Curiosities of Olden Times

by S. Baring-Gould

The poor mother, becoming alarmed at his disappearance, offered a small sum of money to any one who would find the boy and bring him home. The peasants of the village scattered themselves among the mountains, caught the runaway, and at the mother’s request took him to the monks of St. Luke’s monastery to have the devil exorcised out of him, for she believed he must be mad. But Nicolas in his cave had one night seen come to him an old man of venerable aspect, with long beard and white hair, stark naked,[16] who bade him be of good cheer, and pursue his admirable course of conduct. The monks of Sterium brought him into the church and endeavoured to exorcise the demon, first with prayers, and afterwards with kicks and blows. Nicolas rushed from the gates of the church shrieking, “Kyrie eleison!” He was brought back and shut up in a tower, with a slab of stone against the door, to keep him in. During the night the sleep of the monks was broken by the muffled cries of “Kyrie eleison!” issuing from the old tower. A thunderstorm burst over the monastery at midnight, and Nicolas dashed the door open, threw down the stone, and leaped forth, shouting between the thunder crashes, “Kyrie eleison!” The monks caught him, put shackles on his wrists, and thrust him into a cell. As they sat next day at their meal in the refectory, the door flew open, and in stalked Nicolas with the chains broken in his hands; he clashed them down on the table before their eyes, and shouted “Kyrie eleison!” till the rafters and walls shook again. The monks rose from table, and thrust him forth, whilst they proceeded with their meal.

Nicolas ran to the church, scrambled up the walls—how no one knew; his biographer Bartholomew thinks he must have swarmed up a sunbeam—reached the dome, and mounting to the apex, began to shout his supplication, “Kyrie eleison!”

In the meantime the monks had retired for their nap after dinner, when the reiterated cries from the top of the church cupola roused them and made sleep impossible. They came forth in great excitement. One, by order of the hegumen, or abbot, took a stout stick, and ascending to the roof by a spiral staircase, crawled after the boy, reached him, dislodged him, and with furious blows drove him off the roof.[17]

The monks now thought the best thing they could do would be to get summarily rid of the maniac by drowning. Papebroeck, the Bollandist, at this point appends the curious note: “If amongst ourselves, better instructed, it is customary to suffocate those who have been bitten by a mad dog—an atrocious custom—lest they should bite and hurt others, and this is regarded as a rough sort of mercy, is it any wonder that these rude monks should have supposed it proper to make away with a madman upon whom exorcism had failed to produce any effect?”

The monks accordingly tied the hands and feet of Nicolas, drew him down to the shore, threw him into a boat, rowed some way out to sea, and flung him overboard.

But Nicolas broke his bonds,[18] as he had shivered the shackles, and swimming ashore, reached land before the monks, and mounting a rock, roared to them as his greeting, “Kyrie eleison!”

The monks despaired of doing anything to him, and abandoned him to follow his own devices. He ran wild among the mountains, and constructed a little hut of logs and wattled branches for his residence. One day he descended to his mother’s house and carried off a hatchet, a knife, and a saw, and amused himself fashioning crosses out of the wood of the cedars he cut down, and erecting them on the summit of rocks inaccessible to every one else.

On another occasion he carried off his brother; but the boy was so frightened at the wild gestures and cries of Nicolas, that he refused to remain more than a night in his cell and ran away home, to the inexpressible relief of his mother.

Nicolas rambled over the country, dirty, dishevelled, and naked, asking and enforcing alms. He was well known to the monks of the monasteries throughout the neighbourhood as an importunate beggar at their doors. The lonely traveller hastily flung him an offering, glad to escape so easily. On one occasion Nicolas waylaid the steward of the monastery of Sterium, and arresting the horse he rode, reproached him with stinginess. The monk, who was armed with a cudgel, bounded from his saddle, fell on Nicolas, and beat him unmercifully, then mounted and joyfully pursued his road.

Nicolas picked himself up, and followed him at a distance with aching bones to the village where the steward slept that night. Then, stealing to his bedside in the dark, he roared into his ear, “Kyrie eleison!” and woke him with a start of terror.