St. Andrew of Crete

According to J. M. Neale's headnote, Andrew was born at Damascus about 660 and embraced the monastic life at Jerusalem, whence he sometimes takes his name. He was sent on church business to Constantinople, where he became a Deacon of the Great Church and Warden of the Orphanage, and under Philippicus Bardanes (711–714) he was raised to the Archbishopric of Crete. He took part in the synod of 712 that condemned the Sixth Oecumenical Council, but later returned to the faith of the Church, and he died on the island of Hierissus, near Mitylene, about 732.

Neale calls the Great Canon, sung right through on the Thursday of Mid-Lent week, his most ambitious composition, and praises his Triodia for Holy Week and his varied Idiomela. This file gives Neale's four versions from Hymns of the Eastern Church (1862), including a portion of the Great Canon, 'Whence shall my tears begin?'. The portrait is a sixteenth-century fresco icon, not a likeness.