Long story

Long story for you.

This is a photo of a postcard of a stained-glass window at St Nicholas’ Church. This story has many layers. The window depicts an event in which some sailors had been given or mis-sold a vial of poison by an unknown evil person. Their lives are in danger, and they know it not. A ghostly St Nicholas appears to then, Obi-Wan-like, and tells them to pour the oil away; and as it hits the sea, it bursts into flames.

That’s it. But to understand the story, you have to dig deeper. Sometime after his death, it was observed that the bones of St Nicholas were miraculously producing an ‘oil’ and that this oil had miraculous healing properties. Various theories have been put forth, from out-and-out fraud to the capillary action of the soft stone on which the bones were laid to rest. In any case, pilgrims came from far and wide in hope of a miracle. I don’t doubt that the vials of oil themselves were freely given; but the pilgrims’ need for food and accommodation, along with generous alms giving to the church, were all good news for the local economy. I also believe that the oil worked, at least sometimes. It is amazing what the power of belief can do. We see it at work in all kinds of ‘magical thinking’ even in our own post-religious, post-secular society.

The story goes that there was an enterprising woman, in Sicily, who bottled poison and sold it to women across Italy who were looking for a way out of unhappy marriages, transporting the poison in the innocent guise of bottles of St Nicholas’ miracle oil. True or no, this came to be widely and deeply believed. It is reported that on his deathbed, Mozart claimed that it was by means of this poison that he had been done for. Perhaps he believed so (remember, belief is powerful). Perhaps he was simply referencing the story (stories are powerful, too). Or perhaps he has been woven into the story itself (stories have a power of their own).

So, we have a miracle oil, and a poison oil, both sought for and highly prized. And within this construct we can imagine that a group of sailors came to Bari in search of hope, and were tricked by someone who had taken advantage of the desperate hope of unhappy wives to inflict death upon random victims. The dealer had no means of knowing to whom the sailors were carrying the vial, but got off on holding the power of life and death over others. An early serial killer, if you will. Foiled, by saintly intervention.

That, then, is the story. I told you that it was long, and layered. And it is not a story with a moral; but it is a story that sweeps us up into it, in the parish of St Nicholas’ with its church with its beautiful window by master-craftsman Leonard Evetts, in a time of pandemic and of a web of stories spinning on social media.

It is a story that reminds us of the power of stories; of the deep and at times desperate need for hope; of the ways in which belief, itself powerful, is complicit in life and death, truth and the limits of our understanding. It is, if nothing else, a stark reminder that if we do not stay at home any one of us may be carrying death to our friends and family unawares. It is a story to sit with today, to seep up capillary veins and marinate our bones. In the spirit of St Nicholas the gift-giver, it is my gift to you.