St Nicholas Road SP1, St Nicholas Close SP2, Nicholas Court SP2

Saint Nicholas Road is next to Saint Nicholas Hospital, which may pre-date the beginnings of the Cathedral. It certainly existed by 1227, which was only 7 years after the building of the Cathedral began.

Both Saint Nicholas Close in Wilton and Nicholas Court in the Spire View Estate in Salisbury are part of groups of roads named after relatively high profile saints.

There is a Saint Nicholas church at Porton and the Italian style church of St Mary and St Nicholas at Wilton.

There are three famous Saint Nicholases.

# St Nicholas of Tolentino
# St Nicholas of Flue
# St Nicholas of Myra

There was also a biblical scholar called Nicholas of Lyra who has not been sainted, but is, perhaps easily confused with St Nicholas of Myra.

St Nicholas of Tolentino

Saint Nicholas of Tolentino is possibly best known for being the patron saint of vegetarians.

He stopped eating meat as a penance.

There is a story about him which has two versions.

The first version is that once when he was given chicken to eat, he made the sign of the cross and the chicken turned into roasted vegetables.

The second version of the story has him being served partridges. In this version, Saint Nicholas also made the sign of the cross, but then the partridge was restored to life and flew out of an open window.Thomas J. Craughwell. This Saint’s for You!: 300 Heavenly Allies Who Will Change Your Life, Quirk Books,US (1 Nov 2007). ISBN 978-1594741845

The two versions of the story, to me, show two attitudes to meat eating and to ‘sin’ in general. In the first version the Saint’s penance is maintained – the miracle preserves his spiritual health, but the chicken is still dead. In the second, the partridges are restored to life, but poor old St Nicholas goes hungry.

There’s a divergence here that I don’t really have the words (or the intellect) to discuss, but its to do with whether the ‘goodness’ of an action is about the impact it has on other people (or partridges) or about its impact on our character or ‘soul’.

Anyway here are some links on vegetarianism:
GoVeg.com: Vegetarian and Vegan Information
The Vegetarian Society
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA): The animal rights organization

St Nicholas of Flue

Saint Nicholas of Flue, in Switzerland was a historical figure who lived from 1417 to 1487. He had nothing to do with chimneys – that was another Saint Nicholas :s. He was an historical figure in two ways. First, he was well documented – unlike, say, Saint Ursula we know many details of his life. Second, he played a relatively significant part in the history of Switzerland.

Saint Nicholas was an interesting character in that he seems to have been torn between a yearning for contemplation and prayer, the life of a hermit, and a desire to play an active part in the world.

He had 10 children (he is the patron saint of large families Thomas J. Craughwell. This Saint’s for You!: 300 Heavenly Allies Who Will Change Your Life, Quirk Books,US (1 Nov 2007). ISBN 978-1594741845), he was a magistrate and he was a soldier who would have probably fought in local wars between cantons.

However, after 25 years of marriage he asked his wife and family for permission to leave them and go and live as a hermit at Obwalden The Alps, Switzerland, and the North … – Google Book Search, some distance away. His family gave him their blessing and he went to spend the rest of his life as a hermit.

In 1481, however, a conference between the cantons was held in Stanz to try to settle existing disputes, achieve some unity between the regions and to admit two new cantons Soleure and Freyburg into the Swiss confederation. This did not got well, and looked in danger of plunging the country into Civil War. Nicholas was called out of his hermitage to go to the conference. Seemingly by force of his personality and skill as a settler of arguments he resolved the disagreements and averted civil war, within an hour.

Whatever occurred in Stanz over 500 years ago (I’m certainly not qualified to separate fact from legend here!), Saint Nicholas von Flue is part of the general narrative of Swiss history, which often seems to be about reconciling the interests of the cantons with the perceived need to unite as one nation.

St Nicholas of Myra

Saint Nicholas of Myra has a ‘U’ certificate reputation, but the stories about him are probably at least 12A.

He lived in the 3rd and 4th centuries, dying in AD 343. He was Bishop of Myra, in Anatolia, which is now part of Turkey.

He is particularly associated with children, and with gift giving.

His association with children seems to be based on a gruesome story which happened at a time when food was short. He stopped at an inn. On entering he went straight to the kitchens, where he found the remains of three young boys who had been butchered for food and stored in a barrel. Saint Nicholas restored the boys to life by preying over the barrel. There is a statue of the saint in Salisbury cathedral which features a barrel at his feet with the boys climbing out of it.

His association with gift giving is based on another story set during a time of great poverty. A man had three daughters, but could not afford a dowry for any of them. Without the prospect of marriage each daughter would have to work as prostitutes. Saint Nicholas heard of this and anonymously gave three bags of gold to the family, either throwing the bags of gold through an open window or dropping them down the chimney, depending on which version of the story you read.