Saint George

St. Georgios, Sankt Göran, Jorge, Yuri

Few saints have enjoyed such prolonged and extensive popularity as St. George. The oldest Greek legend of St. Georgios was already current in the 4th century, and during the 5th century it was translated into Latin, and eventually into the European vernacular tounges. In the latter, his name acquired a variety of pronunciations, from the Russian Yuri to the Spanish Jorge, Swedish Göran and the English George. These language areas mark, respectively, the eastern and western boundaries of the cult of the saint, which extended from Ethiopia in the south to Scandinavia in the north. He is England's national saint - hence the inclusion of his arms, a red cross on a white ground, in the flag - and he is, for example, the patron saint of both Moscow and Barcelona.

There are several conflicting stories behind St. George and his famous fight with a dragon. Perhaps the pagans saw dragons as beneficial creatures. When the Christians came, they said that dragons were that of the devil. The priests wanted to stifle any religon that wasn't Christianity. They came up with the St. George and Dragon story. One speaks of St. George as one who was endowed at birth with three marks on his body. One was that of a dragon which was inscribed on his chest. This was undoubtedly taken as an omen, and so it proved to be.

St. George grew older and took the time to learn the art of fighting. After several battles against the Saracens of Syria, he traveled into Libya where a dragon was known to live near the town of Sylene. There was a dragon that plagued a town and took sacrifices. This particular dragon required the sacrifice of a virgin every single day. On the day of St. George's arrival the kings daughter, Sabra, was to be the next victim.

A hero emerged by the name of St. George, with all appropriate pomp and valor accompanied the princess to the dragons home. It is here that many stories deviate, but one tells of how St. George captures the huge dragon as it rises out of the mire and attaches its head to Sabra's girdle. Then he slayed the beast in the name of Christianity. The princess then brings the living dragon back into the town where all the inhabitants exact their vengeance upon him. His actions coverted the whole town to Christianity. The story went around spreading the word of Christianity while making the dragon an evil creature.

Who exactly was this figure, with his mass appeal? The primitive Christian legend tells us that St. George came from Cappadocia in Asia Minor, became and officer in the Roman army and was executed during the great persecutions of the Christians in 303. His death was preceded by remarkably prolonged sufferings - more numerous and ghastly, perhaps, than those inflicted on any other martyr. He had actually been sawn up into many pieces, but several times God had restored him.

In this way St. George became and ideal figure to lepers, since they too were tormented and hoped to be miraculously cured. He became their patron saint and their hospitals were dedicated to him. Sweden, before the Reformation, had many hospitals dedicated to S:t Göran. Most of them were outside the city walls, as in the case of Visby, where the ruins of S:t Göran's hospital are still extant, and in Stockholm, where the hospital was in Norrmalm - at that time a suburb.

The other aspect of the legend of St. George, and one which was to grow more important as time went on, was his officer's rank, which in Western Europe eventually came to be equated with knighthood. During the First Crusade in 1099, at the siege of Antioch - where St. George is supposed to have been martyred - the saint appeared to the crusaders riding a white horse, leading them into victory over the infidel. The same thing is supposed to have happened at the storming of Jerusalem.

The militant, victorious saint of chivalry now became immensely popular all over Western Europe, the foremost example of a miles Christi, a soldier of Christ, and consequently the favourite saint of the medieval knights, constantly invoked in battle. St. George became the patron saint of orders of chivalry and individual knights, and also for armourers. The raw materials of the armour was extracted by mine owners, and St. George became their patron saint as well - as witness, for example, the chalice belonging to the Guild of St. George (Örjansgille) at the Swedish copper mine of Stora Kopparberget in Falun.

The knights wanted a hero who was not only distinguished by his bravery as a martyr but had also provided himself valiant in battle. Shortly after the First Crusade, in the early years of the 12th century, a new aspect of the legend of St. George became current in Europe, namely the story of his fight with the dragon. The monster threatened to engulf a whole city with its venom unless it was given two living beings a day to feed on. When it came to the princess's turn to be sacrificed, together with a sheep, St. George came by, engaged the dragon in single combat and defeated it. He then prevailed on the King and all citizens of Silene to be bapitised into the Christian faith.

This chivalrous exploit now became the principal ingredient of the legend of St. George and a subject of innumerable depictions all over the western world. The story is illustrated in Greek and Russian icons, in Italian, French and English reliefs and book illuminations, on Spanish altars and in German woodcuts and engravings, and in various other media and countries.

There is the famous bronze sculpture which has existed in Prague since 1373, showing horse and knight, just over half their actual size, fighting a somewhat diminutive dragon. But the largest, most artistic and dramatic portrait of St. George to be found in any country was consecrated, on New Year's Eve 1489, in Storkyrkan, Stockholm. Commissioned by Sten Sture the Elder, it was the work of Bernt Notke and his journeymen, who were specially called in from Lübeck.

What makes this group unique is the tremendous size of the dragon in relation to the knight, the more than life-size scale of the entire group and the drama of the composition, with a tremendous horse rearing up on its hind legs. Another distinctive quality of this composition is its combination of idealisation and realism.

All supplication of saints in northern Europe was abolished at the Reformation. In Sweden St. George, alone among the traditional saints, continued to be widely depicted in churches despite the Lutheran orthodoxy of the 17th century. In the Roman Catholic world, moves have been made since 1970 to subdue or completely abolish the cult of St. George and other saints whose historical existence cannot be firmly verified. It is only in the Orthodox Church that he fully retains his canonised status.

Even in our time, however, St. George has everywhere remained a living symbol of dauntless defiance of contemporary dangers. In Catalonia, where the language and culture of the people were suppressed in the days of Franco, St. George's Day - celebrated here, as everywhere, on 23rd April - has developed into a big national festival. In the lea of the UN building in New York in 1990, a gigantic bronze statue was erected, portraying the victory of St. George over the dragon of nuclear missiles. And in Stockholm, the well-known S:t Göran statue in Storkyrkan can reappear, for example, on broad-sheets protesting against government spending cuts and on posters in which his sword is uplifted against the venom-spouting dragon of air pollution.