WHO WAS SAINT GEORGE?

Saint George is the Patron Saint of England, and next Tuesday 23 April will be St George’s Day. But who was he?  Very little is known about George's life. It is thought that he was an officer in the Roman army. Of Cappadocian Greek origin, he became a member of the Praetorian Guard for Roman emperor Diocletian but was sentenced to death for refusing to recant his Christian faith. George was executed by decapitation on 23 April 303. His body was buried in Lydda, where Christians soon came to honour him as a martyr. He became one of the most venerated saints in Christianity, and he has been especially venerated as a military saint since the Crusades. By 1117, the Knights Templar adopted the Cross of St. George as a simple, unifying sign for international Christian militia, embroidered on their tunics.

In 1348, Edward III chose George as the patron saint of his Order of the Garter, and also took to using a red-on-white cross in his Royal Standard.

His feast day, Saint George's Day, is traditionally celebrated on 23 April. Historically, the countries of England, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Ukraine, Malta, Ethiopia, as well as Catalonia and Aragon in Spain, and Moscow in Russia, have claimed George as their patron saint, along with others. The Church of Saint George in Lod (Lydda), Israel, contains a sarcophagus claimed to contain St. George's remains.

George’s veneration dates to the 5th century with some certainty, and possibly even to the 4. Pope Gelasius I stated in 494 that George was among those saints "whose names are justly reverenced among men, but whose actions are known only to God."

The story of the defeat of the dragon is not part of Saint George's earliest biographies and seems to have been a later addition. The earliest known record of the legend of Saint George and the Dragon occurs in an 11th-century Georgian source, reaching Catholic Europe in the 12th-century.

The tradition tells that a fierce dragon was causing panic at the city of Silene, Libya, at the time George arrived there. In order to prevent the dragon from devastating people from the city, they gave two sheep each day to the dragon, but when the sheep were not enough they were forced to sacrifice humans, elected by the city's own people, instead of the two sheep. Eventually, the king's daughter was chosen to be sacrificed, and no one was willing to take her place. George saved the girl by slaying the dragon with a lance. The king was so grateful that he offered him treasures as a reward for saving his daughter's life, but George refused it and instead he gave these to the poor. The people of the city were so amazed at what they had witnessed that they became Christians and were all baptized.

Saint George's encounter with a dragon, as narrated in ‘The Golden Legend’, a 13-century collection of saints’ biographies, would become the most familiar version in English owing to William Caxton's 15th-century translation.

In the medieval romances, the lance with which George slew the dragon was called Ascalon, after the Levantine city of Ashkelon, in modern-day Israel. The name Ascalon was used by Winston Churchill for his personal aircraft during World War II, according to records at Bletchley Park. Not a lot of people know that!

Happy St George’s Day everyone.

1 John 3: 11-24

John 10: 11-18

IN YOUR PRAYERS THIS WEEK

• God's peace and justice in all war torn places of the world, but especially in Ukraine, and in Israel and Gaza as the situation seems to be worsening.
• those grieving the loss of loved ones in the Sydney knife attack and those physically and mentally injured. the bereaved and the sick, in mind, body or spirit
• the staff at the surgery
  
• the residents and staff of the Mount Care Home
  
• the children and staff of our Parish schools, and all returning to school or Uni, with SATs and exams looming.

Our Next Services