[Illustration: Florentine School (Fifteenth Century). St. Nicholas and the Three Maidens.]
This is the story which in general has linked the name of St. Nicholas particularly with the virtue of generosity. For instance, in Dante’s _Purgatorio_ the shade of Hugh Capet introduces the name of Nicholas in this connection.
Esso parlava ancor della largezza che fece Niccolao alle pulcelle, per condurre ad onor lor giovenezza.
“It spoke further of the generosity of Nicholas toward the maidens in order to conduct their youth to honor.”
Among schoolboys the story was particularly well known. It formed the subject of one of the plays performed by them on St. Nicholas’ eve. It, also, more frequently than any other incident in his life story, forms the subject of pictures by Byzantine and early Italian painters. The pictures representing the dejected father and the daughters preparing for bed, one of the daughters sometimes dutifully pulling off her father’s boots, and the youth St. Nicholas on the outside of the house furtively casting through an open window his gifts of gold, inevitably bring to mind the later methods of gift bestowing employed by Santa Claus. That the connection was felt in earlier times is made clear from earlier references to the custom, especially in the form of Protestant objection. For instance, a preacher of Lauban in 1608, referring to St. Nicholas’ gifts to the maidens, remarks: “Hence comes the custom that some parents lay something on the bed for children and say St. Nicholas has given it, which is an evil custom since by it the children are directed to St. Nicholas when we know that not St. Nicholas but the holy Christ Child gives us everything good for body or for soul.”[42] Another Protestant preacher of the same period makes similar objection, saying: “One had better tell the children that the dear Christ Child sent such gifts; if they shall be good, better ones will follow on Christmas day.” The surreptitious manner of conveying the gifts to the children must have been an old practice as may be inferred from the incident recorded of the young man of the sixteenth century who, in attempting to imitate St. Nicholas, fell through an opening left for grain and nearly lost his life.[43]