St George

The Warrior Saint

Alex Joseph is a Sophomore at Northeastern University. He studies Cell and Molecular Biology while balancing his love of science, Model UN, and biking through the city at night. When he's not there, he lives at home in Marlborough with his parents, little brother, and their parakeets.

St. George, Orsanmichele church, Donatello Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/aiva/47334659942

A Superhero

As I reflect on my time as a boy, I think back to the various saints and martyrs we learned about in Sunday school. All of them were known for their various quirks, traits, and, more morbidly, their early demises. And yet, I think even at a young age, I was most fascinated with Saint George. And why wouldn’t I be? What’s not to love about a knight in shining armor who killed a dragon and saved a beautiful princess?

In my eyes, he was as much a superhero as he was a saint. And, much to my delight, he seemed to be one of the more popular saints back home in Kerala seeing as how every time I went back and visited, his statues and images were plastered everywhere. That iconic image of him riding on a horse, brandishing a spear at a cowering serpent is permanently burned into my mind.

And yet, as I grew older, I began to wonder if this really happened. Surely dragons aren’t real...right? Well as it turns out the reason that this particular legend became so popular is an interesting tale of its own.

Early Life

The real Saint George is thought to have been born sometime around the late 3rd Century in a place called Cappadocia, in what we now know as Turkey. At the time, the territory was under the rule of the mighty Roman Empire. While not much is known about George’s early life, we do know that he became a soldier in the Roman Military under the rule of Emperor Diocletian. Word has it that George was also quite the soldier, and yet he gave much of this up in favor of his faith when it was tested. Diocletian had a particular disdain for Christians and sought to purge Rome, and, subsequently, its military, of all would-be believers. While there are several variations of what happened next, all of them follow the same theme. George was tempted by the Emperor (either by torture or promises of gold and riches) to give up Christ and yet he persisted, refusing to renounce his faith: a crime for which he was beheaded in 303 CE.

Since then, George has been known as a patron saint of soldiers, farmers, several parishes, and even entire nations. In fact, entire cults arose in his name (the most famous of which basically took over England at one point, though that’s a story for another time), making him one of the most popular saints in history.

One of the many places in the world to take a particular interest in him was our very own Kerala, which hosts one of the primary pilgrimage sites dedicated to him in the world.

St George's Forane Syro Malabar Church, Kochi

Asia's largest shrine to St George

St George's Forane Syro Malabar Church, Edathua

Constructed in 1810

Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_George_and_the_Dragon_(Raphael)

Fact Check

Okay, but now for what you came here for: where did the dragon come from? Spoiler alert: there wasn’t actually one. I initially became skeptical of the story when I grew up for two main reasons

1) dragons (I feel like this is self explanatory)

2) if George was a Roman soldier, why is he depicted as a knight in shining armor, medieval style?

Well it turns out this is more reflective of the time this story came to be. Apparently, around the time of the crusades in the 11th and 13th centuries, Saint George’s history as a “warrior saint” gained popularity again, as did a need for more folklore surrounding him. It is around this time that the legend of him rescuing a princess from a horrifying dragon in the city of Silene became popular. This is why most artistic depictions of George as a dragon-slayer have him in the armor of a medieval knight, rather than in the plates of a Praetorian guard as he would have worn.

Indeed, it seems that this story arose as a way of raising morale and is more a tall tale than anything else, given that at the end of the story the entire township of Silene converted to Christianity.

The idea of a Christian warrior triumphing over evil in the field of battle was exactly the sort of message a crusading army needed, and that also likely also explains why the Knights Templar referred to their symbol as “Saint George’s Cross.”

What can we learn?

So, does the fact that the story of Saint George and the Dragon is mostly wartime propaganda for a crusading army mean we should stop telling it? If you ask me, not at all. Yes, we should absolutely understand and reflect on the horrifying history of the event it was trying to endsorse, but I think, as far as parables go, it still has its uses.

For one, kids love a hero, and I think it’s not a bad idea to introduce them to the idea of the brave saint who fought evil head on and won. But more to the point, it can teach us all a thing or two.