Today is Saint George’s Day, where his feast is celebrated by many Churches where St. George is the patron of that land. He is celebrated in Catholic, Anglican, and the various Orthodox traditions alike. Even the Muslim faith holds this man in high regard. In some regions this would be the equivalent of St. Patrick’s day in Ireland. The feast will often be recognized with the flying of a white flag adorned with a red cross.
While the earliest account of St. George comes to us from St. Bede in the early 700’s A.D., the most famous account of St. George comes to us from a book known as The Golden Legend. This work is a collection of accounts of the lives of the saints compiled by Archbishop St. Jacobus de Voragine, of Genoa. He compiled the most popular accounts of the time, somewhere around the mid 1200’s. Reading many of these accounts, one can imagine them being told at a tourist trap to a bunch of crusaders to get them to purchase a novelty sword used by “St. George himself” to slay a dragon. While they are all certainly pius accounts, some appear to be a bit embellished. The tome turns the saints into the comic book heroes of old.
The Legend tells the story of a kingdom beset by a dragon around the year 287 A.D. To appease the beast, they had offered it two sheep per day. When they ran out of sheep they cast lots for their children, offering them in sacrifice to the creature. As the story goes, the lot fell upon the princess, the daughter of the king. As she was set before the abyssal home of the dragon, it just so happened that the knight of Cappadocia, St. George himself, was traveling through the area. When the dragon arose to consume her, the pius knight called upon the power of Christ and met the beast in battle giving it a mortal wound. He and the princess then led the wounded beast back to the city where he gave witness to the power of Jesus and offered to slay the dragon entirely if all would be baptized. He refused all reward from the king, asking rather that the reward be given to the poor and churches erected.
Later, he would sell his worldly possessions, his armor and sword, and walk the streets as a preacher of the gospel. This was at the time of the Christian persecutions of Diocletian and Maximian. The story makes him out to be a bold preacher confronting pagans and their idols. For his efforts, he was beaten with iron rods to break his bones, forced to drink poison which miraculously had no effect, and many other tortures which failed to end his life, including being doused in molten lead. At the end of these tortures, he called upon the power of God to burn the pagan temple and the wife of the local governor along with others, converted to Christianity. After this, St. George would be beheaded by the enraged official.
What follows are accounts of St. George appearing to lead crusaders into battle, and the various miracles that are attributed to his tomb and devotion.
In reality, all we know of St. George is that he was a soldier in high regard in the Roman Emperor Dioclecian’s army. When the persecution of Christians began, he himself being one among them, he refused to recant his Christian faith. He suffered tremendous torture being revived three times before the exhausted emperor finally called for his head.
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