Andrew, whose name is interpreted “beautiful,” “answering,” or “manly,” was the brother of the apostle Peter and his companion in the passion of the cross.
[Running head: Sixth Title.]
The priests and deacons of Asia described Andrew’s passion.
He was first a disciple of John the Baptist. One day, when he was with John the Baptist, his teacher, Jesus passed near the Jordan and John said of him: “Behold the Lamb of God.” Andrew and another fellow disciple followed Jesus, went with him to his dwelling, and remained with him that day.
Afterward Andrew brought his brother Peter to the Lord Jesus so that Peter might become familiar with him. On another occasion Christ called them while they were fishing in a little boat on the Sea of Galilee, and they followed him. He chose them among the number of the twelve apostles.
After the coming of the Holy Spirit, when the apostles went to diverse parts of the world to preach, Andrew departed for Achaia, a province of Greece. Preaching there, he multiplied the Church by converting very many to the faith. Among others, he regenerated Maximilla, the wife of Egeas the proconsul of the province, in sacred Baptism.
When Egeas heard this, he was disturbed. He entered the city of Patras and compelled Christians to sacrifice to idols.
Andrew met him and said: “You who have merited to become a judge of human beings ought to acknowledge your Judge who is in heaven, worship him when known, and by worshiping him recall your soul from false gods.”
Egeas said: “Are you that Andrew who preaches the superstitious sect that the Roman princes ordered to be exterminated?”
Andrew answered: “The Roman princes have not yet understood how the Son of God, coming into the world, taught that idols are demons. We teach that God is offended through them, that when offended he turns from their worshipers, and that those from whom God turns do not hear him. By failing to hear his commandments, they are held captive until they depart from the world carrying nothing with them except sins.”
Egeas said: “While preaching these vain things, your Jesus Christ was affixed to the gibbet of the cross.”
Andrew answered: “He voluntarily accepted the gibbet of the cross for our restoration, not for his own guilt.”
Egeas replied: “Since Jesus was betrayed by his disciple, captured by the Jews, and led to the cross by soldiers, how do you say that he underwent the cross willingly?”
Andrew showed by several arguments that Christ suffered voluntarily and not by compulsion: because, foreknowing the Passion, he foretold it to his disciples; because he knew his betrayer and did not avoid him; and because he chose the place to which he knew the betrayer would come to seize him. He asserted that he had been present to all these things and added that the mystery of the cross was exceedingly great.
Egeas said: “It should not be called a mystery but a punishment. Unless you obey my words, I shall make you experience that mystery.”
Andrew answered: “If I feared the gibbet of the cross, I would not preach the glory of the cross. I wish you to hear the mystery of the cross so that perhaps, once you know it, you may believe and be saved.”
He then endeavored by many arguments to show how fitting and necessary it was for the Son of God to become incarnate and to suffer in this manner.
Egeas said: “Tell these trifles to your own people. Obey me and sacrifice to the almighty gods.”
Andrew answered him: “Every day I offer to almighty God the immaculate Lamb, namely the Eucharist. After the whole faithful people has eaten it, it remains one and whole.”
When Egeas asked how this could occur, Andrew said that he should assume the character of a disciple and would then understand the mystery.
Egeas replied: “I shall extort knowledge of this matter from you by torments.” In anger he ordered Andrew cast into prison.
In the morning Egeas ordered the Apostle to be brought before his tribunal. He again began to invite him to sacrifice to the idols, saying: “Andrew, let the ruins of the gods be restored through you. Otherwise I shall have you suspended upon the cross that you have praised.”
When Egeas threatened him with many punishments, Andrew answered: “Devise whatever punishment seems greatest to you. I shall be more acceptable to my King the more constant I am in torments for his name.”
The governor ordered twenty attendants to beat him and, when he had been beaten, to bind him to a cross with ropes so that he would suffer a longer torment there.
As he was being led to the cross, a crowd of people gathered, mourning and saying: “His innocent blood is condemned without cause.” When the people wished to make a sedition against the governor, the Apostle earnestly asked them not to impede his martyrdom, for their Master had displayed patience in his own Passion. Gratian treats this in Cause 23, Question 1, § 1.
Seeing the cross from afar, Andrew greeted it, saying: “Hail, holy cross, which was dedicated in Christ’s body and adorned from his members as with pearls. Before my Master ascended you, you possessed earthly fear; now you possess heavenly love and receive what is desired.
“Secure and rejoicing, I come to you, so that you too may exult and receive me, the disciple of him who hung upon you. I have always been your lover and have desired to embrace you.”
After saying these things, he came to the place and stripped himself. The attendants did not fasten him to the cross with nails but bound him with ropes. He lived there for two days and preached to the twenty thousand people standing nearby.
When the crowd threatened Egeas with death unless he took Andrew down from the cross, Egeas promised to do so. As Egeas went to the place of the passion to have him taken down, Andrew saw him and said that if he came to obtain mercy, there was still time to obtain it; but if he came to take him down from the cross, he could not do so, because Andrew already saw his King awaiting him with the crown.
When they tried to take him down at the governor’s command, they were unable, for their arms grew numb.
The Apostle prayed that the Lord would not permit him to be taken down alive but would admit him to the rest above. At last an exceedingly great splendor appeared around him so that he could not be seen, and he rendered his spirit to the Lord.
Egeas returned home but was seized by the devil along the way and expired. His wife Maximilla took the Apostle down and buried him honorably.
Andrew’s body was afterward translated and now rests in the city of Amalfi in the regions of the kingdom. Manna like oil still flows from his tomb. It is given to everyone who asks and does not fail.
§ I: Andrew’s Miracles
During his life Andrew shone through many miracles. He restored to life forty men who had drowned in a river while coming to hear the teaching of the faith from him.
A woman who could not give birth to a son conceived in adultery repented; when she believed, Andrew caused her to give birth freely.
He wonderfully liberated a young man who fled to him for help after his utterly shameless mother accused him before a judge of having wished to violate her, because he had refused to consent to her lust when she wished to lie with him. That most wicked woman was struck by lightning and changed into charcoal before the judge, who was converted to the faith with his household.
A certain Nicholas, a seventy-year-old man immersed in the filth of lust, had grown so inveterate that he could not remain continent even when he resolved to do so. Andrew obtained continence and pardon for him through a four-day fast and prayer. The old man fasted on bread and water for six months and afterward lived praiseworthily and rested in peace.
After Andrew’s passing, he delivered a certain bishop from a subtle deception of the devil by appearing as a pilgrim. He knocked at the door of the bishop’s house and sought to speak with him.
The devil had come to the bishop in the form of a most noble and beautiful girl in order that she might preserve the resolve of virginity and spiritual life according to his teaching. The pilgrim revealed her to be the devil, with whose concupiscence the bishop had already been inflamed.
First, however, he solved three questions that she had proposed to the pilgrim through a messenger.
The first was: what was the greatest miracle that God had made in a small thing? He answered: the diversity of human faces.
The second was: where is earth higher than every heaven? He answered: in the empyrean heaven, because Christ’s body, assumed from Adam’s substance, is there above all the heavens, and Adam was formed from the clay of the earth.
The third question was: how much distance separates heaven from earth? The pilgrim answered that the one who was speaking had measured it by falling from heaven and therefore knew it very well.
When the messenger reported these things, the devil vanished and the pilgrim disappeared. The bishop was pierced by remorse for the evil he had conceived, and it was revealed to him that the pilgrim had been blessed Andrew.