Happy Saint George’s Day!

Saint George, the patron of England, was most likely born in the third century in Cappadocia Province (eastern Turkey), which was part of the Roman Empire. He was raised Christian, became an officer in the Roman military under Diocletian, and was executed in 303 CE during a major sweep to eradicate religious minorities and make Rome great again, known as the Diocletian persecution. The exact date of his death isn’t really known, but has been determined to be April 23, which became his feast day.

He has been venerated since at least the 5th century, possibly earlier, and has been adopted as a patron of dozens of places, with multiple churches in the Middle East claiming to possess his relics. He was “discovered” by English knights fighting the crusades in the late 11th century, who believed that he and a couple of other supernatural soldier-saints fought with them and led them.

It was also around this time that a red cross on a white background became known as St. George’s cross, which was adopted as the flag of England sometime in the 14th century, possibly when King Edward III formed the Order of the Garter under the patronage of St. George in 1348.

Stories about St. George slaying a dragon date from the 11th century. The gist is that a dragon was terrorizing the city of Silene, Libya, demanding a blood sacrifice first of sheep and then of humans. No one has explained how the dragon communicated this demand, nor how George happened to be in Libya at this (or any) time, but when it was the king’s turn to give up his daughter to feed the bloodthirsty beast, George rescued her and killed the dragon. And everybody in the kingdom converted to Christianity. Boom!

The earliest depictions of this dragon in art showed it as very serpentlike and wingless. By the late Middle Ages it had wings and resembled a giant lizard or dinosaur, like we usually imagine a European-style dragon these days.

However, Don’t Forget . . .

“Always be polite to dragons,” said Princess Cimorene to her son, Daystar, in Talking to Dragons by Patricia Wrede

(Lead image: Saint George on Horseback, by Albrecht Dürer, ca 1504, Museum of Fine Arts Boston)