St. Nicholas — The Catholic Bishop Who Punched a Heretic in the Face

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He crossed the room in front of the emperor
and every bishop, and he punched another man

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in the face. No, not a metaphor, not raised
voices in some theology debate, an open-handed

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shot to the face in front of everybody at the
biggest church meeting in Christian history,

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thrown by a guy who spent the last 1700 years
shrinking down until kids think he's a cartoon

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in a red suit. You think you know this man,
you do not. Before any of that, before the

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council, before the miracles, before he turned
into the most impersonated saint on the planet,

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he was just an orphan sitting on more money
than he knew what to do with, standing outside

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some poor guy's house in the middle of the night
trying to figure out how to give it all away

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without getting caught.

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Hi, my name is John O'Connor and this is Everyday
Saints, episode 13. 13 weeks, 13 saints.

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And if you've been here since week one, thank
you for sticking around. If you're new here,

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welcome to the porch. Do stick around and if
this hits you, subscribe so you don't miss

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next week. A new saint every Thursday. For my
regulars, you will notice I'm changing things

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up a little this episode. The meat and potatoes
are still there, don't worry, but just served

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up a little differently. Let me know what you
think. Today's guy, you already have an opinion

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about. This is Saint Nicholas of Myra. The actual
man buried somewhere underneath the beard,

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the belly laugh, and the eight reindeer plus
Rudolph. Nobody wrote, and then the bishop

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clocked a heretic into a Christmas song. But
stick with me, because that's very much in

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here. My wife Sarah wasn't raised Catholic,
and when I told her I was doing an episode

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on the real Saint Nicholas, She said, wait,
are you about to tell me Santa Claus punched

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somebody? Yeah, basically I am. So if you walked
in expecting a cute Christmas story or one

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you're ready to roll your eyes at, stay with
me. The parts of this that sound the most made

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up are actually pretty well documented. The
part that feels the most believable, jolly

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guy, bag of toys, workshop full of elves, that's
stuff we made up 200 years ago. we're going

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to sort out which is which. Nicholas was born
around 270 AD in a town called Patera in what's

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now southern Turkey. His parents had money and
they were Christian, but he did lose both of

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them young, probably due to some regional sickness.
So while he was still a young man and not yet

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married, he was old enough to inherit everything,
but not old enough to to really know what to

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do with it. I mean, most guys who come into
that type of money that fast go out and buy

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a boat or a hot rod or whatever the top of the
line horse was back then. Nicholas did not

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buy a boat or a horse. There was a man in town,
used to have money and then lost it all, with

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three daughters and nothing to give them for
a dowry. Sounds like a small problem from where

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we're sitting. A daughter with no dowry had
exactly one grim way left to take care of herself.

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So this father was out of options and out of
hope. Nicholas heard about it. And instead

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of showing up at the guy's door in broad daylight
so everybody could see him being generous,

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he waited until the dark, grabbed a bag of gold,
and depending on which version you hear, either

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threw it through an open window or dropped it
down the chimney. where it landed in a stocking

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somebody had hung out to dry by the fire. Which,
if you think about it, means the entire concept

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of stockings hung by the chimney with care started
because a guy needed somewhere to stash some

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cash without ringing the doorbell. He did it
again for daughter number two, did it again

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for daughter number three. This third time,
the dad's been staying up waiting to catch

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whoever's been doing this, catches him red-handed.
and Nicholas begs him, please don't tell anyone.

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He didn't want the credit. He wanted to do this
generous act, but he wanted his name nowhere

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near it. And I have to admit, that's the part
that gets me. We live in a world where everybody

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wants to be seen doing the right thing. This
guy took a real risk specifically to make sure

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nobody saw him. That's it. That's the whole
seed of Christmas morning. Three bags of gold

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in the dark, so three girls wouldn't end up
with nowhere to turn if you catch my drift.

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Somewhere between the fourth century turkey
and the mall parking lot, we kept the gifts

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and completely lost the guy. Historically, this
one holds up pretty well. It's one of the earliest

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stories anyone tells about him, written down
not long after he died. Not a court transcript,

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but about as good as ancient saint stories get.
Nicholas became Bishop of Myra eventually,

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a port town near Patera. And in the early fourth
century, that job came with a real chance of

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getting you killed. Emperor Diocletian ran the
worst empire-wide crackdown on Christians in

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Roman history. Soldiers were going town to town
arresting bishops by name. Because if you

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cut the head off of a local church, aka the
church leaders, then the rest falls apart faster.

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Nicholas was exactly who they were looking for.
The old accounts say he got arrested, chained

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up, and held for years in conditions built to
break a person. Cold, stolen floor, barely

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any food, not trying to kill you fast, trying
to slowly convince you that whatever you believe

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isn't worth what it's costing you. Tradition
says he carried the marks of it on his body

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the rest of his life. Picture that. A guy blessing
babies and settling arguments between merchants

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with scars on his wrists from the chains he
wore rather than say, hey, Jesus wasn't the

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Lord. And unlike some of what's coming, this
part is about as solid as history gets. The

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Diocletian persecution is extremely well-documented.
Nicholas getting swept up and it shows up early

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and often. If you don't buy the reindeer stories,
that's fine, but Don't let that double bleed

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backward onto the guy who did actual years in
an actual Roman cell for this. Then, in 313

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AD, everything flipped. Constantine legalized
Christianity and whoever was still alive walked

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free. Nicholas walked out a bishop who had been
tortured and never backed down. That's the

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guy who, 12 years later, walks into the most
important meeting the early church ever had.

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It is 325 AD. Constantine calls bishops in from
everywhere to a city called Nicaea to settle

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something tearing the church apart. A priest
named Arius is teaching that Jesus wasn't fully

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and internally God. That, and I quote, there
was a time when he was not. Jesus in his version

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is the greatest thing God ever made. Just made
though, not equal to the father. Sounds like

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a fine distinction from way over here, the kind
of thing only theology nerds argue about, right?

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But in 325 AD, it was not that. If Arius is
right, the guy who died on the cross wasn't

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actually God doing the dying. He was some incredibly
important created being doing it on God's behalf.

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Now, that's not a footnote. Whole cities had
already rioted over this. Dock workers and

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bakers arguing the nature of Christ in the street
with the heat people bring to politics now.

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Imagine you're a group chat on your phone,
but it's the fourth century and the topic is

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whether Jesus is God. Nicholas is in the room
and according to church tradition, he's sitting

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there listening to Arius lay out all of this
in front of the entire council and something

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in him just snaps. He gets up, walks across
the floor, and hits Arius across the face.

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All right, I gotta be straight with you on this
one. The punch isn't in the earliest write-ups

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of Nicaea. It shows up centuries later in Byzantine
tradition. Now, that doesn't automatically

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make it fake. Plenty of true stuff gets written
down late just because nobody thought to record

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it at the time. But there is a difference, a
real difference between This definitely happened

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and the church has told this story forever
because it believes it's true. This one's the

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second kind. I'm keeping it in anyway because
even a story that isn't rock solid history

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tells you something real. What the earliest
Christians thought defending the faith was

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supposed to look like. So the punch landed or
it didn't. Truth be told, hitting a guy in

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an imperial council was a serious offense. Most
versions say cost Nicholas his position and

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nearly his freedom on the spot. Stripped, thrown
into a cell that same day, only reinstated

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after a vision convinced everyone what drove
him wasn't a temper problem. It was love for

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the truth. Same guy who snuck through the dark
so three sisters would never know who saved

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them, gentle and secret, furious and public
over something non-negotiable. Not two different

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guys. One guy who could love a struggling person
quietly and love the truth loudly enough to

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risk everything in front of the most powerful
man alive. That's the thing I keep landing

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on with Nicholas. Most of us are only good at
one of those. Rest of his life, he was the

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Bishop of Myra and pretty much every story that
survives him is a rescue story. Three men in

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Myra once were falsely accused. Already sentenced
already kneeling with the executioner's sword

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in the air and tradition says Nicholas shows
up at a dead sprint grabs the blade out of

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the Executioner's hand before it comes down
and gets in the governor's face until the guy

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admits he took a bribe Three men who had made
peace with dying in the next five seconds get

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to walk home instead It's not a rescue that
could be the opening scene in an action movie

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today sailor stories, too Ships getting torn
apart in storms and Nicholas miraculously shows

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up on deck and the sea goes flat calm. A famine
story where he talks grain ships into dropping

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cargo in Myra first. Telling the captains the
paperwork will still check out and it does.

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Take it all at face value or figure some got
added on because people couldn't stop telling

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stories about the guy. Either way, the pattern
never changes. He shows up uninvited for people.

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who have run out of moves. He dies December
6, 343 or 345 A.D. buried in Myra. That date

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becomes his feast day and for a long stretch
of European history, that's the actual day

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people gave gifts, not December 25. In 1087,
sailors from Bari, Italy sail over and take

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his remains home where they still are. People
still report a clear liquid seeping from his

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bones called manna. with an actual ceremony
every year to collect it. From there, Nicholas

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travels about as far from a fourth century Turkish
bishop as a guy can travel. Dutch settlers

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bring their own gift-giving tradition with them
to New Amsterdam. That's New York now. They

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call the version of Nicholas Sinterklaas. Now
say that a few times fast and you'll hear where

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Santa Claus comes from. A poem in 1823 gives
him the sleigh and reindeer. A cartoonist gives

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him the red suit and the North Pole address.
A soda company finishes the job. By the end

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of it, almost nothing of the real bishop survives
except the gifts. The guy who did years in

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prison for his faith got replaced by a guy who
says, ho, ho. If my wife Sarah is right and

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you walked in for a Santa punchline, I hope
you are walking out with something closer to

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an actual man. All right, back on the porch.
I keep coming back to his hands. The same

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hands that dropped gold through a window in
the dark, wanting nothing back, not even a

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thank you. The same hands that got chained up
in a Roman cell, rather than deny what he believed.

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There were years of that. The same hands that,
if the story's true, crossed a room in anger

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the second somebody explained away who Jesus
actually is. We like to keep gentleness and

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conviction in separate people. You are either
the soft one or the sharp one. You pick a lane,

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but Nicholas never picked. He was tender toward
the one struggling person right in front of

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him and rock solid on the one truth he nearly
died for. Most of us can manage one of those

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on a good day. He carried both at the same time
his whole life. So. Here's the question Nicholas

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leaves you with. Which one have you flatten
yourself into? The soft one or the sharp one?

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Gone so gentle, you have gone quiet on stuff
that actually matters. The thing you would

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have said something about five years ago, the
thing you let slide now because it's easier.

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Nicholas didn't let us slide. Not with Arius,
not in that room or Gone so locked in on being

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right that you have stopped seeing the actual
person in front of you. They don't need your

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argument. They just need somebody to show up,
quietly, expecting nothing back. That's the

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version of Nicholas nobody remembers. The one
in the dark outside a stranger's window. If

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I'm keeping it 100, most of us pick a side and
call it our personality, instead of admitting

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it's a gap. The gentle ones tell themselves
silence is love. The convicted ones tell themselves

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hardness is faithfulness. Nicholas doesn't let
either of us off that easy. He hands the quiet

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ones a bishop with scars on his wrists, a man
who refused to shut up when it counted. He

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hands the hard ones a different picture, a man
in the dark outside a stranger's window giving

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away gold. making sure the father never found
out who saved his daughters. And now it is

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time for the closing prayer. Lord, thank you
for Nicholas. Thank you for a guy who gave

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in a secret and never asked for credit. And
for the fire in him that wouldn't stay quiet

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when it mattered. For anyone whose gentleness
has gone silent, give them his nerve. For

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anyone whose convictions have gone cold, give
them his willingness to show up in the dark

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for someone who will never know his name. Help
us hold both. Amen. One more thing before we

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go. St. Nicholas is the saint of kids, sailors
and pawnbrokers. Those three gold balls outside

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pawn shops are literally his three bags of gold.
Also, patron saint of Greece, Russia and unmarried

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people. A guy who did years in prison for his
faith, who tradition says Decta Heretic defending

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it and spent the rest of his life showing up
for people with nowhere else to turn is now

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more famous than almost any Christian who ever
lived and almost nobody knows who he actually

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was. Well, that is episode 13. If this changed
how you will think about Nicholas aka Santa

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Claus next December, send it to somebody who
needs the real version. Leave a review if you

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have a minute. and next week, back to an unknown
saint. I think this one's going to surprise

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you just as much as this did. I'm John O'Connor.
Thanks for sitting on the porch with me, and

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I will see you next week.