Chapter 5 - Svetoi Andrei
Patron Saint of Russia
The adjective 'Byzantine' is occasionally applied to arguments as well as styles of architecture. The expression 'It matters not one iota' derives from one such dispute about the Nicene Creed, drawn up to unite all centres against the followers of Arius, who taught that only God the Father could be described as divine.
Some were inclined to fudge the question of what substance Christ actually consisted but with the Emperor Constantine looking on and banging heads together, the Council of Nicaea in 325 tried (unsuccessfully, as it turned out) to put an end to years of theological battles in which Christ was defined as having two natures in one body, or one nature (divine) in a human body, or an apparently human body, or an apparently divine body. These attempts had not clarified the issue. To define Christ's precise relationship with God the phrase 'like substance' (Greek: homoi-ousios) was proposed, but the opponents of Arius were having none of it. Nicaea insisted that Christ was one substance with God and only the phrase homo-ousios ('same-substance') would do. The difference was one letter 'i', the Greek letter iota - and it certainly mattered at the time.
In general, the way in which the East approached these questions was different from the West's. A comparison could be made with the contrasting approaches to diplomacy of European nations and the USA. We might expect Andrew to have been taken up - as the forgers possibly intended - to be an anti-Peter and used as the basis of authority in the way Rome used Peter. But, paradoxically, this did not happen in Greece. Local leadership and the cult of local saints seem to have played a more significant role in the Eastern Church. Perhaps this explains why Andrew enjoys an honoured place in the Greek Orthodox liturgy and is the patron saint of Greece - but does not have the same status as Peter does for Catholics.
This difference in style was shown right from the beginning of the adoption of Christianity as the official religion of the Roman empire in 312. The bones of Andrew were considered important enough to be brought to the New Rome, but the great churches there were still dedicated to abstractions - for example, Eirene (peace), Sophia (wisdom), Dynamis (power) - plus one to Archangel Michael and four to local saints and martyrs. Andrew continued to be revered as the local saint of Patras, but throughout Greece his profile remained modest -something which may have pleased the retiring Andrew we met in the Gospels.
However, in the tenth century, just when the Pseudo-Dorotheus and Pseudo-Epiphanius legends were gaining currency, a significant development took place to the north. Prince Vladimir of Kiev was a coming man seeking to consolidate a kingdom and integrate the peoples under his sway. This ambition was not harmed by his forthcoming marriage to Anna, sister of Emperor Basil at Constantinople. There are various stories about how he came to adopt Christianity as the official religion of his country, which he accomplished in autocratic fashion by ordering a mass baptism of the populace in the River Dnieper at Kiev.
Those who believe that behind every successful man stands a woman will no doubt favour the explanation that Anna influenced him with bedchamber evangelism and perhaps some bedchamber diplomacy. I prefer the story that Vlad sent emissaries off to various countries to find the most appropriate form of religion for his up-and-coming nation. They reached Constantinople and were so overwhelmed by the beauty of sight, sound and smell that they encountered in the church of Santa Sophia that they felt themselves to be at the very gate of Heaven. Vlad was glad to take their advice and thus founded the Church whose roots were in Byzantium but whose branches eventually stretched into every corner of the vast empire that became Russia.
It was Constantinople rather than Rome he was acknowledging and its system of Caesaro-papism in which the Church is part of the fabric of state. As the state Church of a great nation, the new Russian Orthodox Church was only too pleased to learn that Andrew, one of the original inner group of apostles, had visited the Kievan Rus. It embraced the legends of the Acts of Andrew, the ones added by Pseudo-Dorotheus and Pseudo-Epiphanius, and was able to supply a few of its own. Enter Svetoi Andrei, the patron saint of Russia.
The Russian Primary Chronicle dates from the eleventh or twelfth century. It describes how Andrew went from Byzantium by the shore of the Black Sea to Scythia (south of Russia) and then Crimea. Under divine guidance he sailed up the River Dnieper, which emerges there, and stopped overnight among the hills around Kiev. In the morning he told his disciples: 'Believe me, on these hills the goodness of God will shine; a great city will be here and God will create many churches and enlighten the whole of Russia with holy baptisms.'
Having prayed all night, in the morning Andrew climbed the hills, blessed them and erected a cross, prophesying the adoption by the people there of the faith of his apostolic Church established in Byzantium. The Chronicle notes - with the benefit of hindsight - that this had indeed happened (with Prince Vladimir's action in 988). (Later biographies of the saints of Russia state confidently that the exact spot on which Andrew erected his cross is now the site of the Church of Apostle Andrew, First-called, in Kiev.)
Astonishingly, the Chronicle goes on to describe how Andrew then went to Novgorod to evangelise there. Since Novgorod is half-way between Moscow and St Petersburg and a thousand kilometres from Kiev, this stretches credulity as well as endurance. The legend came to be used by Novgorod in the fourteenth century to assert its independence from Constantinople's jurisdiction, on the grounds that the Church there had been personally founded by Andrew.
There he encounters the sauna bath, which he regards as a horrific form of masochism to be resisted by all good Christians. Saunas have acquired a dubious reputation in red-light areas in modern cities, but Andrew's objections were more basic: 'They have wooden bath-houses which the people heat until they are red-hot. They then undress, and, after pouring over themselves kvas (a beery drink made from mouldy bread), they take young twigs and lash their bodies so much that they can hardly move. Half-dead, they pour icy water over themselves and only then are revived. They do this daily. Tortured by nobody, they instead torture themselves and call it washing!'
This somewhat jaundiced account of the sauna culture Andrew found among the Slavs of Novgorod perhaps owes more to the fact that the author of the Chronicle had a motive in pouring some cold water of his own on their pretensions! In this account in the Russian Primary Chronicle, Andrew is said also to have visited the land of the Varangians (Norsemen), then made his way to Rome, where he recounted his adventures, before going east to his fate at Patras. How credible is this legend? Wholly credible, according to Petrov Sergei, Metropolitan of Odessa and Kherson, in a lecture given in 1988, when he was awarded a doctorate by the Orthodox Theology Faculty of Preshov in the Czech Republic. I leave readers to judge whether they find his account, given here in translation, a plausible one:
In Odessa we have a divinity faculty, the Odessa Spiritual Seminary, which counts St Apostle Andrew as its higher guardian, reflecting the ancient belief of our Church that St Andrew came this way when the south of Ukraine and Dnieper were inhabited by Skifs (the people of Scythia). The similarity of this record and the church-wide legends about the preaching in Scythia of the first-called disciple of Christ would seem to provide adequate historical and scientific grounds for believing that the apostle preached in our land too. But since the middle of the eighteenth century there has appeared some literature that is sceptical of this legend. The famous Church historian E. E. Golubinski sums up three (as he thought, very strong) arguments.
First, beyond Scythia was barren wilderness, unknown to the rest of the world, and so it was impossible for the apostle to have travelled there.
Second, the sauna episode is out of tune with the serious tone of the Chronicle. Different regions of Russia teased each other with sarcastic stories, and this sounds like one.
Third, in the Chronicle there is an older narrative that says, 'In the land of Russia, the apostles did not teach,' and 'The apostles were not here in bodily presence.' Thus the legend about Andrew was inserted later.
Scientists and sceptics therefore consider the creation of the legend of Andrew's visiting Russia as the act of vanity of one author who wanted to portray Russians as among the first to receive Christianity. However, not all of their arguments are sustainable. Regarding the first point above, it has been shown that it was wrong to consider the lands beyond the Dnieper as wild and unknown to the rest of the world. They were part of trade routes used by the Greeks in the first century BC. As for points two and three, the Christian faith has no doubt about the validity of the legend that Andrew preached in Russia because it was supported by the Church, the guardian of truth. Thus we consider this legend true, and all scientific attempts to prove otherwise are only hypotheses because science does not have the means to prove or disprove the truth of this legend ...
If Scythia was known to the Greeks and Romans as part of the universe, then surely the apostles, who were very thorough in following the prophecy contained in the Old Testament that the future Messiah's teaching would spread to the end of the universe, would have tried to reach it. There is also the prophecy of Christ himself ('Go ye into all nations'). Given the very nature of Andrew, his spiritual commitment, one imagines that he would have been very eager to fulfil the wishes of Christ; it is understandable that it was he who came to Russia. Can you imagine him reaching the southern borders of our land, then suddenly deciding to turn back?
Further, we consider that if someone had forged the Chronicle, then they would have copied the style of the important legends and certainly would not have added a ridiculous story about a sauna. It proves the originality of the story. The storyteller simply had to record what had happened and what was said.
Another argument for the authenticity of the sauna episode is that pagans had a cult of the body and valued highly everything to do with it (including bathing). This is apparent from the famous Roman baths - they were palaces.
The main aim of the apostles' preaching was to make people admit their own sins and be baptised in the name of Christ. Andrew may have drawn on the contrasting images of washing the body in a bath and washing the soul by confessing sins. That is another reason for believing that he did refer to bathing habits.
So the Apostle did preach on Russian land, up to Novgorod, but his preaching did not bear much fruit. Christianity was not accepted at that time. That is why it is understandable that Andrew felt like an alien among strangers and a little bitter when talking about the bathing habits of the barbarians, remembering the words of Holy Scripture, 'Light came into the world but people liked darkness rather than light because their acts were evil.' The pagans of the north preferred the dubious pleasures of the bath to life eternal and Christ's cross. This was the thinking Andrew expressed in his report on this journey. It is mentioned several times in Holy Scripture that such a report existed. [The Metropolitan then cites Acts 11:4-18, 15:12, 21:19; Galatians 2:1-2.]
The story of the bath episode was incorporated into the Chronicle by the outstanding theologian and historian Nestor at the end of the eleventh or the beginning of the twelfth century. Although Christianity had been introduced into Russia a century previously, pagan superstitions were still alive. Nestor used the sauna-bath episode from an original report about a journey in Russia by Andrew as religious satire to condemn this superstition.
It is noteworthy that the people of Novgorod had to be baptised by fire and the sword, while the people of Kiev were baptised quickly and without problems. Later (in 1074-8) almost all the citizens of Novgorod were nominal Christians but switched to the side of a pagan during a revolt.
This concludes Metropolitan Sergei's 'defence'. Quite what the citizens of Novgorod would make of it, I shudder to think - or even the former Metropolitan of Novgorod and Leningrad, Alexei, who is now Patriarch of all Russia. Reprinted in the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate, vol. 7 (1988), it illustrates the different forensic standards which Orthodox leaders bring to assessing the legends of Andrew.
I came across an alternative Russian version to the outlandish claims of the Chronicle in the Life and Labours of Saint Apostle Andrew, First-called, published in Odessa in 1894, based on the chronicle of Russian Orthodox saints published in 1858. This follows the life of Andrew as told in the Gospels, picks up the itinerary of the Acts of Andrew, then outlines the 'third journey of Andrew'. This begins in Georgia (then called Svanetia and Osetia), where he met with success. Not so in the land of the Djigits (lawless tribes who rode everywhere on horseback). Their modern descendants are people such as the Chechens who have proved such a thorn in the flesh of modern Russia. These people met Andrew with hostility and tried to kill him. The account adds: 'They still don't have faith - punishment for treating Andrew like that.'
After this Caucasian adventure, Andrew journeyed to the Crimea, where he visited a number of towns, leaving converts behind wherever he went, and finally reached the town of Khersones. This is apparently not the modern Cherson at the mouth of the Dnieper, since the account adds that Khersones doesn't exist any more, but ruins can be seen near Sevastapol. There is a cathedral commemorating the spot where Prince Vladimir was baptised prior to the mass baptism which his people underwent at Kiev. There is also a legend that the spot where Andrew came ashore can still be identified.
The next chapter begins with Andrew expressing his desire to visit the 'land of the Goths and Skifs' and the voyage up the Dnieper to Kiev, already described. However, after erecting his cross there, it continues: 'Andrew went back, visiting places he had already visited to see if faith was still alive there. So he visited Sinope for a third time.' (This contrasts with the earlier account in the Acts of Andrew of Sinope being hostile territory and also omits any mention of places north such as Novgorod.)
Andrew continues into Greece, and the Patras martyrdom completes this saga. The two Russian hagiographies of Andrew differ in the detail of what happened after his death on the cross. In the 1894 life, Aegeates' wife, Maximilla, buried him by the seashore 'and did not leave his grave while alive'. Her unhappy husband then committed suicide by jumping from a window. The earlier account has Maximilla put Andrew into her own coffin. 'Aegeates wanted to punish her but died.' However, both are agreed that the remains were transferred to Constantinople at a much later date.
The life then states that in 1208 Pope Innocent 'gave permission to transfer the remains to Amalfi, but the head of Andrew, which was kept in Patras, was brought to Rome where it is still kept in the Cathedral of St Peter'. (This is incorrect, as we shall see in the next chapter, and so perhaps we should treat with caution the next part of the story.) 'During the time of Tsar Michael Fyodorovitch [the first of the Romanovs, whose dynasty began in 1613] Patriarch Parfeni sent him the right hand of St Andrew. The fingers are brought together for holy blessing. It was as though St Andrew wanted to show posterity how the fingers should be held for blessing and to warn people not to be misled by poor teaching.'
The account further adds that the left foot of Andrew is kept in the Ilyinsky monastery on Mount Aphos in northern Greece. First given by the emperor, in 964, to the Greek Varetad monastery, which was burnt by Turks, it was bought by the head of the Ilyinsky monastery as a contribution to restoration funds. However, we should not allow the extravagance of the Russian Primary Chronicle to blind us to the fact that time and again different strands of evidence link Andrew with the Black Sea and Crimea.
Does it matter that the time gap cannot be filled in with details? As we have seen, the Andrew legend was revived by the conversion of Russia. We shall now see how new life was breathed into the bones of St Andrew in the West.