St George is enigma personified. He is one of the most widely recognised Christian Saints and the legend of his encounter with the dragon is common currency, yet he is far more than a simple romantic hero.

Close investigation of the literature and imagery of his cult reveals that this saint is a highly complex figure. There have been innumerable, sometimes startling variance of legends found in both literary and visual records of devotion to him. Furthermore, he has a variety of curious analogues throughout the cultures of the world, something which helped to illumine this mythic hero as the roots of his cult penetrate the deepest realms of religious belief.

In the subtitle in his 1983 study David Scott Fox¹ calls St George 'The Saint with Three Faces'. It seems that he does our hero an injustice with a partial truth. For St George appears in many guises. 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 EL Khedir, the mythic hero of Islam. His legend is deeply concerned with the power of chastity to overcome evil, yet he is also a strong symbol of fertility.

He is the patron Saint of England and is often thought to be an honorary if not actual, son of the Country, with several Parish towns claiming to be the site of the encounter with the dragon. Dragon Hill in Berkshire, which stands alongside the white horse of Uffington has a bare patch at the summit; it is said to have been made barren by the Dragon's blood split there by Saint George. Other places, such as Dunsmore Heath, Warwickshire, Brinsop, Herefordshire and the hamlet of Saint George in Derbyshire, also claims the encounter. Yet the Saint is also patron of places ranging from Catalonia to the Danish Holsterbro, whilst the Baltic state Georgia is actually named in his honour. In her study of 1908 Margaret Bulley² notes that 'St George was claimed as Patron Saint of Germany, Portugal, Barcelona, Genoa, Ferrara, Armenia, Antioch, Constantinople, various parts of France, and the coptic Christians, whilst 'St George for Holy Russia' was the battle cry of the Zsar. How many of these places claimed to be the scene of the dragon episode is not recorded, but the Danes were certainly one people who believed that the combat had happened on their soil.

Interestingly the Danish version of the story claims that the dragon ate two eggs each day rather than two sheep. When the supply of eggs began to fail, one human and one egg were offered - if anything, this version seems to be even more fantastical than the standard legend.

The story of St George and the Dragon has been a major influence on the popularity of the Saint: it established him as the epitome of the chivalric knight a factor which almost certainly lay behind Edward III's interest in the Saint and his adoption as the patron Saint of England in the mid -14th Century. Yet it is relatively late, and quite spurious, addition to the narrative of his life.

it is generally accepted by scholars that St George was born in Palestine and martyred there by a heathen emperor in 303AD because he refused to give up his Christian beliefs; the dragon legend does not appear in written versions of his life until the 13th Century it is probable that this legend is based on a fifth century description of the Emperor 'dragon' implying that he was cruel and fierce. There are many pre-Christian traditions of Heroic dragon-slayers such as Perseus and Horus, and it is likely that these stories were influential in the creation of the legend of St George and the dragon.

Richard Johnson' version in his famous history of the Seven Champions of Christendom (1608) continues to cast St George in the role of the chivalric hero, but it departs from the medieval convention by allowing the Knight to marry his princess; until this point he always refuses the offer of her hand in marriage as a reward for killing the dragon.

This development marks a major transition from the original story of a holy man who is killed because he refuses to abjure his Christian beliefs and instead presents us with a true romantic hero with little trace of conventional Christian fantasy.

Sam Riches, Department of Art History, Leicester University

References

¹David Scott Fox, Saint George with Three Faces (Windsor Forest 1983)
²Margaret H Bulley, Saint George for Merrie England (London 1908)