The Saint Who Would Be Santa Claus: The True Life and Trials of Saint Nicholas of Myra. By Adam C. English. Waco, Tex.: Baylor University Press, 2012. xii + 236 pp. $24.95 cloth.

Abstract

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)The Saint Who Would Be Santa Claus: The True Life and Trials of Saint Nicholas of Myra . By Adam C. English . Waco, Tex. : Baylor University Press , 2012. xii + 236 pp. $24.95 cloth.Book Reviews and NotesFor Anglophone readers the study of Saint Nicholas has been dominated by Charles W. Jones's 1978 magisterial Saint Nicholas of Myra, Bari, and Manhattan: Biography of a Legend (Chicago: University of Chicago). Jones accepted as a starting point that all scholars can know about Nicholas--if he ever even existed--was a collection of legends, which Jones meticulously traced in his book.Although scholars praised and used the book, many have felt uncomfortable with Jones's dismissal not just of any historical evidence about Nicholas but also of the possibility of such knowledge. In this new study English makes a case for limited historical knowledge about Nicholas.English makes it clear that most surviving material is hagiographic if not legendary, but he also makes the case that not all of the material could have been created de novo and thus that there are historical kernels about the saint. But which ones?English points out that the earliest account of Nicholas, a supposed bishop of Myra in southwest Asia Minor in the fourth century, dates to the mid-fifth century. Proclus of Constantinople (d. 446) wrote an encomium on the saint and his abundant virtues. English argues that Proclus drew from an earlier but now non-extant Eastern source. He also lists several sixth-century sources. But he does not rush to make his case. For example, he accepts that no proof exists that Nicholas attended the Council of Nicea in 325, but also points out that the lists of attendees at the council leave out names of bishops known to have attended. He also makes the overall good point of asking how Nicholas could have become so famous if he had never even existed (37).This limited-history approach produces some very unusual and positive results. For example, Nicholas's most famous miracle was aiding an impoverished man who lacked the funds for dowries for his three daughters whom he planned to sell into prostitution. Nicholas saves the day and the young women by throwing three bags of gold on three different occasions into the man's window. When the man discovers the identity of the mysterious donor, Nicholas swears him to secrecy.English does not defend the historicity of this particular tale but does point out that Nicholas helps the daughters to get married rather than encourage them to embrace virginity or even to enter a convent as the pious reader would have expected. …