The Old English Prose Lives of St Andrew

Andrew the Apostle was an important figure for the early medieval English church: the cathedral at Rochester, the second bishopric established by the Augustinian mission, was dedicated to him, and he became the patron saint of Scotland. Erstwhile fisherman and brother to Simon Peter, Andrew’s role in Christ’s ministry is described in the gospels and his subsequent activity gets limited mention in the Acts of the Apostles. His later career sees far fuller treatment in two distinct apocrypha and these are reflected in two quite distinct Old English prose narratives. One, recounted by Ælfric in his Catholic Homilies (and also told in abbreviated form in the Old English Martyrology), builds on the gospel account and expands upon the traditions around Andrew’s death in a conventional hagiographic narrative. The other tells an altogether more adventurous story in a form of hagiographic romance, retold in workaday Old English prose by an anonymous translator. While presenting an attention-grabbing narrative, this prose account of Andrew among the cannibals pales in comparison with the more extravagant and expansive treatment of the same story in the Old English poem Andreas.

The anonymous Old English prose legend survives in two manuscripts, in fragmentary form among the late-tenth-century Blickling Homilies (Princeton University Library, W. H. Scheide Collection, MS 71, fols 136r–139v), and in the Old English homily collection of the first half of the eleventh century, Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 198, fols 386r–394v. Inclusion in these two collections indicates that this adventure story was viewed as an edifying narrative suitable for reading out in place of a homily on the festival of St Andrew, 30 November. The story begins with Matthew’s mission to the cannibals of the city of Mermedonia, where he is captured, blinded, and prepared as foodstuffs, which involves a 30-day waiting period. Matthew’s sight is restored by God and he is reassured that he will be saved by Andrew, whom the Lord contacts at Achaia when Matthew has three days remaining before his due date. Andrew cavils at the practicality of getting to Mermedonia in time but is pointed by the Lord to a boat heading that way, steered by Christ and two angels disguised in human form. The steersman asks for passage money, but accepts Andrew’s request to serve the Lord’s purpose sans payment. When Andrew’s disciples are scared of the sea, the steersman suggests that Andrew reassure them with accounts of his teacher’s miracles. Andrew duly tells of Christ’s miraculous calming of rough seas. As Andrew goes to sleep, the angels carry him and his disciples to Mermedonia, where Andrew realizes the divine nature of the steersman and asks forgiveness for not recognizing Christ, which is duly given as Christ explains the miracle of transportation was to demonstrate Christ’s unknowable power.

In Mermedonia, Andrew duly releases Matthew after miraculously killing seven guards. The two apostles together restore sight to the remaining captives and release them. The discomfited Mermedonians turn on Andrew and, encouraged by the devil in the likeness of a boy, drag his body through the streets of the city with a rope about his neck for three days, but the gore of his trail is turned through Andrew’s prayer to a tree bearing fruit. The devil commands his ancillary devils to kill Andrew, but they balk at the sign of the cross on his countenance and rebel against their demonic lord. In prison, Andrew addresses a stone image upon a column, encouraging it to pour forth water from its mouth to drown the Mermedonians and calling up a barrier of flame to stop their escape. When the chastened remnant of Mermedonians beg for mercy and convert to Andrew’s faith, Andrew’s prayers bring the drowned back to life, purged through the now-baptismal water. Andrew establishes a church and bishopric of Mermedonia and departs after seven days.

The story is a retelling of the Praxeis Andreou kai Matheian eis ten Polin ton Anthropophagon (Acts of Andrew and Matthias in the City of the Cannibals), composed in Greek (conveniently available in a translation by Robert Boenig), presumably transmitted through a now-lost Latin translation (and Boenig also translates subsequent surviving Latin analogues). The likely appeal of the piece for the compilers of the homiliaries may be evident from the plot summary above. The story explicitly portrays the power of the Christian God, here enacted in opposition to an imagined enemy group that evokes no sympathy in view of their alienating food practices, even as the story is ladened with Christian symbolism that could be exploited by a preacher, from the power of baptismal water to the sign of the cross to the consumption of the eucharist, as well described by exegetical critics like Hill and Walsh. At the same time, the story presents the pleasure of an adventure narrative, with the forces of evil crushed in spectacular fashion, yet brought back to life through intercession, complete with appealing ironies, such as Andrew explaining to Christ the apostolic imperative of working for God without cash, telling the miracles of Christ calming the sea in front of Christ, an irony emphasized by the translator’s wording, as when Andrew gesæt be þæm steorreþran þæs scipes, þæt wæs Drihten Hælend Crist (‘sat by the steersman of the ship, that was the Lord Saviour Christ’), and causing the consumption of the flesh-eating enemies through the corrosive salt flood that turns implicitly into baptismal water at the end. If the prose narrative has seen relatively little attention from modern critics, it is probably because the same story is told in yet more striking form in the poem Andreas. There the ironies of the steersman being Christ are ramped up further since Andrew berates Christ in disguise for his pride in not sharing his God-given gifts with the needy; Andrew sermonizes more fully at the unrecognized helmsman in a far more developed storm scene; the gore of the tortured saint is turned into a primrose path; and the climactic flood is presented as the excessive serving of alcohol, a bitter beer-drinking, at an uncontrollable drinking party, playing with the thematics of good and bad consumption — all presented in the language of heroic poetry in a mock-heroic treatment seen by some as a parody of Beowulf. The poem shows just how far the story told in the prose narrative could be adapted.

A less sensational account of the saint is told in Ælfric’s ‘Natale sancti Andreae apostoli’ (‘Feast of Saint Andrew the Apostle’), the item for 30 November in Ælfric’s First Series of Catholic Homilies (CH I.38) (to read more about Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies, click here). In the first half of this homily, Ælfric retells the gospel story of Christ’s calling to Andrew from Matthew 4:18-22, elaborating on Christ’s call to make the brothers fishers of people, and explaining the purchase of the heavenly kingdom through true charity or good works. A note in MS Royal 7 C xii suggests the homily once ended there but all manuscripts now include a second half in which Ælfric draws on the apocryphal Passio Andreae to describe Andrew’s torture and martyrdom in Achaia at the hands of the wicked judge Aegeus. The story told is characteristic of the martyrdoms related by Ælfric: the pagan ruler has worldly power and so threatens and tortures Andrew’s body for not honouring the pagan gods, even as the saint has the spiritual power to ignore such bodily torments, instead revelling in the contrast between the ephemeral nature of this life and the eternal torment or rewards of the next. The drama of the confrontation is primarily presented through dialogue, which features verbal sparring between the exasperated tormentor and the insouciant saint. In this case, much of the punning centres on the gallows-cross, which Aegeus can see only as instrument of torture even as Andrew views it as an object of salvation which he is happy to embrace. The saint dies bathed in mystical light, a source of inspiration to the onlookers and an intercessor for future audiences, whereas the tormentor dies in pain. The homily survives in some ten manuscripts (some now fragmentary) suggesting that this was a widely recounted story, bringing completeness to the story of this apostle.

Part of the appeal of these Andrew stories lies in the striking range of these Old English retellings, demonstrating the differing potential for the use of Old English prose and poetry. Ælfric’s handling demonstrates the way a homilist can draw a moral use out of a New Testament narrative (in the first half) and provides a dramatic but predictable and clearly edifying story in the martyrdom narrative of the second half. The latter makes appealing use of dialogue for dramatic effect and shades into distinctive rhythmical prose towards the end, an early instance of Ælfric’s heightened prose form. The anonymous account, on the other hand, presents an altogether more sensational episode in the apostle’s life through a different kind of story-telling that seems to revel in sensational details and ironies, presented in utilitarian Old English prose, with occasional inaccuracies or infelicities, introduced either in translation or in transmission (the count of Matthew’s days is inconsistent, the roughness of the sea is never explicitly stated, some necessary details seem to be omitted). The further treatment of this same underlying narrative in heroic verse shows how a story can be radically amplified and made yet more interesting in a different Old English idiom. The manifold voices apparent here demonstrate the interest of a narrative that gets retold.

Bibliography

Manuscripts

Princeton University Library, W. H. Scheide Collection, MS 71 (the “Blickling Homilies”)

link: https://dpul.princeton.edu/catalog/x346d4176

Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 198

link: https://parker.stanford.edu/parker/catalog/fh878gz0315

London, British Library, Royal MS 7 C. xii

link: https://iiif.bl.uk/uv/#?manifest=https://bl.digirati.io/iiif/ark:/81055/vdc_100060441469.0x000001

Editions and Translations

Boenig, Robert. The Acts of Andrew in the Country of the Cannibals: Translations from the Greek, Latin, and Old English (New York, 1991).

Cassidy, F. G., and R. N. Ringler. Bright’s Old English Grammar and Reader, 3^rd edn. (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1971): 205-19. Text of the anonymous prose Andrew from CCCC 198.

Clemoes, Peter, ed. Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies: The First Series, Text, EETS s.s. 17 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997). Text of CH I.38 with full manuscript variants.

Liuzza, Roy M., ed. and trans. Ælfric, The Old English Catholic Homilies: The First Series, Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 86 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2024). Accessible text and translation of CH I.38.

Morris, Richard, ed. The Blickling Homilies, EETS, o.s., 58, 63, 73 (1874-80; reprinted in one volume, London: Oxford University Press, 1967), 228-49. Text and translation of the composite anonymous prose story drawn from Blickling Homilies and augmented by CCCC 198.

North, Richard and Michael D.J. Bintley, eds. Andreas: An Edition, (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2016). Text and translation of the poem.

Rauer, Christine, ed. and trans. The Old English Martyrology: Edition, Translation and Commentary (Cambridge: Brewer, 2013). Text and translation of the martyrology account.

Criticism

Biggs, Frederick M. ‘Ælfric’s Andrew and the Apocrypha’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology 104 (2005), 473–94.

DeGregorio, Scott. ‘Þegenlic or flæsclic: The Old English Prose Legends of St. Andrew’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology 102 (2003), 449–69.

Friesen, Bill. ‘Legends and Liturgy in the Old English Prose Andreas’, Anglo-Saxon England 43 (2014), 209–29.

Godden, Malcolm. Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies: Introduction, Commentary, and Glossary. EETS s.s. 18 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

Hill, Thomas D. ‘Figural Narrative in Andreas: The Conversion of the Mermedonians’, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 70 (1969), 261–72.

——. ‘The Sphragis as Apotropaic Sign: Andreas 1334-44’, Anglia 101 (1983), 147–51.

Walsh, Marie Michelle. ‘The Baptismal Flood in the Old English Andreas: Liturgical and Typological Depths’, Traditio 33 (1977), 137–58.

Wilcox, Jonathan. ‘Eating People is Wrong: Funny Style in Andreas and Its Analogues’, in Anglo-Saxon Styles, ed. Catherine E. Karkov and George Hardin Brown (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003), pp. 201–22.

Jonathan Wilcox, jonathan-wilcox@uiowa.edu, is John C. Gerber Professor of English at the University of Iowa, where he teaches and researches medieval studies with an emphasis on early medieval English literature. His most recent book is Humour in Old English Literature: Communities of Laughter in Early Medieval England (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2023).