St Andrew's Day: Scotland's Patron Saint and the Cross That Conquered the World

On the 30th of November, Scotland celebrates its patron saint. Like St George's Day, St Andrew's Day lacks the global fanfare of St Patrick's Day. That should change. Because Andrew himself was extraordinary, his connection to Scotland is stranger and more compelling than most people realise, and the cross he died on flies today on more flags than almost any other symbol on earth.

Who Was Andrew?

Andrew was a fisherman from Bethsaida on the Sea of Galilee. He was the brother of Simon Peter — the rock on which Christ built his church — and according to the Gospel of John, it was Andrew who first brought Peter to Jesus. In that sense, Andrew was the apostle who found the apostle. The quiet one who made everything else possible.

He was one of the first disciples called. He witnessed the feeding of the five thousand. He was present at the Last Supper. And after the resurrection and Pentecost, tradition tells us he travelled vast distances spreading the Christian gospel — through Asia Minor, along the Black Sea coast, into what is now Greece, Romania, Russia, and Ukraine. The Orthodox Church venerates him as its founding apostle. The city of Constantinople — Byzantium, the heart of the eastern Christian world — claimed Andrew as its patron.

He was martyred in the Greek city of Patras around 60 AD, crucified on a diagonal cross — an X-shape, now known as the Saltire — at his own request, because he considered himself unworthy to die on the same shape of cross as Christ.

How Did He Get To Scotland?

Here is where the story gets beautifully, gloriously strange.

In the 4th century, a monk named St Regulus — also called Rule — was keeper of Andrew's relics in Patras. According to legend, an angel appeared to him and instructed him to take the relics to the ends of the earth for safekeeping. Regulus set sail, carrying bones of the apostle — a tooth, an arm bone, a kneecap, and some fingers — across the Mediterranean, around the Iberian coast, up through the Atlantic, and eventually shipwrecked on the eastern coast of Scotland at a place called Kinrymont.

That place is now called St Andrews.

He built a church there. The bones were venerated. A settlement grew, then a cathedral — once the largest in Scotland — then a university, then a town that carries the apostle's name to this day. The town of St Andrews in Fife is named after a fisherman from Galilee whose bones allegedly arrived there by shipwreck in the fourth century, carried by a monk following angelic instructions.

You could not make it up.

The Flag

The white diagonal cross on a blue background — the Saltire — is one of the most recognisable flags in the world. It is the cross of Andrew's martyrdom, adopted as Scotland's national symbol. It is also one of the three crosses that make up the Union Jack: the Cross of St George (England), the Cross of St Andrew (Scotland), and the Cross of St Patrick (Ireland) overlaid together into the flag that flew over the largest empire in human history.

Andrew's cross has flown over Scottish battlefields, on the masts of Scottish ships, above Scottish regiments fighting in every corner of the world. It flies today above Holyrood and Edinburgh Castle and thousands of Scottish homes. It is the oldest continuously used national flag in Europe, with some historians dating its adoption to the 9th century.

A fisherman's execution cross, carried by a shipwrecked monk to the edge of the known world, became the flag of a nation. That is the Saltire.

How Is It Celebrated?

St Andrew's Day — Là Naomh Anndra in Scottish Gaelic — was made an official bank holiday in Scotland in 2007, though it remains a working day for most. Celebrations include ceilidh dancing, traditional Scottish music, Burns-style suppers with haggis and whisky, and in recent years a growing movement to reclaim it as a genuinely national day of cultural pride.

It deserves more than it currently gets. Andrew was extraordinary. His story is extraordinary. And Scotland's claim on him — bizarre, legendary, gloriously improbable — is one of the best origin stories any nation has ever had.

On the 30th of November, raise a glass to the fisherman from Galilee whose bones allegedly washed up on the Fife coast. Scotland has been claiming him ever since, and honestly, who can blame them.

Slàinte