Feast of St. Andrew

The apostle and brother of Simon Peter is traditionally remembered today. According to John’s gospel Andrew was a disciple of John the Baptist before leaving to follow Jesus. Tradition has him going to preach the gospel in Scythia (near the intersection of modern-day Mongolia, China, and Russia), Epirus (in the southwest Balkans), and Achaia (a narrow strip of territory in Greece), among other places.

It’s also reported that Andrew was martyred by being hung on the “x” shaped cross, which, of course came to be known as the St. Andrew’s cross that we see on the Scottish national flag (he’s the patron saint of Scotland) as well as the Confederate battle flag.

Here’s historian Peter Williams’ account of how Andrew came to be associated with Scotland:

There are two reasons why Andrew was adopted as the patron saint of Scotland. One is that, in AD 345, when the Emperor, Constantine the Great, decided to translate Andrew’s bones from Patras to Constantinople, St. Regulus (or St. Rule), a Greek monk, was instructed by an angel to take a large number of these relics to a place in the far northwest. He was told to stop at a site on the Fife coast of Scotland, where he founded the settlement of St. Andrew. The other explanation is that the seventh century Bishop of Hexham, St. Wilfrid (some sources give Acca as the bishop) brought back some of the saint’s relics from a trip to Rome and they landed in the hands of the Scots King, Angus MacFergus, who installed them at St. Andrew’s to enhance the prestige of the new bishopric.One legend concerning St. Andrew is that when the Pictish King Angus, faced with a large invading army, prayed for divine guidance, a saltire (the diagonal cross) appeared in the shape of a white cloud against the blue sky. Angus won a decisive victory and decreed that Andrew would be the patron saint of his country. It was not until after Robert Bruce’s victory at the Battle of Bannockburn (1314) however, that the Declaration of Arbroath named St. Andrew the patron saint of Scotland forever and the Saltire became the national flag in 1385.