Chapter 1 - Andrew the Enigma

Andrew, the fisherman from Galilee, is an enigma. First to be called as a disciple, senior to his brother Peter in age and part of the core group who followed Jesus in his short ministry, Andrew slips elusively out of the Bible and disappears into the mists of legend. Hundreds of years later he surfaces, restored to a prominent place among the founders of the Christian Church, and is adopted as the patron saint of several countries.

In many ways, Andrew is an ideal patrol saint: facts are scarce and legends about him abound. No one is too particular about whether they are historically accurate, thus enabling his persona to be invoked in a variety of ways. On the other hand, his disappearance from the scene as the Christian Church struggled to establish its identity raises more questions than the reliable documents and data have ever been able to answer. Did he conduct a mission around the Black Sea area? If so, did he go north into Russia - 900 years before that country became Christian - or did he turn back, creating the first bishop of Constantinople and thus founding the apostolic line of the Orthodox Church? Did he then meet his death in Patras in south-western Greece, martyred on an X-shaped cross by a Roman ruler whose wife had been converted by the apostle?

The mysteries do not end after Andrew's death. Mark Antony's famous funeral oration for Caesar in which he claimed, 'The evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones', is not true of Andrew. Long after his death, Andrew's bones have been used for good causes. Divided into lots, swapped, revered and claimed to be the source of miracles, some have disappeared and others survive as the focus of devotion for Roman Catholics in various places. One is tempted to add that if all the bones of Andrew which were being revered in various sites at one particular time in history had been brought together, the Church might have had two apostles for the price of one. They would each have had a job.

In the medieval era, when the veneration of relics was at its height, there were two Churches, both claiming apostolic supremacy - the Roman or Western Church and the Orthodox or Eastern one. Orthodoxy may have gone marching on in the belief that Andrew had founded its patriarchate, but Andrew's body was not mouldering in any grave. In the Western Church popes and bishops were moving his bones around proudly, contradicting any idea that Andrew was the property of the Eastern Church. This renewed interest on the part of both halves of Christendom had the positive effect of establishing a new reputation for Peter's elder brother.

In Scotland Andrew was to become the focus of national aspiration. The little town on the east coast named after the apostle (St Andrews) quickly grew into a powerful ecclesiastical centre that would promote that ambition. The legend of Regulus (abbot and saint, depending on which version you choose), who had a vision that the bones that resided in Patras should be saved and brought to Scotland, tells how the apostle's bones came directly by sea to St Andrews. This conveniently established a direct link between Scotland and the place in which Andrew was martyred, ignoring the claims of the places in Italy which harboured relics. But, most significant of all, it omitted to mention the alternative version of how Andrew's bones arrived in St Andrews - that they were brought there from Hexham in England. The embarrassing fact that Scotland's patron saint, whose symbol was carried into battle by Scottish armies repelling English invaders, might actually have been a gift from the Old Enemy would not exactly have been good propaganda.

Did St Regulus really exist? Where are the bones which once reposed in the grandeur of St Andrews cathedral? Did Andrew really die at Patras? Or, more fundamentally, did Andrew really travel anywhere after his return to Galilee following the death of Jesus? These are just a few of the questions surrounding the enigma of Andrew that this book will set out to address, albeit in the knowledge that there is no final, undisputed answer to any of them.

Perhaps that is how Andrew would have wanted it. His scant appearances in the Scriptures reveal his character as modest and retiring, content to take a back seat and be an enabler (bringing others to Jesus or assisting with the feeding of the five thousand). We are left by the Gospel writers in no doubt about the fiery character of some of his fellow fishermen-disciples (e.g., the sons of Zebedee, James and John, who were nicknamed Boanerges, 'sons of thunder', by Jesus). His brother Peter seems to have been a blend of bluster and bullishness charging off in pursuit of his passions, while his older, steadier brother receded more and more into the background.

Homily writers (and some biographers of St Andrew) have exploited the few acorns of information in the Gospels and have nurtured great oaks that attempt to place Andrew close to the heart of the Christian faith. I have no quarrel with this legitimate enterprise. The stories of the saints were written to
inspire those who hear them. Even relics provide a tangible link with the holy person and with the place in which they are exhibited. We should not be too quick to condemn fabulous stories about saints or the wish to have some kind of physical reminder of a great figure from the past.

Those who feel repelled by the veneration of relics may look upon such practices with a sense of superiority. Yet in our own time the belongings of famous people can fetch huge sums of money simply because of their aura. At its worst it is a kind of idolatry, but those who think it harmless to collect Elvis Presley's jumpsuit or Winston Churchill's cigar butts perhaps have an insight into the simple faith of those who treated the saints of the Church as spiritual heroes and treasured their relics. As time went by, the place in which the hallowed object was exhibited became hallowed itself and it almost ceased to matter if the object was genuine. This is what has happened with the Shroud of Turin (shown recently to date from the period in the Middle Ages when relic veneration was at its height). While acknowledging the counterfeit nature of the cloth, the Pope still feels happy to commend it to Catholics as a catalyst for faith in the Resurrection.

As for the fabulous nature of many of the Andrew legends, we cannot afford to be too disdainful towards these either. It was the custom, before books replaced oral history, to tell stories about famous heroes that recounted the kinds of action consistent with their character or status. Come to think of it, there is nothing alien to our own age about this. We now accept (after some pious reluctance earlier this century) the idea of portraying Christ on film, television or in musicals such as Godspell. (It is regarded as legitimate piety.) We can appreciate Shakespeare's versions of Macbeth or Richard III, knowing that his portrayal of these characters is at variance with known facts. (We call it dramatic licence.)

The fictitious Sherlock Holmes and James Bond became so popular that when the authors' original corpus had been exhausted, new scenarios were created involving these characters (imitation being the sincerest form of flattery). Much the same happened with Andrew in the early Church. A combination of dramatisation, fictionalisation and imitation resulted in Gospels being created that featured biblical characters and incidents.

This 'apocryphal' literature often had another, hidden, agenda. It was designed to promote a particular school of theology. The period AD 150-350 was particularly rife with disputes, splits and rivalries between various groups and centres in the early Church. After Rome crushed the Jewish revolt in AD 70 and rased Jerusalem, the focus of activity in the early Church switched to cities such as Alexandria, Antioch and Rome, which developed their own 'spin' on the Gospel. As well as this geographical divergence, there was a theological diversity. This gave rise to a healthy debate - and some theologies that were judged to be distinctly unhealthy, akin to falling victim to a nasty disease. The main heresies held that salvation was a question of knowing certain hidden truths (Gnosticism); that the world was a battleground between good and evil (Manicheanism); that since God could be put to death, Jesus must only have seemed to be a man (Docetism); and that he was wholly human (Arianism).

The apocryphal literature featuring Andrew, as we shall see in chapter 3, is coloured by these factors. Alas, as literature it is not very good. One of the least credible tales is the Pistis Sophia, which dates from the second half of the third century. Originally written in Greek, it survives only in Coptic but adopts a style common to the Byzantine world in which the hero (here the post-Resurrection Jesus) is asked questions:

Andrew stepped up and spoke, 'My Lord, concerning the solution of the sixth repentance of the Pistis Sophia, thy enlightening power first prophesied through David in the 129th Psalm wherein the Power said' [he then quotes verses 3-8].

Jesus answers, 'Well, Andrew, you blessed one, this is the solution of the repentance. Amen, amen I say to you, I will perfect you in all mysteries of light, and in all gnosis from the Inner of the Inner to the Outer of the Outer.'

It doesn't take much forensic skill to see this for what it was -pure Gnosticism - and that it is somewhat out of tune with the Jesus we meet in the conventional Gospels.

Gradually, an accepted canon was established as central and the more outlandish literature (in style or theology) was marginalised. This is what happened to the Acts of Andrew, the Acts of Andrew and Matthias and the Acts of Peter and Andrew. All three developed differently in their various versions in Syriac, Coptic, Greek and Latin, circulating in different geographical areas. For instance, the Coptic version of a story that is generally agreed to have taken place in the Black Sea area has Andrew encountering a couple of sphinxes - clearly playing to the local audience!

All three of these books of Acts were subject to editing and reissue in later centuries (as happened when Gregory of Tours revised the Andrew legends in the early medieval period). Since the Reformation they have languished, available only in scholarly translations which tend to underline the awkward and incredible storylines.

The Acts of Andrew and Matthias had never been translated from the original Greek until 1958, when Peter Peterson included it in his study of the growth of the Andrew legends. Rather than omit these important sources of 'Andreana' from this book, but conscious that they are less than thrilling to read in their original form, I have opted to summarise and paraphrase, thus making available, for the first time in popular form, the full Andrew legends. I hope readers will forgive a sense of fun intruding from time to time and not take this for impiety.

Another facet of this book is my intention to cover the subject from a historical perspective of two thousand years. This may seem odd, since it is a biography, a life of a man who died at the very latest around AD 70. My reason is that there is not one Andrew but several, who emerge at various stages of history; the apostle seems to have enjoyed a wonderful capacity for being reinvented.

The scholarly consensus seems to be that there are cycles in the development of the Andrew legends. The fact that no tradition exists about him in the early Church puts some distance between the Galilean fisherman (chapter 2) and the later character of the various Acts, all of which had made an appearance by AD 500 (chapter 3). The Western cult of Andrew was given a boost by the influence of two Gregorys, one being the aforementioned Bishop of Tours (died AD 594), who edited his own version of two of the legends, the other being Pope Gregory the Great (died AD 604), who gave Andrew a prominent place in Rome and Catholicism (chapter 6). Yet another stage in the cycle occurred in the ninth century, when attempts were made by Greek Orthodox churchmen to set up Andrew as a kind of anti-Peter to boost the status of Constantinople (chapter 4).

I have been able (by virtue of translations made for me by my Russian wife) to include a chapter on the role of Andrew as patron saint of Russia (chapter 5). The complicated tale of how Andrew acquired the status of patron saint in Scotland is contained in chapter 8. I finish with reflections on Andrew and the contemporary Scottish psyche (chapter 9).

The fact that there is renewed interest in St Andrew in Scotland is, I hope, a positive development. It is said that St Andrew's Day dinners may soon be more popular among Scots expatriates than that other annual saturnalia of haggis and hagiolatry, the Burns Supper. Those who are worried that not enough is known about the Andrew in whose honour the celebration takes place need have no fear. For two hundred years this handicap has scarcely worried the Burnsians, who have been able to enjoy the Bard in contradictory roles as both proletarian and poseur, lecher and moralist!

In researching the book I came across a reference taken from the Scottish American Journal of 1884 of 'Scotch dishes for St Andrew's Day'. The recipe for 'Hotch-potch' is accompanied by a jokey little poem which describes that there are 'carrots intill't, beef intill't, and turnip intill't' (and so it goes on). I know a corny (but true) story based on the poem. A person unfamiliar with the Scots tongue innocently asked, 'Yes, but what's intill't?' (Scots for 'into it'). The cook to whom she addressed the question replied by repeating the poem, after which the same question inevitably came, followed by the repetition of the poem, ad nauseam. I hope that this book will not prove too much of a hotch-potch based on bones, or repetitious, and that at the end of it the reader will agree that the story of Andrew has more intill't than a pious legend.

Back

TOC

Next