Historical Context
Andrew lived during the first phase of Byzantine Iconoclasm, when the emperor Constantine V Kopronymos ordered Christians, under penalty of death, to remove the holy icons from their churches and homes. Those who resisted and held to the traditions of the Fathers were imprisoned.
According to his life, when Andrew heard that the emperor was throwing virtuous and pious Christians into prison in place of thieves and robbers, he went to the Church of the Great Martyr Mamas in Constantinople and publicly denounced the emperor for persecuting the true faith.
Confession and Martyrdom
The synaxarion relates that the emperor, attempting to justify himself, said that it was folly to venerate wood and paint. Andrew replied that whoever suffers for the holy icons suffers for Christ, and whoever reviles the icon on which Christ is depicted offers insult to Christ Himself.
Enraged, the emperor ordered Andrew tortured without mercy. As he was being dragged through the streets to the place of execution, his feet were cut off, and he died of his wounds. By tradition he was executed in the Forum Bovis (Forum of the Ox) in Constantinople, around 766 or 767.
Veneration and Legacy
About a hundred years after his death, a canon in his honor was written by Saint Joseph the Hymnographer (commemorated April 4), one of the foremost liturgical poets of the Eastern Church and himself an opponent of iconoclasm. This connects the martyr's veneration to the broader hymnographic tradition that flourished after the restoration of the icons.
A monastery dedicated to him, Saint Andrew in Krisei, once stood in Constantinople; the building survives today as the Koca Mustafa Pasha Mosque in Istanbul.
Modern scholarship treats the historical figure with caution. Brubaker and Haldon (Byzantium in the Iconoclast Era, 2011) note that the figure of Andrew of Crete, like those of many iconophile saints said to have lived under iconoclasm, is unverified.
Traditional Accounts
By tradition, Saint Andrew is invoked for the healing of those afflicted with seizures.
