21 January 2007

Santa Claus Came to Town

I watched an interesting documentary on the History Channel while I was home for Christmas (one of the few t.v. channels I miss), called "The Real Face of Santa." Basically, a researcher--who is a native of Bari--was studying the bones of St. Nicholas in the crypt in the cathedral at Bari. Nobody questioned the authenticity of the relics, incidentally. The researcher did mention that he is concerned that the place in which the bones are housed has started to leak and is very damp (apart from the holy liquid apparently exuded by the relics themselves), and he is afraid the relics will completely deteriorate in the next 50 years, but the folks in charge don't want to move the relics.

Regardless of all that, he had some people reconstruct, based on skull measurements and historical data, what St. Nicholas would have looked like. An article that includes the picture can be seen here.

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