Pegenlic or fl¾sclic: The Old English Prose Legends of St. Andrew

Scott DeGregorio, University of Michigan at Dearborn

With the coming of a Christianity nourished on Roman liturgical custom, the Anglo-Saxons inherited a system of devotional practices centered on the cults of those saints already venerated in the Western Church.1 While native English saints' cults soon developed and prospered, it was the major saints of the Church whose cults had been brought over by the Roman missionaries that were the most popular, and of these, the cult of the apostle Andrew occupied an important place.2 The knowledge that Pope Gregory the Great had held this first-called of apostles and brother of St. Peter in high esteem, dedicating to him his monastery on Mount Coelius (from which no less than Augustine of Canterbury himself was dispatched to head up the English mission), must surely have fueled Andrew's cult early on, and probably had something to do with the devotion that Bishop Wilfrid is known to have paid him.3 In the later period, this apostle's popularity is expressed in the calendars and other liturgical books as well as in Latin writings such as the lives of St. Dunstan, all four of which tell of his devotion to Andrew.4