2020/09/21 by Thomas N. Hall · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · #Historical, Literary, and Cultural Studies #Historical and Religious Studies of Rome #Historical and Archaeological Studies
paper · doi:10.1515/9781501513060-009
openalex publication_date 2020/09/21 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04
A pivotal scene in the Old English Andreas comes at the end of the three-day period during which St Andrew is brutally tortured by Mermedonian cannibals, who scourge him, drag him through the streets, and draw a seemingly endless supply of blood from his body.Throughout the ordeal Andrew remains a model of resolute piety, but on the third and final day his courage begins to wane.Mindful of Christ's words on the Cross, he implores God to deliver him from his suffering.God replies by assuring Andrew that He will protect him from further torment and that in spite of present afflictions, the righteous will triumph over evil at the end of time.Then as a sign that Andrew's suffering has not gone unheeded, God directs him to turn and look at the trail of blood that his enemies have spilled on the ground: "Geseoh nu seolfes swaeðe, swa þin swat aget þurh bangebrec blodige stige, lic<es> laelan; no þe laðes ma þurh daroða gedrep gedon motan, þa þe heardra maest hearma gefremedan."Þa on last beseah leoflic cempa aefter wordcwidum wuldorcyninges; geseh he geblowene bearwas standan blaedum gehrodene, swa he aer his blod aget.(lines 1441-49) 1 "Now behold your own path, where through the breaking of your bones and the bruising of your body, your blood has shed a gory trail.They will not be allowed to do you any more harm by the blows of their spears, those who have performed the most severe injuries to you."Then after the King of Glory's speech, the beloved soldier looked at the path.He saw flowering groves standing adorned with blossoms where he had earlier shed his blood.This miracle marks a decisive turning point in the narrative.From the moment in the story when the devil appears and incites the Mermedonians to rise against him, Andrew's enemies encounter little resistance in their campaign to overpower him.Even though Christ has repeatedly assured him that he has nothing to fear, Andrew's suffering gets worse and worse, and he seems incapable of defending himself.Once he witnesses the eruption of blooming trees from the trail of his blood, however, he quickly recovers his strength and determination and regains the miraculous powers that he displays earlier in the poem.After praising God for coming to his rescue, he returns to prison, where God visits him and heals his wounds; then as sound of body as ever before, he unleashes the flood that subdues his captors and leads to their conversion.One of the curiosities of this passage is that while the version of the apocryphal Acts of Andrew and Matthias which the poet must have based his poem on is apparently lost and we don't know exactly what his source looked like, none of the surviving recensions of this apocryphon in Greek, Latin, Syriac, or Old English even mentions Andrew's blood in its account of this miracle. 2 In the Recensio Casanatensis, the Latin version that is universally agreed to be closest to the poet's presumed source, when God directs Andrew to look behind him, he sees trees spring up not from his blood but from his