Saint Nicholas in Byzantine art. Nancy Ševčenko (USA, South Woodstock, VT)

Icons of Saint Nicholas in the monastery of Saint Catherine on Sinai are among the oldest painted images of the saint that we have. They reveal the gradual development of his portrait type over several centuries, from a generic elderly bishop to the distinctive figure with slightly elongated features, bulging cranium, receding hairline and rounded white beard that was to become canonical from the 11^th century on. By this time, the saint was being venerated throughout the Byzantine world and an essential part of almost any painted Byzantine apse program.

Rich narrative cycles of the life of Saint Nicholas first appear in the late 12^th c. Nearly 60 Byzantine cycles in fresco and icon painting survive, exhibiting a remarkably wide geographical and social range (those in Thessalonike and in Serbia in the 14^th c. were particularly lavishly developed), and exploiting a new form, the «vita icon», a panel with numerous narrative scenes surrounding a central portrait of a saint. The cycles include scenes of his birth, his arrival at school, his consecrations to deacon, priest and bishop, and his peaceful demise. Of his miracles, the most popular was the Praxis de stratelatis, a lengthy tale that involved Saint Nicholas coming to the aid of three generals wrongly accused by the emperor of treason. It revealed the saint's ability to defend the innocent, and willingness to intervene on their behalf with the highest authorities in the land. He became a popular choice as personal advocate at the Last Judgment, and depictions of his life a popular choice for the decoration of funerary chapels. Other popular narratives include those of the three maidens whom the young Nicholas rescued from prostitution, and his posthumous rescue of the child Basil, kidnapped by an Arabic emir. Saint Nicholas intervened with the powers of nature as well, saving ships endangered by storms at sea, and felling a tree inhabited by demons.

This extraordinarily popular saint was not a martyr, nor was he a theologian with volumes of writings to his name or a major source of healing. What he did do that was so valued by the Byzantines was to step in, when and wherever called upon, to right things, to restore justice and order for the individual struggling to survive in the political as well as in the natural world and concerned with his or her fate at the end of time.