christ: the True Cross, the nails, the Crown of...
