In a romantic situation, one quarter of an hour from the village of Sparta in Elis, stands a fine monastery dedicated to St. Nicholas. Every year on the 10th of May—the anniversary of the finding of the saint’s ikon—there come to the monastery thousands of worshipers from all parts of the Peloponnese, who bring various offerings to the saint and remain several days in the romantic monastery, worshiping the wonder-working ikon and celebrating the annual festival.

Amongst this year’s worshipers’ was a peasant, John Doulos, from the village of Bezaïté, who invoked the help of the saint on behalf of Kyriakula, his young daughter, who was blind. He brought her to worship at the shrine. The unfortunate girl had lost her sight on Easter day, when she thought she saw a great fire before her eyes and fell to the ground. From that moment she could see nothing. All medical skill was of no avail, and the despairing Doulos determined to take his daughter to the saint. They arrived at the monastery on the Wednesday before the festival. Thursday and Friday, days and nights, they spent inside the church kneeling before the ikon in prayer and supplication. Suddenly about dawn on the Saturday, when the worshipers in the church were numerous, Kyriakula arose, and crossing herself, cried:

“Father, father, I see! There are the saint’s candles! There is the ikon!”

A thrill of emotion ran through those present, and all joined with the girl, whose sight had been restored, in worshiping the ikon of the wonder-working saint. After remaining many hours to bless the name of the saint, the healed girl left the church with her father and joined in the festival. Then she returned to her village, and her restored eyesight told better than words the saint’s miracle.

[CHAPTER VII]
ST. NICHOLAS PLAYS

In our time the celebration of St. Nicholas’ day has lost much of the ceremony that was once associated with it. Even in countries like Belgium and Holland, where the day is a great folk festival, there is little to connect the day with the story of the beloved bishop-saint. “Sinterklaes” is better known than St. Nicholas. In early days the case was different. Particularly in the centuries immediately following the transfer of the St. Nicholas relics to Italy, the time when the vogue of the eastern saint reached its height in the countries of western Europe, in many ways his story was kept fresh in the popular memory. Not only did the Boy Bishop custom commemorate, in somewhat extravagant fashion to be sure, the elevation of the boy Nicholas to the rank of bishop, but stories of the life of the saint formed an important part of the lectiones, or “readings,” for the day in the church; and more important still, some of the principal episodes in his life formed the subject, in church schools, for hymns which later developed into little plays.[69] In the election of the Boy Bishop was reenacted with a great deal of adventitious detail one of these episodes. In more strictly dramatic fashion were reenacted the four episodes: (1) of the maidens saved from a life of shame; (2) the three murdered schoolboys restored to life; (3) the kidnapped boy restored to his parents; and (4) the Jew that put his treasures in charge of the image of St. Nicholas.

These little St. Nicholas plays have genuine significance in the early history of the modern drama. At a time when the classical drama was dead, when the works of Plautus and Terence were valued as repositories of sententious expressions and their dramatic character apparently not suspected, when the names tragedy and comedy were almost entirely dissociated from dramatic meaning, by one of the strange ironies of life, under the auspices of the Church, which had been hostile in its attitude toward earlier drama, there was created, seemingly without being realized, the germ from which developed the modern drama. The St. Nicholas plays go back to an early stage in the new dramatic development. Little dramatic scenes from scriptural story began to find a place in the liturgy of the Church as early as the tenth century. St. Nicholas plays are not much later, and are the earliest ones handling scenes drawn from outside the biblical story. They begin not later than the first of the twelfth century. St. Nicholas may almost be regarded as the patron saint of the modern drama, since he seems to have watched over its birth.

The St. Nicholas plays were represented apparently by the choir boys in connection with the celebration of the festival of their patron saint. The language used was Latin, of a schoolboy variety, but vernacular elements soon began to appear. Forming, as they did, a part of the school service, and presented, as they were, by choir boys, as might be expected, they were for the most part sung or chanted. Their purpose to provide entertainment and their dissociation from the older drama are indicated by the names applied to these primitive dramas. Miracula was the name given them when the subject-matter was in mind; when their character and purpose were in mind the name applied to them in Latin was ludus, in French, jeu. The actors at a comparatively early time in English were called players before the word ‘play’ had yet acquired its later definitely dramatic meaning.

The subjects from the St. Nicholas story used in these little plays have been mentioned. One should notice what a range of interest is comprised in these four stories. They afford opportunity for the use of many of the cant phrases of the modern dramatic critic. There was a melodrama of crime, a primitive detective play, with St. Nicholas playing the part of detective in discovering the crime of the innkeeper and his wife. There was a play dealing with the rough road to matrimony, ending in a triple marriage, hardly surpassed in modern love comedy. There was a sentimental comedy, with gripping heart interest, in the story of the boy abducted and restored. There was a screaming farce in the story of the Jew that was robbed. It should be noted, too, that the modern “tired business man” would find the endings in all four as happy as could be wished.

One of the early St. Nicholas plays also is of interest because it is one of three plays composed by the earliest determinable personality in connection with the authorship of modern drama. The name of the author, Hilarius, seems to have been no misnomer. He was probably an Englishman,[70] or an Anglo-Norman, who went to France to study under Abélard. He is the author of a number of innocent love poems, playful in tone, addressed to an English Rose and to his nun friends, Bona and Superba. From his writings we learn that he was not only lively, but fat. Along with a number of other students, on account of some misbehavior, he seems to have suffered a kind of rustication and been obliged to leave the monastery where he was studying and to take up residence in a neighboring village. In a mock elegy he feigns despair at being deprived of the privilege of hearing lectures. Altogether the character of this medieval student is easy to associate with the farcical little Latin play which he wrote, back in the twelfth century, presenting the story of the Jew who committed his valuables to the care of the image of St. Nicholas.