His reputation evolved among the faithful, as was common for early Christian saints , and his legendary habit of secret gift-giving gave rise to the traditional model of Santa Claus "Saint Nick" through Sinterklaas. Very little is known about the historical Saint Nicholas. The earliest accounts of his life were written centuries after his death and contain many legendary elaborations. Other early stories tell of him calming a storm at sea, saving three innocent soldiers from wrongful execution, and chopping down a tree possessed by a demon.
In his youth, he is said to have made a pilgrimage to Egypt and the Palestine area. Shortly after his return, he became Bishop of Myra. He was later cast into prison during the persecution of Diocletian , but was released after the accession of Constantine. An early list makes him an attendee at the First Council of Nicaea in , but he is never mentioned in any writings by people who were actually at the council. Late, unsubstantiated legends claim that he was temporarily defrocked and imprisoned during the Council for slapping the heretic Arius.
Another famous late legend tells how he resurrected three children, who had been murdered and pickled in brine by a butcher planning to sell them as pork during a famine.
Fewer than years after Nicholas's death, the St. Nicholas Church was built in Myra under the orders of Theodosius II over the site of the church, where he had served as bishop and Nicholas's remains were moved to a sarcophagus in that church. In , while the Greek Christian inhabitants of the region were subjugated by the newly arrived Muslim Seljuk Turks , and soon after their church was declared to be in schism by the Catholic church, a group of merchants from the Italian city of Bari removed the major bones of Nicholas's skeleton from his sarcophagus in the church without authorization and brought them to their hometown, where they are now enshrined in the Basilica di San Nicola.
The remaining bone fragments from the sarcophagus were later removed by Venetian sailors and taken to Venice during the First Crusade. His relics in Bari are said to exude a miraculous watery substance known as " manna " or " myrrh ", [ attribution needed ] which some members of the faithful regard as possessing supernatural powers. Very little at all is known about Saint Nicholas's historical life.
