The Christ-child surrounded by angels.
Painting by Rubens.
The shore meanwhile is lined with the bulk of the populace of Bari and the pilgrim visitors who eagerly await the return of the image at night-fall. Bonfires are then burned, rockets are shot off, everybody who possesses a candle or torch lights it and the people fall in line with the paraders to restore the sacred image to its guardians at the church.
CHAPTER III
CHRIST-KINKLE AND CHRIST-KINDLEIN
I have now told you all that is known of the story of Saint Nicholas during his lifetime and even after his death. I think you will agree that we have not yet gone very far in identifying Santa Klaus, the modern Saint Nicholas, with the historic saint who was once Bishop of Myra.
It is true that some learned men have thought to find in the legend of the three maidens an answer to a couple of problems that bother the inquiring mind.
First they explain that the three purses of gold, which, in pictures by the old Italian masters, figure as three golden balls, and which were looked upon as the special symbol or sign of the charitable Saint Nicholas, are the origin of those three gilt balls which swing over a pawnbroker’s shop in token of that well-spring of human kindness which has earned for him the affectionate title of “uncle.”
“Suffer little children to come unto me.”
Painting by B. Plockhorst.
If you have a fine sense of humor you will see that the last sentence is sarcasm. And if you have small love for clever explanations that don’t explain, you will reject this theory of the origin of the pawnbroker’s sign and prefer to believe that it sprang from the gilt pills which adorned the shield of the great Medici family of Italy. Medici means doctors. Both the name and the shield were reminders that the family earned their first fame as physicians many years before they became the greatest princes and money changers of Europe.