St George: Hero, Martyr and Myth - Samantha Riches - E-Book

St George: Hero, Martyr and Myth E-Book

Samantha Riches

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Beschreibung

Who was St George and how did he become patron saint not only of England but also of many other European countries? In this richly illustrated book, Samantha Riches explores the extraordinary wealth of myths and legends, art and inspiration that has grown up around the obscure fourth-century Christian martyr. The visual arts of medieval and renaissance Europe bear eloquent testimony to the range of significant cultural roles of St George. A hero and martyr who was venerated as a symbol of chivalry, he was also an emblem of both chastity and fertility, and was a signifier of the power of the urban elite. Using historical, art historical and literary evidence, Riches creates a vivid and compelling narrative, paying close attention to the symbolism of the saint's combat with the dragon and its development as the most significant aspect of his legend and cult. The complex medieval psychology revealed by her study of this motif reveals some astonishing results, not least the implications of the discovery of a number of representations of female dragons.

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The original version of this book was dedicated to the memory of my grandparents and the mixed heritage they bequeathed me: English, Scottish Irish, Romany, Scandinavian, Norman and who knows what else.

In the years that have passed since that publication I have gained a husband and also two grandsons. This new edition is therefore dedicated to my grandparents as before (noting that we probably need to substitute ‘showpeople’ for ‘Romany’) and also to Colin, Ivor and Oisin.

 

 

Front cover image: St George and the dragon woodcut, frontispiece used in Richard Pynson’s printing of Alexander Barclay’s Life of St George, 1515. (Trinity College, Cambridge)

 

First published 2000

This paperback edition first published 2025

The History Press

97 St George’s Place, Cheltenham,

Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© Samantha Riches, 2000, 2005, 2025

The right of Samantha Riches to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 83705 029 1

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ Books Limited, Padstow, Cornwall

Enfors we us with all our might

To love Seint George, our Lady[’s] knight

From a mid-fifteenth-century carol of St George,BM MS Egerton 3307, fol. 63b

Contents

Acknowledgements

Preface

CHAPTER ONEThe Development of the Cult of St George

CHAPTER TWOSt George the Martyr: Torture and Resurrection

CHAPTER THREEThe Virgin’s Knight: St George and the Chivalric Ideal

CHAPTER FOURThe Heavenly Warrior: The Military Saint and Patron of England

CHAPTER FIVEThe Dragon Myth: Light versus Dark

CHAPTER SIXPost-Medieval Themes in the Cult of St George

 

Epilogue: The Afterlife of a Hero

Table 1: Literary Versions of St George’s Legend

Table 2: Tortures in the Literary Versions of St George’s Legend

Table 3: St George and the Dragon

Notes to Tables

Notes

Select Bibliography

Picture Credits

Acknowledgements

Many people have contributed to the completion of this project, some through sharing with me their knowledge of the cult of St George and its associated traditions, others through practical help. My thanks go out to them all; any errors of fact or interpretation are, of course, my own.

Much of the research for this book was carried out during the preparation of my PhD thesis, ‘The La Selle Retable: an English alabaster altarpiece in Normandy’ at the Department of History of Art of the University of Leicester, and my first debt of gratitude must go to my supervisor, Dr (now Professor) Phillip Lindley. He gave freely of his time, advice and enthusiasm, and I have been very lucky to have benefited from his support and experience. I was also fortunate to receive financial assistance for my research from several organisations, particularly the British Academy, the Research Committee of the Arts Faculty Budget Centre at the University of Leicester, and the Richard III and Yorkist History Trust. Intellectual stimulation has been provided by many friends and colleagues at Leicester, most notably Professor Charles Phythian-Adams and Professor Greg Walker; particular thanks are due to Dr Graham Jones whose perceptive comments on an earlier draft of the text have been extremely helpful. I am also indebted to the University of Leicester Library, especially the Inter-Library Loans Department.

I have received valuable assistance from staff at several other libraries and research facilities: the British Library, the Bibliothèque Nationale, the Society of Antiquaries, the Library and Photographic Collection of the Warburg Institute, the Index of Christian Art at Princeton and the Wiltshire Archaeological Society at Devizes. Many other people have also contributed to this project, too many to name individually, but I am pleased to acknowledge the particular help of Professor Colin Richmond, Dr Eileen Scarff, Dr Sarah Salih, Dr Duncan Givans, Dr Wendy Larson, Philip Lankester, Dr Jenny Alexander, Dr Nigel Ramsay, Professor Pamela Sheingorn, Janet Backhouse, Professor Richard Marks, and Hr Palle, the parish priest of Borbjerg, Denmark. Alison Balaam, language assistant in the Department of Classics at Warwick University, provided very generous assistance with translations from Latin. I would like to express special gratitude to Dr Miriam Gill, who has given unsparingly of her time, knowledge and enthusiasm, and whose bibliographical suggestions have proved invaluable. In France I am indebted to Christine Jablonski-Chauveau, Conservator of Antiquities and Objets d’Art of the Eure département, Annick Gosse-Kischinewski and the staff of the Departmental Archives of the Eure at Evreux, and the mayor and community of Juignettes and La Selle.

Practical support was also offered by many friends in the form of hospitality during research trips and the provision of obscure books and other material: Cath Ranzetta and Roger Llewellyn, Annick Toujani, and Brian and Mary Goddard were especially helpful. In many ways the most essential support has been the provision of the childcare which allowed me to carry out my work, and I would like to acknowledge the contribution of Alex Davies in particular.

My editors, Christopher Feeney and Clare Bishop, have been very supportive throughout the process of transforming an academic thesis into a work of more popular history. I have also profited from the assistance of several other individuals and organisations during the additional research undertaken for this book, most notably the Guild of St George, the Royal Commission on the Historic Monuments of England, Dr Julian Eve, Georgia Wilder, and Steve Bell. I am very grateful to correspondents who have contacted me with suggestions for revisions since the publication of the first edition, notably Christopher Stace, Jeremy Harte, Claude Blair and Dr David Woods.

My greatest debt of gratitude is, however, to my long-suffering family. My son Kishon McGuire has accepted changes of home, school and carers with equanimity during my studies, and followed me around the churches, museums and galleries of England and France in search of saints and dragons with (usually) remarkable good humour, throughout the period of my PhD studies and the subsequent writing of this book. My parents, John and Olivia Riches, have offered emotional financial and practical support in many ways, and my former partner, Tom McGuire, similarly contributed to the successful completion of this work. I sincerely hope that all four of them are satisfied that their investment in me, in all its forms, is finally bearing fruit.

This new edition allows me to add some further acknowledgement of those who have supported my thinking about St George in recent years. John Constable and Heather Davis have been especially helpful with inspiration and information; various colleagues at Lancaster University, staff at the National Theatre (London) and the Bode Museum (Berlin), as well as a range of broadcasters, have given me wonderful opportunities to reflect on aspects of my work. Special thanks to the late Sarah Wheeler/Thomas Tobias for introducing me to Mental Fight Club in Southwark. Above all, my gratitude goes to Colin Bertram, who has indulged my research interests for the past two decades and enabled me to extend their geographical and chronological range.

Preface

St George is the archetype of a figure who is instantly recognisable but little understood. In the early years of the twenty-first century his image and emblem are all around us, everyday sights whose true meanings are rarely considered and, when they are, may often seem elusive. He is now invariably shown in combat with a dragon, a motif that frequently appears on items such as coinage and commercial insignia, while his flag, the red cross on a white ground, flutters on church towers and is painted on the faces of soccer fans. He is invoked by English nationalists, even claimed as a native of this country on occasion, and his encounter with the dragon is commonly used as a paradigm of the eternal struggle of good against evil, doubtless in the hope that the saint’s victory indicates that good will eventually prove triumphant. English people are all familiar with the idea of him as their patron saint, their emblematic special protector, but few have any real idea of how and why he came to hold this position in English consciousness.

This book sets out to examine not only the ‘truth’ about St George – who he was, when he lived and what happened to him – but also when and why he came to be recognised as England’s patron saint. Furthermore, it examines the wide range of meanings associated with him during the late medieval period, the time when his role in England’s conception of itself was consolidated. The focus is primarily on the period between 1300 and 1550, a time of huge social, political and religious change across Europe which witnessed events such as the Black Death, a pandemic of the plague that killed between a third and a half of the population of Europe and reached England in 1348, and the Reformation, the theological quarrel sparked off by Martin Luther’s ‘Ninety-Five Theses’ of 1517. These events had far-reaching social, political, religious, economic and psychological consequences, which included such fundamental issues as the end of feudalism and the rise of the middle classes towards one end of our time-frame, and, at the other, the break-up of the established Roman Church and the radical reappraisal of many social mores, such as the importance of marriage and family life. This book obviously does not aim to offer an analysis of these hugely important events, or to present an overview of the changing dynamics of English society and religious beliefs during these years. However, it must be recognised that the cult of St George did not develop, and could not have developed, inside a vacuum. Individuals’ devotion to this saint was undoubtedly affected by these far-reaching historical changes: part of the function of a saint is surely to act as a steadfast figure of refuge, offering the hope of intervention or succour during the trials of human existence. Thus large-scale events such as wars, outbreaks of disease, the deaths of monarchs and religious and social changes form a kind of backdrop – seldom referred to yet present none the less – to the much smaller-scale narrative played out in these pages.

Some developments do play a more important role, however, and of these we should perhaps make special note of the rise of lay literacy, which is now recognised as an important aspect of the later Middle Ages. To a great extent this phenomenon seems to have been a concomitant of the development of an educated, and relatively affluent, middle class who were able to indulge both their pieties and their ostentation through the purchase, display and use of Books of Hours and other devotional manuscripts. An ability to read (although not necessarily also to write) opened up a whole world of religious possibilities to the devout lay man or woman, since reverence of God, in all his forms, the Virgin Mary and the saints no longer needed to be mediated through a priest. Rather, we encounter for the first time a clear desire of people outside the cloister to form a personal relationship with the objects of their veneration as well as the increasing availability of means by which this could be achieved.

In the early medieval period God had often seemed to be a remote and rather threatening figure of majesty and wrath, but as the later Middle Ages developed it is clear that new forms of devotion were arising within the Roman Church which encouraged a view of Christ as truly human as well as truly divine. Perhaps the most significant aspect of this trend was the movement now known as ‘mariolatry’, a cult that identified the Virgin Mary as a figure of importance in her own right, rather than simply as a convenient functionary of God the Father. By identifying the Virgin as a human being, albeit a perfect one conceived – according to the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception – without the stain of Original Sin, late medieval people were able to approach their God in the knowledge that this human intercessor would help their case if only they called on her with sufficient fervour and proved their devotion through prayers, pilgrimages, the veneration of her images and the giving of alms in her name. Saints could also be called upon to aid their human devotees, particularly when an individual saint was identified as being powerful healer in cases of a specific disease, for example. The possibility of visiting conveniently located relics would undoubtedly have encouraged the cults of particular saints, but it will become clear that other factors seem to have been at work as well.

Another important development in late medieval society which should also be borne in mind is the rise of the guilds – groupings of lay people, sometimes retaining their own priest – which originally were purely religious in nature but soon came to be important in the control of both trade and civic government. The guilds were often, but not always, associated with a patron saint: as we shall see, the role of St George guilds seems to have been crucial in the urban social scene.

The conclusions suggested by this survey of St George’s appearances in late medieval literature, historical sources and the visual arts are often surprising and sometimes unsettling, with apparently conflicting readings occurring with disconcerting regularity. We can perhaps view the cult of St George as indicative of late medieval society as a whole: many-layered and multifaceted, with an ability to give easy credence to apparently contradictory ideas. In the manner of Lewis Carroll’s White Queen, believing six impossible things before breakfast was perhaps less of a challenge to the fifteenth-century English man or woman than it would be to a modern person, especially when those beliefs appear to be set up in opposition to each other. Hence St George will be considered in these pages as symbolic of both fertility and chastity; as a tortured martyr oppressed by a heathen ruler as well as a figure of noble authority; as a symbol of English nationhood in general but also a representative of quite discrete parts of English society. Even his very identification as the patron saint of this country is questioned, with an examination of his special relationship with several other countries and peoples.

The book opens with an examination of the earliest sources on St George and an overview of the ways that his legend and cult develop throughout the medieval period. This is followed by a detailed appraisal of those aspects of the saint’s life and legend which seem to have been most salient to late medieval people, and we end with a review of post-medieval developments in the cult of St George in England and beyond. The ultimate aim is to facilitate a deeper understanding of this saint’s position in the English psyche, while also uncovering some of the ways in which late medieval societies seem to have used religious figures as a vehicle for exploring aspects of their own lives and belief systems. We should, however, venture at the outset of this study to ask a few questions about the very nature of such an inquiry, and to define our terms of reference.

The study of sainthood is a field beset with difficulties. No aspect of it is without controversy, particularly when the modern-day writer seeks to reconstruct the mind-set of long-dead individuals and communities by utilising what may seem to amount to little more than a few oblique references in obscure texts or artworks. Even the very nature of what may and may not be discussed is open to debate: is hagiography, the writing and rewriting of a saint’s life and supposed miracles, something that says more about the concerns of the individual writer and his or her community than about the ‘facts’ of a saint’s existence? Is the search for the original, or ur, text the only worthwhile task, or are the later variations, subtractions and additions of equal, or even greater, value? Should hagiology, the study of saints and their cults, necessarily include or exclude less tangible evidence, such as slight references to images or practices long since destroyed or forgotten? For instance, a particular altar, image or votive light of a saint may be mentioned in only one will, made by an otherwise obscure benefactor. One such example is John Sayntmaur (or ‘de St Maur’), who bequeathed a cow, valued at 10s., in his will of 1485, the profit of which (probably derived from the sale of the animal and subsequent investment of the proceeds) was to fund a wax taper to be burnt on Sundays and feast days before an image of St George in his local parish church of Rode (Somerset). Is it really desirable to cite this reference as evidence of a local cult of St George when we have no idea how large or valuable the image was, how many other people expressed their devotion to the saint through recourse to it, or even for how many years it was the object of individuals’ interest?

How, indeed, should a saint cult be defined? One interpretation would suggest that a cult is something which is purely liturgical, based around the practices of the established Church where a clerical process was able to delimit who was entitled and how they should be revered and invoked, but an alternative view would suggest that this ‘imposed’ religiosity was actually less important than the ‘sainthood by acclamation’ model, where popular movements were able to propel individuals to the official, or unofficial, status of saint. This current study tries to straddle both definitions, allowing that while the veneration of St George was officially encouraged the cult was also the product of genuine interest from ordinary people. Devotion to this saint was by no means the preserve of one specific group within late medieval society, but different manifestations of it were particularly important to some discrete groupings: the cult evidently fulfilled many different needs.

One particular problem faced by historians working in the pre-modern period is the undoubted loss of so much potentially significant evidence. In relation to saint cults, we can see that manuscripts and books containing legends, miracles or the scripts of dramatic presentations about saints may have been discarded, burnt, whether accidentally or deliberately, or allowed to be irreparably damaged by poor storage conditions. Paintings and sculptures of saints may have suffered the same fate, or have been deliberately defaced by iconoclasts, while many churches and other buildings that may have been connected with a saint cult have been demolished or refurbished, with consequent losses of wall paintings, stained glass windows, sculpted decorations, and so forth.

The evidence that would have been provided by these lost items is unquantifiable and irretrievable, but perhaps of even greater significance is evidence for a devotion to a saint which was never recorded in any tangible form. The extent to which late medieval England was an illiterate society is open to question, but it seems fair to say that, despite the rise of a literate middle class, a considerable part of the populace would have been largely illiterate and hence would have had little access to, or use for, written accounts of a saint’s life and deeds, unless they were able to listen to someone else reading these works aloud. Furthermore, impoverished peasants would only rarely have had either the opportunity or the means to purchase even relatively cheap devotional objects, such as pilgrim badges or small images made from plaster or tin, even though their personal attachment to the saint may have been every bit as strong as the devotion of a much richer person who could afford to commission a magnificent image or even endow a chapel in the saint’s honour. We know from the evidence of late medieval wills that many people chose to show their veneration of a saint by bequeathing money to buy wax to be burnt on an altar dedicated to that saint – this kind of activity was open to anyone with the means to buy or make a candle – but unless the person was wealthy enough to need to make a will (a group that excludes virtually all women, except widows of some property) there would be no tangible evidence for later historians to uncover. Likewise, many people will have undertaken pilgrimage to a particular shrine or image associated with a saint, and the vast majority of these pilgrimages will not have been recorded in any way.

In the light of these problems it may seem tempting to restrict an inquiry such as this current study to incontrovertible evidence, to consider only well-attested aspects of the cult of St George, such as chivalric orders, royal foundations and artistic achievements commissioned by named individuals. Yet such a survey, while relatively simple to research and write, would do a real disservice to our forebears, for it would omit any sense of the reverence felt for St George by the community at large during the late medieval period. A study of a saint cult, particularly one that seems to have been so widespread and so long-lasting, demands an inclusive approach despite the difficulties associated with reconstructing the concerns, loyalties, aspirations and mores of long-dead people who have left few traces of their lives. To privilege the accessible, easily quantified evidence left to us, which largely originates from one small section of society – the educated, the literate and the wealthy – over the concerns of the main body of the population is both undesirable and indefensible, and it is with this in mind that we should approach the texts, objects and records discussed in this book. For the most part we will be looking at accidents of survival, and we should always remember that, while these items may not have been truly representative of the actuality of the late medieval cult, they are important clues to reconstructing the society that created them. In default of direct evidence about their creation and use it is impossible to make definitive statements about these items; we can, however, suggest possible readings, and it is in this spirit that this book is conceived.

The types of evidence for the cult of St George considered in this book fall into three main categories, and for ease of reference I have endeavoured to maintain consistency in my use of language. Firstly, there is literary evidence, such as prose, poetry, drama and allusions within other texts. A major part of this literary evidence consists of retellings of the legend of St George, and within this book a literary retelling is referred to as a life. (Full details of the lives referred to appear in the bibliography.) Secondly, there is visual evidence, which takes the form of single images or groups of images; where a group of images forms a narrative it is referred to as a cycle. Finally, there are historical records. This evidence is derived from primary textual sources such as wills, invocations, civic ordinances and the records of guilds and other organisations.

Whilst these designations of literary, art historical and historical forms are largely discrete, there are some types of evidence that cannot be categorised so easily. For example, a literary text may be illustrated with images, for instance, in Alexander Barclay’s Life of St George (1515), which is decorated with a cycle of woodcuts (see illustration 5.30). Again, we know that a St George play was held at Lydd (Kent) at least twice during the second half of the fifteenth century; no evidence survives about the text performed, the staging, or even whether the ‘script’ was varied between performances, so what we have, in effect, is a brief historical record of a literary event. This kind of cross-category evidence can be difficult to interpret accurately as we are invariably confronted with the product of several individuals’ work that may not have been coordinated. For example, the woodcuts used in Barclay’s Life of St George may well have been created with no reference at all to the specific narrative that the author was using; illustrations may sometimes simply decorate the text that they accompany, but at other times they appear to reinforce, or even to subvert, the written word. Another factor to be considered is the evidence may have been filtered through different levels of recording (the dates of the performances of the Lydd play are noted in the parish churchwardens’ accounts, a source that would been more concerned with financial aspects, for example, than with the niceties of the theatrical form used).

Cross-category evidence needs to be treated very carefully, but, as with the use of the evidence of veneration drawn from accidental survivals discussed above, it does seem essential to make this study of the cult of St George inclusive rather than exclusive. Hence, as readers and researchers, we should always consider that the readings offered by students of saint cults cannot and do not pretend to the status of ‘truth’. This book is written in a spirit of such investigative detection, with due allowance to the fact that alternative readings can and should also be sought through further research into this saint and devotion to him.

CHAPTER ONE

The Development of the Cult of St George

St George is enigma personified. He is one of the most widely recognised hagiographical figures in the canon of the Church – the legend of his encounter with the dragon is common currency – yet he is far more than a mere romantic hero ‘skilled in Dragon Management and Virgin Reclamation’.1 Close investigation of the literature and iconography of his cult soon reveals that this saint is a highly complex figure. In the sub-title of his 1983 study, Sir David Scott Fox calls St George ‘the saint with three faces’; I fear that he does our hero an injustice with a partial truth. For St George appears in many more guises than three. He is, of course, the chivalrous knight who rescues the fair lady from certain death, but he is also an ancient symbol of light and power engaged in perpetual struggle with the forces of darkness and chaos. He is the Christian hero who demands the conversion of an entire town before he will despatch the dragon who has claimed so many lives, yet he is also Al Khidr, the mythic hero of Islam. His legend is deeply concerned with the power of chastity to overcome evil, but he is also a strong symbol of fertility. Equally, he is the patron saint of England, and is often thought to be an honorary, if not actual, son of this country. However, he is also patron of places ranging from Catalonia to the Danish town of Holstebro, while countries as diverse as Ethiopia and Georgia have significant cults devoted to him.

St George was a hugely popular saint throughout the Middle Ages: over 100 visual cycles of his legend, dating from the early twelfth century to the end of the sixteenth century, are still extant throughout Europe, besides countless individual images, almost all of which depict his combat with the dragon. In England alone almost 100 medieval wall paintings of St George are known, around half of which are still legible to some extent. In addition, a considerable number of literary versions of his life survive, including eight English and Scottish versions dating from between the eleventh and sixteenth centuries. Over the course of the 1,700 years that have elapsed since the probable date of his death there have been innumerable, sometimes quite startling, variants of St George’s legend. These are found in both the literary and visual records of devotion to him, and several of the most interesting variations were apparently well known in late medieval England but have subsequently been largely forgotten. These aspects of the cult form a major part of this study, but a secondary theme is concerned with the comparisons that can be drawn between St George and his analogues throughout the cultures of the world: the fundamental concept of the mythic hero who overcomes a monster is both widespread and long-lived. It seems very likely that the story of St George has been informed by the legends of these non-Christian figures, and when viewed in this light it is evident that the roots of his cult penetrate the deepest realms of religious belief.

As St George embodies such a diverse group of themes and patronages, we need to be certain which aspects are being presented when we examine the role he plays within any one image or narrative. We need to be careful to consider not only the date and provenance of the work, but also the audience for which it was intended. Given that there is this multiplicity of factors at work in the presentation of the saint, it is essential to have a grasp of the history of the cult in order to be able to make some sense of it. This chapter considers the genesis of reverence of St George and the spread of this devotion to Western Europe during the early Middle Ages. The evidence for the ‘real’ life and death of the man identified as St George is assessed, alongside the probable reasons for the development of his ‘fictional’ story and the impact of imagery and ideas associated with other figures, both Christian and non-Christian. But before we begin this detailed examination it will be wise to refresh our memories of the conventional history of the saint, beginning with the largest source of information, the hagiographical material.

St George’s legend was very popular throughout the medieval period, but it was subject to a great deal of reinterpretation. Tables 1, 2 and 3 (see pp. 218–21) summarise the various extant accounts in Old English, Middle English and a Scottish dialect, along with two Latin versions. It is readily apparent that there is a marked disparity between the different retellings. For example, the dragon episode, which is now generally assumed to be the legend, does not appear at all in Ælfric’s version of the Life, and the tortures inflicted on St George vary a great deal. Yet some aspects are relatively consistent, and the basic medieval written legend can be summarised as follows:

St George, whose name is derived from the Greek term for ‘a tiller of the soil’, a Christian and an officer in the Roman army, is called upon to sacrifice to the Roman gods. He refuses to do this, and is then detained and tried before a heathen ruler (usually called Dacian). St George is tortured on the rack and the wheel, and is subjected to other improbable torments such as being dismembered and boiled (see, for example, illustrations 3.5 to 3.9 and 3.20). He steadfastly refuses to sacrifice, and many onlookers are converted to Christianity. He is also given a poisoned drink by a powerful magician named Athanasius (illustration 3.9); when this fails the magician himself is converted. St George is ultimately beheaded (illustration 3.10), and the heathen ruler is often said to die immediately afterwards.

The story is enhanced by variations such as the conversion of the heathen ruler’s wife and an episode where St George pretends to recant, visits the heathen temple and then throws down the idol, which is usually said to be Apollo or Bacchus (illustration 3.11, the late fifteenth-century Borbjerg retable, depicts St George before the heathen temple in the central panel). This story of the witnessing, torture and death of St George can be characterised as the ‘martyrdom legend’; it demonstrates a direct conflict between Christianity and the classical Graeco-Roman religions, which is typical of the lives of early Christian martyrs.

In most versions of St George’s legend an episode is included where he rescues a princess, and this is a clear deviation from the standard model of a Christian martyr. This story was apparently not recorded before the tenth century, but its inclusion in the mid-thirteenth-century Golden Legend version of the Life of St George ensured that it became a standard motif in subsequent treatments of the legend of the saint even though the order in which these events were thought to have occurred relative to the martyrdom is often uncertain. The basis of this story is that a water-dwelling dragon has been threatening a town in Libya, usually called Silene, with its pestilential breath and, in order to keep it away, the people have been giving it sheep. When the supply of sheep begins to fail the people agree to sacrifice one child and one sheep each day. Lots are drawn, and eventually the king’s only daughter is chosen. The king asks for her to be spared, but the people threaten to burn him and his palace if he refuses to give her up to the dragon. In most accounts a grace period is agreed, and then the princess is sent out with her sheep. She is wearing her best clothes, but sometimes is explicitly said to be dressed as a bride. St George, the knight-errant, then arrives and offers to kill the dragon. The princess protests but the saint insists on fighting the monster, and succeeds in wounding it with his lance or spear. He then instructs the princess to fasten her girdle around the dragon’s neck, and she leads it back to the city as if it were a dog. Everyone is very frightened, but St George says that he will kill the dragon if all the people will convert to Christianity; in some cases the dragon is already dead when the baptism takes place. He then baptises the king and many thousands of his subjects, and asks for a church to be built. The king offers the saint a reward, usually money but sometimes land or the princess’s hand in marriage. St George refuses, but teaches the king about Christian belief and then goes on his way.

Illustration 1.1 from the Salisbury Breviary, a French manuscript created for John, Duke of Bedford c. 1424–35 (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS Lat. 17294), illustrates several episodes of the dragon story within one image: St George meeting the princess, fighting the dragon, then accompanying the princess as she leads the subdued beast towards the city as the inhabitants flee in fear. St George wears armour throughout the narrative and is identified by a little crest of a red cross on a white background on his helmet. He carries a shield bearing the same device in the scene of the combat with the dragon. The story begins on the left side in the background, where the king, queen and princess look out of the window of a castle labelled ‘Sylene’. In the centre St George, mounted, speaks with the princess who stands in the gateway of the castle. They each have a speech scroll; George’s reads ‘Filia quid p[rae]stolari’ (Daughter, what are you waiting for?), the princess’s reads ‘bone iuvenis fuge’ (Run away, nice young man!). Then, in the background, St George spears the dragon in the mouth while the princess kneels in prayer behind him. Finally, in the foreground, the princess leads the dragon with a girdle, while St George, having dismounted, spears the dragon through the neck from behind. A group of five citizens flee from them as they approach.

This presentation of several aspects of the narrative within one image, a relatively common device in late medieval art, also occurs in a late fourteenth-century carved chest-front (illustration 1.2). Here we find St George encountering the princess at the top of the composition, in the upper left corner. The combat is depicted immediately beneath, with the princess praying on the far left. In the centre we see St George riding back towards the city, following the princess who leads the dragon on a leash. Her watching parents are visible as two crowned heads, looking out from a tower in the midst of the town buildings. A large lion sits outside the town gates, looking back towards the town itself: his exact meaning is unclear, but he is one of a number of wild animals present in the image, and it seems likely that together they are intended to evoke a sense of the natural, uncultivated wilderness that lies beyond the safety of the city wall.

In common with those of most other early saints, St George’s legend, or legends, have little grounding in historical accuracy. But not everyone has been dissuaded from belief in him, however slight the evidence. ‘That St George is a veritable character is beyond all reasonable doubt, and there seems no reason to deny that he was born in Armorica, and was beheaded in Diocletian’s persecution by order of Datianus, April 23rd, 303.’ Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1894) could hardly be more wrong. Far from being a definitive statement on the saint, this commentary merely provides an opportunity for dissent among the cognoscenti, for there is no aspect of St George’s life that is incontrovertible, whether his birthplace, profession, the year of his death or details of his tortures. Despite Brewer’s bold assertion, St George is rarely hailed as a native of Armorica (an ancient name for Brittany), but is strongly associated with the Palestinian towns Joppa (the modern-day Jaffa) and Diospolis (or Lydda). Both claim to be the site of his martyrdom, and the latter claims to be his birthplace too. Furthermore, the fact that the saint is often given the appellation ‘St George of Cappadocia’ is recognition of a tradition that he originates from this area of central Turkey.

Confusingly, there is also an historical figure called ‘George of Cappadocia’, a character of somewhat different pedigree who is never likely to be canonised. He is quite well documented and is known to have pursued a career selling questionable pork to the Roman army, later rising to the position of Archbishop of Alexandria. A known adherent of the Arian heresy, a belief system that questioned the divinity of Jesus, he was murdered in AD 362 by an angry mob. A small group of commentators, notably Edward Gibbon in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, have attempted to identify St George with this George of Cappadocia, and succeeded in sullying the saint’s reputation to a considerable extent. However, it seems unlikely that such a heretic could become a saint of orthodox Christianity, and the discovery during the nineteenth century of two churches dedicated to St George, at Shaqqâ and Ezra in Syria, effectively closed the question for they were built around AD 346 and hence predate the death of George of Cappadocia by some sixteen years. An inscription at the Ezra church stated that it contained ‘the cherished relic of the glorious Victor, the holy Martyr George’. This statement clearly identifies this St George as a martyred Christian, which is entirely congruent with the ‘original’ martyrdom legend. However, although some commentators have claimed that the Ezra inscription is consistent with a date of AD 346, others have placed it as late as AD 515: this disagreement clearly throws the whole issue into yet more confusion. Despite this rather difficult, and perhaps self-contradicting, evidence, it is still quite possible that the life and exploits of George of Cappadocia had some influence on the emerging cult of St George. The Arian George seems to be the first person recorded bearing the Greek name ‘Georgios’, and given that there is no historically authentic reason to connect St George with Cappadocia it seems quite possible that a conflation of the two figures may have given rise to the tradition that locates the saint in this area. The dubious Archbishop George of Cappadocia did at least have the advantage of definitely having existed, something that cannot be claimed with any veracity of the ‘actual’ St George.

1.1 The Salisbury Breviary, 1424–5: the narrative of St George and the dragon with images of the trial of St George. (Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. MS Lat.17294, fol. 448)

1.2 Late fourteenth-century carved chest-front of the narrative of St George and the dragon. (Victoria & Albert Museum, London)

The story of the ‘real’ St George which seems to have the widest currency is set in Nicomedia, the town on the Asiatic shore of the Bosphorus which was one of the official residences of Emperor Diocletian (ruled AD 284–305). Towards the end of the third century, Christianity was generally tolerated in the Roman Empire, with the faith openly professed by many people of rank, up to and including Diocletian’s wife and daughter. However, there was ill-feeling among non-believers, which seems to have been directed particularly at Christian soldiers who were thought to be breaching disciplinary codes as a consequence of their religion. Several were executed at the turn of the century, but then a subversive plot was discovered in which believers were said to be involved. All soldiers were ordered to sacrifice to the Roman gods, and on 23 February AD 303 the Praetorian Guard razed the Cathedral of Nicomedia. The next day saw the issue of an edict effectively outlawing Christianity: churches and writings were to be destroyed, meetings for worship were forbidden, and Christians who held office were stripped of their posts. Some commentators claim that those Christians who did not hold office were expected to submit to slavery, and all were to lose their civil rights, a change in legal status which meant that previously protected people could now be subjected to torture. The edict was ruthlessly enforced throughout the Empire, and many believers were martyred; in Britain St Alban was among those who suffered.

Eusebius, an ecclesiastical historian and Bishop of Caesarea who lived in the mid-fourth century, writes that when the decree was published in Nicomedia an unnamed man of high rank tore it down and publicly destroyed it. Eusebius records that he was the first Christian in that district to be martyred under the terms of the edict, and that he was tortured, imprisoned and executed but bore every torment with great courage. Some later versions of the story name the anonymous man as St Nestor, a close cognate of several aspects of St George in the Greek tradition, but most commentators claim that the man in question was St George himself. Established facts about the hapless martyr are undoubtedly in short supply in this story, but little time elapsed before extra material was grafted on to these bare bones, much of it probably drawn from the traditions of other martyr–saints. St George is said to have been a soldier native to Cappadocia, or perhaps Lydda, and early writers tend to picture him as a Roman officer of some rank. It is claimed that after his destruction of the edict he went to the Temple of Bacchus and threw down the statue of the deity; he is said to have later refused to sacrifice, and was then tortured and martyred on a date usually identified as 23 April AD 303. Sir Ernest Wallis Budge, keeper of near Eastern manuscripts at the British Museum in the late nineteenth century and a noted authority on early Christianity, argued that the martyrdom is likely to have taken place some fifty years earlier, on the basis of inferences he drew from the Chronicon Paschale, a Byzantine work of the early seventh century. However, Budge remains isolated in this view. The cults of soldier–saints such as St Nestor seem to have been very influential on the development of St George’s legend. St Menas, another very popular Eastern saint whose cult seems to predate that of St George, has a legend which is remarkably similar. In early versions of their lives the details of their military careers are virtually identical, and both were persecuted by a tyrannical heathen ruler. It is also notable that St Menas is associated with the cure of skin diseases, particularly ‘the scab’, which is remarkably close to St George’s identification as a healer of scaly skin conditions; both are also strongly linked to the ideal of chastity. A third soldier–saint whose cult may have influenced St George’s own is St George of Bydda. This obscure figure is noted by only one commentator, with little clear evidence, but claims of links to both Cappadocia and Georgia may be significant.

Meanwhile, a group of fourth- and fifth-century Coptic texts provides very detailed information about the saint: he is said to have been born in AD 270 at Militene, a city in Cappadocia where his father, a Christian named Anastasius, was governor. Anastasius’s own father, John – also a Christian – is said to have been the governor of the entire province. St George’s mother is named as Kîra Theognôsta, the daughter of Dionysus, Count of Lydda: a neat device that allows the two main sites claiming St George to be given similar weighting. Even more interestingly, Kîra Theognôsta is said to be related to ‘the saints that dwelt at Lydda’ mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles (chapter IX, verses 32–5) as well as to Joseph of Arimathea: linking pseudo-historical saints with ‘real’ Biblical characters was a common medieval device aimed at substantiating the claims to sanctity of otherwise dubious figures. On the death of her husband Anastasius, Kîra Theognôsta returned to Lydda with her ten-year-old son George and his two younger sisters Kasia and Mathrôna (whose names are the Coptic forms of ‘Katherine’ and ‘Martha’, two saints whose legends bear striking similarities to some aspects of St George’s legend, as we shall see). In one version no mention is made of the return to Lydda: instead, George was adopted on the death of his father by the new governor, Justus, who trained him as a soldier and betrothed him to his own daughter. But before the marriage could be formalised, Justus died and George entered military service under Emperor Diocletian, serving alongside the young Constantine in both the Egyptian campaign of AD 295 and the subsequent Persian War. The narrative then recounts the story of the purge of Christianity from the Roman army, George’s tearing down of the decree at Nicomedia, and his subsequent martyrdom.

Despite the well-constructed legend set out in these Coptic manuscripts, a rather different story is found in a fragmentary manuscript dated to c. AD 50–500, which was discovered under a fallen pillar in the cathedral of Q’as Ibrim during the construction of the Aswan Dam in 1964. This version is written in Greek but was probably composed by a Nubian: it has been suggested that the historical saint may have originated from the kingdom of Nobatia in the Nubian region, an area of the Nile Valley between Aswan and Khartoum. Despite its probable provenance, in this version St George is again identified as a Cappadocian, but this time his Christian mother, Polychronia, secretly baptised her son against the wishes of her husband Gerontius. Some years later George entered the Imperial Service and rose quickly through the ranks of the local service. He travelled to Diospolis to seek further preferment, and was horrified to hear of the ruler’s pagan beliefs. He openly criticised this unnamed ruler during a visit to the court and was then imprisoned and tortured with iron-spiked shoes, the crushing of his skull, scourging and other torments. St Michael intervened to free him from prison and cure his wounds, and many people, including the ruler’s wife, were converted to Christianity when they heard St George preach. The saint also defiled the temples of Apollo and Heracles, and was then beheaded along with several thousands of the king’s subjects.

The Coptic and Nubian narratives described above were undoubtedly linked to later versions of the life of St George, but it appears that the most influential version of the St George legend is a fragmentary fifth-century Greek palimpsest in Vienna which is presented as based on an earlier document written by, or at least with the assistance of, a servant of the saint called Pasicrates. This outlines the early life of St George in a story very similar to the Coptic tradition discussed above, but gives a much more detailed account of the martyrdom of the saint, which Pasicrates claims to have witnessed. He says the torture endured for seven years and led to the conversion of 30,900 people, including the Empress Alexandra. The villainous emperor is a Persian named ‘Datianus’, or ‘Dadianus’, a name that transmogrifies into the ‘Dacianus’ used by Ælfric and the ‘Dacian’ of later medieval tradition. This detailed version had an enormous impact on the subsequent hagiography of St George: it is the source of the traditions that St George was killed four times, only to be resurrected on the first three occasions, that he was given poison by a magician named Athanasius (who subsequently converted to Christianity and was himself martyred), that the saint was suspended over a fire, sawn in two, was dismembered and boiled (among many other torments), that he performed healing miracles and a miracle of making seventy wooden thrones take root and bear both blossom and fruit, and that he resurrected the dead.

The problem with this apparent eyewitness account, aside from the somewhat fantastical nature of the saint’s experience, is that ‘Pasicrates’ was almost certainly an invention of hagiographers. It seems that the persona of the servant of a martyred saint was commonly adopted by early writers of martyrdom legends and this finding tends to suggest that it was the story itself, and the general Christian truths it espoused, which was significant rather than any claim to be presenting the literal truth about St George. Hence the serious inconsistencies in this version of the legend, such as the contentions that a Cappadocian should not have been answerable to the King of Persia and that the profession of magician was outlawed in Classical Rome, need not have been an issue for the first readers of this text. Such ‘problems’ could have arisen from a simple lack of knowledge about geography, or a tendency to treat all foreign races as interchangeable: again, the impression given is that these ‘minor details’ are simply irrelevant to the main purpose of the work, which was to encourage devotion to the saint.

A Vatican manuscript, almost certainly of a somewhat later date, and possibly as late as the eighth century, names Diocletian as the heathen emperor, and incorporates three miraculous cures rather than actual resurrections. Otherwise it is very similar to the earlier work, but the problem of its date throws into question the proposition that the anonymous martyr of Nicomedia was in fact St George: if this identification is accurate, why was Diocletian not named as the ruler in the earliest sources? In an attempt to resolve the problem, Datianus/Dacian is sometimes identified with the historically authentic Maximinus, Diocletian’s co-emperor, possibly on the grounds that he also bore the name ‘Daza’. One other possibility is that the emperor in question was actually Decius (ruled AD 249–51), another renowned persecutor of Christians, but the fact that he reigned over half a century before the generally accepted date of St George’s martyrdom does tend to undermine this contention. The net result is that none of the competing camps are able to offer a truly convincing explanation of who St George was, or, indeed, if he actually existed at all. Gelasius, a late fifth-century pope, recognised the extent of the problems associated with the saint, and decreed that the hagiographical legends should be treated with extreme circumspection. His Church Council of AD 494, which formulated the first Index of forbidden books, trimmed the number of St George’s tortures and removed all references to resurrection. The evidence of later images and literature concerned with the lengthy martyrdom clearly demonstrates that their efforts were not well rewarded. The discussion below (see Chapter Two) of the construction of St George as a martyr outlines the significance of the large number and variety of tortures associated with the saint. Although resurrection does not appear as such in the literary lives outlined in Tables 1, 2 and 3 (see pp. 222–5), miraculous cures are performed on the tortured saint in several versions, while the visual motif of the resurrection of St George by the Virgin, discussed below (see Chapter Three), is a clear example of resistance to this official proscription.

Despite the apparent uncertainty over the precise nature of the physical saint, there is clear evidence that a cult of St George existed from the earliest times, regardless of the veracity of his legend. We have already referred to the mid-fourth-century churches at Shaqqâ and Ezra, but Lydda was undoubtedly the most famous seat of his devotion. Unfortunately, the evidence here is relatively late: around AD 530 Theodosius, a deacon and pilgrim, wrote about the saint’s tomb at Lydda, and mentioned the miracles that were said to have been witnessed there, but it is at least possible that pilgrimage had already been taking place for many years. Certainly the shrine here is generally recognised as the epicentre of the medieval cult; Constantine, the first Christian Emperor of Rome, was said to have built a basilica over the saint’s tomb.