E07877: Gregory of Tours, in his Miracles of the Blessed Apostle Andrew, recounts numerous miracles carried out by *Andrew (the Apostle, S00288) during his lifetime. There is a brief reference to oil and 'manna' produced by his tomb. Written in Latin in Tours (north-west Gaul), 585/594.

Gregory of Tours, Miracles of the Blessed Apostle Andrew (Liber de miraculis beati Andreae apostoli, BHL 430)

The following summary is deliberately brief: most miracles and other incidents are not specified individually. For the prologue in which Gregory explains why he wrote the work, see E07865.

1-2. When the Apostles disperse after the ascension of Christ, Andrew sets out for Greece, while Matthew goes to a place called Mermidona, where the inhabitants blind him and throw him into prison. An angel tells Andrew to go to Mermidona and rescue him. Instructed by the angel, Andrew gets into a ship which he finds on the shore, and sails to Mermidona. He finds Matthew, who at his prayer is healed and released from his bonds. Matthew departs, and Andrew preaches in Mermidona. A crowd seizes and injures him, but at his prayer they repent and are converted. On his return from Mermidona he heals a blind man.

3-17. Andrew travels through the cities of Asia Minor (Amaseia, Sinope, Nicaea, Nicomedia), Thrace (Byzantium, Perinthus), and Macedonia (Philippi, Thessalonica). He carries out miracles of all kinds: including healings, exorcisms, expelling demons from places they inhabited, resurrection of the dead, releasing prisoners, punishing miracles, weather miracles, and controlling earthquakes. He is occasionally protected by an angel. He constantly preaches and converts people in the cities he visits.

18. In Thessalonica the proconsul, Virinus, arrests Andrew and has wild beasts set on him, but they refuse to harm him. In the end Virinus gives up and Andrew goes free.

19-29. Andrew resumes his travels, moving on to Achaea and its cities (Corinth, Patras), continuing to preach and perform miracles.

30-36. In Patras, Andrew heals Maximilla, the wife of Egeas, the proconsul. Maximilla becomes a Christian, angering Egeas. He has Andrew arrested and imprisoned. Crowds come to the prison to hear his teaching, which he never ceases to deliver. After a few days he is taken out of prison, tortured, and crucified. He hangs on the cross for three days, never ceasing to preach, before giving up his spirit, 'which the reading of his passion reveals in full' (quod lectio passionis eius plenissime declarat). Maximilla receives his body and buries it.

37. Gregory recounts a miracle at Andrew's tomb in Patras: manna like flour (manna in modum farinae) and sweet-smelling oil flows from the tomb, and the quantity of oil predicts how fertile the fields would be each year. Gregory states that it is said that once oil ran from the tomb into the middle of the church, 'just as we wrote in our first book of miracles' (sicut in primo Miraculorum scripsimus libro). He has not narrated Andrew's martyrdom in detail because he found that someone else had already written it, usefully and elegantly (quia valde utilitier et eleganter a quodam repperimus fuisse conscriptum).

38. Gregory states that these are the miracles of Andrew, which he has presumed to narrate in an unworthy fashion and in rustic speech. He begs the mercy of Andrew, on whose feast day he was born, and hopes that Andrew will bring it about (obtineat) that he is forgiven for his sins when he faces judgement.

Text: Bonnet 1969. Summary: David Lambert.