The Journey: How an obscure Byzantine Saint became our Santa Claus. David Price Williams
“I’m going to stay here a while longer,” I replied. “I’m going to learn more about Christianity. At some time, I suppose I should go and see some of my father’s old contacts and talk to them, let them know of his passing. After that I have an urge to travel a little, go out into the world.”
We ate together that last evening at one of the wine shops on the dock. The following morning, I thanked Polios profusely for the experience he had given me, especially for my introduction to the Christian community in Alexandria whose number I had now joined.
As we said farewell on the quayside, I said, “Truly, Polios, being here has changed my life, and in such a short time. I now have a direction to follow and many new friends to be with. It’s the start of a new life for me, thanks to you.”
“Go with God,” he answered and kissed me on both cheeks. “May the Lord keep you safe, Nicholas.”
And with that he turned back to his ship and I walked into the city again. I took a room in one of the less fashionable parts of
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Alexandria near the meeting house where I was studying with Eusebius. There was quite a community of believers in that area so I had no difficulty finding a place.
* * * * *
The months seemed to disappear like smoke and my time in Alexandria sped by. In the end I devoted more than two years to studying Christian theology from Eusebius and from other luminaries I met there. It was a life so very different to the aimless existence I had led in Patara. As I immersed myself in study and prayer; I became acquainted with profound ideas about the meaning of our life on earth.
One of the great Christian intellectuals who had lived in Alexandria was the Athenian scholar Clement who was still very much remembered here, almost a hundred years later. He had been very deeply versed in the writings of the ancient Greeks, especially in the ‘Iliad’ and the ‘Odyssey’ of Homer, books which I had been forced to read as a child. But he had gone on to compare what he described as ‘this pagan literature’ with the teachings of our Lord to emphasise the truly revolutionary thinking that Christianity represented. He showed how the steadfast love of God described by Jesus totally triumphed philosophically over the casual relationships even the Homeric heroes endeavoured to have with the manifestly petulant and prejudiced gods of the old world of Mount Olympus. Clement had a mastery of the
DAVID PRICE WILLIAMS
thinking of the Athenian philosophers as well, especially the stoics, and he drew on these also to highlight the supremacy of the Christian message. Following his example, I applied myself for many thoughtful days in the new library that was being created at the old temple of Serapis, studying copies of the works of the Greek philosophers they had acquired to replace the originals. As Clement had, I compared the thoughts of writers like Plato and Aristotle with Christian ideas.
Another great thinker who had lived and worked in Alexandria was Origen Adamantius, an Egyptian who initially very much followed Clement in the way he interpreted the Christian scriptures. He too knew the works of the Stoic philosophers well and emphasized comparisons between the gospels and the works of Pythagorus and other great thinkers from Athens. Idiosyncratically, Origen taught that to reach God one had to pass through many phases, the last being human. It was not an idea to everyone’s taste. But he was very well versed in the Hebrew writings as well and through his wide knowledge he had reworked the Greek version of the holy book of the Jews, the one they call the Septuagint, which had in fact been originally translated in Alexandria soon after Alexander the Great had been here. Alas there were some scholars in Alexandria who thought Origen’s writings were bordering on the heretical, especially when he called the idea of the Holy Trinity into question and in the end he had to leave the city under a cloud and he died in Caesarea.
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I met many remarkable people among the Christian community living in Alexandria and we spent long hours reading and discussing the gospels together, as well as the epistles of Paul and other writings. Eusebius was a patient tutor and I had a voracious appetite for what he was able to reveal to me. In the end, after all my studies, I felt I was entering a new life, starting afresh. I emerged from the breadth of my studies feeling I had been translated into a different existence.
On the suggestion of Theodorus and after much prayer and soul-searching I took holy orders; I was ordained as a priest. From now on I knew I had a direction to follow, a path to take, to help others and to spread God’s word of redemption throughout the world. It was a remarkable feeling but I knew I had a very definite message to deliver, one that I had first sensed on the day of my baptism and as the months went by it was one I was to discern more and more. I knew that God had a mission for me to perform and for the first time in my life I slowly gained the sensation that I was truly needed. I felt ready to go out into the world.
DAVID PRICE WILLIAMS
CHAPTER SIX
THE ETERNAL NILE
I had been in Alexandria two years by this time and it was only then that I remembered I should really have tried to find some of the people whom my father had known and with whom he had been trading, if only to let them know he had passed away. Obviously by now I knew the layout of Alexandria very well and so one spare afternoon I walked all the way down Canopic Street and, turning into a narrow alley near the Moon Gate where I had long since discovered all the incense merchants operated, I saw a sign with a name that I thought I recognised, ‘Apollodorus Incense and Spices’ it read, so I went in. Inside was piled high with sacks full of aromatics of various kinds and heavily perfumed with all the fragrances of the orient. At the back of the shop I found an elderly man with a withered arm whom I supposed to be the eponymous Apollodorus.
“Apollodorus, sir, I am Nicholas, son of Aquila, from Patara. I think you did business with my father, did you not?”
“Aquila, you say?” He looked at me quizzically and after a moment’s thought he recalled, “Ah yes, but that was some years ago. I used to buy some of his terebinth resin, as I remember. It was a cheaper product than I normally sell
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mind you,” he continued rather condescendingly, “but there used to be something of a market for it among the lower class households of the city and they did sometimes burn it in some of the temples of the lesser cults and more obscure deities.”
“Well,” I continued, “I was given your name by our manager Eurymachus as someone with whom I should make contact.”
“I don’t think I can be of much help to you young man. Your father’s partner, Chrolos, was it? No, Chronos, that’s it, he came here, well, it must have been two or three years ago and took the last supplies I had, saying they were damaged stock and he would replace them the following day. He never came back. The sacks were worth a tidy sum I can tell you. It left me considerably out of pocket. Have you come to make restitution after all this time, is that what it is?”
For a moment I was thrown into a state of considerable confusion. I was sure Chronos had been drowned in the shipwreck five or six years ago. How was it he’d turned up in Alexandria? Had it really been him? And how did he know about Apollodorus? How did he find out he was a client of my father’s? I didn’t know what to say.
“You mean,” I hesitated, “You actually saw Chronos here, in Alexandria, two years ago?”
DAVID