The Cross of Patras

The most firmly received element of the post-Gospel Andrew tradition is that the apostle ended his course as a martyr, crucified at Patras (Patrae) in Achaea, on the northern coast of the Peloponnese. This place and this manner of death ground his feast on November 30 and his place in Orthodox iconography. The narrative itself descends from the apocryphal Martyrdom of Andrew, and this file reports it as the source’s claim, flagging honestly where the received memory and its earliest text part ways.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Apostle)

The Received Tradition

That Andrew was crucified at Patras in Achaea is the single most stable element of the apostle’s post-Gospel story. The journeys attributed to him vary from witness to witness and are often vague or fabulous, but the martyrdom is fixed: he died on a cross at Patras, on the northern shore of the Peloponnese in Greece, under a Roman proconsul. This is the datum that the Church received, that her hymnography presupposes, and that her iconography depicts; it is the anchor of the cult of the First-Called (Elliott, The Apocryphal New Testament, 1993, pp. 231–245; Prieur, Acta Andreae, CCSA 5–6, 1989). Whatever uncertainty attends Andrew’s travels, the place and fact of his death are the part of the tradition that can be reported with the greatest confidence, precisely because the martyrdom-narrative was the most widely copied and liturgically useful portion of the whole.

It is important to be clear about what “firmly received” means here. It does not mean that the crucifixion at Patras is attested by an early independent historian; it means that this is the consistent and dominant memory of the tradition, carried above all by the Martyrdom of Andrew. The received character of the datum and the apocryphal character of its earliest source are not in conflict — they are two true things about the same tradition, and an honest account holds them together.

The Source: The Martyrdom of Andrew

The narrative of the death at Patras descends from the Martyrdom of Andrew (the Passio or Martyrium), the closing portion of the apocryphal Acts of Andrew tradition. Because the martyrdom was the part of the original most often copied and read, it survives in fuller and more independent form than the journey-material, in several Greek recensions and in Latin, Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, and other versions; it is the part of the lost original that can be reconstructed with the greatest confidence (Prieur, Acta Andreae, CCSA 5–6, 1989; Elliott, 1993, pp. 231–245). The standard critical edition of the whole tradition is Jean-Marc Prieur’s Acta Andreae in the Corpus Christianorum Series Apocryphorum (CCSA 5–6, Brepols, 1989); the most accessible English orientation is Elliott’s The Apocryphal New Testament (Clarendon, 1993, pp. 231–245); and Dennis R. MacDonald’s The Acts of Andrew (Scholars Press, 1990, pp. 47–69, 323–411) reconstructs and translates the passion-material.

In the narrative, the setting is Patras and the antagonist is the proconsul Aegeates (Aigeates). The hinge of the plot is the conversion of the proconsul’s wife, Maximilla — together with his brother Stratocles — to a life of sexual continence at the apostle’s urging. Maximilla withdraws from her husband’s bed; Aegeates’ rage at this is what provokes the persecution and the death sentence (Elliott, 1993, pp. 231–245; MacDonald, 1990, pp. 47–69, 323–411; Prieur, CCSA 5–6, 1989). Andrew is then scourged and condemned to the cross. A distinctive detail of the source is that he is bound to the cross rather than nailed — fastened with cords so that he should die slowly, the better to prolong his suffering, and (in the logic of the narrative) the better to let him keep preaching (Elliott, 1993, pp. 235–245; MacDonald, 1990, pp. 343–411). This binding-not-nailing detail belongs to the early form of the account.

Preaching from the Cross

The most famous feature of the Patras martyrdom is the motif of the apostle preaching from the cross. In the narrative Andrew does not die at once: bound rather than nailed, he hangs alive for some days — the recensions speak of two or three — and from the cross he addresses the crowds that gather, exhorting and instructing them, and refusing to be taken down even when the now-relenting Aegeates, moved by the people, would release him (Elliott, 1993, pp. 235–245; MacDonald, 1990, pp. 343–411; Prieur, CCSA 5–6, 1989). The image of the apostle suspended and still teaching, his death itself made into a final sermon, is the dramatic heart of the Passio and the source of much later devotion.

Bound to this is the celebrated Address to the Cross (the Salutation to the Cross), the speech in which Andrew, on first seeing the instrument of his death, greets it with joy rather than dread — hailing it as a thing long desired and long awaited, an “O good cross” made beautiful by the limbs of the Lord, the means by which he will pass to his Master. This salutation is one of the most quoted passages of the whole apocryphal corpus and has fed Orthodox and Western liturgical and homiletic tradition alike (Elliott, 1993, pp. 235–245; MacDonald, 1990, pp. 343–411; Prieur, CCSA 5–6, 1989). It must be reported for what it is: a literary set-piece of the apocryphal Martyrdom of Andrew, not an independent record of the apostle’s words. Its theological beauty is real; its provenance is the apocryphon. Both are reported here as the source’s claim.

What the Early Texts Do and Do Not Say

Honesty requires a clear line here. The early martyrdom accounts say that Andrew was crucified — fastened to a cross, bound rather than nailed, and left to die over days. What they do not say is that the cross was X-shaped. The diagonal saltire — the familiar X on which Andrew is shown in later iconography and which became the Saint Andrew’s cross of heraldry — is a later development, not a feature of the early Passio. The earliest texts speak simply of crucifixion, with the binding detail; the specific shape of the cross is supplied by a much later medieval tradition (Elliott, 1993, pp. 231–245; Prieur, CCSA 5–6, 1989). The growth of the saltire tradition is treated in full in the companion file — see The Saltire and Its History — and is not pressed here. The point for this file is the negative one: do not read the X back into the early sources.

[Disputed: The crucifixion at Patras is the received and dominant tradition, but its earliest source is the apocryphal Martyrdom of Andrew, a text of the second-to-third-century apocryphal Acts of Andrew tradition (Prieur, Acta Andreae, CCSA 5–6, 1989; Elliott, 1993, pp. 231–245). The specific X-shape of the cross is a later, medieval elaboration and is absent from the early accounts; it is treated separately in the companion file. The fact of crucifixion at Patras and the shape of the cross thus stand on very different evidentiary footings.]

The Encratite Framing

One further honesty is owed. In the apocryphal source, the cause of the martyrdom is not a generic clash of faith and empire but a specific moral demand: the conversion of Maximilla to continence. It is her renunciation of the marriage bed, and Aegeates’ fury at it, that drives the whole passion. This is the encratite coloring of the Acts of Andrew — the ascetic, continence-centered theology that pervades the work and supplies its plot-engine (Elliott, 1993, pp. 231–245; MacDonald, 1990, pp. 47–69; Prieur, CCSA 5–6, 1989). The reader should know that the dramatic motive of the Patras martyrdom is itself a vehicle of that theology, and weigh the narrative accordingly. The fuller assessment of this encratite framing — what it is, where it stands relative to the Church’s faith, and how to read the apocryphon responsibly — belongs to the companion file Assessing the Apocrypha, to which this point is cross-referenced.

Liturgical Reception and Patras Today

Whatever the provenance of the narrative details, the Church’s reception of the martyrdom is firm and ancient. Andrew the First-Called is commemorated on November 30, and his feast presupposes the death at Patras as the culmination of his apostolic course; the hymnography of the day celebrates the cross as the apostle’s glory and his entry into the kingdom (Elliott, 1993, pp. 231–245). Patras itself became, and remains, a major center of his cult: the city venerates Andrew as its patron, and the great Church of St. Andrew at Patras stands as the focus of his veneration and a significant place of Orthodox pilgrimage, associated with the place of his death and with the keeping of relics connected to him. The question of what became of the apostle’s body — its translations and its later history — is taken up in the companion file The Relics. Here it suffices to mark that the liturgical and devotional reception, centered on Patras and fixed to November 30, is the living end of the tradition whose textual roots this file has traced.

References

Jean-Marc Prieur, Acta Andreae, Corpus Christianorum Series Apocryphorum 5–6 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1989).
J. K. Elliott, The Apocryphal New Testament (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), pp. 231–245.
Dennis R. MacDonald, The Acts of Andrew and the Acts of Andrew and Matthias in the City of the Cannibals (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1990), pp. 47–69, 323–411.