St. nocholas epiphany city4/24/2023 ![]() "What's left in the church to find if they ever do open up that space? Who knows?” Around the World What's more, "the church has been sacked and abandoned and rebuilt, so it has a long, checkered history with many gaps," he says. For one, nothing has been found, he says. Nicholas Church, leading some Turkish archaeologists to hypothesize it could include Santa's tomb.Ĭampbell University's English is skeptical. Various types of imaging, they claim, revealed an unexplored chamber beneath the mosaic floors of the city's ancient St. Nicholas may still be in Demre after all. In October 2017, Turkish authorities suggested that St. Nicholas's death, until his remains were allegedly taken to Italy, Christians had no doubt where his corpse was located: The Cathedral of Myra, where the saint had served the faithful. Demre, Turkeyįor more than seven centuries after St. But that explanation hasn't entirely extinguished the controversy. )ĭecades ago, anatomy professor Luigi Martino examined the Bari and Venice bones and concluded that they could have come from the same skeleton. ![]() So, it seems they left some small fragments behind, which the Venetians took later.” ( See amazing pictures of cathedrals and churches worldwide. They feared not only the locals coming after them, but also the bones and power of Nicholas. The story goes that the Bari sailors who took the remains from Turkey in left some of them at the Church of St. ![]() Nicholas in the Lido contains small bone fragments from the saint that Venetian sailors claimed to have unearthed in 1099 at the nearly abandoned church in Myra. Venice, Italyīari isn't the only Italian city with a claim to the saint's body parts. So it's also anatomically possible that the Illinois fragment is part of the same skeleton. Intriguingly, the Bari relics include only a partial pelvis. But of course, even that can be contested,” adds English, a Christian theologian and philosopher at Campbell University in North Carolina. “We have a pretty good amount of confidence that these are bones of Nicholas in Bari. Īdam English, author of the book The Saint Who Would Be Santa Claus, notes the people who moved the bones documented their journey in detail. Each May a festival celebrates their homecoming, re-enacted by priests who arrive by boat with an icon-style painting of the saint. These remains still lie in the Basilica of Saint Nicholas, a destination for both Orthodox Christian and Roman Catholic pilgrims. “During the time of the Crusades, when the Byzantine Empire was slowly eroding, a group of Italians removed his body from Myra and brought it to Bari with the goal of safeguarding a number of the relics from the Turks who really didn't have any interest in Christian saints,” Witczak says. Nicholas's remains, or most of them, may have been spirited from what's now Turkey to the Adriatic port city of Bari in 1087, according to Reverend Michael Witczak, professor of liturgical studies at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. Here are a few more places where the real Father Christmas could be buried. “This bone fragment, in contrast, suggests that we could possibly be looking at remains from St Nicholas himself.” "Many relics that we study turn out to date to a period somewhat later than the historic attestation would suggest," archaeological dating expert Tom Higham said in a statement. Though the year of his death is disputed, the day is not-December 6, now celebrated as St. 343 in Myra, a small town now called Demre in modern-day Turkey. The Greek bishop, known as a patron of children, likely died in A.D. ![]() Martha of Bethany Church in Morton Grove, Illinois, does in fact date to the time of the saint's death. In 2017 Oxford University scholars announced a first step in that direction: A radiocarbon study that shows a bone long thought to be a St. In the early and medieval Christian tradition, the mortal remains of popular saints were scattered among various churches in various places to be displayed as sacred relics.ĭating and DNA tests may allow scientists to piece together which relics are actually from the same man. Though his remains are venerated worldwide, nobody knows for certain where he rests in peace-or more accurately, in pieces. But the final chapter of the holy man's own story is equally intriguing-and controversial. Nicholas became the red-suited chimney hopper we know as Santa is fascinating in its own right.
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