NICHOLAS, SAINT, a highly popular saint of the Roman Catholic church, and rever enced with still greater devotion by the Russian church, which regards him as a special patron, was one of the early bishops of Myra in Lycia. The precise date of his episco pate is a subject of much controversy. According to the popular account he was a con fessor of the faith in the last persecution under Maximinian, and having survived until the council of Nice, was one of the bishops who took part in that great assembly. This, however, seems highly improbable. His name does not occur among the signatures to the decrees, nor is he mentioned along with the other distinguished confessors of the faith who were present at the council, either by the historians, or what is more impor tant, by St. Athanasius. He may, with more probability, be. refelsed to a later period; but he certainly lived prior to the reign of Justinian, in whose time several of the churches of Constantinople were dedicated to St. Nicholas. Of his personal history lewdly anything is certainly known, and the great popularity of the devotion to him rests mainly on the traditions, both in the w. and in the c., of the many miracles
wrought through his intercession. lie is regarded, in Catholic countries, as the especial patron of the young, and particularly of scholars. In England, his feast was celebrated iu ancient times with great solemnity in the public schools, Eton, Sarum cathedral, and elsewhere; and a curious practice founded upon this characteristic of Sk Nicholas, still subsists in some countries, especially in Germany. On the vigil of his feast, which is held on Dec. (3, a person in the appearance and costume of a bishop assembles the child ren of a family or of a school, and distributes among them, to the good children, gilt nuts, sweetmeats, and other little presents, as the reward of good conduct; to the naughty ones, the redoubtable punishment of the " Klaubauf." The supposed relics of St. Nicholas were conveyed from the e. to Bari, in the kingdom of Naples, towards the close of the 11th c.; and it is a curious fact that in the Russian church the anniver sary of this translation, May 8, is still observed as a festival.