As we look forward to this year’s St Andrew’s Day celebrations, here is a little peek into his life, his work and the Scottish values that we celebrate on St Andrew’s Day.
What is St Andrew’s Day?
St Andrew has been celebrated in Scotland for over one thousand years, with feasts being held in his honour as far back as the year 1000 AD.
However, it wasn’t until 1320, when Scotland’s independence was declared with the signing of The Declaration of Arbroath, that he officially became Scotland’s patron saint.
Since then, St Andrew has become an integral part of Scottish society. The flag of Scotland is the saltire, also known as St Andrew’s Cross, and the ancient town of St Andrews was named due to its claim of being the final resting place of St Andrew.
With so many different connections to our country, it’s worth considering how St Andrew came to be so important to Scotland.
The answer is surprisingly simple and sums up some of the most prominent characteristics that you can find in Scots both at home and abroad.
Who was St Andrew?
The story goes that Andrew, the Galilean fisherman who was singled out to be Christ's first disciple, preached the Gospel in the lands around the Black Sea and in Greece and was eventually crucified on an X-shaped cross in Patras.
St Andrew is the patron saint of other countries as well as Scotland. His association with Scotland, a land he never set foot on is, not surprisingly, based on several conflicting legends, the most colourful of which is the story of St. Rule.
Three hundred years after Andrew's martyrdom the Roman Emperor Constantine, himself a Christian, ordered that the saint's bones should be moved from Patras to his new capital city of Constantinople.
Before the order was carried out a monk called St. Rule (or St. Regulus) had a dream in which an angel told him to take what bones of Andrew's he could to 'the ends of the earth' for safe keeping.
St. Rule duly took what he could, presumably in a swift and frantic raid on the tomb, and after an epic journey with the aforementioned assortment was shipwrecked on the east coast of Scotland. He must have deemed that he had indeed reached the 'ends of the earth'!
Over a millennium later St. Rule's Tower still stands among the ruins of St. Andrew's Cathedral, which in its heyday was a great centre of Medieval pilgrimage.
But the whereabouts of the relics are unknown. They were probably destroyed in the Scottish Reformation.
During his visit in 1969, Pope Paul VI gave further relics of St. Andrew to Scotland with the words "St Peter gives you his brother" and these are now displayed in a reliquary in St Mary's Catholic Cathedral in Edinburgh. But what these comprise is not recorded.
Find out about the history of St Andrew
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