he came to the location of present-day Kyiv in AD 55, where he erected a cross and prophesied the foundation of a great Christian city. Belief in the missionary visit of St. Andrew became widespread by the Middle Ages, and by 1621, a Kyiv synod had declared him the "Rus'-apostle". Saint Titus, a disciple of St. Andrew's, is also venerated in Ukrainian churches, as are three "Scythian" disciples, Saints Ina, Pina and Rima, who accompanied him to Kyiv. Both the 18th-century Church of St Andrew and an earlier structure from 1086 it replaced were purportedly built on the very location of the apostle's cross, planted on a hill overlooking the city of Kyiv. Although the Primary Chronicle refers to the apostle continuing his journey as far north as Novgorod, St. Andrew's visit to any of these lands has not been proven, and in fact may have been a later invention designed to boost the autocephalic aspirations in the territories where the upper clergy continued to be dominated by Greeks for several centuries. These first half-legendary Christian churches on the territory of present Ukraine were eliminated by the Gothic invasion in the third century. The head of the "Scythian bishopric" presented at the First Ecumenical Council in Nicaea in 325 probably in fact was Bishop Cadmus from the Bosporan Kingdom. Crimean roots According to a 9th-century tradition, Pope Clement I (ruled 88–98) was exiled to Chersonesos on the Crimean peninsula in 102, as was Pope Martin I in 655. Furthermore, it has been definitively recorded that a representative from the Black Sea area, the "head of the Scythian bishopric", was present at the First Council of Nicaea in 325, as well as the First Council of Constantinople in 381; it has been surmised that this representative would have to have been Bishop Cadmus of the Bosporan Kingdom. Ostrogoths, who remained on present-day Ukrainian lands after the invasion of the Huns, established a metropolinate under the Bishop of Constantinople at Dorus in northern Crimea around the year 400. A bishop's seat had also existed since 868 across the Strait of Kerch, in the ancient city of Tmutarakan. The Polans and the Antes cultures, located so close to the Crimea, surely became familiarized with Christianity by this time. Saints Cyril and Methodius The relics of Pope St. Martin were allegedly retrieved by the "Equal-to-apostles" brothers Saints Cyril and Methodius, who passed through present-day