St Andrew (Nov. 30). The Martyrologies agree in giving Nov. 30 as the day of the martyrdom. The festival appeared early at Rome, and was given a place of high dignity[92]. In fact there is authority for the feast being kept at Rome in early times with no less solemnity than St Peter’s Day. It will be remembered that in the prayer Libera nos in the Canon of the Mass Andrew is named together with Peter and Paul. The Sacramentary of St Leo has four sets of ‘propers’ for masses on this festival. It is a day of much importance in the Greek Church, as St Andrew, the Protoclete, is reckoned the apostle of Greece. St Andrew is the patron of the Russian Church[93]. Relics of St Andrew, said to have been brought by a monk named Regulus from Patras to Scotland, gave the name of St Andrew to the place in Fife previously known as Kilrymont; and St Andrew became the patron saint of Scotland. In the Aberdeen Breviary his day is a ‘greater double.’
Bishop Wordsworth remarks that St Andrew’s Day ‘is perhaps the only festival of an Apostle claiming to be really on the anniversary of his death.’ Nov. 30 is given as the day of his martyrdom in the apocryphal Acta Andreae, describing his death at Patras[94].
St James the Great (July 25), the son of Zebedee, does not appear very early. The day is not noticed in either the Leonine or the Gelasian Sacramentary, and made its way to general acceptance but slowly. In the canons of the Council of Oxford (A.D. 1222) it does not appear among the chief festivals for general observance in England, although in England it was certainly a festum chori long before that date.
It would seem (Acts xii. 2, 3) that the death of James took place about the time of the Paschal commemoration; the Coptic Kalendar marks St James’s day on April 12, and the Syrian lectionary of Antioch on April 30, on which day also the Greek Church keeps a festival of St James, using for the Epistle Acts xii. 1, etc. The placing of the festival in the West so far from Easter as July 25, suggests that the latter date was connected with some translation of relics, or such like.
As we have already seen (p. 16) the ancient Syriac Kalendar edited originally by Wright, commemorates James together with his brother John on Dec. 27.
St John, Apostle and Evangelist. The principal festival on Dec. 27 is found in the fourth century in the East, where he was conjoined with James. Traces of this conjunction are to be found in the West. It is interesting to find in the Gothic Missal, printed by Muratori, a mass for the Natale of the Apostles James and John placed between St Stephen and Holy Innocents. And in the Hieronymian Martyrology we find at Dec. 27 ‘the ordination to the episcopate of St James, the Lord’s brother The Greek Church commemorates the metastasis, or migration of John, on Sept. 26, and an important festival in honour of the holy dust (called manna) from his tomb at Ephesus on May 8. St John before the Latin gate (May 6). The story of the caldron of boiling oil is as old as Tertullian (de Praescript. c. 36). But of the festival there is no notice before the closing years of the eighth century. The day of the month probably marks the date of the dedication of a church near the Latin gate[95]. It is characteristically a Western festival. In the Roman rite it was, about the thirteenth century, a semi-double: it was made a double by Pius V (1566-1572), and a greater double by Clement VIII (1592-1605). St Matthew (Sept. 21): in the Greek, Russian, Syrian and Armenian Churches, Nov. 16: in the Egyptian and Ethiopic Kalendars of Ludolf, Oct. 9. The festival of Sept. 21 is certainly late in appearing. It is wanting in the Leonine, Gelasian, and Gallican Sacramentaries, and in Muratori’s edition of the Gregorian. It is found, however, generally in the martyrologies, which fact, of course, does not necessarily imply that there was any liturgical observance of the day[96].