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Other stories tell of Nicholas saving
his people from famine, sparing the lives of those innocently accused,
and much more. He did many kind and generous deeds in secret, expecting
nothing in return. Within a century of his death he was celebrated as a
saint. Today he is venerated in the East as wonder, or miracle worker
and in the West as patron of a great variety of persons-children,
mariners, bankers, pawn-brokers, scholars, orphans, laborers, travelers,
merchants, judges, paupers, marriageable maidens, students, children,
sailors, victims of judicial mistakes, captives, perfumers, even thieves
and murderers! He is known as the friend and protector of all in trouble
or need (see list).
Sailors, claiming St. Nicholas as patron, carried
stories of his favor and protection far and wide. St. Nicholas chapels
were built in many seaports. As his popularity spread during the Middle
Ages, he became the patron saint of Apulia (Italy), Sicily, Greece, and
Lorraine (France), and many cities in Germany, Austria, Switzerland,
Italy, Russia, Belgium, and the Netherlands (See list). Following his
baptism in Constantinople, Vladimir I of Russia brought St. Nicholas'
stories and devotion to St. Nicholas to his homeland where Nicholas
became the most beloved saint. Nicholas was so widely revered that more
than 2,000 churches were named for him, including three hundred in
Belgium, thirty-four in Rome, twenty-three in the Netherlands and more
than four hundred in England.
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