This story is inserted in the Kiev chronicle among the story about the settlement of the Russian Slavs. At the mention of the name Polyan, the speech immediately goes to the description of "the way from the Varangians to the Greeks" and vice versa "from the Greeks along the Dnieper to the Varangian sea, and along that sea to Rome". "And the Dnieper flows," it is said here, "into the Ponetsky Sea, the Russian Sea, along which the Apostle Ondrej, the brother of Peter, taught, as if he had decided." Characteristic in the last words is the appearance of a certain skepticism in the author in relation to the transmitted fact, in view of which he hastens to disclaim responsibility for its reliability by vaguely referring to some source. But immediately afterwards he, or rather someone else, his successor, boldly develops the timidly thrown opinion into a whole tale, half touchingly poetic, half completely unaesthetic, even ridiculous. Up. Andrei from the seaside Asia Minor city of Sinop comes to Taurida Korsun. Here he learns that the Dnieper mouth is near and decides to go through it to Rome. By chance ("by God's chance") he stops for the night on a shallow under the upland bank of the Dnieper on the site of the future Kiev. "Rising in the morning," he pointed out to his disciples the nearby mountains, foretold about the great city that would be there and many churches, climbed the mountains, blessed them and put a cross, and then continued his journey to Novgorod, where... marvels at the bath's self-torture, which he tells about when he comes to Rome.

The question of the historical authenticity of the legend will be answered by a historical and literary reference on its gradual development. The Book of the Acts of the Apostles, spreading mainly about only Ap. Paul, remains silent about the fate of the twelve. This circumstance gave rise to the development of a rich apocryphal literature of various "praxis, periodi, martyria, and taumata" in the ancient Christian world, which presented in detail the apostolic labors and feats of many of the 12th and 70th. A whole cycle of such legends has as its subject the preaching of the Apostles Peter, Andrew and Matthew in the country of the Anthropophagi or Myrmidons and in the country of the barbarians. Their antiquity is very venerable. The fact is that all such types of apocryphal literature were used, as an instrument of insinuating propaganda, by numerous Gnostic sects of the first centuries and later by the Manichaeans. And the analysis of the apocryphal legends of the cycle of interest to us from this point of view leads special researchers (Lipsius, Zoga, etc.) 1 to the possibility of attributing even their present redaction to the second century. Under such conditions, the preservation of a grain of historical truth in them is easily permissible. But the question is: how, after isolating the fantastic excesses of narration from these apocrypha, is it possible to correctly interpret their extremely mysterious geographical and ethnic nomenclature? It is not easy to solve it. Any real terminological element of the apocrypha of the first formation in their subsequent history underwent changes that were very unfavorable for historical truth. The abundant heretical filling of the first apocrypha opened up a pretext for their intensified and frequent reworking in the spirit of other doctrines (in an earlier era) and in the spirit of the Orthodox Church (especially in the fifth and sixth centuries); there were also imitations that were non-tendentious in the dogmatic sense. The examples show that in these alterations the rules of historical accuracy were very little cared for, and that there were bizarre metamorphoses with proper names. S. Petrovsky (op. cit), unraveling, under the guidance of authoritative Germans, the meaning of the apocrypha relating to our question, comes to the conclusion that they speak of the preaching of Ap. Andrew, by the way, in the present-day Caucasian countries adjacent to the Black Sea, and even in the lands of the neighboring Azov region. However, it is quite risky to solve this issue without Oriental data. When V.V. Bolotov, armed with these means, in his posthumous "Excursion E" (Christ. Reading, 1901, June) touched on a part of the scientific pattern woven by the Russian researcher, he was hopelessly confused, if not completely disintegrated. It turns out that, in accordance with the linguistic data of the Coptic and Abyssinian legends, the activities of the Apostles Bartholomew and Andrew, instead of the imaginary Black Sea, belong in the purest way to African territory. This example, of course, is not without significance for the future solution of the question posed.

In parallel with the lengthy legends about the missionary journeys of the apostles, brief news also developed in the form of lists, or catalogs, marked with the names of: Hippolytus of Rome (III century), Dorotheus of Tyre (IV century), Sophronius, a friend of Bl. Jerome († 475), and Epiphanius of Cyprus († 403). These catalogues in the surviving redactions are undoubtedly of a later origin than the time of their imaginary authors, and in relation to the news of the missionary domain, in particular Ap. St. Andrew, go back to the original apocrypha and their later ecclesiastical alterations (5th to 8th centuries) as their source. At the same time, the vague apocryphal countries of barbarians and anthropophags are categorically localized in Scythia here, although there is a tendency to see in it not European, but Asian (Caspian) Scythia.

An echo of an independent (non-apocryphal) church tradition is wanted to be seen in Eusebius. "When Sts. the apostles and disciples of Our Saviour," we read in him III, 1, "were scattered throughout the whole world, then Thomas, as the tradition contains, ?? ? ????????? ????????, received Parthia as a lot, Andrew received Scythia... Peter, as is known, preached in Pontus and Galatia... This is said word for word (???? ??????) in Origen in the third part of his commentaries on Genesis." This work of Origen has not survived to us, and to what extent and to what extent the quotation quoted represents a literal excerpt from it, scholars of church literature leave questioned.2 Some see in many authoritative manuscripts of the history of Eusebius a special sign before the word "Peter," and from this conclude that it is only with the news of Peter that the quotation from Origen begins, and the news of Ap. Andrew belongs to Eusebius himself and to the contemporary ecclesiastical tradition (and not to Origen). But the antiquity of the tradition of the fourth century is not so deep that it cannot be explained from the same source we have indicated. However, the letter of Eusebius' text suggests that the quotation from Origen should include all the lines about the apostles, beginning with ?????. Particle?? at the word ?????? ?'?? ????? clearly corresponds to the particle ??? at the word ????? ???, linking these phrases into one period. Consequently, we can date the tradition written down by Origen to the end of the second or the beginning of the third century. Eusebius is repeated: Rufinus ("as it is handed down to us") and Eucherius of Lyons († 449) ("as history tells").

In the eighth, ninth and subsequent centuries, the material accumulated over the centuries in the form of apocryphal and ecclesiastical legends, brief reports and local traditions sown everywhere served as a source for the compilation of new "Acts", "Praises" and "Lives" of the Apostles. Here the missionary activity of Ap. St. Andrew's Cathedral is divided into as many as three preaching journeys, copied from the travels of St. Andrew. Moreover, the First-Called Apostle with complete certainty leads through European Scythia and along the northern and western coasts of the Black Sea passes to Byzantium, where he ordains the first bishop for this city, Stakhios. Of the narrations of the latter kind, the story of the monk Epiphanius3 should be noted, since it contains some elements that later became part of the Russian legend. Epiphanius lived at the end of the eighth and beginning of the ninth centuries, when the burning question of our time was the question of icons. Under the influence of this ecclesiastical interest, Epiphanius, like some other persons of that time, undertook a kind of scholarly and archaeolotic journey through the coastal countries of the Euxine Pontus, in order to study local monuments and traditions concerning the external worship of God in the time of the apostles. Therefore, in his narration about Ap. He carefully noted all the sacred images, altars, temples and crosses, which, according to the stories of the locals, originated from the time of the preaching of the above-mentioned disciple of Christ. Here, among other things, there is more than one mention of "an iron rod with the image of the life-giving cross, on which the Apostle always leaned." Not far from Nicaea in Bithynia, "Blessed Ap. Andrew, having overthrown the vile statue of Artemis, placed there the life-giving image of the saving Cross." Further east, in Paphlagonia, "he chose a place of prayer convenient for the construction of an altar, and consecrated it, erecting the sign of the life-giving cross." This is where both the cross and the staff, which appear in the two versions of the Russian legend, originate. In the monk Epiphanius4, ap. Andrew from the Caucasian countries, without bypassing the Meotic Gulf (Sea of Azov), through the strait (Kerch), comes directly to the Bosporus (Kerch); from here it passes to the Crimean cities of Feodosia and Chersonesos; then he sailed by sea to Sinop and returned to Byzantium. The later Greeks express themselves much more boldly and have a broader idea of the area of missionary activity of Ap. St. Andrew's Church in the north of the Black Sea. Nicetas David of Paphlagonia (con. IX and the beginning of the X century), the famous biographer of Pat. Ignatius, composed a number of rhetorical speeches of praise in honor of the apostles. In the praise of Ap. To Andrew5 he expresses himself thus: "Having received the north as an inheritance, you went around the Iberians and the Sarmatians, the Taurians and the Scythians, every country and city that lies in the north of the Euxine Pontus and which are located in its south" (col. 64). "And so, having embraced with the gospel all the countries of the north and the whole coastal region of Pontus... he approached this glorious Byzantium" (col. 68). From this point of view, the terminology of the ancient apocrypha was now decisively applied to the spaces of southern Russia. Even in the chronicler John Malala (VI century) the name of the Myrmidons ("anthropophagi" of the apocrypha) is applied to the Bulgarians, when they lived near Meotica, i.e. near the Sea of Azov. For Leo the Deacon (X century), Myrmidonia was also there, and the Myrmidons were already considered the ancestors of the Russes, and the possessions of the Russ near the Sea of Azov were called Myrmidonia. "In any case," says V.G. Vasilevsky, "there is not the slightest doubt that in the eleventh century the name of the Myrmidons, along with other names inherited from classical antiquity, served to designate the Russians. Thus, in the Byzantine tradition and literature of the eleventh century there was a great deal of data for the compilation of the circulation of Ap. Andrew.

Byzantium itself needed the legend of Ap. Andrew in such a full development. It was necessary, first, to protect his independence from Roman claims and to prove his equal honesty to Rome; secondly, to ensure for themselves the dominion over all the churches of the East as far as possible. Just as Rome's pretensions and successes were based on the fact that Rome was the seat of the chief apostle, so Byzantium, in order to achieve the first of these goals, wanted to convince the world that it was also a genuine Sedes apostolica, no less, if not greater, than the Roman one, because it was founded by the elder brother of Ap. Peter, the first disciple of Christ. In Nicetas Paphlagoninus we read the following address to Ap. Andrew: "Rejoice, therefore, the first-called and foremost of the apostles, who in dignity is immediately following his brother, and in vocation even older than he, in faith in the Saviour and in doctrine primordial not only for Peter, but also for all the disciples" (sol. 77). Legend claimed that Ap. Andrew made his disciple and successor Stakhios bishop of Byzantium. Someone's caring head also came up with a list of the names of the alleged 18 successors of Stakhios, up to the historically known first bishop of Byzantium, Mitrophan (315-325). In order to achieve the second goal, to secure its dominance over the rest of the Eastern churches, Byzantium took a look at Ap. Andrew, as an apostle of all the East. Characteristic in this respect is the episodic story in the narration of the monk Epiphanius about how the two brothers-apostles shared power over the universe: it fell to the lot of Peter to enlighten the western countries, Andrew – the eastern ones. From this we can conclude that Byzantium willingly supported the legends about the preaching of St. Paul. Andrew in those countries where they existed (Armenia, Georgia) and even tried to instill similar legends in the northern countries (Moravia, Russia), to which her influence extended. That the Byzantines on occasion even directly instilled in the Russians the belief that Ap. Andrey, we have documentary evidence. This is a letter to the Russian prince Vsevolod Yaroslavich, written on behalf of the emperor Michael Doukas (1072-1077) by his secretary, the famous scientist of his time, Michael Psellos, with the aim of matching the emperor's daughter Vsevolod to the emperor's brother. One of the arguments for the closest union of the two courts is the following: "Spiritual books and authentic histories teach me that our states both have one source and root, and that one and the same word of salvation is spread in both, the same witnesses of the divine mystery and its messengers have proclaimed the word of the Gospel in them." It is clear what these words mean.

Thus, Byzantium gave everything that was needed to create a Russian belief about the implantation of Christianity in our country. Andrey. And the Russian legend was not slow to appear. His internal inconsistencies are a journey from the Crimea to Rome through... Ladoga, the belittling of the apostolic dignity, etc., are so great that usually the ironic criticism of Golubinsky here almost reaches sarcasm. But we will not beat a lying man. We will only try to find a possible series of ideas and materials that gave rise to individual components of the legend. First of all, the author must have been vaguely aware of the desert state of the Russian country at the beginning of our era; That is why he leads the Apostle along it only in passing. But where could he direct him along the great waterway, to what famous point of the ancient Christian world? From the Varangians, who had been all over the world, the writer could have heard that, as all roads lead to Rome, so from the Varangian Sea their countrymen know the ways to it. The very direction of the Apostle to the Varangian sea seems to have a connection with the traditions of the Norman north: there is some (unpublished) Icelandic saga about Ap. Andree7; There is also information that in ancient times Ap. Andrew was considered the patron of Scotland.8 The influence of Varangian tales is probably noticed in the story of the Novgorod baths; The plot is typical of the Finnish-Scandinavian North. We have in mind one story of Baltic origin on the same topic and in the same style. It is listed by a certain Dionysius Fabricius (XVI-XVII centuries) in his "Liyonicae histoirae compendiosa series". The story is as follows. Once there was a Dominican monastery Falkenau near Dorpat-Yuriev. The brethren, suffering from a lack of means of subsistence, decided to send a tearful letter to the pope. In it, the Dominicans depict their austere, austere life in food and flesh mortification. Every Saturday they put their flesh in terribly heated baths, scourge themselves with rods and pour cold water on them. The pope was surprised and sent his envoy to personally inquire about the affairs of the monastery. After the treat, he was led into a hotly exhausted bathhouse. When it came time to take a steam bath, the gentle Italian could not stand it: he jumped out of the bathhouse, saying that such a way of life was impossible and unheard of among people. Returning to Rome, he told the Pope about the wonder he had seen ("Reading. in the Obsh. Nest. Chronicle.", book. I, p. 289). A humorous and ridiculous story, very reminiscent of our chronicle. In the story about the Novgorod baths, the Russian southern author obviously had a definite, not particularly lofty goal. Having so beautifully glorified his native Kiev, he, according to the Russian custom of mocking anyone who is not in our village, decided to present the Novgorodians before the apostles in the most ridiculous way. The Novgorodians understood this in this way, because, in response to the Kiev edition of the story, they created their own, in which, without rejecting the glorification of Kiev and completely silent about the baths, they assert that Ap. Andrew "goes down the Volkhov to the boundaries of this great Novagrad and plunges his rod into the ground a little, and from there it is called Gruzino" (15 versts from the Volkhov station, St. Nicholas Railway, Arakcheevskoye estate). This miraculous staff "made of unknown wood" was kept, according to the writer of the Life of Mikhail Klopsky, in his time (1537) in the St. Andrew's Church in the village of Gruzin.

In determining the reason for the compilation of the Russian legend and the time of its entry into the chronicle, we will follow the instructions of an interesting hypothesis by Prof. I.I. Malyshevsky (ор. сіт). The above-mentioned letter of the Greek Emperor Michael Doukas of 1074, which inspired the idea of the preaching of St. Paul. St. Andrew in Russia, found quite intelligent people at the Russian court. First of all, it was the leader himself. Kn. Vsevolod Yaroslavich, who, according to his son, Vladimir Monomakh, "sat at home, knew how to speak five languages", including, of course, Greek, especially since he was married for the first time to a Greek princess. Vsevolod's daughter, Yanka (Anna) – the alleged object of the matchmaking in 1074 – born of a Greek, also probably knew Greek, as can be seen from the following. To obtain and read the "authentic spiritual books and stories" that tell about the apostle. Andrew, they thus had every opportunity. After that, the following fact is remarkable. In 1086, Yanka took monastic vows. Vsevolod builds a church and a monastery for her in honor of Ap. Andrew. In 1089, she traveled to Constantinople to visit her royal relatives, where at that time the former emperor Michael Doukas himself was still living in the Studite monastery; his namesake secretary Psellos, the author of the historical letter, was also alive. As abbess of St. Andrew's Convent, Yanka had strong motives to obtain the most detailed information about the Apostle from the alleged culprits of her interest in his name. Another significant coincidence. Pereyaslavl bishop. Ephraim, who came from a rich family, visited Greece and in particular the Studite monastery, built in his cathedral city in 1089 a church in honor of St. Paul. Andrew. Obviously, the transplantation of the idea of apostolic preaching in Russia from Byzantine soil to Russian soil had already taken place. Only a certain period of time was needed and, perhaps, the nearest reason for dressing the idea in plastic forms.

Such a moment and reason can be seen in the middle of the twelfth century in the disputes about the legality of the installation of Clement Smolyatich, when Constantinople and Novgorod stood up against Kiev, which had to defend its authority and the right to autocratic installation of metropolitans by all possible means. True, during the arguments for the blessing of Ap. Andrei was not exiled. But this legally weak idea, although consoling to the supporters of the Russian party that was finally defeated, might have interested some of them, so to speak, retrospectively, and prompted them to work it out, perhaps even the "great scribe and philosopher" himself, who had been deprived of his cathedra since 1155 and lived long after that, Clement. Characteristically, Novgorod is ridiculed in the legend, and Tsargrad is stubbornly hushed up. Contrary to the Greek sources that cite Ap. In the Russian story, he goes to Rome and from there, in spite of all the journey, does not enter Constantinople, but returns directly to "Sinope". The fact that the legend got into the chronicle may have been around this time, and not much later, is evidenced by the fact of its spread in all the chronicles (except for the Novgorod one, for obvious reasons). And this means that it became an integral part of the chronicle narrative before the moment when the Kievan chronicle, as an all-Russian one, was replaced by frequent chronicles of various parts of the Russian land, i.e. at least before the middle of the thirteenth century. Uk. Publish. Jbeil. No 59 sobr. Weather.; Moscow. Synod. Libraries NoNo 244, 248 and 247.

Один новый исследователь внесение в летопись сказания склонен приурочивать ко времени 1-го (1164 г.) "архимандрита" Киево-Печерского монастыря Поликарпа. Враждовавший с Киевом Андрей Боголюбский был однако покровителем Печерского монастыря и носил имя Андрея, чтимое в его роде от времени вел. кн. Всеволода (Slavia, t III, Прага 1924-25 г. Седельников "Др. Киев, лег. об ап. Андрее"). Если о престиже Киева (против Новгорода и греков) имел основание ревновать Климент Смолятич, то поддержать и продолжить его ревность имел основание и его младший современник, активный составитель Печерского Патерика, арх. Поликарп. Нужно было защитить достоинство Киева в глазах Андрея Боголюбского, хлопотавшего в Константинополе об учреждении у себя в Суздальщине особой митрополии.

Характерна еще одна деталь. В подложных сказаниях об ап. Андрее нет совсем упоминания о Риме. А в летописной повести оно как-то искусственно привязано к лицу апостола, без всякого мотива и содержания. Поэтому не лишена интереса гипотеза только что упомянутого ученого о культивировании этой подробности в латинских кругах Киева, в частности в доминиканских. И разобранные проф. Малышевским легенды о миссионерских подвигах в Киеве доминиканца Яцека (Иакинфа) Ондровонжа (Тр. Киевск. Дух. Акад. 1867 г.), и факты изгнания доминиканцев из Киева в 1233 г. вел. кн. Владимиром Рюриковичем, и сохранение анекдота о банном мытье именно у доминиканцев в Прибалтике, могут косвенно поддержать догадку, что именно им интересна была противо-греческая тенденция через авторитет ап. Андрея связать Киев с первым, а не со вторым Римом.

Проф. А.Л. Погодин (I. VII "Biz. — Slavia, Прага 1937-38 г.) упоминание о Риме считает признаком очень раннего возникновения и написания русской легенды, а именно — до разделения церквей в 1054 г. По его мнению, когда Василевс Михаил Дука (Михаил Пселл) в своем письме ссылался на предание об Андрее, он уже предполагал его известность в Киеве. Проф. Погодин, используя гипотезу проф Приселкова о северокавказской, тмутараканской родине Киевского митр. Иллариона, поставленного на митрополию в 1051 г., ему и приписывает пересадку в Киев легенды (без банного "мовения", конечно) с Кавказа, где она полностью сформировалась и служила как раз в эти века (VIII — XI вв.) идейным орудием для иверийцев (грузин) в их борьбе с греческой (антиохийской) иерархией за их церковную автокефалию. В иверийских легендах повествуется о сокрушении ап. Андреем идолов и водружении на горе возле Пицунды (Питиунт) креста с благословением и предсказанием расцвета здесь христианства — явная параллель киевскому варианту.

Занесенное в летописи, в прологи и в некоторые жития свв. (особенно в эпоху литературной производительности при всероссийском митр. Макарие) предание о хождении ап. Андрея по русской земле постепенно сделалось общерусским верованием. Русские, по свидетельству иностранцев, всегда с уверенностью высказывали его пред всеми, вопрошавшими их о вере. Иван Грозный на предложение иезуита Антония Поссевина унии, по примеру греков, отвечал: "Греки для нас не евангелие. Мы верим Христу, а не грекам. Мы получили веру при начале христианской церкви, когда Андрей, брат ап. Петра, приходил в эти страны, чтобы пройти в Рим. Таким образом мы в Москве приняли христианскую веру в то самое время, как вы в Италии, и содержим ее ненарушимо". Тем же аргументом и с не меньшей энергией защищал самобытность русских церковных обрядов перед греками Арсений Суханов (XVII в.): "веру вы изначала прияли от ап. Андрея, а мы такожде от ап. Андрея". Хотя нужно заметить, что еще в начале XVI в. были русские книжники, не разделявшие этого убеждения. Так, известный старец псковского Елеазарова монастыря Филофей, толкуя одно место из апокалипсиса (12:14), писал о русской земле: "се есть пустыня, понеже святые веры пусти беша, и иже божественнии апостоли в них не проповедаша, но последи всех просветися на них благодать Божия". В одном сборнике XVI в. читаем: "а не бывшу никоторому апостолу в русской земли, но поистине русскому языку милость Божия открыся". А преп. Иосиф Волоколамский в своем Просветителе ставил даже вопрос: почему ап. Андрей не проповедывал христианства в русской земле? и отвечал так: "возбранен бысть от Св. Духа. Его же судьбы бездна многа и сего ради суть сиа несказанна".

С окончательным укреплением в Московской Руси предания о проповеди у нас ап. Андрея, оно возродилось в XVII в. и в Руси Киевской. Его встречаем мы в Палинодии Захарии Копыстенского, вышедшей в 1621 г. В том же году Киевский собор санкционировал это верование и решил установить праздник в честь первозванного апостола. "Поелику", говорят отцы собора, "св. ап. Андрей есть первый архиепископ константинопольский, патриарх вселенский и апостол русский, и на киевских горах стояли ноги его, и очи его Россию видели, и уста благословили, и семена веры он у нас насадил, то справедливым и богоугодным делом будет возстановить торжество и нарочито праздник его. Воистину Россия ничем не меньше других восточных народов, ибо в ней проповедывал апостол". После этого у южноруссов предание об ап. Андрее повторяется довольно часто, и возникают попытки определить место апостольского стояния и водруженного им креста. Сам Петр Великий не усумнился разделять это верование своих подданных, учредив первый в России орден именно в честь Андрея Первозванного снадписью: "Sanctus Andreas Patronas Rossiae". Императрица Елизавета Петровна заложила в Киеве на Андреевской горе церковь в честь Апостола (1744), исполненную энаменитым Растрелли и представляющую шедевр нашего церковного рококо. А в 1832 г. "один археолог-мечтатель, занимавшийся раскопками в Киеве, думал не только с полной точностью определить место водружения креста св. Андреем в фундаменте бывшей Воздвиженской церкви, но и найти остатки самого креста" (Малышевский).