Andreas (poem)
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Andreas is an Old English poem found in the late 10th century Vercelli Book, a manuscript containing religious prose and poetry from various sources.
It tells the wild, apocryphal story of Saint Andrew and his journey to rescue Saint Matthew from the cannibalistic Mermedonians.
The 1,722 line poem is the closest of the surviving Old English poems to Beowulf in style and tone, using "heroic" forms of address and battle descriptions. However, Andreas is a Christian hero, not a pagan, and the poem has close affinities with the hagiographical Old English poems Judith (poem) and Juliana (poem). In fact, Andreas seems a surprisingly cowardly and reluctant hero, which suggests the "heroic" style is possibly ironic, at least in certain portions of the poem: God's miracle-working seems to be the real hero.
