With St Andrews Day on November 30, Michael Alexander explores the foreign success of St Andrew’s, which goes far beyond the shores of the city of Fife named after him:
Choose from the slippery rocks of St Andrews Castle towards the harbour, and facing the cliff overlooking the coast about 150 metres southeast of Castle Sands, the highly eroded remains of Lady Buchan’s cave cling to the rock wall above.
According to local folklore, it is named after a local woman, Lady Buchan, who, a centuries or two ago, would have used a cave that was once larger and was artificially expanded for tastes and picnics with two elegantly decorated apartments equipped with shells.
Coastal erosion means there are only a few gaps left, a corroded railing and some tricky steps.
But it is the original cave that collapsed a long time ago, known as St Rule’s Cave, which has a much deeper connection to the history of St Andrews and even to scotland’s very base.
It is here, according to legend, that St Regulus (also known as Rule) stayed when he was shipwrecked in the 4th century while wearing the relics of St Andrew, who has become the patron saint of Scotland.
It tells the story that in 357 A. . C D. , some 297 years after Galilean fisherman Andrew, one of the 12 disciples of Jesus Christ, was crucified by the Romans in Patras, Greece, an angel told the Greek monk St Regulus in a dream that he had to take the hidden relics. Andrew “to the ends of the earth” to protect himself, and wherever he digs up, builds a sanctuary.
With the saint’s right hand, the upper bone of an arm, a patella and one of his teeth, and accompanied by 17 priests and 3 nuns, St Regulus was shipwrecked in St Andrews Bay, where he was stranded on the shores of the time. colony that would be St Andrews, taking refuge in what would be St Rule’s Cave.
Historians have long assumed whether St Regulus had been collected and supported through the king of the local Picts or whether the relics had been brought to Britain in 597 AD. C. as a component of Augustine’s mission, and then to Fife in 732 a. C. through Bishop Acca of Hexham. , a well-known collector of devoted relics.
What cannot be discussed, however, is that a monastery was built in St Andrews to space out the relics, and in 1070 King Robert I ordered the structure of St Regulus Church with the largest St Andrews Cathedral to be built later.
The 33-metre-high tower of St Rule Church in St Regulus, built through culde monks, still exists more than 4 centuries after all the lines of the Scottish relics of St. Andrew were destroyed by the Reformation.
This ended the role of St Andrews Cathedral as the centre of Christianity in Scotland and a pilgrimage position in the Middle Ages.
However, the call of St Andrew lives through the call of the city of Fife, through his prestige as patron saint of Scotland and across the bridge depicting the death of his martyr through crucifixion on a unique X-shaped cross.
Only Scotland celebrates St Andrew: Russia, Romania, Barbados, Georgia, Ukraine and Greece are also among the countries of the world that also show favoritism.
Peter Herron, 46, is Peter Herron, 46.
The cartoonist, illustrator, graphic designer and has been living in Bucharest’s Pantelimon district for six years with his Romanian-born wife Anca Banaseanu, 39.
Growing up in St Andrews, the alumni of Langlands Primary and Madras College spent many afternoons on the rocks of Castle Sands exploring its many nooks and crannies.
But while Scotland’s arrangement is related to the relics brought to St Andrews, Romania has a much more direct and oblique bond.
“St Andrew is credited with Christianity in Romania, yet, as in the most Christianized countries, the integration of the new faith would be in the devout Dacean and pagan ideals of the time to facilitate the transition,” Peter says.
“After the adoption of Christianity, Saints Peter and Andrew are the patron saints of wolves, thus linking this symbol already engraved in the Romanian spirit to the new deities.
Peter says that even in the Romania of the century, many Romanians still cling to the old pagan rituals, now Christianized.
Despite Nicolae Ceausescu’s policy of forcing Rural Romanian communities to use concrete blocks, wheat, barley, wisin and, of course, garlic remain of paramount importance to St Andrews.
An unmarried grain of wheat is placed in the soil and the duration of the root that grows there correlates with the prosperity of the following year.
“Although there are now a maximum of short farm animals, the ritual of making drinks from millet or wheat still has meaning because the idea that if you make the drink and share it with your neighbors, the milk produced through everyone would be healthy, “he says. .
However, as Bram Stokers’ maximum Dracula readers might expect, garlic has a unique power.
“On the night of St Andrew’s birthday party, Romanians historically say that this is one of the events in which the spirits of the dead can roam freely, either to chase, to harm, or to both.
“They would take the soft bulbs and rub them in front of any access point in a house, whether it’s a door, a window or a door. The test of the wandering spirits would not be damaged until the first chicken sings!
St Andrews is also the patron saint of Russia, and even in the Grand Palace of the Moscow Kremlin there is a St Andrews Hall, the ancient throne hall of the tsars, where at the top of the ceiling there are shots adorned with St Andrew on his cross.
Dr. Dmitry Fedosov, of the Moscow Institute of World History at the Russian Academy of Sciences, told the Post Office that november 30 was not widely celebrated in Russia, with the imaginable exception of some Orthodox believers.
However, it is held through the Caledonian Club of Moscow of which he is a member.
The flag of the club is part of the Scottish saltir and part of the Russian naval flag, which the saltire.
“The Russian naval flag brought through Peter the Great, defected through communist rule and recently restored through the Russian government,” says Dmitry, who is a regular guest at Dundee and a big Dundee United fan.
“It features the blue-on-white sweater, an exact mirror of the Scottish national banner. This is the case with a fortuitous resemblance.
“St Andrew, of course, is our not unusual pattern, and the opening passage of the venerable Declaration of Arbroath states that the Scots came here from the Great Scythus, that is, the steppes of southern Russia (or present-day Ukraine) would have preached the Apostle. “
Dmitry recently published for publication the oldest statutes of the Scottish Order of St. Andrew, dated 1720, but dating from its foundation in 1698 through Tsar Peter the Great.
Dmitry says the question is not whether there was a Scottish influence, but who was the tool of that influence when the Cross of St Andrew became a national feature in Petrine Russia.
“Among the circle of vital Scots surrounding Peter the Great,” he says, “I would recommend General James Daniel Bruce, whose parents in Clackmannan were ardent Jacobites, and an armor expert, not to mention the fact that he himself wore the Star of St. Andrew, and the jumper is the greatest rhythm of the Bruce Shield.
“The Scottishman of great influence in the court of Tsar Peter also included his leading adviser, General Patrick Gordon of Auchleuchries (1635–1699).
There is also Major General Paul Menzies, Admiral Thomas Gordon, Professor Henry Farquharson, who taught mathematics and navigation in Moscow and St. Petersburg, the head of Russian medicine and the tsar’s non-public physician, Dr. Robert Erskine, and many others.
Billy Kay, based in Newport and an announcer, approached the Caledonian Club in Moscow while in Moscow to gather curtains for an exhibition in 2015.
It was then that he learned of the astonishing story of infantrymen on the Georgian-Russian border by making a Flower of Scotland song with a historian and one of the border guards quoting the Arbroath Declaration in Russian.
Billy is fascinated, however, by the ties between the cross of St. Andrews and the Americas.
In the southern United States, the jumper was connected to the Red War Flag of the Confederacy, which is now, unfortunately, related to right-wing groups.
“It was probably for Sir Walter Scott that because of his Scottish and Scottish heritage they chose this flag,” Billy says.
Billy has already interviewed John McGhie of Perthshire, whose father, the Reverend William McGhie, came here to draw the flag of a proud and independent Jamaica and in his beloved Scottish sweater.
With at least 25 million American Scots, St Andrews corporations are also incredibly popular.
Last November, Billy won the prestigious Mark Twain Award at the New York State St Andrew’s Society’s 263rd anniversary banquet in popularity for his efforts to “help the Scottish network look to the future, identify paths to good fortune and a vision. “
But, as a football enthusiast, Billy likes the story of Scot Alexander Watson Hutton, nicknamed “the father of Argentine football,” who brought football to St Andrews Scotch School in Buenos Aires in 1882.
Two years later, Glasgow, which had Fifer parents, established Buenos Aires English High School and an old team of academics founded in 1898; which has become known as the senior athletic club.
After being a successful manager and referee, Hutton reinstated the Argentine Football League Association, the oldest known league, along with the UK, and its president.
In the early years, two groups called St Andrews and the former Caledonians, either with jumping on their T-shirts, competed for the name with thirteen numbers each. A tiebreaker was ordered and St Andrews won the fit 3-1.
Former North East FIfe MP Stephen Gethins, now a professor of foreign relations practice at the University of St Andrews, is very interested in how St Andrew is helping to connect Scotland with friends and partners around the world.
Having noticed first-hand the connections between Ukraine and Russia, he recalls taking the ferry from Brindisi in Italy to Patras in Greece, a student remained between the rails.
He was fired from the ship and entered the city where Andrew was executed.
In the beautiful churches that carry Andrew’s call in the city, you can see some of his other surviving relics where he served as bishop and was martyred through the Romans.
Stephen visited sint-Andrieskerk Church, St Andrews, located in Antwerp.
“If you look very carefully, locate a small portrait of Mary, Queen of Scotland,” she says. “Two of his bridesmaids fled to Antwerp after their execution, where they prayed in the church and are also commemorated there.
“Even in the Holy Land, it will locate the Scots connection to St Andrews.
“On the shores of the Sea of Galilee is the Church of St Andrews, a church in the ancient city of Tiberius that welcomes Scots and those from around the world overlooking the position where Andrew was a fisherman.
“In Jerusalem, overlooking the city walls, you can take a moment to quietly reflect on St Andrews Scots Memorial Church in Jerusalem.
“The church was built to commemorate the Scottish infantrymen who died in the war and would evoke photographs of a Highland castle, although when I was there, it was a quiet reflected image position away from the traffic and heat of Jerusalem in the upper summer. “