Apostle Andrew

Andrew, called in Eastern Christianity the First-Called (Protokletos), was one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus and the brother of Simon Peter. The Gospel of John identifies Bethsaida in Galilee as the city of Andrew and Peter and presents Andrew as a fisherman who had first been a disciple of John the Baptist. When John pointed to Jesus as the Lamb of God, Andrew followed Jesus and then brought his brother Simon to him, an episode that underlies his title as the first-called apostle. The Synoptic Gospels include him in the lists of the Twelve and associate him with the fishing partnership on the Sea of Galilee; Mark notes that Jesus called Simon and Andrew together while they were casting a net. Beyond these notices the New Testament offers only a few further scenes: Andrew speaks at the feeding of the five thousand, drawing attention to the boy with five barley loaves and two fish, and he, with Philip, conveys to Jesus the request of certain Greeks who wished to see him. He is also named among those present at the Olivet discourse in Mark. After Pentecost the canonical Acts of the Apostles does not describe his subsequent career.

Later Christian writers supplied missionary itineraries that cannot be verified from contemporary sources. Eusebius of Caesarea, citing Origen, assigned to Andrew a field of preaching in Scythia, a designation that in antiquity covered lands north of the Black Sea. Other traditions, developed in the Greek East, associated him with Thrace, Bithynia, Cappadocia, and the cities of the Black Sea coast, and with the foundation of the church at Byzantium, a claim that later served the apostolic prestige of Constantinople. The apocryphal Acts of Andrew, composed probably in the second or third century and known today from fragments, epitomes, and Latin and Coptic adaptations, recounts extensive travels, miracles, and conflicts with pagan authorities, culminating in a martyrdom at Patras in Achaia. These narratives are hagiographical rather than documentary; they nonetheless determined the geography of Andrew’s cult.

Ecclesiastical tradition holds that Andrew was put to death by crucifixion at Patras, in the Roman province of Achaia in the Peloponnese. The familiar X-shaped cross, or saltire, associated with his martyrdom is a later iconographic development; earlier accounts speak of crucifixion without specifying that form. No first-century source records the year of his death, and proposed dates in the sixties of the first century remain conjectural. Relics believed to be his were said to have been translated from Patras to Constantinople in the fourth century, in the time of Constantius II or later. In 1208, after the Fourth Crusade, Cardinal Peter of Capua transferred a substantial portion of the remains to Amalfi, where they are still enshrined in the cathedral. A medieval Scottish tradition, important for national identity, held that relics of the apostle reached Fife in the eighth century and gave the town and see of St Andrews their name; the relics themselves disappeared during the Reformation. The skull, taken to Rome in 1460 by Thomas Palaiologos, was returned to Patras by Pope Paul VI in 1964. The Cathedral of Saint Andrew in Patras remains the principal shrine of the apostle in Greece.

Andrew’s cult is among the most widespread of any apostle. He is the patron saint of Scotland, whose flag bears the white saltire on blue; of Russia, where legend connected him with early preaching along the Dnieper and where the Order of Saint Andrew was the highest imperial decoration; and of Greece, Romania, Ukraine, and Barbados. Local patronage includes Patras and Amalfi, as well as numerous parishes and towns named for him. Because of his occupation in the Gospels he is invoked by fishermen, fishmongers, and sailors; other traditional patronages include rope-makers, singers, and those suffering from gout or sore throat. His principal feast is kept on 30 November in the Roman Martyrology and in the Byzantine calendar; some Eastern churches also commemorate the translation of his relics. He belongs to the earliest layer of Christian saints, recognized by the undivided Church without a later process of beatification or canonization.

The historical Andrew remains, apart from the New Testament notices, largely inaccessible. The expansion of his legend in late antiquity and the Middle Ages reflects the needs of churches that claimed apostolic foundation and of nations that adopted him as heavenly protector. What can be said with confidence is that a Galilean fisherman, brother of Peter and one of the Twelve, became in Christian memory the apostle of the Greek East and of several European nations, and that Patras has been, from late antiquity to the present, the focal point of his martyr cult.