Red-Letter Day
Apostle & Martyr
November 30
also known as Andrew, St. Andrew, The First-Called
Andrew was a Galilean fisherman and one of the twelve apostles, the brother of Simon Peter and, in John's Gospel, the first of the disciples to follow Jesus and the first to bring another person to him. The church has honoured him ever since as the Protokletos, the First-Called. Tradition sent him north and east as a missionary, into Scythia by the Black Sea and on into Greece, and remembers him crucified at Patras in Achaia. He is the patron of Scotland, Greece, and Russia, and his feast is November 30.
Andrew was a fisherman of Bethsaida, a town on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee, and the brother of Simon, whom the church would come to know as Peter. Before he ever met Jesus he had gone out into the wilderness to hear John the Baptist, and he was standing near the Baptist one day when Jesus walked past. John looked at Jesus and said, "Behold, the Lamb of God!" Andrew heard it, and he left the teacher he had been following and went after the one the teacher had named. He walked with Jesus that afternoon and stayed with him, and by the end of the day his mind was made up.
Then Andrew did the thing that would mark his whole life. He went to find his brother. He came to Simon and told him, "We have found the Messiah," and he brought him to Jesus. It is a small sentence and an enormous one. Andrew was the first of the disciples to bring another person to Christ, and the apostle who would one day be the rock of the church was led to Jesus by his brother. If the church remembers Andrew for anything, it is for this: he was a man who could not keep good news to himself.
Some while later Jesus came walking by the Sea of Galilee where Andrew and Simon were casting their net into the water, for they were fishermen, and he called them to leave everything and come with him. "Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men," he said, and they left the nets where they lay and went. From then on Andrew was one of the Twelve, and the Gospels show him twice more doing exactly what he had done at the first, standing between somebody and Jesus and closing the distance. When a great crowd had followed Jesus into a lonely place and there was nothing to feed them, it was Andrew who noticed one boy in the multitude. "There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish, but what are they for so many?" he said. He did not know what Jesus would do with so little; he only brought what there was, and watched it feed five thousand. And when some Greeks came up to Jerusalem for the feast and wanted to see Jesus, foreigners from outside Israel hoping to come near, they went first to Philip, and Philip went to Andrew, and Andrew and Philip together carried them in to the Lord.
After Pentecost the Gospels fall silent about Andrew, and the church took up the story where Scripture set it down. It remembered that he went out to the hard countries of the north and east, into Scythia among the peoples of the Black Sea, and through Asia Minor and on into Greece, preaching the Messiah he had found to people who had never heard the name. The years of that long labour are mostly lost. Its end the church held fast. Andrew came at last to Patras, a city of Achaia in Roman Greece, and there the governor Aegeates, who could not make him stop preaching, condemned him to the cross.
The church long told that they bound Andrew to the cross rather than nailing him, so that his dying would be slow, and that he hung there alive for two days and never once stopped preaching, teaching the crowd that gathered beneath him until his breath at last failed. And it told that the cross was not upright but shaped like an X, and that Andrew had asked for it so, counting himself unworthy to die in the very form his Lord had died. He had spent his whole life bringing others to Christ, and at the end he was brought where Christ had gone before him.
They could still his voice, but not his harvest. Andrew had learned from his Lord that "unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit," and the churches that rose after him, from Patras to Scythia and on to far coasts he never saw, are the fruit of that falling. The first man to say "We have found the Messiah" is bringing his brothers in still.
How we know Andrew is a tale of two archives, the canonical and the traditional, and they are very differently lit. For his life with Jesus we have the four Gospels and the opening of Acts, where he stands in every list of the Twelve (Matthew 10, Mark 3, Luke 6, Acts 1) and, in John's Gospel, appears three times as the disciple who brings someone to Jesus: his brother Simon, the boy with the loaves, the Greeks at the feast. After the day of Pentecost, where Acts names him among the apostles gathered in the upper room, the New Testament says nothing further of him.
Everything else belongs to tradition, and the earliest thread of it is thin but old. Writing around 325, Eusebius of Caesarea reports in his Church History what the third-century scholar Origen had recorded about where the apostles had gone. In Arthur Cushman McGiffert's translation in the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Eusebius writes that "Parthia ... was allotted to Thomas as his field of labor, Scythia to Andrew, and Asia to John." Scythia, the lands north of the Black Sea, is the seed of Andrew's whole northern legend, and the reason he is honoured today from Greece to Ukraine to Russia.
The fuller story, the missions and the martyrdom, comes from the apocryphal Acts of Andrew, a work of the mid-second century known to Eusebius and later abridged by Gregory of Tours. It carries Andrew through Asia Minor and Greece to Patras in Achaia, where the proconsul Aegeates has him crucified for refusing to abandon Christ. That Andrew died a martyr at Patras is early and consistent tradition. The detail by which the West now knows him best, the X-shaped cross, is later. The earliest Acts describe an ordinary cross to which Andrew was bound rather than nailed; the crux decussata, the diagonal saltire that became the "Saint Andrew's Cross," is an attribution the Catholic Encyclopedia dates no earlier than the fourteenth century. The church told the saltire as Andrew's own cross, and told it so widely that it climbed into the heraldry of nations: the white saltire on a blue field is the flag of Scotland, and Andrew is patron of Scotland, Greece, and Russia alike. Beneath that late and beloved emblem stands the older and firmer memory of an apostle killed for his preaching on a cross at Patras. The later centuries gave the cross its unmistakable shape, and the shape in turn gave nations a banner; both the martyrdom and the emblem are part of Andrew's history, the one as an event long remembered, the other as a devotion the church made and carried.
Two later relic-traditions bore Andrew's memory west and north. Around 357 his relics were translated from Patras to the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople, and the Byzantine church came to honour him as the founder of the see of the imperial city, the apostle who, tradition held, had ordained a certain Stachys its first bishop. From this descends the standing of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, which keeps Andrew as its patron and calls its archbishop by Andrew's own title, the First-Called. That founding tradition is not attested in the earliest centuries and reached its full form only in the early middle ages, yet it shaped the self-understanding of the Eastern church for a thousand years and shapes it still. In the West, a parallel story held that a monk named Rule, or Regulus, carried some of Andrew's bones by sea and was shipwrecked on the coast of Fife, at the place that took the apostle's name, St Andrews in Scotland; and that the Pictish king Óengus, granted a vision of Andrew's saltire in the sky before a battle at Athelstaneford, took the apostle for his patron and the saltire for his standard. How far these stories reach back into fact is beyond recovering. They are the reason a fisherman of Galilee became the patron of a northern kingdom he never saw, and that reception is itself a documented part of his history.
Andrew is kept on November 30 by the Western and Eastern churches alike, and St Andrew's Day is the national day of Scotland. He is patron of Scotland, Greece, and Russia, and is claimed with affection by Ukraine and Romania as well, lands that trace their Christianity to the northern mission the church assigned him; he is a patron of fishermen, for the obvious reason, and the patron of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, whose archbishop bears Andrew's title of the First-Called. His emblem is the saltire, the diagonal white cross on blue that flies as the flag of Scotland and marks his day. In art he is usually an old man with a broad beard, leaning on or bound to the X-shaped cross, and often with a fish or a net nearby for the trade he left. His relics have travelled far: from Patras to Constantinople in the fourth century, and after the sack of Constantinople in 1204 to the cathedral of Amalfi in southern Italy, where much of them remains; his head, long kept in Rome, was returned to Patras by Pope Paul VI in 1964 as a gesture of friendship to the Orthodox church that keeps the apostle's name. The town of St Andrews in Scotland grew up around the shrine that once held what the Scots believed were his bones, and lent its name in time to a university and the most famous links in golf; but the older thing the name remembers is a fisherman of Galilee who was the first to find the Messiah and the first to bring somebody else to him.
The Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles (the Andrew passages)(Greek, 1st century)
The whole reliable record of Andrew: John 1:35-42 (the first call and the bringing of Simon), Matthew 4:18-20 and Mark 1:16-18 (the call at the nets), John 6:8-9 (the boy with the loaves), John 12:20-22 (the Greeks brought to Jesus), and the four apostolic lists.
Other translations: ESV, Bible Gateway
Public domain: King James Version, Wikisource
Acts and Martyrdom of the Holy Apostle Andrew (from the apocryphal Acts of Andrew)(Greek, mid-2nd century)
The earliest narrative of Andrew's missions and his crucifixion at Patras under the proconsul Aegeates; the source of the "bound, not nailed" and preaching-from-the-cross traditions. A second-century devotional romance, read as such.
Public domain: Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. VIII, Wikisource
The Gospel According to John (Pillar New Testament Commentary)(English, 1991)
The believing-tradition commentary to hand a reader who wants to go deeper on the Andrew scenes (John 1, 6, 12), careful with the text and prayerful with it.
Public domain: Eerdmans / Apollos (publisher)
Primary sources. The four Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles are the whole of the reliable record. John 1, 6, and 12 give the three scenes in which Andrew brings someone to Jesus; Matthew 4 and Mark 1 give the call at the nets; the four apostolic lists (Matthew 10, Mark 3, Luke 6, Acts 1) place him among the Twelve. Free in the ESV at Bible Gateway and in the public-domain King James at Wikisource.
Principal hagiography. The apocryphal Acts of Andrew, a work of the mid-second century, is the source of the missions and the martyrdom at Patras. It survives only in fragments and later abridgements, most fully in M. R. James's The Apocryphal New Testament (Oxford, 1924); the related Acts and Martyrdom of the Holy Apostle Andrew is in the Ante-Nicene Fathers, translated by Alexander Walker, free at Wikisource. Read for what it is, a devotional romance of the second century, it preserves the oldest form of Andrew's death.
Recommended modern biography. D. A. Carson's The Gospel According to John (Pillar New Testament Commentary, Eerdmans, 1991) is the believing-tradition commentary to put in a reader's hand for the Andrew scenes, careful with the text and prayerful with it, and still in print; it treats John 1, 6, and 12, where Andrew chiefly lives, at the depth a thoughtful reader can follow.
Further reading. Peter M. Peterson's Andrew, Brother of Simon Peter: His History and His Legends (Brill, 1958) remains the one scholarly monograph devoted to the apostle and his traditions, out of print but borrowable at the Internet Archive; the Catholic Encyclopedia article on St Andrew (1907) at New Advent gives a compact survey of the relics and the medieval cult.
Online resources. The Andrew passages in the ESV are at Bible Gateway; Eusebius's Church History, with the Scythia notice in McGiffert's translation, is at New Advent and CCEL; the Ante-Nicene Fathers Acts and Martyrdom of the Holy Apostle Andrew is at Wikisource.
Andrew.
Andrew is expounded, and is as much as to say as fair, or answering unto strength, and it is said of andor, that is as much to say as strength; or Andrew is said thus, as antipos of ana, which is to say high, and of tropos which is conversion, so that Andrew is to say, a man highly converted, and in heaven addressed unto his maker. He was fair in his life, answering in wisdom and in doctrine, strong in pain and converted high in glory. The priests and deacons of Achaia wrote his passion like as they had seen it with their eyes.
Andrew and some other disciples were called three times of our Lord. He called them first in the knowledging of him, as when S. Andrew was with John the Baptist, his master, and another disciple; he heard that John said: Lo! here the Lamb of God; and then he went anon with another disciple, and came to Jesu Christ and abode with him all that day. And then S. Andrew found Simon, his brother, and brought him to Jesu Christ, and the next day following they went to their craft of fishing. And after this he called them the second time by the stagne of Gennesereth, which is named the sea of Galilee. He entered into the ship of Simon and of Andrew, and there was taken great multitude of fish, and he called James and John, which were in another ship, and they followed him, and after went into their proper places.
After this he called them from their fishing, and said: Come, follow me, I shall make you fishers of men. Then they left their ships and nets, and followed him, and after this they abode with him, and went no more to their own houses. And howbeit he called Andrew and some other to be apostles, of which calling, Matthew says in the third chapter: He called to him them that he would. And after the ascension of our Lord, the apostles were departed, and Andrew preached in Scythia and Matthew in Murgondy. And the men of this country refused utterly the preaching of S. Matthew, and drew out his eyes, and cast him in prison fast bounden. In the meanwhile an angel, sent from our Lord, and commanded him to go to S. Matthew into Murgondy, and he answered that he knew not the way. And then the angel commanded him that he should go unto the seaside, and that be should enter into the first ship that he should find, and so he did gladly, in accomplishing the commandment, and went into the city by the leading of the angel, and had wind propitious. And when he was come he found the prison open, where S. Matthew was in; and when he saw him he wept sore and worshipped him; and then our Lord rendered and gave again to S. Matthew his two eyes and his sight. And then S. Matthew departed from thence and came into Antioch, and S. Andrew abode in Murgondy, and they of the country were wroth that S. Matthew was so escaped. Then took they S. Andrew and drew him through the places, his hands bounden in such wise that the blood ran out. He prayed for them to Jesu Christ, and converted them by his prayer; and from thence he came to Antioch. This that is said of the blinding of S. Matthew, I suppose that it is not true, nor that the evangelist was not so infirm, but that he might get for his sight that S. Andrew gat for him so lightly.
It was so that a young man came and followed S. Andrew, against the will of all his parents; and on a time his parents set fire on the house where he was with the apostle, and when the flame surmounted right high, the child took a brush full of water and sprinkled withal the fire, and anon the fire quenched. And then his friends and parents said: Our son is made an enchanter. And as they would have gone up by the ladders, they were suddenly made blind, that they saw not the ladders, and then one of them recried and said: Wherefore enforce you you against them? God fights for them and you see it not. Cease you and leave off, lest the ire of our Lord fall on you. Then many of them that saw this believed in our Lord, and the parents died within forty days after, and were put in one sepulchre.
There was a woman with child, joined in wedlock with a homicide who was troubled greatly upon her deliverance; and at the time of childing she might not be delivered. She bade her sister to go to Diana and pray to her that she help me. She went and prayed, and Diana said to her, which was the devil in an idol: Wherefore prayest thou to me? I may not help ne profit you, but go unto Andrew the apostle which may help you and your sister. And she went to him, and brought him to her sister, which travailed in great pain, and began to perish. And the apostle said to her: By good right you suffer this pain; you conceivedst in treachery and sin, and you counselledst with the devil. Repent you, and believe in Jesu Christ, and you shall be anon delivered of your child. And when she believed and was repentant, she was delivered of her child, and the pain and sorrow passed and ceased.
An old man called Nicholas by name, went unto the apostle and said to him: Sir, I have lived fifty years, and always in lechery. And I took on a time a gospel, in praying God that he would give me from then forthon continence. But I am accustomed in this sin, and full of evil delectation, in such wise that I shall return to this sin accustomed. On a time that I was inflamed by luxury, I went to the bordel, and forgat the gospel upon me, and anon the foul woman said: Go hence you old man, for you are an angel of God, touch me not, nor come not near me, for I see marvel upon you. And I was abashed of the word of the woman, and I remembered that I had the gospel upon me, wherefore I beseech you to pray God for me and for my health. And when S. Andrew heard this he began to weep, and prayed from tierce unto nones. And when he arose he would not eat, and said: I shall eat no meat till I know whether our Lord shall have pity of this old man. And when he had fasted five days, a voice came to S. Andrew and said to him: Andrew, your request is granted for the old man, for like as you have fasted and made yourself lean, so shall he fast and make himself lean by fastings for to be saved. And so he did, for he fasted six months to bread and water. and after that he rested in peace and good works. Then came a voice that said: I have gotten Nicholas by your prayers whom I had lost.
A young christian man said to S. Andrew: My mother saw that I was fair, and required me for to have to do sin with her; and when I would not consent to her in no manner, she went to the judge, and would return and lay to me the sin of so great a felony. Pray for me that I die not so untruly; for when I shall be accused I shall hold my peace and speak not one word, and have liefer to die than to defame and slander my mother so foully. Thus came he to judgment, and his mother accused him, saying that he would have defouled her. And it was asked of him oft if it was so as she said, and he answered nothing. Then said S. Andrew to her: You are most cruel of all women, which for the accomplishment of your lechery will make your son to die. Then said this woman to the provost: Sir, sith that my son came, and accompanied with this man, he would have done his will with me, but I withstood him that he might not. And anon the provost and judge commanded that the son should be put in a sack anointed with glue, and thrown into the river, and S. Andrew to be put in prison till he had advised him how he might torment him. But S. Andrew made his prayer to God, and anon came an horrible thunder, which feared them all, and made the earth to tremble strongly and the woman was smitten with the thunder unto the death. And the other prayed the apostle that they might not perish, and he prayed for them, and the tempest ceased. Thus then the provost believed in God, and all his meiny.
After this, as the apostle was in the city of Nice, the citizens said to him that there were seven devils without the city, by the highway, which slew all them that passed forthby. And the apostle Andrew commanded them to come to him, which came in the likeness of dogs, and sith he commanded them that they should go whereas they should not grieve ne do harm to any man; and anon they vanished away. And when the people saw this they received the faith of Jesu Christ. And when the apostle came to the gate of another city there was brought out a young man dead. The apostle demanded what was befallen him, and it was told him that seven dogs came and strangled him. Then the apostle wept and said: O Lord God, I know well that these were the devils that I put out of Nice; and after said to the father of him that was dead: What will you give to me if I raise him? And he said: I have nothing so dear as him, I shall give him to you. And anon the apostle made his prayers unto almighty God, and raised him from death to life, and he went and followed him.
On a time there were forty men by number, which were coming by the sea, sailing unto the apostle, for to receive of him the doctrine of the faith. And the devil raised and moved a great storm and so horrible a torment that all they were drowned together. And when their bodies were brought tofore the apostle, he raised them from death to life anon, and there they said all that was befallen to them. And therefore it is read in an hymn that he rendered the life to young men drowned in the sea. And the blessed S. Andrew, whilst he was in Achaia, he replenished all the country with churches and converted the people to the faith of Jesu Christ and informed the wife of AEgeas, which was provost and judge of the town, in the faith, and baptized her. And when AEgeas heard this he came into the city of Patras and constrained the christians to sacrifice. And S. Andrew came unto him, and said: It behoves you which have deserved to be a judge, to know your judge which is in heaven, and he so known, to worship him, and so worshipping, withdraw your courage from the false gods. And AEgeas said: You are Andrew that preach a false law, which the princes of Rome have commanded to be destroyed. To whom Andrew said: The princes of Rome knew never how the son of God came and taught and informed them that the idols be devils, and he that teaches such things angers God, and he, so angered, departs from them that he hears them not, and therefore be they caitiffs of the devil and be so illused and deceived that they issue out of the body all naked, and bear nothing with them but sins.
And AEgeas said to him: These be the vanities that your Jesus preached, which was nailed on the gallows of the cross. To whom Andrew said: He received with his agreement the gibbet of the cross, not for his culp and trespass, but for our redemption. And AEgeas said: When he was delivered of his disciple, taken and holden with the Jews, and crucified by the knyghts, how sayst you that it was by his agreement? Then S. Andrew began to show by five reasons that Jesu Christ received death by his own agreement and will, forasmuch as he came tofore his passion, and said to his disciples that it should be, when he said: We shall go up to Jerusalem, and the son of the maid shall be betrayed. And also for that Peter would withdraw him, he reproved him, and said: Go after me, Sathanas. And also for that he showed that he had power to suffer death, and to rise again when he said: I have power to put away my soul and to take it again. And also for that he knew tofore him that betrayed him, when he gave him his supper, and showed him not. And also for that he chose the place where he should be taken, for he knew well that the traitor should come. And S. Andrew said that he had been at all these things, and yet he said more, that the mystery of the cross was great. To whom AEgeas said: It may not be said mystery, but torment, and if you will not grant to my sayings, truly I shall make you prove this mystery. And Andrew said to him: If I doubted the gibbet of the cross I would not preach the glory thereof. I will that you hear the mystery, and if you knew and believedst on it you should be saved. Then he showed to him the mystery of the cross, and assigned five reasons. The first is this: Forasmuch as the first man that deserved death was because of the tree, in breaking the commandment of God, then is it thing convenable that the second man should put away that death, in suffering the same on the tree. The second was that, he that was made of earth not corrupted, and was breaker of the commandment, then was it thing convenable that he that should repel this default, should be born of a virgin. The third; for so much as Adam had stretched his hand disordinately to the fruit forbidden, it was thing convenable that the new Adam should stretch his hands on the cross. The fourth; for so much as Adam had tasted sweetly the fruit forbidden, it is therefore reason that it be put away by thing contrary; so that Jesu Christ was fed with bitter gall. The fifth; for as much as Jesu Christ gave to us his immortality, it is thing reasonable, that he take our mortality. For if Jesu Christ had not been dead, man had never been made immortal. And then said AEgeas: Tell to your disciples such vanities, and obey you to me, and make sacrifice unto the Gods almighty. And then said S. Andrew: I offer every day unto God Almighty, a lamb without spot, and after that he is received of all the people, so lives he and is all whole. Then demanded AEgeas how that might be. And Andrew said: Take the form for to be a disciple, and you shall know it well. I shall demand you, said AEgeas, by torments. Then he being all angry, commanded that he should be enclosed in prison, and on the morn he came to judgment, and the blessed S. Andrew unto the sacrifice of the idols. And AEgeas commanded to be said to him: If you obey not to me, I shall do hang you on the cross, for so much as you have praised it. And thus as he menaced him of many torments S. Andrew said to him: Think what torment that is most grievous that you may do to me, and the more I suffer, the more I shall be agreeable to my king, because I shall be most firm in the torments and pain. Then commanded AEgeas that he should be beaten of twenty-one men, and that he should be so beaten, bounden by the feet and hands unto the cross, to the end that his pain should endure the longer. And when he was led unto the cross, there ran much people thit And when he saw the cross from far he saluted it, and said: All hail cross which are dedicate in the body of Jesu Christ, and were adorned with the members of him, as of precious stones. Tofore that our Lord ascended on you, you were the power earthly, now you are the love of heaven; you shall receive me by my desire. I come to you surely and gladly so that you receive me gladly as disciple of him that hung on you. For I have alway worshipped you and have desired you to embrace. O you cross which have received beauty and noblesse of the members of our Lord, whom I have so long desired and curiously loved, and whom my courage has so much desired and coveted, take me from hence, and yield me to my master, to the end that he may receive me by you. And in thus saying, he despoiled and unclad him, and gave his clothes unto the butchers. And then they hung him on the cross, like as to them was commanded. And there he lived two days, and preached to twenty thousand men that were there. Then all the company swore the death of AEgeas, and said: The holy man and debonair ought not to suffer this. Then came thither AEgeas for to take him down off the cross. And when Andrew saw him he said: Wherefore are you come to me, AEgeas? If it be for penance you shall have it, and if it be for to take me down, know you for certain you shall not take me hereof alive; for I see now my lord and king that abides for me. Therewith they would have unbound him, and they might in nowise touch him for their arms were bynomen and of no power. And when the holy S. Andrew saw that the world would have taken him down off the cross he made this orison hanging on the cross, as S. Austin says in the book of penance: Sire, suffer me not to descend from this cross alive, for it is time that you command my body to the earth, for I have born long the charge, and have so much watched upon that which was commanded to me, and have so long travailed, that I would now be delivered of this obedience, and be taken away from this agreeable charge. I remember that it is much grievous, in proud bearing, in doubting, unsteadfast in nourishing, and have gladly laboured in the refraining of them. Sire, you know how oft the world has entended to withdraw me from the purity of contemplation, how oft he has entended to awake me from the sleep of my sweet rest, how much and how oft times he has made me to sorrow, and as much as I have had might I have resisted it right debonairly in fighting against it, and have by your work and aid surmounted it: and I require of you just and debonair guerdon and reward, and that you command that I go not again thereto, but I yield to you that which you have delivered me. Command it to another and empesh me no more, but keep me in the resurrection, so that I may receive the merit of my labour. Command my body unto the earth, so that it behoves no more to wake, but let it be stretched freely to you, which are fountain of joy never failing. And when he had said this, there came from heaven a right great shining light, which environed him by the space of half an hour, in such wise that no man might see him. And when this light departed he yielded and rendered therewith his spirit. And Maximilla, the wife of AEgeas, took away the body of the apostle, and buried it honourably. And ere that AEgeas was come again to his house, he was ravished with a devil by the way, and died tofore them all. And it is said that out of the sepulchre of S. Andrew comes manna like unto meal, and oil which has a right sweet savour and odour. And by that is shewed to the people of the country when there shall be plenty of goods. For when ther comes but little of manna, the earth shall bring forth but little fruit, and when it comes abundantly, the earth brings forth fruit plenteously. And this might well happen of old time, for the body of him was transported into Constantinople.
There was a bishop that led an holy and religious life, and loved S. Andrew by great devotion, and worshipped him above all other saints, so that in all his works he remembered him every day, and said certain prayers in the honour of God and S. Andrew, in such wise that the enemy had envy on him, and set him for to deceive him with all his malice, and transformed him into the form of a right fair woman, and came to the palace of the bishop, and said that she would be confessed to him. And the bishop bade her to go confess her to his penitencer, which had plain power of him. And she sent him word again that she would not reveal nor show the secrets of her confession to none but to him, and so the bishop commanded her to come; and she said to him: Sir, I pray you that you have mercy on me; I am so as you see in the years of my youth, and a maid, and was deliciously nourished from my infancy, and born of royal lineage, but I am come alone, in a strange habit; for my father which is a right mighty king would give me to a prince by marriage; whereto I answer that I have horror of all beds of marriage, and I have given my virginity to Jesu Christ for ever, and therefore I may not consent to carnal copulation. And in the end he constrained me so much that I must consent to his will or suffer divers torments; so that I am fled secretly away, and had liefer be in exile, than to break and corrupt my faith to my spouse. And because I hear the praising of your right holy life, I am fled unto you and to your guard, in hope that I may find with you place of rest, whereas I may be secret in contemplation, and eschew the evil perils of this present life, and flee the diverse tribulations of the world. Of which thing the bishop marvelled him greatly, as well for the great noblesse of her lineage, as for the beauty of her body, for the burning of the great love of God, and for the honest fair speaking of this woman. So that the bishop answered to her, with a meek and pleasant voice: Daughter, be sure and doubt nothing; for he for whose love you have despised yourself and these things, shall give to you the great thing. In this time present is little glory or joy, but it shall be in time to come. And I which am sergeant of the same, offer me to you, and my goods; and choose you an house where it shall please you, and I will that you dine with me this day. And she answered and said: Father, require of me no such thing, for by adventure some evil suspicion might come thereof. And also the resplendour of your good renomee might be thereby impaired. To whom the bishop answered: We shall be many together, and I shall not be with you alone, and therefore there may be no suspicion of evil. Then they came to the table, and were set, that one against that other, and the other folk here and there, and the bishop entends much to her, and beheld her alway in the visage, and he marvelled of her great beauty. And thus as he fixed his eyes on her his courage was hurt, and the ancient enemy, when he saw the heart of him, hurt [him] with a grievous dart. And this devil apperceived it and began to increase her beauty more and more; insomuch that the bishop was then ready for to require her to sin when he might.
Then a pilgrim came and began to smite strongly at the gate or door, and they would not open it. Then he cried and knocked more strongly; and the bishop asked of the woman if she would that the pilgrim should enter. And she said; Men should ask first of him a question, grievous enough, and if he could answer thereto, he should be received, and if he could not, he should abide without, and not come in, as he that were not worthy but unwitting. And all agreed to her sentence, and enquired which of them were sufficient to put the question. And when none was found sufficient, the bishop said: None of us is so sufficient as you, dame, for you pass us all in fair speaking, and shine in wisdom more than we all; propose you the question. Then she said: Demand you of him, which is the greatest marvel that ever God made in little space. And then one went and demanded the pilgrim. The pilgrim answered to the messenger that it was the diversity and excellence of the faces of men: for among all so many men as have been sith the beginning of the world unto the end, two men might not be found of whom their faces were like and semblable in all things. And when the answer was heard, all they marvelled and said that this was a very and right good answer of the question. Then the woman said: Let the second question be proposed to him, which shall be more grievous to answer to, for to prove the better the wisdom of him, which was this: Whether the earth is higher than all the heaven? And when it was demanded of him the pilgrim answered: In the heaven imperial where the body of Jesu Christ is, which is form of our flesh, he is more high than all the heaven. Of this answer they marvelled all when the messenger reported it, and praised marvellously his wisdom. Consequently she said the third question, which was more dark and grievous to assoil. For to prove the third time his wisdom, and that then he be worthy to be received at the bishop's table, demand and ask of him; How much space is from the abysm unto the same heaven. Then the messenger demanded of the pilgrim, and he answered him: Go to him that sent you to me and ask of him this thing, for he knows better than I, and can better answer to it, for he has measured this space when he fell from heaven into the abysm, and I never measured it. This is nothing a woman but it is a devil which has taken the form of a woman. And when the messenger heard this, he was sore afraid and told tofore them all this that he had heard. And when the bishop heard this and all other, they were sore afraid. And anon forthwith, the devil vanished away tofore their eyes.
And after, the bishop came again to himself, and reproved himself bitterly, weeping, repenting and requiring pardon of his sin, and sent a messenger for to fetch and bring in the pilgrim, but he found him never after. Then the bishop assembled the people, and told to them the manner of this thing, and prayed them that they would all be in orisons and prayers, in such wise that our lord would show to some person who this pilgrim was which had delivered him from so great peril. And then it was showed that night to the bishop that it was S. Andrew which had put him in the habit of a pilgrim for the deliverance of him. Then began the bishop more and more to have devotion and remembrance to S. Andrew than he had tofore.
The provost of a city had taken away a field from the church of S. Andrew, and by the prayer of the bishop he was fallen into a strong fever. And then he prayed the bishop that he would pray for him, and he would again yield the field. And when the bishop had prayed for him, and he had his health, he took the field again. Then the bishop put himself to prayer and orisons, and brake all the lamps of the church, and said: There shall none of them be lighted till that our Lord has venged him on his enemy, and that the church have recovered that which she has lost. And then the provost was strongly tormented with fevers, and sent to the bishop by messengers that he should pray for him, and he would yield again his field and another semblable. Then the bishop answered: I have heretofore prayed for him, and God heard and granted my prayer, and when he was whole, he took from me again the field. And then the provost made him to be borne to the bishop, and constrained him for to enter into the church for to pray. And the bishop entered into the church, and anon the provost died, and the field was re-established unto the church. Et sic est finis.
Almighty God, you gave such grace to your apostle Andrew that he readily obeyed the call of your Son Jesus Christ, and brought his brother with him: Give us, who are called by your holy Word, grace to follow him without delay, and to bring those near to us into his gracious presence; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Deuteronomy 30:11–14Psalm 19 or Psalm 19:1–6Romans 10:8b-18Matthew 4:18–22