319. Heist of St Nicolas: The Medieval Mafia Who Stole Santa (Part 2)

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0:28Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnand. And me, William de Rumpel. And this is the second episode with the wonderful Sam de Rimpel, author of Shattered Lands, which we also covered in this podcast. Welcome back to you, Sam. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me. And if we had to do a little subtitle of this second episode, because in the first one, we were talking about the origins of the real St. Nicholas and where his tomb is and all of these different cults which kind of merge into this one character that we now know is St. Nick. This one, I think we would have as a subheading, Who Stole Santa?

1:06Because it is the story of one of the most extraordinary, you couldn't believe it, heists. So by the turn of the first millennium, St. Nicholas, as we've established in the last episode, was already famous. So you have pilgrims coming, believing that his bones might be able to produce actually a healing liquid called myrrh, which I think tickles me as well because it's all so Christmassy and also macabre. And Myra itself is named, is this right after myrrh? That's right, isn't it? It's all intertwined. So, I mean, myrrh is older than the name Myra, but it's named after it. And we're not quite sure what the early association is, but all sorts of people seem to say that his tomb begins secreting myrrh.

1:49As every good saint's tomb should do. Whether the bishops have been pouring myrrh into his tomb so that it secretes this sacred liquid, no one's quite sure. It becomes very, very famous for this. And there's people who visit Myra from across the Mediterranean to collect vials of myrrh. If you're asking the Monty Python question, yeah, really happy that you bought the gold. Thanks for the frankincense. What the hell is myrrh? Myrrh, just to remind you, we did cover this one Christmas. It's an incense which is said to have antiseptic qualities as well. So that is the answer to your question. What is myrrh?

2:28That is what myrrh is. So yes, tell us, what is this story about the heist, the great Christmas heist? It's one of these stories that you just can't make up. In 1087, 62 Italian fishermen set sail from Puglia, the town of Bari, to steal the mortal remains of Father Christmas. Brilliant. Now, the background to this is that Anatolia, modern Turkey, which had been a secure heartland of Christianity since the time of St. Paul is now facing a dramatic change in its religion and in its ethnicity, because the Turks originally from the steppe have invaded Anatolia. And Sam and I visited last year the extraordinary Armenian capital of Ani, which was in their path and very close to Ani, the Armenian city that was, I think it was an enormous big metropolis up in what's now Eastern Turkey, but was the capital of the Armenian Bagratid kings.

3:30This battle, Manzikert, is fought, 1071. And the Seljuk Turks, who are invading from Central Asia, defeat the Byzantines, defeat the Armenians, and move very rapidly into Anatolia. And anyone that's seen that, what's that wonderful Turkish soap opera? Ertugul. Ertugul, that's right, where you would see those Turkish nomads with all their swords and their pasturing animals and the yurts and all these beautiful women sitting on carpets, all that sort of thing. That's sweeping in into a landscape that had previously been Greek-speaking, Christian in religion, looking to Constantinople, the Byzantine capital, for leadership.

4:11So this means that all the sacred relics and all the saints' tombs and all the holy churches and and sacred sites of Anatolia are now in danger. And so the Italians can dress up this heist as saving Saint Nicholas from the heathen, rather than just pinching it for the benefit of Bari and pinching the pilgrim traffic. They can put a good spin on it, can't they, Sam? Exactly. And I think it's important to remember just how big the relic trade is at this point. It's not just in Christianity, notably, it's also in religions like Buddhism. So you get a million stupas that are dedicated to the teeth of the Buddha.

4:51So many teeth, in fact, that they would fit many whole entire mouths. And likewise, you get this whole trade in early Christian saints and the relics associated with them. These guys are very intent on getting these bones. And there is an economic motive here, as well as just piety, because if you have the bones of a saint, you get the pilgrim traffic. And it gives the whole town a sort of identity and importance, as well as a sacred protector. This is regarded almost as a kind of force field, isn't it, which protects these places. Exactly. And so crucially, from all the accounts that survive of this great heist to try and steal the relics of St.

5:30Nicholas, the Italian sailors from Puglia arrive, I think it's in Antioch, further to the east in Turkey. And they find that there's another group of Venetian ships who are also planning to steal the relics of Saint Nicholas. And there's a race between the two sets of sailors between who can get there first. It's like an Ocean's 11th setup. And the year is, what year are we talking about? Just let's pinpoint the date. We're 1087. So it's 16 years after the Byzantines have lost in Manzikert and after this kind of wave of Turkish nomads has suddenly entered Anatolia and spread very rapidly in with quite large armies.

6:13The border fortress has fallen. And suddenly, even though Constantinople and everything further west is still safe, the whole of eastern Anatolia is now very much under threat. I should say two little things here, which people might not know. At the Battle of Manzikert, It was another battle between the Anglo-Saxons and the Normans. So although the official battle is between the Turks and the Byzantines, the Turks had Norman mercenaries working with them, the cousins of the Norman Knights that had just won the Battle of Hastings in 1066. While many of the defeated Anglo-Saxon aristocracy who'd lost their lands when William the conqueror conquers England, goes and joins the Varangian Guard, which is the North European Guard, which guards the Byzantine.

7:03So whatever it was, 1066 to 1071, that's only six years apart. But there's a rematch of the Battle of Hastings in eastern Turkey. That's the first story. I didn't know that. That's great. The second story is that the Venetians have form in this Ocean's Eleven contest for getting the bones because I think just before this, they'd stolen the bones of Saint Mark from Alexandria. So when you go to Saint Mark's Cathedral in Venice, now this great sort of cathedral swarming with tourists, that cathedral is built, the Duomo is built, to house the bones of Saint Mark's pillaged from Alexandria. This is a game that the Venetians have got forward, but at this stage, our brave heroes, the sailors of Puglia, get there first.

7:49So talk us through what happens. So obviously they cross by sea, by ship. Where do they pull up and how easy is that crossing for them? And is there nobody there to stop them? Paint us a picture. Sure. So it's April 1087. There's 62 Poolean sailors divided between three ships. Mafiosi, basically. Yeah, exactly. It's the Mafia. The Mafia shows up in the port of Adriatic. The best account of this is that one of the sailors, Nisiphorus, would later write a chronicle about their mission. And of course, he justifies it as the kind of greatest thing that's ever happened to Christendom, saving the relics from the marauding Turks.

8:30And of course, you know, you read between the lines and there are very much still Greek Christians in the church when they get there who are much less fond of this whole plan. Thanks to Nysephorus, we have this wonderful sort of, again, Hollywood-ish image of like Gandalf, these four monks saying, hang on a minute, you shall not pass. We have these bones, we're doing fine, we're looking after them fine. What do you mean you're taking them away? These four monks are definitely rather astonished. By all accounts, these sailors show up armed with iron mallets. This really is the mafiosi. Yeah, they are.

9:06They ask, where is the saint's body kept? The mafia army descends. Absolutely. Good fellows has iron mallets, doesn't it? Yeah. So these four poor monks, they're in a town that by all accounts has been kind of half emptied. There's worry that these Turkish nomads are about to descend on the town. And the reason why the sailors have picked this moment is because the town is virtually emptied. People have fled the town. And so this is the kind of moment is ripe to nick the relics. But these four brave monks have stayed on in the church. They thought that they were going to be facing the Turks. But of course, instead, there's these Italian sailors.

9:44And so one of the lines that we have in the memoir is that the monks respond when asked where the saint is being kept. They respond, the holy confessor of God will never let you touch him. And one of the monks tries to run away and call the remaining townsfolk, the few people who've stayed. But the sailors grab them, tie them up and place a guard at the entrance of the basilica. No, poor monks. But then it gets a little harder for the sailors because apparently one knocks over a bottle of myrrh. I'm so glad myrrh is in this story as much as it feels so festive. Okay, so knocks the myrrh onto the floor and it doesn't smash, but it makes this enormous vibrating clanging sound.

10:27It goes clank on the floor and handily the sailors interpret this as a message from St. Nicholas saying that it is my will to leave with you. This is pure Monty Python. That is why I've hurled myrrh on the ground because I want you to take me with you. away from the lovely place where I've lived very happily. So then is it easy from there on in? They just scoop up the bones and flee or what happens? So I've seen a picture of the sarcophagus. It's got an enormous hole in it. So they use the iron mallets to good effect by the look of it. Yeah, no, I mean, they say that history is written by the victors.

11:06So, you know, according to Necephoros' account, the bottle of myrrh clangs to the ground, which reveals the voice of St. Nicholas saying, I must come with you. At which point a sailor called Matthew is kind of, you know, guided to the tomb, figures out which of the tombs is St. Nicholas's and smashes it open with his mallet, revealing an explosion of myrrh that kind of, you know, cascades across the floor. More myrrh. There's always more myrrh. And then supposedly the sailors grab the bones, which are swamped in myrrh, wrap them in silks, load them onto the ships, aided by the will of St. Nicholas.

11:45The Italian sailors make it onto their ships and the winds are favorable and they've done it. They sail off into the distance. Shocking tale. Okay, in their getaway vehicle, heave him, heave him, quick, faster, very faster. Okay, so they get back. The Pope, I'm guessing, must be beside himself with delight. Right. He must have been cock-a-hoop. They've got their bones back. What does he do to commemorate this great heist? Yeah, so they build a massive new basilica in Bari. So today, if you go to Bari in Puglia, there is a massive basilica dedicated to St. Nicholas to house his mortal remains. It's very gorgeous.

12:24It's gorgeous and has all these very early pictures of him, again, all along the walls. And today, you know, it's a kind of Romanesque church. But what's rather interesting is that Bari itself had been part of an Islamic emirate within the last century, I think. And so as a result, many of the craftsmen had earlier been working and building Islamic art. So despite the fact that it's a Romanesque church, behind the bishop's chair is a motive that resembles Allah written in Arabic. But it's clear that the craftsmen don't actually know Arabic. They're kind of, you know, it's kind of pseudo-Arabic, you know, resembles the shapes that Allah reads when you know Arabic.

13:07But it's a kind of Islam-esque symbols dotted all over this church because all these craftsmen are the grandchildren of people who've been working for the Islamic Emirate of Bari. Islam leaving one place and arriving in another. Exactly. So Bari does very well from this. It now becomes, it tracks all the pilgrim traffic that was heading off to Mara. Exactly. And for good measure, there's a lovely image in the church at Bari with St. Nicholas saying, my bones will rest here, because obviously his voice had announced to the sailors that he'd wanted this to happen. And so, yeah, it becomes the departure point later for the Crusaders So you get all of the famous knights who then charge off to the Holy Land during the Crusades Kneel at his crypt, because again, he's the patron saint of sailors The Poseidon conflation And so all of these guys who are about to take off their boats do so after kneeling to him When I was at college, I followed the route of the First Crusade to Jerusalem I got a college grant and went off and I went through Bari.

14:12And the first time I ever went to St. Nicholas at Bari was following the reach of the Crusades. And I followed in the footsteps to the church. But Sam, only two decades later, the poor monks of Myra have another visit from relic hunters. So, yes, two decades later, the Venetians finally arrive. You would have thought that they'd arrived around the same time, considering, according to those accounts, the Venetians had also been in Antioch looking for the relics themselves. But the poor monks seem to still be there. We don't know whether it's four monks still, but the church is very much still active.

14:46But this time, a bunch of sailors arrive and rather usefully for the sailors of Venice, they, through divine revelation, discover that the Poolean sailors have got the wrong tomb in Myra. You couldn't make this up. So they also go in with a bunch of iron mallets and smash up a different marble sarcophagus. And there is a photograph that you've sent us, Sam, of another beaten up early Christian sarcophagus also smashed by iron mallets. The poor monks of Myra are having a very hard time. Yeah, they were just saying, you know, everything was fine until you arrived. Nothing was smashed. It was all quite tidy.

15:26Let's take a break. Join us after the break. where we delve into this story a bit more and also the spread of the cult of St. Nicholas across the world.

15:40Welcome back. So just before the break, we had the sailors from Puglia who got some bones and then the Venetians going, well, you got the wrong bones because we have the right bones. And the poor monk saying, we had all the bones and they were fine. But now where is St. Nicholas? And this is the point, Sam. that suddenly the reliquary spreads around Europe. And also the mythology and name of St. Nicholas becomes a big deal in Europe at this point. Exactly. So you quite quickly get fingernails of St. Nicholas showing up in Normandy or Calais. Suddenly there's all sorts of... Now that they're in Italy...

16:20Bits of him. Bits of him start spreading to all sorts of churches. And this didn't happen. I mean, you and I have been to the tomb of St. Francis Xavier in Goa in the 1960s when they displayed the uncorrupted body of St. Francis Xavier. A local pilgrim bent down and bit off his little toe, which she smuggled out of Goa in her mouth. It's a disgusting story. And then she got caught. Someone alerted the ferry's point, and they found the bone of St. Francis Xavier in her mouth. And now when you go to the Basilica, you can kiss, if you wish, her toe in a separate monstrance, which is kept for visiting pilgrims.

17:03And while the uncorrupted body of St. Francis Xavier is only available once every 10 or 15 years, you can kiss the toe any day you like. So this is how these things get moved around. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So take us now to a place where I know they still, you know, they don't go in for all this Father Christmas stuff. They still very much say, Sinterklaas, you know, so St. Nicholas, it is all based around the cult of St. Nicholas. And I remember, you know, just not so long ago that Sinterklaas was a big deal with his sidekick, Black Pete, who we've also discussed on this podcast before being problematic as an image.

17:44But at what point did the, now we call them the Dutch, the Netherlands, when did it embrace St. Nicholas and make him their own? Sure. So this seems to be around 1300, that again, thanks to his association with sailors, you know, the Netherlands is famously largely kind of, you know, reclaimed land from the ocean was very much a kind of port region where sailors would trade. And so Amsterdam becomes associated with him by about 1300. And curiously, it's the kind of Dutch name for Saint Nicholas that becomes Sinterklaas, Klaas being Nicholas. But here it takes on a whole stranger thing, because as we mentioned in the last episode, Saint Nicholas's own legend is very much associated with the old Greek cult of Poseidon.

18:34It's in Amsterdam that it begins to be mixed with local pagan Germanic traditions surrounding Odin. So Odin, crucially, rides a flying white horse through the air, which becomes the flying reindeer. And he's always accompanied by these two black ravens who tell him about the good or bad behaviour of mortals, i.e. whether people have been naughty or nice. This is from the myth of Odin. Yes, it's from the myth of Odin. And the reindeer is originally a white horse. Crucially, when you go to Amsterdam today and you see the Sinterklaas procession, he still there rides a white horse rather than a reindeer.

19:15The reindeer is an American tradition that comes later, and we'll get to that in a bit. But so essentially here it meets a whole new range of kind of pre-Christian traditions. But of course, everything begins to change in the Reformation. Saint worship is outlawed across the region. And interestingly, Sinterklaas is one of the only surviving kind of, you know, because his feast day is still recognised, despite the fact that all his reliquaries are smashed. Your average farmer would still recognise the feast day of Saint Nicholas. Tell us quickly about the transformation of the two ravens of Odin into a black Moorish sidekick called Zvartepiet.

20:01Black Pete, yes. So that is a rather, that's a much later story. What seems to happen is that the images of Saint Nicholas dropping bags of gold coins in the kind of three daughters myth is transformed into him dropping oranges. Again, that's why we have oranges in stockings, etc. But at this time, oranges are associated with Moorish Spain, with Andalusia. The Blackswater Peaks are meant to be basically kind of moors from Morocco and Spain associated with oranges. The oranges are one part of it, but also isn't there the story that naughty and nice, you know, it doesn't just mean you're going to get presents or not get presents.

20:44Because if you are naughty in the Sinterklaas and Black Pete mythology, you will be thrown into a sack. So there are sacks, there are Christmas sacks here, but you will be as a child thrown into the sack and taken back to Moorish Spain. So it's one of those things that parents would threaten their children with until I believe, you know, not fairly recently saying, you know, well, you don't want Black Pete to take you away. And there are these sort of tableaus that take place in the streets, or certainly there were, where, you know, people would reenact this and they'd grab like a screaming child and say, ah, we're going to get you.

21:18You know, it's all part of the, you know, sort of the Christmas, not the Christmas plays. Oh, no, I won't. Oh, yes, you will. All that festive hijinks that would happen around Holland. But this is the origin of our Santa Claus myths. And there's all sorts of bits of our present day, things that we associate now with Christmas that are actually originally associated with the Feast of St. Nicholas. I think one of the more intriguing ones is in 1663, the Protestants tried to outlaw the Feast of St. Nicholas in addition to his icons, because people would begin making icons of him made from bread. There's what, again, Jeremy Seal in his book Santa Life describes as an insurrection of 11-year-olds in Amsterdam who ridiculed the authorities by marching for their rights to make gingerbread cakes of St.

22:10Nicholas. And that's where the association of gingerbread with the Feast of St. Nicholas begins. This is like your boys, Anita. You can imagine your two lads doing an insurrection against their mother when she tries to stop them doing something. Can I just say there is a daily, daily insurrection in this house for one thing or the other. So, OK, strong in the Netherlands, but the place which has given Santa the kind of livery that we recognize now internationally, the red and the white. That all comes from America and advertising and Coca-Cola. We know that. That's a widely spread story. But is it the Dutch who first take this saint with them?

22:49Because they do found New Amsterdam, which is now New York. That is part of their colony. That is their colony, I should say. Is there a demonstrable link between those Dutch sailors who go off to the New World and take their old saint with them? Yes, that's exactly how it happens. It seems that the Dutch bring their traditions of Sinterklaas to New Amsterdam. And then when the British take over the city, they rename New Amsterdam as New York, and they anglicise Sinterklaas as Santa Claus. And so that's where our current name for the saint comes from. And of course, interestingly, the British themselves had a whole separate set of traditions to do with Saint Nicholas, as in St.

23:32Nicholas's Church in Chiswick. But suddenly there's a kind of new figure of Santa Claus. You know, New York is known for it being a melting pot of all different migrants. Over a period of time, I guess they would have brought their own traditions, their own Christmas beliefs as well and sort of added on. So you get all of this embellishment to the Santa Claus, Santa Claus, now Santa Claus that we have in New York. I mean, what kind of thing did we see? What kind of metamorphosis does he go through? So you get, of course, Dutch migrants, English migrants, Italian migrants and Eastern European migrants who all bring their different traditions together.

24:11So from Eastern Europe, you get the idea of dropping presents down chimneys, whereas the name is obviously the Dutch name. What's interesting is that they all had slightly different traditions associated with him. And there's evidence that eventually it's in the 19th century New York that finally they decide to move the date that they're going to observe his feast on. There's an account from 1827 that says the old Dutch settlers transferred the observance of the Eve of St. Nicholas, who you know is especially the patron of little children, to that of New Year. And so you get a moving of the date first to New Year.

24:52And then very soon there's the same decade, in fact. There's a writer called Clement Clarke Moore who writes a children's poem about Santa arriving the night before Christmas. And so suddenly again, the date shifts to Christmas Eve. And until this point, until 1827, you've always had the Feast of St. Nicholas and the gift giving, etc. on the 5th or 6th of December. But now suddenly it's the 24th of December. And this is a crucial new American idea. I don't think I'd ever made the link that Santa Claus was completely different from the Christmas story. Because we've always bundled it together. But it's two completely different bits of the Christian calendar that get conflated in New York.

25:37I have a question though. I have a crucial question for those who are gearing up to the big day. Reindeer. Because they do a lot of heavy lifting in the modern day story. Quite literally, they do a lot of heavy lifting. So are the Americans responsible for reindeer as well? Yeah, so that same poem has him arriving via flying reindeer and the white horse that Santa Claus, that Sinterklaas has in Amsterdam that flies through the air accompanied by ravens suddenly turns into flying reindeer and we get the beginning of the whole kind of Rudolph story. But why? They have horses in America. This writer, it's just this children's poem.

26:18It's a random children's poem that's set the night before Christmas that has a huge impact on the Santa Claus myth. Interestingly, also, this is a moment when, you know, the exploration of the North Pole is happening. Lots of people are heading north, discovering new bits of Canada and, as I said, trying to get to the North Pole. And so polar mania is everywhere in New York at this time. And so there's lots of, I think, kind of imagery of people hanging out with reindeer on the streets at the same time of the year that everyone's hanging up images of Santa Claus. They just put up images around town at the same time of year and people just begin associating the two.

26:58And Sam, when did Coca-Cola get into that? Because we've always heard about Coke. Yes, because in case you haven't heard, the Dutch export of Sinterklaas was always dressed in green. He was in a very fine green cape, green hood, very handsome. He looked too, he had the beard, but nothing of the red and white that we see. That is Coca-Cola livery, isn't it? And the Coke is red and white before this, and they transfer their colours onto Santa. So it's very simply in 1931, Coca-Cola does an ad trying to basically show that Coca-Cola is really great when you chill it. So, you know, put it in your fridge kind of thing.