Primary source · Koine Greek
The Life of Nicholas of Myra
Michael the Archimandrite · c. AD 814–842 (earliest full Life)
What this text is
The oldest complete biography of the bishop of Myra — the three purses of gold through the poor man's window, the sailors saved, the innocents spared — the hagiographic bedrock under a world of legend.
Public-domain translations
Literal gloss of the Greek (Vita per Michaelem 12)
By night he cast a purse of gold through the window of the poor man's house and hurried home; with it the father gave his first daughter in marriage. And this he did a second time, and a third — desiring that his good deed be hidden.
Manuscript witnesses
Michael the Archimandrite, Vita per Michaelem
c. AD 814–842 (medieval copies)The first connected biography; earlier only the 6th-c. Praxis de stratelatis attests the cult. The gap is candidly flagged in this archive's citations.
Provenance
Myra in Lycia; the earliest full Life is four centuries after the bishop
Editions & scholarship
Critical editions and standard translations behind the text above.
- Hagios Nikolaos: Der heilige Nikolaos in der griechischen KircheGustav Anrich, 1913–1917The critical corpus of the Nicholas texts.
- Saint Nicholas of Myra, Bari, and ManhattanCharles W. Jones, 1978The standard study of the legend's growth.