4th or 6th century; feast also October 17. The real story of Saint Rule
is uncertain. There was no "vita"
before the 9th century. Some it seems confuse this abbot with a Greek
monk, also named Regulus, who is said to have brought relics of
Saint Andrew (f.d. November 30)
to Rigmond, Scotland, thus founding Saint
Andrews.
The tradition relates that Saint Regulus was born in Patras and led by a
dream to take some of the relics in his care to an unknown destination
to which an angel would lead him. He followed the angel to Fife, where
he built a church to house the relics of Saint Andrew. (The rest of the
relics were taken to Constantinople.)
In fact, the relics were acquired by a Pictish king, who founded the
city, in 736; the abbot at that time was the Irish Tuathal.
Regulus is the patron of Kylrewni and is commemorated in the Aberdeen
Breviary
(
Attwater2,
Benedictines,
Farmer,
Montague).
St Rule And The Foundation of St. Andrew's 4th Century
The medieval legend tells us that a Greek monk had a vision in 345,
warning him that the first Christian Emperor Constantine was intending
to remove the relics of St. Andrew, the first-called of the Apostles,
from Patras, the place of his martyrdom, to Constantinople, the new
eastern capital of the Empire. This monk, called Rule, or Regulus,
considered that the vision gave him commission to take some of the
relics to the west,
to the utmost region of the world
, and so he took
from the Apostle's shrine an arm-bone, three fingers of the right hand,
a tooth and a knee-cap. He set forth with a company of devout men and
women, and after a perilous voyage, landed at a place called Kilrymount
in Scotland. There he built a church to house the relics in thanksgiving
for their survival.
Now comes a difficulty, because the legend goes on to tell how a king of
the Picts, Angus MacFergus, also had a vision of St. Andrew, promising
him victory in battle. Angus in gratitude donated the land round the
settlement founded by Regulus and declared that the church he had built
should be the head and mother of all the churches in the kingdom. This
puts the foundation of St Andrews four hundred years later, in the
eighth century.
It has been suggested that Regulus did establish a community at this
place and that the relics were introduced during the reign of Angus,
being brought from Hexham by St. Acca, who was forced to leave his
diocese in 732. Hexham had been founded by St. Wilfrid, and it is
recorded that he had obtained relics of St. Andrew for his church there.
Mention of the relics both of St. Andrew and St. Regulus are found from
this time, and the bishopric was transferred from Abernethy to St
Andrews in 908
(
Bowen).
St Rule's Tower where his relics rest
http://www.saint-andrews.co.uk/Tour/tower.htm