St. George - England's Patron Saint
St. George
by Michael Collins MA (Oxon) MPhil
In this short essay compiled from secondary sources, I have  identified three main themes:
the historical St George
the growth and influence of legends about him in England
the place of St George in English history, literature and       institutions
Because the themes are interrelated and affect each other, I present  them chronologically.
St George is the patron saint of England and among the most famous  of Christian figures. But of the man himself, nothing is certainly  known. Our earliest source, Eusebius of Caesarea, writing c. 322,  tells of a soldier of noble birth who was put to death under  Diocletian at Nicomedia on 23 April, 303, but makes no mention of his  name, his country or his place of burial. According to the apocryphal  Acts of St George current in various versions in the Eastern Church  from the fifth century, George held the rank of tribune in the Roman  army and was beheaded by Diocletian for protesting against the  Emperor's persecution of Christians. George rapidly became venerated  throughout Christendom as an example of bravery in defence of the poor  and the defenceless and of the Christian faith.
George was probably first made well known in England by Arculpus  and Adamnan in the early eighth century. The Acts of St George, which  recounted his visits to Caerleon and Glastonbury while on service in  England, were translated into Anglo-Saxon. Among churches dedicated to  St George was one at Doncaster in 1061. George was adopted as the  patron saint of soldiers after he was said to have appeared to the  Crusader army at the Battle of Antioch in 1098. Many similar stories  were transmitted to the West by Crusaders who had heard them from  Byzantine troops, and were circulated further by the troubadours. When  Richard 1 was campaigning in Palestine in 1191-92 he put the army  under the protection of St George.
Because of his widespread following, particularly in the Near East,  and the many miracles attributed to him, George became universally  recognized as a saint sometime after 900. Originally, veneration as a  saint was authorized by local bishops but, after a number of scandals,  the Popes began in the twelfth century to take control of the  procedure and to systematize it. A lesser holiday in honour of St  George, to be kept on 23 April, was declared by the Synod of Oxford in  1222; and St George had become acknowledged as Patron Saint of England  by the end of the fourteenth century. In 1415, the year of Agincourt,  Archbishop Chichele raised St George's Day to a great feast and  ordered it to be observed like Christmas Day. In 1778 the holiday  reverted to a simple day of devotion for English Catholics.
The banner of St George, the red cross of a martyr on a white  background, was adopted for the uniform of English soldiers possibly  in the reign of Richard 1, and later became the flag of England and  the White Ensign of the Royal Navy. In a seal of Lyme Regis dating  from 1284 a ship is depicted bearing a flag with a cross on a plain  background. During Edward 111's campaigns in France in 1345-49,  pennants bearing the red cross on a white background were ordered for  the king's ship and uniforms in the same style for the men at arms.  When Richard 11 invaded Scotland in 1385, every man was ordered to  wear 'a signe (sic) of the arms of St George', both before and behind,  whilst death was threatened against any of the enemy's soldiers 'who  do bear the same crosse or token of Saint George, even if they be  prisoners'.
The fame of St George throughout Europe was greatly increased by  the publication of the Legenda Sanctorum (Readings on the Saints),  later known as the Legenda Aurea (The Golden Legend) by James of  Voragine in 1265. The name 'golden legend' does not refer to St George  but to the whole collection of stories, which were said to be worth  their weight in gold. It was this book which popularized the legend of  George and the Dragon. The legend may have been particularly well  received in England because of a similar legend in Anglo-Saxon  literature. St George became a stock figure in the secular miracle  plays derived from pagan sources which continued to be performed at  the beginning of spring. The origin of the legend remains obscure. It  is first recorded in the late sixth century and may have been an  allegory of the persecution of Diocletian, who was sometimes referred  to as 'the dragon' in ancient texts. The story may also be a  christianized version of the Greek legend of Perseus, who was said to  have rescued the virgin Andromeda from a sea monster at Arsuf or  Jaffa, near Lydda (Diospolis), where the cult of St George grew up  around the site of his supposed tomb.
In 1348, George was adopted by Edward 111 as principal Patron of  his new order of chivalry, the Knights of the Garter. Some believe  that the Order took its name from a pendant badge or jewel  traditionally shown in depictions of Saint George. The insignia of the  Order include a Collar and Badge Appendant, known as the George. The  badge is of gold and presents a richly enamelled representation of St  George on horseback slaying the dragon. A second medal, the Lesser  George, also depicting George and the dragon, is worn attached to the  Sash. The objective of the Order was probably to focus the efforts of  England on further Crusades to reconquer the Holy Land. The earliest  records of the Order of the Garter were destroyed by fire, but it is  believed that either in 1348 or in 1344 Edward proclaimed St George  Patron Saint of England. Although the cult of St George was suppressed  in England at the Reformation, St George's Chapel, Windsor, completed  in stages from 1483 to 1528, has remained the official seat of the  Order, where its chapters assemble. The Monarch and the Prince of  Wales are always members, together with 24 others and 26 Knights or  Ladies Companion.
Much later, in 1818, the Prince Regent, later George IV, created  the Most Distinguished Order of St Michael and St George to recognize  exemplary service in the diplomatic field. The Order was founded to  commemorate the British protectorate of the Ionian islands and Malta,  which had begun in 1814. Originally membership was limited to  inhabitants of the islands and to Britons who had served locally. In  1879 membership was widened to include foreigners who had performed  distinguished service in Commonwealth countries. The Order was  reorganized by William 1V into three classes: Knight Grand Cross  (GCMG); Knight Commander (KCMG); and Companion (CMG). Nowadays there  are women members of each class with the title 'Dame'. The medal of  the Order shows St George and the Dragon on one side, and St Michael  confronting the Devil on the other with the inscription,'auspicium  melioris aevi' ('augury of a better age'). The Chapel of the Order is  St Paul's Cathedral.
Saint George is a leading character in one of the greatest poems in  the English language, Spencer's Faerie Queene (1590 and 1596). St  George appears in Book 1 as the Redcrosse (sic) Knight of Holiness,  protector of the Virgin. In this guise he may also be seen as the  Anglican church upholding the monarchy of Elizabeth1:
But on his breast a bloody Cross he bore
The dear remembrance of his dying Lord,
For whose sweet sake that glorious badge we wore
And dead (as living) ever he adored.
The legend of St George and the dragon took on a new lease of life  during the Counter Reformation. The discoveries in Africa, India and  the Americas, in areas which maps had previously shown as populated by  dragons, presented vast new fields for Church missionary endeavour,  and St George was once again invoked as an example of danger faced and  overcome for the good of the Church. Meanwhile, the Protestant author,  John Bunyan (1628-88), recalled the story of George and the Dragon in  the account of the fight between Christian and Apollyon in Pilgrim's  Progress (1679 and 1684).
The cult of St George was ridiculed by Erasmus after his visit  (sometime between 1511 and 1513) to the saint's shrine at Canterbury,  where the supposed arm of George attracted a large pilgrim traffic.  Edmund Gibbon claimed that St George was originally George of  Cappadocia, the Arian opponent of St Athanasius, but this theory, says  Gibbon's nineteenth-century editor, J.B.Bury, 'has nothing to be said  for it'. Research which established what little we actually know about  the historical George was carried out around the turn of the century  by the Bollandists, a scholarly society within the Jesuits. On the  evidence of fourth century inscriptions found in Syria, one dating  from c346, and the testimony of the pilgrim Theodosius, who visited  Lydda in 530 and is the first to mention the tomb of St George, they  concluded that George had indeed actually existed.
In more modern times, St George was chosen by Baden-Powell, its  founder, to be patron of the Scouting Movement, and on St George's  Day, scouts are bidden to remember their Promise and the Scout Law.  Baden-Powell recounted in Scouting for Boys that the Knights of the  Round Table 'had as their patron saint St George because he was the  only one of all the saints who was a horseman. He is the patron saint  of cavalry, from which the word chivalry is derived'.
In 1940, when the civilian population of Britain was subjected to  mass bombing by the Luftwaffe, King George V1 instituted the George  Cross for 'acts of the greatest heroism or of the most conspicuous  courage in circumstances of extreme danger'. The award, which is  second only to the Victoria Cross, the highest military decoration, is  usually given to civilians and can be given posthumously. The award  consists of a silver cross. On one side is depicted St George slaying  the dragon, with the inscription,'For Gallantry'; on the other appear  the name of the holder and the date of the award. For lesser, but  still outstanding acts of courage, the King created the George Medal.  This also is a silver cross, with on one side the reigning monarch and  on the other St George slaying the dragon. The island of Malta was  awarded the George Cross for its heroism in resisting attack during  World War 11.
Some confusion has arisen from the revision of its Calendar of  Saints by the Roman Catholic Church in 1969. Saints have long been  honoured with different degrees of solemnity. What the Catholic Church  did was to downgrade the recollection of St George to the lowest  category, commemoration, an optional memorial for local observance.  The Church did not abolish St George. Indeed, it maintains a fine  Cathedral named for him, opposite the Imperial War Museum in London.
The reason the Church now simply commemorates St George is that,  although he certainly existed, so little is definitely known about  him. Most of the legends about George are apochryphal and indeed  incredible. The Church has never officially held that these legends  are literally true, but made use of them to illustrate some of its  teachings in times when people were more comfortable with such  materials. As early as 496, Pope Gelasius in De libris recipiendis  includes George among those saints 'whose names are rightly reverenced  among us, but whose actions are known only to God'. The virtues  associated with St George, such as courage, honour and fortitude in  defence of the Christian faith, indeed remain as important as ever. St  George is also, of course, venerated in the Church of England, by the  Orthodox churches and by the Churches of the Near East and Ethiopia.  The supposed tomb of St George can still be seen at Lod, south-east of  Tel-Aviv; and a convent in Cairo preserves personal objects which are  believed to have belonged to George.
St George is still venerated in a large number of places, by  followers of particular occupations and sufferers from certain  diseases. George is the patron saint of Aragon, Catalonia, Georgia,  Lithuania, Palestine, Portugal, Germany and Greece; and of Moscow,  Istanbul, Genoa and Venice (second to St Mark). He is patron of  soldiers, cavalry and chivalry; of farmers and field workers, Boy  Scouts and butchers; of horses, riders and saddlers; and of sufferers  from leprosy, plague and syphilis. He is particularly the patron saint  of archers, which gives special point to these famous lines from  Shakespeare's Henry V, Act 3, Scene 1, l. 31:
'I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game's afoot:
Follow your spirit; and, upon this charge
Cry God for Harry, England and St George!'.
Indirectly, the spirit of George the soldier saint played a part in  modern English history when Sir Laurence Olivier's film of Henry V was  issued in 1944 as an encouragement to our armies fighting for the  liberation of France.
H.Delehaye, Les legendes grecques des saints militaires, Paris 1909
I.H.Elder, George of Lydda, 1949
E. Hoode, Guide to the Holy Land, Jerusalem 1962
G.J.Marcus, Saint George of England, 1939
Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend : Readings on the Saints, Tr.  William Granger Ryan, 2 vols (Princeton: Princeton University Press,  1993)
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