The relics of St. Andrew, Prince of Smolensk, were translated on this day in the sixteenth century. A year ago today, in the early morning, I was traveling by U-Bahn to Vienna’s Third District to St. Nicholas Cathedral in time for an 8 a.m. liturgy. I happened to be in Vienna on my namesday because of the relocation of my family there from Moscow. Then, the host, Bishop Aleksei, generously received me for tea, which gradually progressed into lunch. This year, I celebrated in Jordanville, and was grateful to be home. My patron saint, Saint Andrew, lived in the fourteenth century. This was a dark time when all Russian principalities existed semi-independently from the Great Principality of Vladimir (the principal collector of tributes for the Mongols). The identity of the people was highly localized. The Smolensk principality in the fourteenth century was subdivided among seventeenth princes. The Russian church scholar Archbishop Philaret (Gumilevskii, d.1866) believed that St. Andrew was the son of Prince Theodore the Blind, who went from Smolensk to Tver. His assumed son, Andrew, disappeared following the pattern of the life of St. Alexis, the Man of God. In 1360, a stranger came to Pereiaslavl and settled at St. Nicholas Church at the city gates. Shortly afterward, he started to function as an acolyte (paramonarios). He died around 1390, about the same time as the Venerable Abbot of the Russian Land, Sergii of Radonezh (1392). However, I wonder if St. Andrew ever traveled 53 miles (84 km) between Pereiaslval and Radonezh. When he died, chains (verigi) were found along with a golden chain, a symbol of dignity, and the note: “I am Andrew, one of the princes of Smolensk. Because of my brothers' envy and plotting (kramola), I left my rule, home, and everything.” The Grand Prince of Moscow, Ivan III, the grandfather of Ivan IV, took the golden chain in exchange for the annual material support of the church (ruga). The service for St. Andrew was composed about the same time. However, as if the saint wanted to remain in oblivion, his veneration was abandoned by the early-mid sixteenth century. At this time, Venerable Daniel of Pereiaslavl, a native of Pereiaslavl, told Grand Prince Ivan IV about the saint and received permission to examine his relics. They found them covered and well preserved in a chrism-like substance. Perhaps it was a mistake to begin the restoration of St. Andrew’s veneration through the civil rather than the church authorities. When St. Daniel reported his discovery, a commission from Moscow refused to recognize St. Andrew as a saint despite the healing of three sick persons at the time of the unearthing of the remains. As a result, they were reinterred. The final glorification of St. Andrew took place as a part of the work on collecting saints’ lives conducted by St. Makarii, Metropolitan of Moscow (d. 1563). The second translation of St. Andrew’s relics took place in 2000. I am humbled to be named after such a luminary, even if most people send me greetings on the feast of another Andrew, the First-Called Apostle. Source: Hegumen Andronik (Trubachev), E.V.Romanenko, “Andrei Pereiaslavskii,” Pravoslavnaia Enstiklopedia. |
