The Ancient Russian Story on the Translation of St Nicholas' Relics from Myra to Bari

Translation from Russian and explanatory notes by Fr Gerardo Cioffari, OP.

Written in Kyiv or Cernigov in the year 1095, on the occasion of the institution in Russia (Kyivian Rus’) of the Feast of the Translation of St Nicholas relics to Bari, this SLOVO or POVEST’ (Sermon, Narration) is of great historical and ecumenical importance.

Although composed forty-one years after the official schism between Rome and Constantinople, the feast has been always celebrated in Russia (with Ukraine and Byelorussia) without interruption

It is all due to the intellectual honesty of the metropolitan Makarij who in the fifties of the XVI century, free from confessionalistic prejudices, collected all the ancient Russian writings in his Великие
Минеи Четьи (Great Monthly Readings).

The chronology of this feast brought some Catholic writers to the absurd thesis of a submission of the Russian Church to the Pope, while Russian historians, like Evgenij Golubinskij, made recourse to clumsy argumentations to explain the joy of the Russians for the presence of the Saint in a Catholic country. The Greeks, on the other hand, celebrate St Nicholas’ translation carefully avoiding any mention of Bari.

On the 9th Day of the Month of May:

Translation to the City of Bari of the Relics of the Godly Man, the Saint and Father Nicholas the Wonderworker, Archbishop of Myra in Lycia

1. Brothers, it is our duty to celebrate and to honor the feasts of God, to become like His Saints and, by practicing the virtues, look for salvation, always in the living experience that we were created in the image of God and by the work of his hands, doing what is pleasing to Him, as did Saint Nicholas, the great and glorious bishop of Christ.

His table I wish now to display before you, dear brothers. Taste of it and see how the Lord is good toward those who put their hope in Him, toward those who trust in Him, toward those who behave according to His will, and how good is the Lord toward those who love Him.

He gave him as a gift to the city of Myra and to the surrounding region in order that he would spread his generosity on them, by working extraordinary miracles and granting healings that cannot be counted, so that he appeared to be great defender and intercessor to those who were in danger,

2. both by earth and by sea, healing the sick, setting the prisoners free, letting the blind see, the lame walk and the deaf hear, cleansing the lepers and expelling the demons. He performed every kind of miracles for everybody, according to what the Lord had said: Whosoever believes in Me, he too will perform the same works I do. So did this saint and godly man, the bishop and father Nicholas.

3. When grace and philanthropy were allowed to rain on us the Sun of Justice, and the favors of the Lord Almighty have been disclosed to us, in our own time and in our years, a wonderful event that is still in our memory has taken place, beyond any human understanding, concerning the godly man, the great bishop Saint Nicholas.

In the year 1088 from the incarnation of God Himself, become man through the inviolate marriage of the Mother of God and ever Virgin Mary, under the Greek Emperor Alexios, under the Patriarch Nicholas

4. of Constantinople, in the time of the Russian Princes, the loved by Christ Prince Vsevolod in Kyiv and his noble son Vladimir in Cernigov, the Ismaelites, having already invaded for divine decree and design of the Most High the Greek lands on the other side of the sea, starting from the Khersonese unto Antioch and Jerusalem,

5. killed every man they would find through all their cities and villages, women and children they took into slavery and burned their houses.

They plundered churches and monasteries, taking the cities under their power.

LYCIA PLUNDERED BY THE TURKS.

In 1071 Bari, capital city of the Byzantine Province of Italy, is conquered by the Normans.

Capital city is now Salerno. Bari experiences a slump in stock exchange.

1085. Antioch, Bari’s main commercial partner, falls into the hands of the Muslims.

The Southern Asia Minor (Turkey), including Lycia, where St Nicholas’ body rests, is prey of Turkish incursions and massacres.

The Russian text opens by underscoring the dramatic situation of St Nicholas’ land in the hands of the Turks.

NB. Russian copyists often are mistaken about the year 1087 (some write 1088, others 1089 or 1096).

6. Then they wasted Lycia too, where the body of St. Nicholas was resting, precious body, venerable body, performing wondrous and glorious miracles.

Couldn't such a godly man stop the waste of his city and of the churches? [Certainly he could] But he did not wish to oppose the divine decree. On the contrary, he said: That the Lord do what is fitting to his eyes. Our Lord Jesus Christ, however, could not stand that His faithful servant rest with his mortal remains in a desolate place,

7. where he could not be glorified by anybody. It is written in fact: I will glorify, he said, those who glorify me and I will raise the glory of those who praise me.

In those days, in the city of Bari, in the German territory, lived a pious priest, loving Christ and righteous. To him appeared Saint Nicholas, saying: Go and tell the men of this city and all the gathered clergy to go and bring me from the city of Myra

8. and let me rest here. As a matter of fact, I cannot remain there, in a place that God permitted to be deserted. Having said this, he disappeared.

As he got up, at dawn, he informed all the men about St. Nicholas' apparition. Those who were listening were filled with great joy,

ST NICHOLAS ASKS THE BARIANS TO GO TO TAKE HIM FROM MYRA

Unlike the other sources, the Kyivian Legend sees the entire affair in the light of Divine Providence.

St Nicholas appears in a dream to a pious priest of Bari exhorting him to tell the citizens to set up an expedition in order to take him from Myra, because his city is in the hands of the Turks and nobody goes there to venerate him.

NB. The other sources say that the idea of the “theft” came to the sailors during the trip. And this seems to be the truth, otherwise the sailors, back to Bari, could not name their own terms to the Archbishop.

9. and said: Today Christ has increased his mercy on his people and on our city, because he made us worthy of receiving his faithful servant St. Nicholas”. And so, in that very place, they chose a group of honorable and God-fearing men, who should go with three ships for the Saint.

Having loaded the ships with grain, pretending to go for trade, they left.

TRADE OPERATIONS IN ANTIOCH

Sixty-two SAILORS leave from Bari. The sources do not say which month or day. We can suppose: the first days of March of the year 1087.

While according to Nicephorus they went directly to Antioch, John the Archdeacon say that they thought about the sacred theft already on the way there, but renounced because Myra was full of Turks gathered for a funeral service.

Once in Antioch, the Barians make their trade operations, selling cereals and buying textile products.

Then, sailing on the way back, stopped in Andriake, the harbor of Myra. Learning that the church was isolated, they decided to give it a try.

10. They reached Antioch. Having sold the grain they bought all the merchandise suitable to them. At this time the Barians came to know that the Venetians who were there had in mind to go there, and take for themselves the relics of St. Nicholas.

11. They speeded up their operations and soon left. Arriving to Myra in Lycia, they moored to the wharf of the city.

12. Having taken council they armed themselves and entered the church of St. Nicholas, where they met four monks, whom they asked where St. Nicholas was. [The monks] showed them the tomb where St. Nicholas was resting.

ENCOUNTER WITH THE MONKS AND TAKING OF THE RELICS

Faithful to his providentialistic vision, the Russian writer omits the contrasts between the sailors and the Byzantine monks.

The other three sources, Nicephorus, John and the French Compiler refer about Matthew (and Alexander) putting the sword at the throat of a monk who was trying to escape to say to the Myrians what was happening.

In the Kyivian Legend, on the contrary, the monks spontaneously and unasked revealed the place of the Saint’s tomb and two of them sailed with the Barians accompanying the relics to Bari.

13. They then smashed the floor of the church and found the stone coffin full of sacred liquor. They poured the sacred liquor in some vessels and took his relics as well as the stone coffin where the relics had been and took them to the ships.

14. They set sail again, leaving two monks in Myra, while the other two accompanied the relics of St. Nicholas. And they got under way toward the city of Bari, on the other side of the sea.

15. They left Myra on the eleventh of the month of April, and reached Bari on the ninth of the month of May, on Sunday in the evening.

ARRIVAL TO BARI.

After referring all the stops of the navigation, the sources say that the Barians, in the evening before entering the port of the city, stop in the St. George, a few miles before Bari. The day after (Sunday 9th of May 1087) they enter the harbor of Bari .

The abbot Elia mediates between those who want the relics to be preserved in the Cathedral church and those (in tune with the sailors) who want a new temple to be built in the Catepan’s court.

In the fight two young people die. The Archbishop draws back his soldiers yielding to the people’s will.

The Kyivian Legend omits the fight, and speaks only of the people’s joy and the Saint’s miracles (borrowing them from Nicephorus).

16. As the Barians saw their arrival from Myra with the relics of St. Nicholas, all went out together to meet them, men and women, children and adults, with candles and thuribles of incense, and welcomed them with great honor.

17. And they put the relics in the church of St. John the Forerunner, near the sea. Oh, listen to me, my brothers, I beg you, how many were the miracles performed once St. Nicholas arrived in Bari from Myra. He arrived in the evening of Sunday, and already the following morning, Monday, he healed forty-seven

18. sick people, men and women, subject to various infirmities and illnesses, some to the head, some to the eyes, others to the hands or to the feet, others to the heart or to the stomach, or through the entire body, and still others who were tormented by unclean spirits. On Tuesday he healed twenty-two sick people. On Wednesday he healed twenty-nine sick people. 

On Thursday, about dawn, he healed a deaf-mute, afflicted by this decease already for five years. After this, St. Nicholas appeared in a vision to a monk, who was a holy man, and said to him: It was by the will of God that I came in this city. On Sunday, at the ninth hour, eleven men were healed.

19. Afterwards every day St. Nicholas performed miracles like a fountain flowing without end. Many gifts were brought to the Saint, gold and silver as well as precious fabrics. The people, in fact, having witnessed to his glorious miracles rejoiced with great joy.

20. And they built in his honor a wonderful church, great and beautiful indeed, named after the holy and virtuous father Nicholas. They made for him also a silver and gold-plated urn.

THE BUILDING OF THE CHURCH

The Russian writer speaks of the grandiosity of the church.

The illuminator of the monumental St Nicholas’ Life in Ivan the Terrible’s times (about 1570) reserves this page to the construction of the church in Bari.

NB. While on the Translation we own a rich documentation, about the construction of the church we have no "Legend." Fortunately, the Basilica is full of inscriptions of the first two centuries inside and outside that make up for this failing.

22. The third year after his translation from Myra, they sent an embassy to the Pope of Rome, German, inviting him to come with his bishops and all his ecclesiastical retinue in order to move the relics of St. Nicholas [to the new church].

23. They came, and took the relics of St. Nicholas and deposited them in the silver urn.

24. The bishops and their dignitaries took them and moved them into the great new church. It was the 9th of May when they deposited them in a hidden place under the altar.

THE POPE PUTS THE RELICS UNDER THE ALTAR OF THE CRYPT
October 1, 1089

Invited by the Archbishop Elia and the Norman Lord of Bari (Bohemund), Pope Urban II comes to Bari and solemnly puts St Nicholas’ bones under the altar of the Crypt (the underground church).

Almost all Russian manuscripts give the wrong name of the Pope: German, instead of Urban, the famous Pope of the First Crusade.

A detail present only in the Kyivian Legend is the circumstance according to which the Pope puts the relics under the altar, but leaves one hand outside for veneration.

25. They transferred also the ancient box in which he was brought from Myra and put it in the church. They picked up a bone of his hands from the relics and exposed it. And a great multitude of people started to come to kiss the relic and the box.

26. The Pope of Rome, German, the bishops and all the people of the city that day established a great feast in honor of the Saint, a feast that is observed up to our own day. They ate and drank and feasted through those days, and they gave many presents to the poor.

JOYFUL CELEBRATIONS IN BARI FOR MANY DAYS AND GIFTS TO THE POOR

The Kyivian Legend ends the story with the great Barian celebrations and joyful feasts for many days. The writer does not forget the Christian spirit of the event and concludes with the gifts to the poor.