St Andrew - Patron Saint of Scotland

St Andrew's Day November 30th

Andrew and his brother Peter were two of the original apostles of Jesus. He was a fisherman from Galilee, and went on to spread the Christian religion in Greece and Asia Minor.

According to tradition, St. Andrew was put to death by the Romans in Patras, Southern Greece by being crucified on a diagonal cross. The diagonal shape of this cross is said to be the basis for the Cross of St. Andrew which appears on the Scottish Flag.

St. Andrews bones were entombed in Greece. 300 years later the bones (relics) were moved by Emperor Constantine (the Great) to his new capital Constantinople (now Istanbul in Turkey).

Legend suggests that a Monk called St. Rule (or St. Regulus) was warned in a dream that St. Andrew's remains were to be moved and was directed by an angel to take those remains which he could to the "ends of the earth" for safe-keeping. St. Rule dutifully followed these directions, removing a tooth, an arm bone, a kneecap and some fingers from St. Andrew's tomb and transporting these as far away as he could. It is said that St. Rule was forced to come ashore at a Pictish settlement because of a storm. The settlement was on the East Coast of Scotland and this later became the town of St. Andrews.

A chapel was built to house the relics, and by 1160 a cathedral. St Andrews was the religious capital of Scotland, and the goal of many pilgrims.

The saint's remains have since disappeared, probably destroyed during the Scottish Reformation, when the strictures of Calvinism tended to wish to remove traces of Catholic "idolatry". The site of the relics is now marked by a plaque in the ruins of the Cathedral in St Andrews.

Another legend of St. Andrew involves the Pictish King Angus. When faced with a large invading army, King Angus 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. However, it was not until after Robert Bruce's victory at the Battle of Bannockburn (1314), that the Declaration of Arbroath named St. Andrew the patron saint of Scotland forever. The Saltire became the Scottish national flag in 1385.