Iconography of Saint Nicholas. Results and perspectives of the studies. Michele Bacci (Siena, Italy)

The major exhibition on the iconography of Saint Nicholas held in Bari from December 2006 through May 2007 offered an invaluable opportunity to analyze the dynamics by which the saint's identity was shaped in the centuries-old process starting in Late Antiquity and ending in our own days. It allowed us to point out the key-role played by images in promoting and disseminating the cult of Saint Nicholas in the area of Lycia and in the rest of the Mediterranean world between the 6th and the 11th c. and to contradict Charles W. Jones's thesis which overemphasized the importance of literary tradition over the material manifestations of worship. The data emerging from textual evidence, archaeological data, and iconographic analysis points out, on the contrary, that the public veneration of the saintly bishop antedated of many centuries the elaboration of a systematic hagiographic narrative and was already widespread, by means of oral traditions and images, well before the writing of his first Life. The cultic development has been clearly expressed by the dynamic interaction of the saint's body with the holy site that he created around his tomb, wherein images were introduced first to enable his commemoration in visual terms, then to make him manifest in his own earthly residence. A cult-image started to take the place of the tomb as cultic focus in Myra as this one became more and more inaccessible; the holy effigy was probably perceived as a prestigious archetype for further miraculous images of Saint Nicholas, widespread from Constantinople to ancient Rus' and the West, which were instrumental to establish new holy sites of the saint well far from his celebrated burial place.