Tag: relics

Postcard from Valencia, Spain: Why women love Santa Claus

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In Spain, women seeking intercession from Saint Nicholas (270-343) traditionally walk from their homes to the nearest church dedicated to him to pray on three consecutive Mondays. If that distance is too great or their health too frail, any church with a statue of him can be substituted. In Italy, young women yearning to find appropriate mates leave three coins for Saint Nicholas in the donation box.

Their devotion stems back to an early generous action by the young man who would become a bishop and saint. Nicholas was born into an affluent family in Turkey in the second half of the second century, but his parents died of the plague. Their death left him alone, but wealthy.

As the story goes, a man living nearby had three daughters of marriageable age (an age now categorized as well underage). As he lacked funds for dowries to attract suitable suitors, prostitution appeared their destiny. Upon hearing the man planned to launch his daughters’ careers, Nicholas anonymously left a cloth bundle of gold on three consecutive nights at the man’s house – sparing the young women (children, if you prefer) from subjection to their father’s plans for their future.

He is valued as the patron saint of many causes, children being the major one. Possibly his role as protector of children stems from the above story and also a gruesome tale of a child he saved from a crazed butcher. It’s not hard to imagine how the bearded image and his sly deposit of sacks bearing gifts evolved into American traditions relating to, as we affectionately call him, Santa Claus.

Saint Nicholas is the patron saint of brewers, perhaps because he took grain from the rich to give to the poor. Maybe grain needed to make beer? Sailors prayed to entrust him to guide their ships through storms, after Nicholas was said to have brought a sailor back to life after the man fell from the mast of his ship in rough seas.

The purported powers of Saint Nicholas’ remains are so potent, daring military maneuvers have been made to obtain them. After the Turks took over Myra, sailors from Bari, Italy, staged a raid to seize his relics in 1087. Venetians later did the same to capture the few shards they had left behind. In Bari, the bones are said to exude myrrh, which smells like rosewater and has miraculous capabilities. The precious myrrh is collected in a flask annually on his day, December 8, and small vials are available for purchase.

Residents of Valencia are fortunate to have a major church dedicated to Saint Nicholas, and tourists are not allowed to interrupt the Monday visitations by the faithful praying for his assistance. The church was founded in the 13th century, but the interior was heavily baroqued up at the end of the 15th.

The church also houses an important statue of Saint Jude Thaddeus, the patron saint of lost causes, who attracts crowds seeking his intercession as well. Many of the Monday women are known to pause to pray to both, as some of their problems involve men who might be regarded as lost causes.

Ceci n’est pas un grafitti: Random snapshots and superficial observations of Quebec City

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Ah, historic old Quebec City. So clean, so orderly. It makes sense the only graffiti we spotted would deny its very existence.

Building upon the initial observations of Quebec found in my post about Montréal, the following represents additional random thoughts from our stay in Quebec City:

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1. Quebec City is spotless. Amazingly litter-free. Everywhere. Even by the port where we were staying.

2. Within the walls of the old city, the buildings are beautifully preserved. Williamsburg-perfect. Virtually everything appears as if it has been carefully restored only yesterday. Even the architecture of the train station is Disney-castle-looking perfect.

3. While we often appeared to be the oldest couple in restaurants in Montréal, Quebec City made us feel the opposite. Blame it on “the boat people,” as I call them. Cruise ships pull up at the port at the base of the city, and empty their contents ashore. Herds of elderly (at least in the fall) take over the streets, swarming their way through the shops.

4. Which means the oldest part of the city is filled with shoppes (which I pronounce shoppies) designed to appeal to the repetitive invasions of the upscale boat people. People who might think opera-length giraffe gloves a necessity.

5. While we loved the pedestrian-dominated streets climbing upward and the perfectly restored buildings, it was when we broke out of the walls and walked past the state capitol that we found the Quebec City I liked. The buildings were all still historic; everything was clean; but there it felt real. More people lived and worked there on a daily basis, there out of the walking range of most of the boat people. Instead of shoppes, the ground floor of buildings housed businesses providing practical services and necessities. Small, neighborhood multi-ethnic restaurants flourished. Outside the old walls, the city has a more authentic feeling personality.

6. And, saints alive. Well, dead actually. Canadian Catholics still elevate relics, as in bones, to prominent display. American Catholics tend to ignore this old-world religious tradition. While I am fascinated but strangely accepting of this, to the point I was not content until I purchased some saint’s bones of my own, the Mister is more mystified. He always comes up with remarks such as, “One saint sure must go a long way.” And he worries about when they chop up the saints into all those little pieces spread out to inspire faith and prayers in churches around the world. Is this the fate of all saints, or only the ones who were martyred in such a brutal fashion their bones already were rendered into shards? Out of curiosity, I thought I would check on the disposition of the body parts Canada’s newest saint, Kateri Tekakwitha, declared so by Pope Benedict on October 21. Stumbled across a virtual audit of her skeletal remains from skull to sternum. The Mister is right. One saint does go a long way.

To view more snapshots taken during our vacation in Quebec City, visit shutterfly.