St George and Merrie England!
by Mike Oettle
THE
calendar entry for 23 April reads: “George, Martyr, 4th century.” It’s a
curious survival when one considers that the Roman Catholic Church has dropped
this date from its universal calendar on the grounds that George is more a
legend than an authentic saint.[1]
Yet
some knowledge about him would be helpful since he is the patron saint of
England[2]
– and therefore also of the Church of England and, in a sense, of the Anglican
Communion – as well as of Portugal, Aragon and a number of Italian and Greek
cities and towns including Padua and Mantua, not to mention a few centres in Germany, Switzerland, Czechia, Slovenia, Croatia and Russia. And in most of these places 23 April is
still St George’s Day.
Information
about him is hard to come by – the Encyclopædia Britannica has two
paragraphs, my tome on church history not a word – and I finally tracked him
down in a Victorian book called Curious Myths of the Middle Ages by the
Rev Sabine Baring-Gould (an eccentric who, incidentally, was the author of Onward,
Christian Soldiers!). According to his gentleman, George is usually supposed
to be the unnamed martyr mentioned by the church historian Eusebius, a soldier
who in AD 303 publicly tore to pieces an edict of the Emperor Diocletian (ruled
AD 285-313) against the Christian churches in Nicomedia.[3]
The protester was immediately executed.
His
popularity rapidly grew – and so, unfortunately, did the list of fantastical
miracles attached to his name. In the Middle Eastern churches he is or was
believed to have been put to death seven times, each time miraculously
recovering – this appears to be a Christianisation of the old Semitic myth of
the god Tammuz. The George of the seven miracles is also revered by Islam,
under the name Gherghis or El Khoudi.
More
familiar to us is the set of legends derived from an Indo-European myth, in
which George arrives in time to rescue a princess condemned to death (much
against her royal father’s will) to satisfy the cravings of a dragon for human
flesh. George is supposed to have speared the dragon and then either beheaded
it on the spot or, using the maiden’s girdle as a halter, led it to her father
and beheaded it in his presence.
It
is this legend that appears to have been especially popular among knights
returning from the Crusades, which would account for George’s adoption as a
patron saint so widely in Europe. As early as 1098 he is credited with helping
the Franks at the Battle of Antioch, and – as a soldier – he always seems to
have been a saint who helped armies win battles.
England’s
patron saint under the Normans and early Plantaganets was ironically, a Saxon
king, Edward the Confessor (reigned 1042-1066). (An earlier King Edward
[martyred in 978] is also remembered as a saint.) George crept in first as
patron of the Order of the Garter in 1348 under Edward III. (George had
previously been made patron of an Austrian order of knighthood, too.)
The
following year Edward, during the siege of Calais, is said to have suddenly
drawn his sword and called out: “Ha! Saint Edward. Ha! Saint George!” According
to Thomas of Walsingham, these words “instilled spirit in his soldiers and
they fell with vigour on the French and routed them”. From then on, George was England’s favourite, and Pope Benedict XIV declared
him to be England’s protector.
The
blood-red cross of St George now also became associated with England. This had
not always been George’s: the Archangel Michael appears to have found his way
into heraldry first, as a knight in silver armour with a red cross on his shield, surcoat and banner,
symbolically killing the Devil in the shape of a dragon. This image was transferred
to George, however, and appears in the regalia of the Order of the Garter.[4]
It
was the custom of the times to have, in addition to the king’s banner of his
coat of arms, a “badge” flag, often bearing a cross. Many such crossed banners
were presented by the Popes, and one which crops up all over the former Holy
Roman Empire is the white cross on red of the empire – it’s even the origin of
the Danish flag, called the Dannebrog, and the Swiss flag. Until George came on
the scene, England’s badge was a white cross on blue, but this was replaced by
St George’s red cross – today the central element in Britain’s Union Jack.
(The white cross on blue was adopted by France, and is today [with white
fleurs-de-lis added] the flag of French-speaking Quebec.)
The
cross of St George wasn’t only a flag, though. While every knight and nobleman
had his coat of arms, not all had a livery to dress their men-at-arms in, and
soldiers without livery would wear the country’s cross as a surcoat (cloth
covering for their armour) when fighting for the king: so the English soldiers
marched in white surcoats with red crosses or, if in livery, with white
armbands bearing a red cross (very different in meaning from today’s Red Cross
emblem). One wonders if the “red cross army” might have inspired Onward
Christian Soldiers.
While
the combined crosses of St George, St Andrew and “St Patrick”[5]
have replaced the plain cross of St George as Britain’s national flag, the
red cross is still the proper flag to fly from an English church. The red
cross also finds its way into the coats of arms of Anglican churches across
England and around the world. The compass rose emblem of the Church of the
Province of Southern Africa has at its centre a silver (or white) shield
bearing this cross and the letters CPSA; and the arms of the Diocese of Port
Elizabeth, too, are based on St George’s cross.
Legend
or no, St George has left his mark on the English-speaking world.
In
closing: While St George has always been a fighting man by reputation, his name
has quite a different meaning: the Greek name Georgios (GewrgioV) means a husbandman, a tiller of
the soil. The popularity of the name George seems to have little to do with its
meaning: it symbolises England, and has become even
more popular since it was the name of four kings of Britain from the House of
Hanover and two more (of the House of Windsor) during the 20th century. In
America, it often honours George Washington.
