Santa Claus — jolly honest-to-goodness Saint Nicholas himself — was based off a Hellenic bishop , hold in the 4th century CE , who gave his riches to the short . For his act , the original gift - give Saint Nick was canonized after his sufferer ’s death .
Nicholas was idolize throughout Europe long before his 19th - century repurposing asSanta Claus . He was the patron holy man of sailor , dramatize by many an Italian naval conglomerate . So when his remains and original perch place in Myra ( modern Turkey ) were seize by the ever - expanding Ottoman Turk imperium in the 11th one C , some Italian sailors decided to “ deliver ” the saint ’s souvenir . They take them back to the Basilica di San Nicola , in Bari , Southern Puglia , where they ’ve been kept in a prosperous grave since 1087 . Though most of St. Nicholas ’s osseous tissue were brought to Bari on that expedition to Asia Minor , roughly 500 smaller chips and fragment were take from Myra to the Lido island of Venice on a ulterior excursion in 1100 .
Over the century , relic shard of what are aver to C. H. Best . Nick ’s boneshave been take on by an telling bit of churches around the public . Therelicsindustry was big patronage in medieval Europe , when having a paragon ’s remain in your church building would draw in Pilgrim Father visitors devote to stay put in your town . With that in intellect , these are just some of the spot where you could visit the ( likely unfeigned — more on that later ) relics of St. Nick .
1. Basilica di San Nicola // Bari, Italy
TheBasilica di San Nicolaisis the most famous destination for pilgrims to pay homage to St. Nick . His bones , put up in the grave in the crypt , are believed to transude myrrh ( an incense like matter burned in places of worship to purify the air ) , which is amass in a flask by the clergy of the Roman basilica on St. Nicholas ’s Day , December 6 .
2. Chiesa di San Nicoló, Lido // Venice, Italy
Not to be outdone by the Puglian sailors of Bari , Venice sent a search party to Myra in 1100 to commandeerSt . Nick ’s bone . They took what was left in his grave — the smaller bones missed during the initial maraud — and brought them back to Venice . Over 500 of these smaller sherd of pearl are preserved in Chiesa di San Nicoló .
3. Palais des Beaux Arts // Lille, France
deeply in the assembling of this Brobdingnagian art museum in Lille , France , sit down a pocket-size slice of ornate 13th - century silverware like no other . The case , in all its faded filigree glory , contains one of St. Nicholas’steeth . The type and relic were formerly housed in a modest Catholic church in Lille . After Napoleon lead off opening museums to domiciliate artifact that had been capture from church service during the French Revolution , the keepsake was moved to the Palais des Beaux Arts .
4. Basilique Saint-Nicolas // Saint-Nicolas-de-Port, Lorraine, France
One ofSt . Nicholas ’s fingerswas add to Lorraine from Bari in 1090 , not long after the original 1087 “ rescue ” surgical procedure . You ’ll obtain it cased in a silver-tongued finger - form memorial that sits in the heart of the altar within this medieval Gothic basilica .
5. Dom St. Stephanus und St. Sixtus // Halberstadt, Germany
The Cathedral of St. Stephanus and St. Sixtus in Halberstadt , completed in the 1430s , is one of Germany ’s okay example of Gothic computer architecture . The treasures it holds are just as telling as the building itself . Many of the items and souvenir were fetch back by spiritual crusaders in medieval times . One of the stars of the cathedral treasury is a remarkably craftedsilver handcontaining another finger of St. Nicholas , in the beginning put up in St. Sophia in Constantinople .
6. Church of New Saint George (Sf Gheorghe Nou) // Bucharest, Romania
This sixteenth - 100 Christian church in downtown Bucharest is one of the oldest in the metropolis — and another site ofSt Nick ’s persist ( in Romania , he ’s known as Holy Hierarch Nicolae , Archbishop of the Bridegrooms of Lycia ) . The Christian church was the lucky receiver of St. Nicholas ’s good hand , as it was give to Romanian Prince Michael the Brave by the Archbishop of Bari in 1599 . The holy relics are placed on the correct side of the nave of the church , in a canopy made from unanimous oak .
7. Shrine of All Saints, St. Martha of Bethany Church // Illinois, United States
TheShrine of All Saints , designated in 2015 , contains the relic of more than 2000 saints . It ’s the second - largest assembling of its kind in the U.S. In 2017 , the Oxford Relics Cluster at Keble College Advanced Studies Centre , lead by Professor Tom Higham and Dr Georges Kazan , studied a fragment ofSaint Nick ’s pelvic boneheld at the Shrine of All Saints . The researchers bump that the bone shard relic did indeed go out back to the quaternary century CE — St. Nicholas ’s lifetime .
As Kazan say , “ These results boost us to become to the Bari and Venice relics to attempt to show that the bone remains are from the same soul . We can do this using ancient palaeogenomics , or DNA testing . It is exciting to think that these relics , which date from such an ancient time , could in fact be actual . ”
