Here I must conclude this summary of the lives and characters of the two greatest apostles, as they have been exhibited in Christian Art; to do justice to the theme would have required a separate volume. One observation, however, suggests itself, and cannot be passed over. The usual type of the head of St. Peter, though often ill rendered and degraded by coarseness, can in general be recognised as characteristic; but is there among the thousand representations of the apostle Paul, one on which the imagination can rest completely satisfied? I know not one. No doubt the sublimest ideal of embodied eloquence that ever was expressed in Art is Raphael’s St. Paul preaching at Athens. He stands there the delegated voice of the true God, the antagonist and conqueror of the whole heathen world:—‘Whom ye ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto you’—is not this what he says? Every feature, nay, every fold in his drapery, speaks; as in the other St. Paul leaning on his sword (in the famous St. Cecilia), every feature and every fold of drapery meditates. The latter is as fine in its tranquil melancholy grandeur, as the former in its authoritative energy: in the one the orator, in the other the philosopher, were never more finely rendered: but is it, in either, the Paul of Tarsus whom we know? It were certainly both unnecessary and pedantic to adhere so closely to historic fact as to make St. Paul of diminutive stature, and St. Peter weak-eyed: but has Raphael done well in wholly rejecting the traditional portrait which reflected to us the Paul of Scripture, the man of many toils and many sorrows, wasted with vigils, worn down with travel, whose high bald forehead, thin flowing hair, and long pointed beard, spoke so plainly the fervent and indomitable, yet meditative and delicate, organisation,—and in substituting this Jupiter Ammon head, with the dark redundant hair, almost hiding the brow, and the full bushy beard? This is one of the instances in which Raphael, in yielding to the fashion of his time, has erred, as it seems to me,—though I say it with all reverence! The St. Paul rending his garments at Lystra, and rejecting the sacrifice of the misguided people, is more particularly false as to the character of the man, though otherwise so grandly expressive, that we are obliged to admire what our better sense—our conscience—cannot wholly approve.
I shall now consider the rest of the apostles in their proper order.
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.