The Miracle of the Great St. Nicolas

The Miracle of the Great St. Nicolas is by Anatole France, from The Seven Wives of Bluebeard & Other Marvellous Tales, translated by D. B. Stewart. The opening says St. Nicolas, Bishop of Myra in Lycia, lived in the time of Constantine the Great. The opening also says that the most ancient and weighty of the authors who have mentioned him give abundant proofs of his sanctity, but none of them records the miracle of the salting-tub.

The text says there were two St. Nicolas, one Bishop of Myra in Lycia and the other more recent, Bishop of Trinqueballe in Vervignole. The text says it was the Bishop of Trinqueballe who rescued the three little boys from the salting-tub. Chapter I introduces Nicolas, a scion of an illustrious family of Vervignole, who showed marks of sanctity from his earliest childhood and at the age of fourteen vowed to consecrate himself to the Lord. The Pope hurls against the Bishop, like a thunderbolt, the Bull Deterrima quondam, by which he deprives him of all his ecclesiastical functions and cuts him off from the communion of the faithful.