Last year I created a file with the Latin text of 47 of the medieval miracle stories of St Nicholas, and a draft English translation for each. Three more stories were left unfinished, containing BHL 6177 (the miracles at Angers), BHL 6178 (the miracles at Brauweiler), and BHL 6209 (a musical miracle at the Cluniac priory of Sainte-Croix in Burgundy). I have now finished these up, and here they are:
- Latin Miracles of St Nicholas – Three more (PDF)
- Latin Miracles of St Nicholas – Three more (Word .docx)
They are also at Archive.org here.
As usual, these files and their contents are public domain. Use them in any way you like, personal, educational, or commercial.
The list of stories about St Nicholas in the Bollandist’s catalogue, the BHL, is longer still. But most of the remaining pieces are quite long, and, in all honesty, late medieval. It’s way too late for this blog, and out of scope.
I did think about BHL 6210 also, which is not too long, and I went so far as to scan the Latin text. But in all honesty I feel no urge whatever to do any more St Nicholas material just now. So let’s stop here.
You have done a lot! You have to leave something for the grad students of tomorrow, heh!
Thank you! But there is still plenty to do. What I hope that I have done is to open up the pathway to the study of the literature about St Nicholas. Instead of being just a mass of barely edited Greek (and Latin), there is now a lot of it, including the oldest and most mainstream stuff, which can be skim-read in English. Which means, of course, that grad students can get to grips with it more easily, so so more work will get done. At least that is my hope. Maybe we will get fewer lazy journalist articles about “some say that” and more “the early life by XYZ says”.