Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 5, 1894.djvu/126

 ii8 Eugene Anichkof.

to create the god Voloss,^ or, as the same St. Nicolas is called by the Siberian idolaters, the Russian god Nicola.

Two very suggestive remarks were made to me- against the liberty I allowed myself to take with Mr. Zingerle's hypothesis. I was asked, in the first place, if the cult of St. Nicolas had spread wide enough in the eighth century, when we find the first mention of Nicor in the Beozuulf, to become a mere common noun indicative of sea-monsters in general; and, secondly, if I could explain, etymologically, Nicolas = Nicor.

The first question slightly puzzles me. I know no written Vita of St. Nicolas earlier than the eighth century. My Syriac text dates from the ninth century,^ and, there- fore, gives us ground for believing that its Greek original belongs to the eighth century ; the panegyric of Methodius the Patriarch* also refers to a Viia written in the eighth century ; and in the Chronicle of Theophanes-^ we find the description of a miracle of St. Nicolas during the reign of the Emperor Nicephorus I (802-811). A few miracles of St. Nicolas are also alluded to by Andreas Cretensis in the seventh century.®

But this date is, strictly speaking, the latest to which we have a right to refer St. Nicolas' Vita and sea-miracles, and the earliest documents we possess are his representa- tions dating from the fifth century.'' If we look into the text of the Life for" proofs of its antiquity we shall find many. In it there is mention of the last persecution of the Christians by Diocletian.^ A miracle is stated to have taken place in the reign of Constantine the Great,^ another

^ Prof. Vesselovsky, Solomon i Kitovras, etc.^ St. Ptbg., 1872, p. xiv.

2 By Mr, Nutt, at the meeting of the Folk-lore Society of the 21st

of February 1894. ^ See Add. Cat. of the British Museum, /. c.


 * Assemanus, /. c., p. 420.

1883 ; see Nicolas, St. '^ Migne, /. r., t. 97, p. 1191. ^ Gorres, /. c.
 * Theophanis Chrono^raphia. Recensuit C. de Boor, Leipzig,

335- ' Ibid., p. 338.
 * Simeonis Metaplirastae vita S. Nicolai ; see Migne, /. ^., pp-334-

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