elves – Author Sarah Angleton

As we enter into the busy Christmas season with the official start of Advent this past Sunday, I suppose it’s fitting to pause for a moment to observe the day when Santa Claus died. Yesterday (December 6) was recognized as the 1,674^th anniversary of the death of one of history’s most widely honored saints.

Celebrated for his gift-giving and kindness, particularly to the children of the poor, and remembered fondly for slapping a heretic across the face during the Council of Nicaea, St. Nicholas is still the hippest 4^th century bishop around.

Sinter-claes-saint-nicolas-dam800 — By Aloxe – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3138918

And no one loves St. Nicholas as much as the people of Bira, Italy, where his remains have been at rest within the Basilica di San Nicola for more than 900 years. But the saint isn’t from Italy originally, and no, he’s also not from the North Pole. He also most likely didn’t make his home with an army of toy-making elves and a herd of magical reindeer. Sometimes, people (like history bloggers) make things up. Sorry.

St. Nicholas actually spent much of his life serving as Bishop of Myra, a Greek town on the Mediterranean Coast, in what is modern-day Antalya, Turkey. Most people assumed that’s where the saint was buried, and he remained there until 1087 when some rowdy Italian elves (or sailors) from Bira spirited away his jolly bones, landing themselves, I would think, permanently on the naughty list.

There are different versions of the story, of course. Italian church historians tend to refer to the theft as the “translation” of the St. Nicholas relics from one place to the other. They favor stories that suggest cooperation of the monks guarding the tomb who stepped aside both in fear for the relics under the threat of Arab occupation, and because they read the signs suggesting Nicholas himself was ready to move. This isn’t quite how the tale is understood by Turkish archaeologists who would like the stolen relics back.

But archaeologists working in Antalya recently claimed they might have evidence that would change the story anyway. Beneath the ancient St. Nicholas Church in Southern Turkey, researchers detected a previously unknown crypt beneath a mosaic floor. Because historic floor removal is a delicate process, it could be a while before the crypt can be fully revealed, and any resting occupants examined.

For now it’s enough evidence for the Turkish archaeologists to publicly claim that the bones stolen away to Bira probably didn’t belong to St Nicholas anyway. They reference records from the time that suggest instead the wily guard monks tricked the thieves and sent the remains of another less well known priest to Italy.

The word from Bira is that they will assume they hold the true remains until world-wide experts reassure them, and this silly Turkish ploy to steal their pilgrimage tourism dollars can be brought to a close (I’m paraphrasing a bit here). I’m not sure what the response has been from the at least three other locations that claim to possess bones of the saint.

Customsuit — See kids? He’s just fine. And jolly as ever. By Oldschool at en.wikipedia (Transferred from en.wikipedia) [Public domain], from Wikimedia Commons

And therein lies the rub with relics. They’re hard to verify. All we really know for certain is that St. Nicholas is definitely dead. That’s what a lot of traumatized children are learning this holiday season. A friend recently posted on Facebook the contents of an e-mail sent to her by her child’s fourth grade teacher expressing concern that student-written responses to an article about the discovery in Turkey revealed some holiday anxiety. I suspect this was not the only teacher who has encountered this tricky problem this school year.

The good news is that regardless of where he was buried, the spirit of St. Nicholas lives on in an undisclosed magical location at the North Pole surrounded by flying reindeer and wily elves, and no way is anyone going to discover his bones there.

I have long maintained that this is not a serious history blog. Though I do attempt to provide good-ish information, and have generally completed at least some “research” on the topic, I’m a storyteller first and so I often fill in a few blanks along the way. And, on occasion, I may throw in a few anachronisms that you, intelligent reader, I assume will pick up on.

Still, I think it bears repeating, if you are starting your big school history research project and the first thing you’ve done is stop by to see what the practical historian has to say about it, you’re probably not going to get a very good grade.

That’s why I decided recently that I should beef up my credentials a little so that I can provide more reliable, useful information. With that in mind, this past weekend, I attended, for the first time ever, a Renaissance festival. Just for you.

It turns out, I don’t live too far from the site of the annual St. Louis Renaissance Faire, a festival that isn’t the biggest (that’s in Texas where everything is bigger) or best of its kind (or even the top 13 according to the Travel channel), but seemed to me like a good place to start my quest for historical accuracy.

The real Renaissance is that period of time that spans the gap between the Middle Ages and life that is somewhat more recognizable by us modern folk. Generally considered to stretch from the 14^th century to the 17^th, it started as a cultural explosion in Florence and much like the black plague, spread through all of Europe.

The period is characterized by major shifts in art, science, religion, and education. The people of the Renaissance began to think of the world and of themselves differently. Exactly when and exactly why this shifting began is open to a surprising amount of (kind of hostile, actually) debate among scholars. The whole thing is frankly a little nebulous, so in the interest of making it a little more concrete, here’s what I learned when I visited the fair, set in the 16^th Century French Village of Petit Lyon:

There was an enormous amount of cleavage during the Renaissance. Seriously, it was everywhere, breast tissue spilling over the tops of
Queen Elizabeth I didn’t get the memo about the cleavage. Evidently she had no sense of style at all.

incredibly tight corsets. I even saw a too-tight corset paired with a pair of sweatpants. So, evidently, there were also no decent tailors.
The Renaissance can be marked by the presence of elves, although admittedly this could have been only in France. A lot of elves. Many of them had bows. Some wore jester hats and jingling shoes. Still others had too-tight corsets. But though they varied, they could all be easily identified by their very pointy ears.
Bands of singing and dancing Caribbean pirates roamed village streets. They were not the clandestine thieves you might expect, but rather were garishly dressed, self-identified as pirates, and occasionally performed for royalty.
Someone should probably tell theses “gentlemen” that they belong in the Caribbean in the early 18th century, not in 16th century France. To illustrate the point, Captain Jack Sparrow was there, too, but he was too surrounded by an adoring crowd to get a good picture, as I was unwilling to wait in line.
The waffle cone, suggested by many to have been invented at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, was a favorite treat of European royalty during the Renaissance.
If one could manage to avoid the elves, there was still the large number of fairies to contend with. So many fairies, complete with delicate wings, blue-tinted skin, high-pitched sugary voices, and sparkly magical fairy dust. It was best to avoid these whenever possible.
Jousting knights mostly told jokes, especially puns. They loved puns. They also enjoyed insulting the attending royalty, who were pretty much cool with it.
The most popular food of 16^th century France was by far the turkey leg. As most sources claim that the turkey, which is native to the Americas, arrived in Europe in the 17^th Century, I think we can safely assume that those sources are wrong.
Anachronism tastes delicious!
King Francois II of France did not speak French. I know this because my nine-year-old who only knows a few French phrases had the opportunity to be knighted. When the king addressed him in French, my boy responded politely in the king’s own tongue, to which King Francois blushed and quickly changed the subject, in English.

So there you have it, the real Renaissance as best as I can tell. I should caution you, though. If you happen to be starting your big school history project on 16^th century France or the Renaissance in general and you start by checking out the St. Louis Renaissance Faire, you’re probably not going to get a very good grade. Unless of course you happen to be writing about elves and fairies. In that case, you should be good.