Saint George

A poor woman's ox

In his oldest story, a poor woman named Schollastike cried out to George in the street. Her ox had fallen down dead in the field.

George handed her his own staff and told her to lay it on the ox and bid it rise, in his name and the name of Jesus Christ. She did, and the ox stood up at once. She praised God and called George a prophet. His words to her:

“Take this staff from my hands, and go to the field and lay it upon the dead ox”

The dead in the tomb

In his oldest story, a governor swore he would become a Christian if George's prayers could raise the dead of an old rock tomb. The governors opened it and found only dust. George knelt and prayed for an hour.

Lightning flashed on the dust, and five men, nine women and three children stood up. One said he had died more than two hundred years before. They begged George for baptism. He struck the ground, water welled up, and he baptised them. Sent to Paradise, they vanished. But the governors called it magic, and the oath was never kept.

“Depart in peace to Paradise”

A later legend: the dragon

George's best-known story was first written in the 1000s. As the Golden Legend, a book of saints' lives, tells it, a dragon by a city of Libya poisons the people with its breath. They feed it sheep, then their children, chosen by lot. The lot falls on the king's daughter.

George rides by as the dragon charges. He makes the sign of the cross, wounds it with his spear, and has her tie her belt round its neck. She leads it into the city, and the people flee. George promises to kill it if they believe in Christ. The king and his people are baptised, and George cuts off its head.

“the dragon followed her as it had been a meek beast and debonair”

The column at Lydda

At Lydda stood a marble column where George had been tied and flogged, with his likeness carved on it. A rough unbeliever rode in and asked whose face it was. Told it was George's, he drove his lance at it in a rage.

The lance went into the stone as if into snow, and stuck fast. His horse fell dead, and as he fell, his ten fingers sank into the marble as if into clay. Terrified, he begged God and George with tears to free him. God forgave him and set him free. A pilgrim bishop, Arculf, later put his own fingers into the marks.

“as if it were a ball of snow”

The horse he had promised

At Lydda, George's likeness was carved on a marble column in a house. A man riding in to join an army stood before it and promised George his beloved horse, if both came home safe. They did.

But he loved the horse more than gold, so he laid its price, twenty gold coins, before the likeness instead. The horse would not move. He added ten coins at a time until the pile reached sixty. At last he gave in: George could have the horse too. At once it could move. He led it inside, gave it to George before the likeness, and left praising Christ.

“…now I see clearly what thy will is.”

What is certain

The Catholic Encyclopedia of 1909 put everything certain about George in one line, which it called “all that can safely be affirmed about St. George”. It dates his death to before Constantine, the first Christian emperor:

“Martyr, patron of England, suffered at or near Lydda, also known as Diospolis, in Palestine, probably before the time of Constantine.”

The evidence of his tomb

The Catholic Encyclopedia held that George did live, because of the honour paid him at one place from very early times. Pilgrims of the 500s to the 700s found him honoured at Lydda, where his body lay. Ruined churches in Syria, Mesopotamia and Egypt bear old inscriptions to him. It calls such honour a cultus:

“An ancient cultus, going back to a very early epoch and connected with a definite locality, in itself constitutes a strong historical argument.”

The man who tore down the edict

In AD 303 the emperor Diocletian posted his first edict against the Christians at Nicomedia, his capital. The historian Eusebius, who lived through it, says a man of high rank tore it down at once, and was put to death.

Later tellings named him George. But the Catholic Encyclopedia says George “cannot safely be identified” with him, and the old lists of martyrs call the man John. Eusebius tells the deed:

“…seized the edict as it was posted openly and publicly, and tore it to pieces as a profane and impious thing”

A doubter

Wallis Budge, who put George's oldest story into English in 1888, thought it grew from the man who tore down Diocletian's edict, and that each new telling added a new wonder. Of George himself, he wrote:

“As for Saint George the martyr it is very improbable that such a person ever lived.”

Rome, 1969

When Rome revised its calendar of saints in 1969, it dropped some martyrs. It kept George and a few other martyrs honoured far and wide. It gave its reason in one Latin sentence. In our translation:

“Their stories of martyrdom are indeed legendary, but historians have no doubt at all that they lived and died as martyrs.”

Known in Britain by the 700s

Adamnan, abbot of the island monastery of Iona, off Scotland, wrote down a pilgrim's stories of George's marble column at Lydda. The Catholic Encyclopedia thinks this probably made George well known in Britain, early in the 700s. Later Ælfric, an English monk, told his martyrdom in Old English, and England had churches of St George before the Norman Conquest of 1066.

The saints at Antioch

The Crusades made George more popular in the West, says the Catholic Encyclopedia. In 1098 the First Crusade, an army from western Europe marching on Jerusalem, fought a great Turkish army outside Antioch. An eyewitness chronicle says that in the battle countless riders on white horses came down from the mountains, led by the soldier-saints George, Mercurius and Demetrius. The Turks fled, and the crusaders won. The chronicler adds:

“This is to be believed, for many of our men saw it.”

A red cross on white

The first sure sign of George's cross on an English flag is the seal of the town of Lyme Regis, in 1284: a ship flying a plain flag with a cross. In the 1340s King Edward III paid for 86 small flags bearing the arms of St George, his red cross on white, for his own ship, and 800 more for his men.

King Richard II later ordered every soldier invading Scotland to wear “a signe of the arms of St. George” before and behind. It is England's flag today.

The Garter

About 1347 King Edward III founded the Order of the Garter, a company of knights, with George as its chief patron. Its church is St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle, and its badge shows George slaying the dragon. Why George? The Catholic Encyclopedia thought it might be the princess's belt in his dragon legend, a strap much like a garter.

A feast like Christmas

In 1222 a church council at Oxford made 23 April a lesser holiday in England. In 1415 the Archbishop of Canterbury raised it to one of the greatest feasts of the year, to be kept like Christmas Day. The Church of England keeps it today as a Festival for George, “Martyr, Patron of England”.