St Andrews Cathedral

Today is the transferred feast of St Andrew, and an appropriate day in wich to post something about the remains of the cathedral at St Andrewes in Fife. It was the largest gothic church in Scotland, begun in the twelfth century, and completed and consecrated early in the fourteenth century. It was wrecked in the later sixteenth century.

St Andrews Cathedral from the north west

St Andrews Cathedral from the north-east with St Rule's Tower to the left

Images:topofly.blogspot.co.uk

St Andrews Cathedral and St Rule's Church

Reconstruction view from South east

Image: st-andrews.ac.uk/classics

The online vimeo reconstruction created by a team at St Andrews University can be accessed at St Andrews Cathedral 1318 | Open Virtual Worlds.

This has a history of the building from its commencement in 1160 and the various misfortunes that befell the fabric and the ensiuing restorations until the sack of the building by the mob in 1559 and its subsequent, and quite rapid, decay.

There is an online illustrated history of the building which can be seen here.

The cathedral from the north in the reconstruction

Image:standrewsrarebooks.wordpress.com

The cathedral and priory buildings from the south-east

The cloister of the Augustinian priory attached to the cathedral

Images:the-saint.online.com

The seal of the cathedral which depicts St Rule's, rather than the cathedral itself, perhaps suggests a taller spire on the church - more like those of Southwell in England. It can be seen in this photograph on adocument of 1512, although the seal matrix is much earlier

  Image;tripadvisor.com

J.Geddy's plan of St Andrews, from around 1580.
[National Library of Scotland reference: MS.20996]

The cathedral can be seen centre-right, with St Rule's tower to the east

Image:digital.nls.uk

In 2010 the argument for rebuilding the cathedral, as with the restoration and reconstructions of Paisley Abbey, St John's Perth and the nave of Dunblane Cathedral is set out here.

How likely that is I do not know. What is clear is that the loss of the cathedral is to be deplored, an expression of Calvinist fanaticism that brought no-one any good.

St Andrew in medieval stained glass

That fine photographer the Rev Gordon Plumb has posted a selection of images of St Andrew in English and French medieval stained glass on the Medieval Religion discussion group, which I thought I would share with readers:

Heydour, St Michael, Lincolnshire, sVII, C2

https://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/3452819272

Orchadleigh, St Mary, sII, 3b

https://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/2492789738

Long Melford, Holy Trinity,Suffolk, nXV, 5b

https://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/2226395649

Doddiscombsleigh, St Michael, Devon, nIV, 2c

https://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/3634778405

Greystoke, St Andrew, Cumbria, [A church I have featured before] East window - scenes from the life of St Andrew

https://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/sets/72157608792442170

Fledborough, St Gregory, Nottinghamshire, nIII, 1a, most unusual 14thC almost monochrome glass:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/3050252375

Sées Cathedral, Bay 6, central figure with bmodern head - later 13thC

https://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/4055886895

Stanford-on-Avon, St Nicholas, Northamptonshire, [A church I have featured before] sII, 2c 14thC

https://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/4102605793

Winchester Cathedral, Choir Clerestory, East window, 1d-2d

https://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/6395709693

Melbury Bubb, St Mary, Dorset, wI, D - fairly crude figures 15thC.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/3480770440

The Martyrdom of St Andrew

Courtesy of Matthew Heintzelman on the Medieval Religion discussion group:

Saint Andrew, preaching from his cross:

"Having said these words, he shed his garments and gave them to the executioners, who fixed him to the cross as they had been commanded. For two days Andrew hung there alive and preached to twenty thousand people. On the third day the crowd began to threaten the proconsul Aegeus with death, saying that a saintly, gentle man should not be made to suffer so; and Aegeus came to have the saint released. Seeing him, Andrew exclaimed: 'Why have you come here, Aegeus? If to seek forgiveness, you will be forgiven; but if to take me down from the cross, know that I will not come down alive, for already I see my king awaiting me." When the soldiers tried to free him, they could not even touch him: their arms fell powerless at their sides."

From Jacobus de Voragine "Golden Legend" (Princeton, 2012 reprint; pp. 17-18)

The Crucifixion of St Andrew from the Hours of Bona Sforza, 

Gerard or Lucas Horenbout, Ghent, circa 1517-1521, 130 x 95 mm, 

Add. MS 34294, f. 189

 
  Image: Copyright © The British Library Board

For the eventful life of Queen Bona, who was married to King Sigismund I of Poland see the online article at Bona Sforza.

St Andrew in art

Here is a selection from the images of St Andrew posted by John Dillon

St Andrew as depicted in an early eleventh-century illumination (ca. 1020) in a sacramentary now at Rouen
(Rouen, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 274, fol. 164v)

Image: enluminures.culture.fr

Here are two views of a twelfth-century statue, probably of the later 1140s or 1170s, from the destroyed tomb of St. Lazarus in the latter's collegiate church in Autun, now in that city's Musée Rolin. It is attributed to the monk Martin and belongs to the great sculptural tradition of twelfth centuy Autun:

St Andrew

Image: World Gallery of Art



Side view of the statue

Image: Sacred Destinations

Fifteenth century Rood screen at Gooderstone church in Norfolk
St Andrew stands between St Peter and St James the Great  and St John (partial view)
Each apostle carries his emblem, and has the verse attributed to him from the Apostles Creed above his head.
St Andrew's costume is similar in its style and colouring - green mantle and pink or purple gown - to other images of him from the period, and which became part of the design of the insignia of the Order of the Thistle.

Image: johnevigar on Flickr

Although in Britain he is traditionally associated with a saltire cross in his martyrdom this is not always the convention on the continent. Thus his martyrdom is shown as happening on a conventional cross as in this illumination in an earlier thirteenth-century psalter (ca. 1230-1240) from Hildesheim:

Image: BnF in Paris (ms. Nouvelle acquisition latine 3102, fol. 6v)

Saint Andrew
Possibly 1326 or ca. 1330
Simone Martini (Sienese, active by 1315, died 1344)
Tempera on wood, gold ground

Metropolitan Museum of Art New York

Image: Metropolitan Museum

St Andrew (at right) as depicted in a panel painting of 1395 by Taddeo di Bartolo, now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest.
Here again he carries an upright cross of martyrdom rather than the more usual saltire form.
Image: World Gallery of Art

St Andrew suffers martyrdom on a tree
Panel painting (ca. 1490) by Carlo Braccesco
 Galleria Franchetti, Ca' d'Oro, Venice

Image: World Gallery of Art

St Andrew holding his traditional saltire cross as portrayed in an earlier sixteenth-century pen-and-ink design for a stained glass window (ca. 1519-1521) by Hans Holbein the Younger,
Kunstmuseum Basel

Image: Wikipedia

Relics of St Andrew

In previous years to mark St Andrew's day I  posted St Andrew's Day, The Order of St Andrew the First Called  and The Order of the Thistle in 2010 and St Andrew - patron of Scotland  and Devotion to St Andrew in medieval England  in 2011.

This year I am adapting a post about his relics and depiction in art from John Dillon on the Medieval Religion discussion group for today. With regard to images I have concentrated on the western depictions of St Andrew, and will publish them in a seperate post.

According to Eusebius, St Andrew preached in Scythia, by which latter quite possibly is meant the Roman province of this name erected by Diocletian in today's south-eastern Romania and north-eastern Bulgaria (Ukrainians and Russians think otherwise, of course). Theodoret has Andrew preaching in Greece. From at least the fourth century onward it has been believed that he suffered martyrdom at Patras.

As will be seen there are several  skulls claimed to be his - probably more than even the explanation of skull fragments that have been scattered and venerated as if they were the whole relic.

In 357 relics venerated as Andrew's were brought from Patras to Constantinople's church of the Holy Apostles. Scots believe that in the eighth century St. Regulus (Rule) brought (some of ?) Andrew's relics from Constantinople to today's St Andrews in Fife. Two illustrated pages on the St Rule Tower and the ruins of St Andrews cathedral at St Andrews can be read here and here. 

In 1208 Andrew's remains were brought, following the Fourth Crusadw of 1204, from Constantinople to Amalfi, where they are now housed in the cathedral dedicated to him. Then, in the 1460s the Despot of Morea, Thomas Palaeologus,  brought with him into exile in Italy a head said to be that of St. Andrew. Pope Pius II  acquired it for the Roman church and, seizing upon this capital opportunity, use it as a propaganda device for his projected crusade against the Turks;  Cardinal Bessarion delivered a welcoming speech to this relic of Andrew in the apostle's partial presence in 1462. In 1964 Pope Paul VI  returned this relic, plus a finger bone from Andrew's relics in Amalfi, to the Greek Orthodox church in Patras as part of his search for reconciliation with the Orthodox.

The opening page of Pope Pius II's account of St Andrew's reception in Italy (with an illuminated initial showing Pope  Pius holding a bust or the reliquary of St Andrew) in a contemporary (1463-1464) collection of writings by this pontiff

(Paris, BnF, ms. Latin 5565 A, fol. 1r):

Image; Biblioteque National Paris

The skull reliquary at Patras

Image:str1.crestin-ortodox.ro

The upper part of a skull is among St Andrew's putative relics at Amalfi.  Some views of it taken when it was on display at Sant'Andrea della Valle in Rome in 2008 for the 800th anniversary of his translation to Amalfi can, hopefully, be seen in these expanded views  here, here, here and here.

St Andrew's right foot is said to be in the monastery of Agios Andreas on Kefalonia. Other relics believed to be his are in the skete of St. Andrew on Mount Athos, a Russian foundation honouring one of that country's patron saints. Here is a view of a reliquary belonging to that monastery and said to contain Andrew's skull:

Image: serko.net/50/athos/KaryesandStAndrewsSkete

The Vatopedi monastery on Mount Athos has what is described as a relic of Andrew's right hand:

Image: eikonografos.com

From at least 1250 until 1979, when it was transferred to the church at Patras, a cross believed to be that of St Andrew was preserved in the church of St. Victor at Marseilles. 

At Trier there is this reliquary of one of St Andrew's sandals:

St. Andrew's Portable Altar, made c.980 AD in Trier

Image: sacred-destinations.com

This reliquary enshrines a sole of St. Andrew the Apostle's sandal. This relic is one of those said to have been brought from the Holy Land to Trier by Empress Helena in the 4th century. The splendid reliquary was commissioned by Archbishop Egbert (977-93), who had a special devotion to Saint Andrew.

It is described as portable altar, but I am not clear how it could have served that purpose. It consists of an oak box covered in gold and ivory and topped with a gilded model of the saint's foot, complete with bejewelled sandal strap. It has a sliding lid so that the relics inside could be shown and touched. The long sides are fixed with smooth ivory plates affixed with gold lions and enamel medallions of the Four Evangelists. The plates are surrounded by bands of enamel platelets, gemstones, and pearls. One of the short ends has two Saint Andrew's crosses made of pearls; the other end has a gold coin with the portrait of Emperor Justinian I surrounded by pearls and red garnet. The reliquary was made to be portable, so that it could be carried by kings and bishops when they travelled and used for Mass when they were at home. There are rings on the lion-shaped feet and on the top, allowing the portable altar to be hung or carried in processions.

Devotion to St Andrew in medieval England

Although St Andrew is most frequently associated in the British consciousness with Scotland he was certainly honoured and invoked in medieval England.

Two ancient cathedrals, Rochester and Wells, are under his patronage, as is the one time cathedral and later priory church at Hexham, and he is also a co-patron with St Peter and St Paul of what is now Peterborough cathedral. There are parish churches dedicated to him in London and Norwich, and the remains of others in Worcester and York.

In York Minster there is this fine early fourteenth century depiction in glass of his death:

The martyrdom of St Andrew
From the de Mauley window in the nave of York Minster

Image:Gordon Plumb on Flickr

Outside towns he is a not an especially common patron, but I would draw attention to the fine former collegiate church of St Andrew at Greystoke in Cumberland. Being rather off the beaten track it is, I suspect, as well known as it deserves to be. I visited the church many years ago whilst on holiday in Carlisle with relatives whom I cajoled to take me there. There are illustrated articles about the church here, here and here. The misericords in the church are illustrated here. The VCH Cumberland account of the college can be read here.

The east window of the church has some fine fifteenth century glass recounting the life of At Andrew after the ebvents recorded in the New Testament. Thanks to the Rev.Gordon Plumb's post on today's Medieval Religion discussion group I can post a link to his fine set of images illustrating the glass and the story of Andrew, including his journey to Wronden to rescue Matthew. It can be viewed here.

The east window of Greystoke Church.
The glass in the tracery is nineteenth century but that in the main lights fifteenth century York work

Image: Gordon Plumb on Flickr

Closer to my own home the church of St Andrew at Slaidburn, in Craven, was the first benefice held by Bishop Richard Fleming in 1403-4, being presented to it by Pontefract priory as patron. Only the tower survives from Fleming's time, the rest of the church being rebuilt later in the fifteenth century. There is a picture of the church as it is today here.

Just outside Pontefract is the church of St Andrew Ferry Fryston - often referred to as Ferrybridge church. This was moved from its original site in the marshes near the river Aire in 1952-3 to a new, drier, location. There is an illustrated article about it here.

Between Doncaster and Barnsley is the church of St Andrew at Bolton on Dearne. This is a church with very important Anglo-Saxon remains, and there is an illustrated article about it here. It is a church of which, on my church crawls, I became very fond - partly because of its traditional West Riding Anglo-Catholicism and also becuase it is little appreciated for its archaeological importance. A glance at later editions of Sir Nikolaus Pevsner's The West Riding reveals how he dismisses the church in a few lines in his first edition, and then had to add a lengthy piece in the appendix revisions explaining how its importance had been pointed out to him by H.M.Taylor - even experts can miss what actually stares one in the face.

St Andrew - patron of Scotland

Today is the feast of St Andrew the Apostle, and has been observed as such since the fourth century. Thinking about this led me to reflect on his emergence as the patron saint of Scotland, and the attendent iconography.

I have edited, adapted and in places extended the following paragraphs from the Wikipedia article on St Andrew - the whole article, and his links with other countries can be read here.

Eusebius quotes Origen as saying that Andrew preached along the Black Sea as far as the Volga, Kiev and Novgorod. In consequence he was to become a patron saint of the Ukraine, Romania and Russia. According to tradition, he founded the see of Byzantium (Constantinople) in the year 38, installing Stachys as bishop. According to Hippolytus of Rome he preached in Thrace, and his presence in Byzantium is also mentioned in the apocryphal Acts of Andrew, written in the second century. This diocese was to develop into the Patriarchate of Constantinople and Andrew is recognized as its patron saint.

By long established tradition Andrew is said to have been martyred by crucifixion at the city of Patras in Achaea on the northern coast of the Peloponnese. Early texts, such as the Acts of Andrew known to Gregory of Tours describe Andrew as being bound, not nailed, to a Latin cross of the kind on which Jesus is said to have been crucified. However a tradition developed that Andrew had been crucified on a cross of the form called Crux decussata (X-shaped cross, or "saltire"), now commonly known as a "Saint Andrew's Cross" This is supposed to have been at his own request, as he deemed himself unworthy to be crucified on the same type of cross as Jesus had been (though of course, the privilege of choosing one's own method of execution is a rare privilege, indeed), and is similar to the story of St Peter being crucified upside down at his own request or insistance, and for the same reason. The familiar iconography of his martyrdom, showing the apostle bound to an X-shaped cross, does not seem to have been standardized before the later middle ages in the view of Judith Calvert in her article "The Iconography of the St Andrew Auckland Cross" in The Art Bulletin 66.4 ( December 1984, pp.543-555) p.545,n.12. She drew this as her conclusion after re-examining the materials studied by Louis Réau in his Iconographiede l'art chrétien III.1 (Paris 1958) p.79 and held that St Andrew's Cross appeared for the first time in the tenth century, but was not to become universal before the seventeenth century, and she was unable to find a sculptural representation of St Andrew on the saltire earlier than an early twelfth century architetural capital from Quercy. However I would comment that every eleventh century or later medieval depiction of St Andrew shows him with or on the saltire.

About the middle of the tenth century, St Andrew became the patron of Scotland.

Several legends state that the relics of Andrew were brought under supernatural guidance from Constantinople to the site which became St Andrews in Fife. Of the two oldest surviving manuscripts one is among those collected by Jean-Baptiste Colbert and bequeathed to King Louis XIV, and now in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, and the other is in the Harleian MSS in the British Library. They state that the relics of Andrew were brought by one Regulus to the Pictish king Óengus mac Fergusa (729–761). The only historical Regulus (Riagail or Rule) - the name is preserved by the tower of the church of St Rule which adjoins the remains of the medieval cathedral in St Andrews - was an Irish monk expelled from Ireland with Saint Columba; his dates, however, are c.573 – 600.

There are good reasons for supposing that the relics which came to St Andrews were originally in the collection of Acca, bishop of Hexham, who took them into Pictish country when he was driven from Hexham (c. 732), and founded a see, not, as according to tradition, in Galloway, but on the site of St Andrews. Given that the church at Hexham had been founded by St Wilfrid, with his strong links to Rome, and more importantly that the church there was dedicated to St Andrew, this looks a tempting interpretation. The connection made with Regulus is, therefore, due in all probability to the desire to date the foundation of the church at St Andrews to an early a date as possible.

According to legend, in 832, King Óengus II led an army of Picts and Scots into battle against the Angles, led by Æthelstan, near modern-day Athelstaneford in East Lothian. The legend states that whilst engaged in prayer on the eve of battle, Óengus vowed that if granted victory he would make Saint Andrew 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 terms of numbers were victorious. Having interpreted the cloud formation as representing the crux decussata upon which Saint Andrew was crucified, Óengus honoured his pre-battle pledge and duly designated Saint Andrew as the patron of Scotland. The white saltire set against a celestial blue background is said to have been adopted as the design of the Scottish flag on the basis of this legend. However, as outlined above, there is evidence that St Andrew was venerated in Scotland before this date.

It has also been suggested that St Andrew's connection with Scotland may have been reinforced following the Synod of Whitby, of 663 when the Celtic church felt that St Columba had been "outranked" by St Peter and that Peter's brother would make a higher ranking patron. In 1320 the Declaration of Arbroath cited Scotland's conversion to Christianity by Andrew, "the first to be an Apostle".

The National Archives of Scotland website has an interesting, illustrated, piece about the use of the image of St Andrew as national patron and emblem: it can be viewed here.

St Andrew also appeared on pilgrim badges from the cathedral priory at St Andrews, examples of which have been found in excavations in the city.

Image:electricscotland.com

There are some good pictures of the remains of what was once the largest cathedral in Scotland, and something of its history here and here. There is an introduction to the site, designed for school groups, with a reconstruction drawing from Historic Scotland here. Incidentally the cathedral priory, founded about in the early twelfth century, was colonised by canons from Nostell priory in Yorkshire, and which was close to my home town.

After the Scottish War of Independence St Andrew continued as a national symbol, as in the Trinity Altarpiece by Hugo van der Goes of circa 1478-79 depicting the saint standing behind the kneeling figures of King James III and his son and successor, James Duke of Rothesay, the future King James IV.

St Andrew with King James III and the future King James IV.
From the Trinity Panels by Hugo van der Goes
Royal Collection on loan to the National Gallery of Scotland

Photo from Englishmonarchs.orm

However a somewhat similar scene with King James IV from his Book of Hours, now in Vienna, and dating to about the time of his marriage to Queen Margaret in 1503, shows St James the Great as his sponsor or patron:

King James IV at prayer.
Queen Margaret is shown top right, and beneath are the arms of the King of Scots.

Image:leithhistory.co.uk

Unfortunately these two illustrations are not of the highest quality but they were the only ones available on the web - due I think to copyright reasons. However they do serve to illustrate the points under consideration.

Image:leithhistory.co.uk

It is to this period that one may well look for the origins of the Order of the Thistle, which I discussed in my post The Order of the Thistle last year. The inventory of King James III's goods made in 1488 includes a collar of the same design as that of the present Order, and in the miniature above the royal arms in the panel on the lower right are encircled by a collar as well as those on the altar frontal in front of the King. King James V is depicted wearing a similar collar in paintings and King Charles I wore one at his coronation at Holyrood in 1633.

St Andrew's Day

Fr Hunwicke has two posts relevant to today - well worth reading with their comments, both about the reconciliation of England to the Church in 1554, and of the diocese of Durham in 1569, and about the possible options for the Ordinariate liturgy. You can find them here and here.