St. Andrew.
Lat. S. Andreas. Ital. Sant’ Andrea. Fr. St. André. Patron saint of Scotland and of Russia. Nov. 30 A.D. 70.
St. Andrew was the brother of Simon Peter, and the first who was called to the apostleship. Nothing farther is recorded of him in Scripture: he is afterwards merely included by name in the general account of the apostles.
In the traditional and legendary history of St. Andrew we are told, that after our Lord’s ascension, when the apostles dispersed to preach the Gospel to all nations, St. Andrew travelled into Scythia, Cappadocia, and Bithynia, everywhere converting multitudes to the faith. The Russians believe that he was the first to preach to the Muscovites in Sarmatia, and thence he has been honoured as titular saint of the empire of Russia. After many sufferings, he returned to Jerusalem, and thence travelled into Greece, and came at length to a city of Achaia, called Patras. Here he made many converts; among others, Maximilla, the wife of the proconsul Ægeus, whom he persuaded to make a public profession of Christianity. The proconsul, enraged, commanded him to be seized and scourged, and then crucified. The cross on which he suffered was of a peculiar form (crux decussata), since called the St. Andrew’s cross; and it is expressly said that he was not fastened to his cross with nails, but with cords,—a circumstance always attended to in the representations of his death. It is, however, to be remembered, that while all authorities agree that he was crucified, and that the manner of his crucifixion was peculiar, they are not agreed as to the form of his cross. St. Peter Chrysologos says that it was a tree: another author affirms that it was an olive tree. The Abbé Méry remarks, that it is a mistake to give the transverse cross to St. Andrew; that it ought not to differ from the cross of our Lord. His reasons are not absolutely conclusive:—‘Il suffit pour montrer qu’ils sont là-dessus dans l’erreur, de voir la croix véritable de St. André, conservée dans l’Église de St. Victor de Marseille; on trouvera qu’elle est à angles droits,’ &c.[206] Seeing is believing; nevertheless, the form is fixed by tradition and usage, and ought not to be departed from, though Michael Angelo has done so in the figure of St. Andrew in the Last Judgment, and there are several examples in the Italian masters.[207] The legend goes on to relate, that St. Andrew, on approaching the cross prepared for his execution, saluted and adored it on his knees, as being already consecrated by the sufferings of the Redeemer, and met his death triumphantly. Certain of his relics were brought from Patras to Scotland in the fourth century, and since that time St. Andrew has been honoured as the patron saint of Scotland, and of its chief order of knighthood. He is also the patron saint of the famous Burgundian Order, the Golden Fleece; and of Russia and its chief Order, the Cross of St. Andrew.
Since the fourteenth century, St. Andrew is generally distinguished in works of art by the transverse cross; the devotional pictures in which he figures as one of the series of apostles, or singly as patron saint, represent him as a very old man with some kind of brotherly resemblance to St. Peter; his hair and beard silver white, long, loose, and flowing, and in general the beard is divided; he leans upon his cross, and holds the Gospel in his right hand.
The historical subjects from the life of St. Andrew, treated separately from the rest of the apostles, are very few; his crucifixion is the only one that I have found treated before the fifteenth century. On the ancient doors of San Paolo, the instrument of his martyrdom has the shape of a Y, and resembles a tree split down the middle. The cross in some later pictures is very lofty, and resembles the rough branches of a tree laid transversely.
I know but two other subjects relating to the life of St. Andrew which have been separately treated in the later schools of art—the Adoration of the Cross, and the Flagellation.
‘St. Andrew adoring his cross,’ by Andrea Sacchi, is remarkable for its simplicity and fine expression; it contains only three figures. St Andrew, half undraped, and with his silver hair and beard floating dishevelled, kneels, gazing up to the cross with ecstatic devotion; he is addressing to it his famous invocation:—‘Salve, Croce preziosa! che fosti consecrata dal corpo del mio Dio!’—an executioner stands by, and a fierce soldier, impatient of delay, urges him on to death.[208]
‘St. Andrew taken down from the cross’ is a fine effective picture by Ribera.[209]
When Guido and Domenichino painted, in emulation of each other, the frescoes in the chapel of Sant’ Andrea in the church of San Gregorio, at Rome, Guido chose for his subject the Adoration of the Cross. The scene is supposed to be outside the walls of Patras in Achaia; the cross is at a distance in the background; St. Andrew, as he approaches, falls down in adoration before the instrument of his martyrdom, consecrated by the death of his Lord; he is attended by one soldier on horseback, one on foot, and three executioners; a group of women and alarmed children in the foreground are admirable for grace and feeling—they are, in fact, the best part of the picture. On the opposite wall of the chapel Domenichino painted the Flagellation of St. Andrew, a subject most difficult to treat effectively, and retain at the same time the dignity of the suffering apostle, while avoiding all resemblance to a similar scene in the life of Christ. Here he is bound down on a sort of table; one man lifts a rod, another seems to taunt the prostrate saint; a lictor drives back the people. The group of the mother and frightened children, which Domenichino so often introduces with little variation, is here very beautiful; the judge and lictors are seen behind, with a temple and a city in the distance. When Domenichino painted the same subject in the church of Sant’ Andrea-della-Valle, he chose another moment, and administered the torture after a different manner: the apostle is bound by his hands and feet to four short posts set firmly in the ground; one of the executioners in tightening a cord breaks it and falls back; three men prepare to scourge him with thongs: in the foreground we have the usual group of the mother and her frightened children. This is a composition full of dramatic life and movement, but unpleasing. Domenichino painted in the same church the crucifixion of the saint, and his apotheosis surmounts the whole.
All these compositions are of great celebrity in the history of Art for colour and for expression. Lanzi says, that the personages, ‘if endued with speech, could not say more to the ear than they do to the eye.’ But, in power and pathos, none of them equal the picture of Murillo, of which we have the original study in England.[210] St. Andrew is suspended on the high cross, formed, not of planks, but of the trunks of trees laid transversely. He is bound with cords, undraped, except by a linen cloth; his silver hair and beard loosely streaming in the air; his aged countenance illuminated by a heavenly transport, as he looks up to the opening skies, whence two angels of really celestial beauty, like almost all Murillo’s angels, descend with the crown and palm. In front, to the right, is a group of shrinking sympathising women; and a boy turns away, crying with a truly boyish grief; on the left are guards and soldiers. The subject is here rendered poetical by mere force of feeling; there is a tragic reality in the whole scene, far more effective, to my taste, than the more studied compositions of the Italian painters. The martyrdom of St. Andrew, and the saint preaching the Gospel, by Juan de Roelas, are also mentioned as splendid productions of the Seville school.
I think it possible that St. Andrew may owe his popularity in the Spanish and Flemish schools of art to his being the patron saint of the far-famed Burgundian Order of the Golden Fleece. At the time that Constantinople was taken, and the relics of St. Andrew dispersed in consequence, a lively enthusiasm for this apostle was excited throughout all Christendom. He had been previously honoured chiefly as the brother of St. Peter; he obtained thenceforth a kind of personal interest and consideration. Philip of Burgundy (A.D. 1433), who had obtained at great cost a portion of the precious relics, consisting chiefly of some pieces of his cross, placed under the protection of the apostle his new order of chivalry, which, according to the preamble, was intended to revive the honour and the memory of the Argonauts. His knights wore as their badge the cross of St. Andrew.