St George of England

ST GEORGE OF ENGLAND

I recall, a few years ago, reading about a landlady who could not get an extended licence for St George's Day because it was not a 'special occasion'.

Needless to say, the pub down the same road had no difficulty in getting an extended licence for St Patrick's Day!

There is no doubt that the Irish are proud of their patron saint, Patrick; the Scots of their patron saint, Andrew; and the Welsh proud of their patron saint, David. But what about the English?

Are we proud of our patron saint, George, whose feast day occurs on 23 April?

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A survey carried out by English Heritage in 2006 suggested that only one half of those interviewed knew who St George was.

So who was St George?

St George was probably a soldier living in Palestine at the beginning of the fourth century. He was martyred at Lydda in about 304 AD, at the beginning of the Diocletian persecution , and became known throughout the East as 'The Great Martyr".

George became a hugely popular saint in the Eastern orthodox churches, and it is from the East that we see the first depiction of him spearing a dragon beneath his feet, an ancient image meaning a Christian vanquishing the devil or a pagan, a triumph of good over evil.

The legend of the dragon appeared in its full-blown state in the fifteenth century in the Golden Legend, first published by William Caxton in 1483.

In it, he is represented as a knight from Cappadocia, who at Silene in Libya, rescued an innocent maiden from the jaws of a dragon, pinning it to the ground with his lance and killing it with his sword. As a result, many people were baptised.

In actual fact, it is suggested that the slaying of the dragon was probably due to him being mistaken in Eastern iconography for St Michael himself, who is usually depicted wearing armour.)

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So much for the life and legend of St George, but how did he become associated with England?

His name was known in England long before the Norman Conquest. It is thought that the returning crusaders did much to establish his popularity. For instance, Richard the Lion-heart placed himself, and his army under the protection of St George. The Synod of Oxford in 1222 established a lesser holy day in his honour.

The following century, Edward the third founded the order of the Garter under his patronage. Hence the chapel dedicated to his honour at Windsor Castle.

In 1415, his feast day was raised to equal status with that of Christmas.

Henry the Eighth decided that the St George’s cross should be the flag of the both the English army and navy. Then in 1606, three years after James the Sixth of Scotland had ascended to the English throne, becoming James the First, he crossed the flag of St George with the blue cross of St Andrew thus making it a prototype of the Union flag.

Finally, in 1940, King George the Sixth instituted a new award, known as the George cross, for 'acts of the greatest heroism or of the most conspicuous courage in circumstances of extreme danger’.

So, for over a thousand years the name of St George has been associated as the patron saint of England and many churches have been dedicated in his memory. He has come to be associated with valour, honour, chivalry, duty, modesty and others before self.

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Whilst it is easy to dismiss St George and the dragon as being a fairy tale, I would suggest that even fairy tales can have some truth, which we do well to ponder.

Whilst St George is a symbol of patriotism, the dragon, I would suggest, is a symbol of patriotism being perverted into nationalism.

You see, my friends, there is always a danger of one cultural pattern being made at the expense of others.

As the Roman Catholic writer and broadcaster, Clifford Longley, has pointed out, 'Whilst nations need unifying ideas', this can be 'a dangerous game if the unifying idea is allowed to become an exclusive one.

Definitions of national identity, which includes any notion of common ethnicity, automatically can easily exclude those who do not share the same ethnicity'.

This we saw in the Balkan States in the 1990s when NATO forces sought to destroy the dragon of ethnic cleansing in order to rescue the helpless maiden of Kosovo.

In our desire to be patriotic, one must always be on guard against victimizing 'the newcomer and the minority, by exaggerating their outsidedness, thereby taking what makes them different, by making it into what makes them inferior’.

Perhaps it is this danger which has traditionally held the English back from wallowing in cheap nationalism. Hence, the historian and former director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, Roy Strong, has observed: 'There are Scottish, Welsh and Irish nationalists, but never English nationalists. We are patriotic but not nationalistic, almost diffident when it comes to defining our identity'.

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Patriotism, Yes. Nationalistic, no. Let us honour St George, but let us also denounce the dragon of nationalism which can rear its ugly head in the extreme right political movements.

God of hosts

who so kindled the flame of love

in the heart of Your servant George

that he bore witness to the risen Lord

by his life and death:

give us the same faith and power of love

that we who rejoice in his triumphs

may come to share with him

in the fullness of the resurrection;

through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,

who is alive and reigns with You,

in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

one God now and for ever. Amen