Okay, I know it’s St. George for England, St. David for Wales, and St. Patrick for Ireland. Does Scotland have a patron saint, and if so, who is s/he?
Andrew.
Thank you! That was fast!
Would have been faster but I’d just posted in another thread, and had to wait an interminable sixty seconds!
PATRON SAINT TOPICS - PLACES (catholic-forum.com)
For Scotland, we see:
[ul][li]Andrew the Apostle[/li][li]Columba[/li][li]Margaret of Scotland[/li][li]Palladius[/ul][/li]
But, like Struan said, St. Andrew is the one most commonly mentioned as the patron saint of Scotland.
That’s interesting. I knew St. Columba was associated in some way with the Diocese of Dunkeld, but I didn’t realise St Margaret was associated with Scotland as a whole, and I’ve never heard of Palladius. Perhaps these are purely Catholic things?
Anyway, the official patron saint of Scotland is Andrew.
Andrew is the patron saint of Scotland. But unlike most countries, where the patron saint of the country is also the missionary or king who led the national conversion to Christianity (Patrick in Ireland, Olaf in Norway, Willibrord in the Netherlands, etc.), Columba is “the Apostle to the Scots.” It was his missionary efforts that converted much of Scotland to Christianity.
Andrew had an odd route to becoming patron saint of Scotland: He was apocryphally crucified on an X-shaped cross, the saltire, by a Roman proconsul named Aegeates, allegedly irked because both his brother and his wife had converted to Christianity, and his wife had espoused celibacy, leaving Aegeates understandably frustrated. The saltire thereafter became Andrew’s symbol in religious art.
Continuing the legend, the Picts were facing a superior “English” army (presumably Northumbrian) in 735 AD when they saw a vision of a saltire in the sky above East Lothian. This was followed by their victory in the Battle of Athelstanesford, and Andrew, associated with the saltire, the obvious patron of the Pictish and later the Scottish nation.
Don’t forget St. Mungo: http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/town/plaza/aaj50/mungo.htm
Mentioning Andrew’s death reminds me of taking my Sunday School class down to look at the twelve windows in our cathedral with depictions of the original twelve disciples. I was explaining some of the symbolism(knife for Bartholemew, St. Peter with his foot propped on an upside down cross), and the bloodthirsty little demons suddenly realized that most of the symbols were for rather gruesome deaths! It got them(2nd and 3rd graders) paying a lot more attention. “Ooh, how did this one die?” and so on.
Betcha they gave their parents some interesting questions after, but I never heard anything about it.
I’m slightly confused by the part I bolded above. Wouldn’t all the saint related stuff be purely Catholic things?
Perhaps I should have said specifically Catholic things? I’m not much up on God-stuff, but Andrew is accepted as patron saint by everyone here in a pretty secular fashion - kind of like how St Christopher is a travellers lucky charm.
That makes a little more sense. They’re all derived from the Catholic church, but some have taken on a bit of life of their own. I’m with you now.
The Orthodox (to a man) and some of the grumpier Anglicans would dispute that. In any case, many non-Catholic churches give some recognition to at least some of the saints, just not with the Catholic cultus.
Andrew as the patron saint was ‘obvious’ only in the sense that the story of Athelstaneford - and indeed the battle itself - was invented much later as a retrospective explanation for the choice of Andrew as the Scottish patron saint. The similarity to the battle of the Milvian Bridge is the obvious giveaway.
It was not until the twelfth century and later that the Scots in general claimed Andrew as a patron saint and only then that the various, contradictory explanations emerge, such as the claim that the (probably mythical) St Regulus had brought his bones to Scotland in the fourth century. The great advantage in the Regulus story was that it dated the arrival of Christianity in Scotland to before the mission of Augustine to England, a particularly useful assertion at times when the Scots were trying to resist English claims of overlordship. The Athelstaneford story had an even more obvious anti-English message, which get reinforced with the equally bogus claim that the battle’s victor, Achaius, had founded the ‘Auld Alliance’ by allying with Charlemagne.
However, what was earlier was the specific association of St Andrew and his supposed relics with Kilrymont (the future St Andrews). And there is evidence that in the ninth century Oengus II, the Pictish king sometimes associated with Athelstaneford, built the original church at Kilrymont. So it is not inconceivable that he played some part in the development of the cult there. But, as I say, it was only later that this cult became more than a local one.
Along with Queen Margaret. Or at least in the eyes of the Roman Catholic Church, she is. She was declared the patroness of Scotland by Clement X in 1673.
I suspect that website is a bit confused on this. Palladius is associated only with Ireland, having been the first bishop of the Irish. Doubless this is the old Scoti/Irish confusion.
From the website ( http://www.catholic-forum.com/SAINTS/saintp3f.htm ) :
Personally, I think St Columba gets short shrift. I wouldn’t expect most Protestant Scots to accept Margaret as a patron (or even a saint) since her biggest accomplishment was bringing the Scottish church more in line with Rome.
But then, I have a personal affection for St Andrew, since I was named after him IRL. (Well, not directly–my family’s not very religious, but it was chosen as a good Scottish name.)
Actually, the idea that he ever went anywhere near Scotland is now generally dismissed - so much so that the entry on him in the ODNB doesn’t even bother to discuss it (in contrast to the entry it replaced, which dismissed the evidence for such a claim with near contempt). But I can see that he can count as not so much an honarary Scot as an erroneous one.
APB: “Wha?! Nae true Scotsman wou’d doot the Battle o’ Athelstanesford!” 
Thanks for the clarification. 