The name "Andrew" (meaning manly, brave, from Ancient Greek: ἀνδρεία, romanized: andreía, lit. 'manhood, valor'), like other Greek names, appears to have been common among the Jews and other Hellenized people since the second or third century B.C.[8] No Hebrew or Aramaic name is recorded for him.
Andrew the Apostle was born to a Jewish family in Bethsaida, in Galilee,[9] possibly between 5 and 10 AD[10] The New Testament states that Andrew was the brother of Simon Peter,[11] and likewise a son of Jonah. "The first striking characteristic of Andrew is his name: it is not Hebrew, as might have been expected, but Greek, indicative of a certain cultural openness in his family that cannot be ignored. We are in Galilee, where the Greek language and culture are quite present".[12]
With Jesus
Both he and his brother Peter were fishermen by trade and also Simon Peter who became a "fisher of men", hence the tradition that Jesus called them to be his disciples by saying that he will make them "fishers of men" (Ancient Greek: ἁλιεῖς ἀνθρώπων, romanized: halieîs anthrṓpōn).[13] According to Mark 1:29, at the beginning of Jesus' public life, they occupied the same house at Capernaum.[8]
In the Gospel of Matthew[14] and in the Gospel of Mark[15] Simon Peter and Andrew were both called together to become disciples of Jesus and "fishers of men". These narratives record that Jesus was walking along the shore of the Sea of Galilee, observed Simon and Andrew fishing, and called them to discipleship.
In the parallel incident in the Gospel of Luke[16] Andrew is not named, nor is reference made to Simon having a brother. In this narrative, Jesus initially used a boat, solely described as being Simon's, as a platform for preaching to the multitudes on the shore and then as a means to achieving a huge trawl of fish on a night which had hitherto proved fruitless. The narrative indicates that Simon was not the only fisherman in the boat (they signalled to their partners in the other boat …)[17] but it is not until the next chapter[18] that Andrew is named as Simon's brother. However, it is generally understood that Andrew was fishing with Simon on the night in question. Matthew Poole, in his Annotations on the Holy Bible, stressed that "Luke denies not that Andrew was there".[19]
The Gospel of John states that Andrew was a disciple of John the Baptist, whose testimony first led him, and another unnamed disciple of John the Baptist, traditionally believed to be John, to follow Jesus and spend the day with him, thus becoming the first two disciples called by Jesus.[20] Andrew at once recognized Jesus as the Messiah and hastened to introduce him to his brother.[21] For this reason the Eastern Orthodox Church honours him with the name Protokletos, which means "the first called".[12] Thenceforth, the two brothers were disciples of Christ. On a subsequent occasion, prior to the final call to the apostolate, they were called to a closer companionship, and then they left all things to follow Jesus.[8]
Subsequently, in the gospels, Andrew is referred to as being present on some important occasions as one of the disciples more closely attached to Jesus.[a] Andrew told Jesus about the boy with the loaves and fishes,[12] and when certain Greeks went to see Jesus, they came to Philip, but Philip then had recourse to Andrew.[22] Andrew was present at the Last Supper. Andrew was one of the four disciples who came to Jesus on the Mount of Olives to ask about the signs of Jesus' return at the "end of the age".[23]
Andrew is said to have been martyred by crucifixion at the city of Patras (Patræ) in Achaea, in AD 60.[23] Early texts, such as the Acts of Andrew known to Gregory of Tours[26] (6th century), describe Andrew as bound, not nailed, to a Latin cross of the kind on which Jesus is said to have been crucified; yet a tradition developed that Andrew had been crucified on a crux decussata (X-shaped cross, or "saltire"), now commonly known as a "Saint Andrew's Cross" — supposedly at his own request, as he deemed himself unworthy to be crucified on the same type of cross as Jesus had been.[b] The iconography of the martyrdom of Andrew — showing him bound to an X-shaped cross — does not appear to have been standardized until the later Middle Ages.[27][c]
The apocryphalActs of Andrew, mentioned by Eusebius, Epiphanius of Salamis, and others, is among a disparate group of Acts of the Apostles that were traditionally attributed to Leucius Charinus but it shows several signs of a mid-2nd-century origin.[28] It describes the supposed travels of the title character, the miracles he performed during them, and finally a description of his martyrdom. Eusebius knew the work, which he dismissed as the product of a heretic and absurd.[29] The Acts, as well as a Gospel of St Andrew, appear among rejected books in the Decretum Gelasianum connected with the name of Pope Gelasius I. Dennis MacDonald posits the theory that the non-canonical Acts of Andrew was a Christian retelling of Homer's Odyssey.[30]
Andrew's remains were preserved at Patras. According to one legend, Regulus (Rule), a monk at Patras, was advised in a dream to hide some of the bones. Shortly thereafter, most of the relics were transferred from Patras to Constantinople by order of the Roman emperorConstantius II around 357 and deposited in the Church of the Holy Apostles.[31]
Regulus was said to have had a second dream in which an angel advised him to take the hidden relics "to the ends of the earth" for protection. Wherever he was shipwrecked, he was to build a shrine for them. He set sail, taking with him a kneecap, an upper arm bone, three fingers, and a tooth. He sailed west, towards the edge of the known world, and was shipwrecked on the coast of Fife, Scotland. However, the relics were probably brought to Britain in 597 as part of the Augustine Mission, and then in 732 to Fife, by Bishop Acca of Hexham, a well-known collector of religious relics.[21]
The skull of Saint Andrew, which had been taken to Constantinople, was returned to Patras by Byzantine emperorBasil I, who ruled from 867 to 886.[32]
In 1208, following the sack of Constantinople, those relics of Saint Andrew and Saint Peter which remained in the imperial city were taken to Amalfi, Italy,[33] by Cardinal Peter of Capua the Elder, a native of Amalfi. A cathedral was built, dedicated to Saint Andrew, as is the town itself, to house a tomb in its crypt where it is maintained that most of the relics of the apostle, including an occipital bone, remain.
Thomas Palaiologos was the youngest surviving son of Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaiologos. Thomas ruled the province of Morea, the medieval name for the Peloponnese. In 1461, when the Ottomans crossed the Strait of Corinth, Palaiologos fled Patras for exile in Italy, bringing with him what was purported to be the skull of Saint Andrew. He gave the head to Pope Pius II, who had it enshrined in one of the four central piers of St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican and then in Pienza, Italy.[3]
In September 1964, Pope Paul VI, as a gesture of goodwill toward the Greek Orthodox Church, ordered that the one relic of Saint Andrew held in Vatican City be returned to Patras. Cardinal Augustin Bea, head of the Vatican's Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity, led a delegation that presented the skull to Bishop Constantine of Patras on 24 September 1964.[34][35] The cross of Saint Andrew was taken from Greece during the Crusades by the Duke of Burgundy.[36][37] It was kept in the church of St Victor in Marseille[38] until it returned to Patras on 19 January 1980. The cross of the apostle was presented to the Bishop of Patras Nicodemus by a Catholic delegation led by Cardinal Roger Etchegaray. All the relics, which consist of the small finger, the skull (part of the top of the cranium of Saint Andrew), and the cross on which he was martyred, have been kept in the Church of St. Andrew at Patras in a special shrine and are revered in a special ceremony every 30 November, his feast day.
The church tradition of Georgia regards Andrew as the first preacher of Christianity in the territory of Georgia and as the founder of the Georgian church. This tradition derives from Byzantine sources, particularly Niketas David Paphlagon (died c. 890) who asserts that "Andrew preached to the Iberians, Sauromatians, Taurians, and Scythians and to every region and city, on the Black Sea, both north and south."[48] The version was adopted by the 10th–11th-century Georgian ecclesiastics and, refurbished with more details, was inserted in the Georgian Chronicles. The story of Andrew's mission in the Georgian lands endowed the Georgian church with apostolic origin and served as a defence argument to George the Hagiorite against the encroachments from the Antiochian church authorities on autocephaly of the Georgian church. Another Georgian monk, Ephraim the Minor, produced a thesis, reconciling Andrew's story with an earlier evidence of the 4th-century conversion of Georgians by Nino and explaining the necessity of the "second Christening" by Nino. The thesis was made canonical by the Georgian church council in 1103.[49][50] The Georgian Orthodox Church marks two feast days in honour of Saint Andrew, on 12 May and 13 December. The former date, dedicated to Andrew's arrival in Georgia, is a public holiday in Georgia.
Cyprus
Cypriot tradition holds that a ship which was transporting Andrew went off course and ran aground. Upon coming ashore, Andrew struck the rocks with his staff at which point a spring of healing waters gushed forth. Using it, the sight of the ship's captain, who had been blind in one eye, was restored. Thereafter, the site became a place of pilgrimage and a fortified monastery, the Apostolos Andreas Monastery,[51] stood there in the 12th century, from which Isaac Comnenus of Cyprus negotiated his surrender to Richard the Lionheart. In the 15th century, a small chapel was built close to the shore. The main monastery of the current church dates to the 18th century.
Other pilgrimages are more recent. The story is told that in 1895, the son of a Maria Georgiou was kidnapped. Seventeen years later, Andrew appeared to her in a dream, telling her to pray for her son's return at the monastery. Living in Anatolia, she embarked on the crossing to Cyprus on a very crowded boat. As she was telling her story during the journey, one of the passengers, a young Dervish priest, became more and more interested. Asking if her son had any distinguishing marks, he stripped off his clothes to reveal the same marks, and mother and son were thus reunited.[51]
Apostolos Andreas Monastery (Greek: Απόστολος Ανδρέας) is a monastery dedicated to Saint Andrew situated just south of Cape Apostolos Andreas, which is the north-easternmost point of the island of Cyprus, in Rizokarpaso in the Karpass Peninsula. The monastery is an important site to the Cypriot Orthodox Church. It was once known as "the Lourdes of Cyprus", served not by an organized community of monks but by a changing group of volunteer priests and laymen. Both Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot communities consider the monastery a holy place. As such, it is visited by many people for votive prayers.
Malta
St. Andrew (Sant' Andrija) is the patron saint of Luqa. The patron saint's traditional feast is celebrated on the first Sunday of July, with the liturgical feast being celebrated on 30 November.[52] A local niche dedicated to him is found in Luqa, which is two storeys high. The first reference regards the small chapel at Luqa dedicated to Andrew dates to 1497. This chapel contained three altars, one of them dedicated to Andrew. The painting showing Mary with Saints Andrew and Paul was painted by the Maltese artist Filippo Dingli. At one time, many fishermen lived in the village of Luqa, and this may be the main reason for choosing Andrew as patron saint. The statue of Andrew was sculpted in wood by Giuseppe Scolaro in 1779. This statue underwent several restoration works including that of 1913 performed by the Maltese artist Abraham Gatt. The Martyrdom of Saint Andrew on the main altar of the church was painted by Mattia Preti in 1687.
Saint Andrew is the patron saint of Romania. The official stance of the Romanian Orthodox Church is that Andrew preached the Gospel in the province of Dobruja (Scythia Minor) to the Dacians who were similar to Thracians, whom he is said to have converted to Christianity. Such a tradition was however not widely acknowledged until the 20th century,[53] although substantiated by the Church History of Eusebius.
According to Hippolyte of Antioch, (died c. 250 AD) in his On Apostles, Origen in the third book of his Commentaries on the Genesis (254 AD), Eusebius in his Church History (340 AD), and other sources, such as Usaard's Martyrdom written between 845 and 865, and Jacobus de Voragine's Golden Legend (c. 1260), Andrew preached in Scythia, a possible reference to Scythia Minor, corresponding to the modern-day regions of Northern Dobruja (part of Romania) and Southern Dobruja (part of Bulgaria). According to Hippolytus of Rome, Saint Andrew had also preached to the Thracians.
Although the exclusive presence in the Romanian language of Latin vocabulary for concepts of Christian faith may indicate the antiquity of Daco-Roman Christianity,[54] according to some modern Romanian scholars, the idea of early Christianisation (preceding the Edict of Milan) is unsustainable. They take the idea to be a part of the ideology of Dacianism, which they claim to purport that the Eastern Orthodox Church has been a companion and defender of the Romanian people for its entire history, aspect supposedly used for propaganda purposes during the communist era.[55] Historians such as Ioan-Aurel Pop consider Romanians to be the first to adopt Christianity among the peoples which now inhabit the territories bordering Romania,[56] conversion to Christianity until the third century (in the province of Roman Dacia, dissolved c. 271/275 AD) playing a significant part in the ethnogenesis of the Romanians.
Scholar Mircea Eliade argues in favor of structural links between Zamolxism and Christianity,[57] thus suggesting a higher likelihood of early conversion. As such, if Andrew the Apostle had preached in Dobruja (in proximity to the Thracians he had also preached to) and not in Crimea as per the Russian Orthodox Church, Christianity in Romania can be considered of apostolic origin.[53][58]
Between the 4th and 6th centuries, the region of Scythia Minor played an influential role in the development of Christian theology.[d]
Tradition regarding the early Christian history of Ukraine holds that the apostle Andrew preached on the southern borders of modern-day Ukraine, along the Black Sea. A legend, recorded in the Primary Chronicle (pages 7.21-9.4), has it that he travelled from Sinop, Turkey towards Chersonesus (Korsun), up the Dnieper river and reached the future location of Kyiv,[59] where he erected a cross on the site where the Saint Andrew's Church of Kyiv currently stands, and where he prophesied the foundation of a great Christian city.[60] Next, he is said to have journeyed north to the Slovenes near the future site of Veliky Novgorod, although he had a negative attitude towards their customs; then he visited Rome and returned to Sinop.[61] Because of this connection to Kyiv and Novgorod, Andrew is considered to be the patron saint of the two East Slavic nations descended from the Kievan Rus': Ukraine and Russia, the latter country using the Saint Andrew's Cross on its naval ensign.[citation needed]
According to legendary accounts given in 16th-century historiography, Óengus II in AD 832 led an army of Picts and Scots into battle against the Angles, led by Æthelstan, near modern-day Athelstaneford, East Lothian. The legend states that he was heavily outnumbered and hence whilst engaged in prayer on the eve of battle, Óengus vowed that if granted victory he would appoint Andrew as the patron saint of Scotland. On the morning of battle white clouds forming an X shape in the sky were said to have appeared. Óengus and his combined force, emboldened by this apparent divine intervention, took to the field and despite being inferior in numbers were victorious. Having interpreted the cloud phenomenon as representing the crux decussata upon which Andrew was crucified, Óengus honoured his pre-battle pledge and duly appointed Andrew as the patron saint of Scotland. The white saltire set against a celestial blue background is said to have been adopted as the design of the flag of Scotland on the basis of this legend.[62] However, there is evidence that Andrew was venerated in Scotland before this.
Andrew's connection with Scotland may have been reinforced following the Synod of Whitby, when the Celtic Church felt that Columba had been "outranked" by Peter and that Peter's brother would make a higher-ranking patron. The 1320 Declaration of Arbroath cites Scotland's conversion to Christianity by Andrew, "the first to be an Apostle". Numerous parish churches in the Church of Scotland and congregations of other Christian churches in Scotland are named after Andrew. The former national church of the Scottish people in Rome, Sant'Andrea degli Scozzesi, was dedicated to Saint Andrew.
A local superstition uses the cross of Saint Andrew as a hex sign on the fireplaces in northern England and Scotland to prevent witches from flying down the chimney and entering the house to do mischief. By placing the Saint Andrew's cross on one of the fireplace posts or lintels, witches are prevented from entering through this opening. In this case, it is similar to the use of a witch ball, although the cross will actively prevent witches from entering, whereas the witch ball will passively delay or entice the witch, and perhaps entrap it.
St. Andrew was the patron saint of the Dukes of Burgundy. A form of St. Andrew's cross called the Cross de Bourgogne was used as the flag of the Duchy of Burgundy, and after the duchy was acquired by Spain, by the Spanish Crown, and later as a Spanish naval flag and finally as an army battle flag up until 1843.[64] Today, it is still a part of various Spanish military insignia and forms part of the coat of arms of the king of Spain.
The feast of Andrew is observed on 30 November in both the Eastern and Western churches, and is a bank holiday in Scotland,[67]
There are week-long celebrations in the town of St Andrews and in some other Scottish cities.
In the Catholic Church, Advent begins with First Vespers of the Sunday that falls on or closest to the feast of Saint Andrew.[68] Andrew the Apostle is remembered in the Church of England with a Festival on 30 November.[69]
In Islam
The Qur'anic account of the disciples of Jesus does not include their names, numbers, or any detailed accounts of their lives. Muslim exegesis, however, more or less agrees with the New Testament list and says that the disciples included Andrew.[70]
In Art
St. Andrew is traditionally portrayed with a long forked beard, a cross, and a book;
^The legends surrounding Andrew are discussed in Dvornik 1958
^According to Réau 1958, p. 79, St. Andrew's Cross appeared for the first time in the tenth century, but did not become an iconographic standard before the seventeenth. Calvert 1984 was unable to find a sculptural representation of Andrew on the saltire cross earlier than an architecturalcapital from Quercy, of the early twelfth century.
^Several Scythian Monks, such as Dionysius Exiguus, had been of romanized Geto-Dacian origin.
References
^Encyclopedia Britannica, "Saint Andrew", 28 May 2019 Archived 1 December 2021 at the Wayback Machine
^Sanidopoulos, John (28 November 2010). "Synaxis of the Achaean Saints". Orthodox Christianity Then and Now. Archived from the original on 27 March 2023. Retrieved 30 April 2023.
^Jefferson, Samuel (1840). The History and Antiquities of Leath Ward - In the County of Cumberland: with Biographical Notices and Memoirs. Creative Media Partners, LLC. p. 36. ISBN978-1-345-71364-0.
^Müller et al, Hans Holbein the Younger: The Basel Years, 1515–1532, Munich, Prestel, 2006
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "St. Andrew". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
Djobadze, Wachtang Z. (1976). "Materials for the Study of Georgian Monasteries in the Western Environs of Antioch on the Orontes". Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium. 372, subsidia 48. Louvain: 82–83.