462. St George: Dragon-Slayer
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In the 3rd century, a Turkish Roman soldier joined a growing cult and was executed for it, inspiring other martyrs. When the cult later became the official religion of the Roman Empire, the soldier inspired a popular cult of his own in Palestine.

The Empire persisted as a religious power structure in Europe and the Middle East, and many churches were dedicated to that Turkish soldier right across the territory of the old empire, from the Levant in the east to Britain in the west. The military cults became associated with orders of knighthood across Europe in the Middle Ages.

When England split away from the church still run from Rome, all banners of saints except for that of the Turkish soldier were banned. He was just too popular.

At some point, a myth about dragon slayer became attached to that soldier. He became adopted as the patron saint of many territories he never set foot in. Georgia, Ethiopia, Aragon and Catalonia, Portugal, Brazil, Bulgaria, Moscow, Serbia and Montenegro, and England.

Tom, that was a top faith leader, the former president of the humanists, no less, Professor Alice Roberts, writing on the website formerly known as Twitter on the 23rd of April 2021. So she was writing, Tom, on the feast day of the most famous dragon slayer of all, wasn't she? Absolutely. St. George. So we did a previous episode on dragons, didn't we? But we didn't mention him. And that's because I think he deserves an episode.

altar himself. He's a saint who is also

An archetype. Yeah. An archetype of courage, of good overcoming evil. So one of the countries that Alice Roberts didn't mention in that list of territories that have St. George as their patron saint was Malta. And Malta, Dominic, is one of three countries in the world to feature a dragon on its flag. So do you know the other two? Wales, of course. Wales. Wales is one. And I'm going to go with somewhere like...

Bhutan. Correct. Very good. Oh my gosh. Was it Bhutan? So you have won the pub quiz. That's excellent. Wow. So people often get those two, but Malta as well, because the flag of Malta has the George Cross on the top side of it. Of course it does. Yeah. And the George Cross, of course, it's the highest honor for courage, isn't it? Yeah. That's awarded to civilians. So for acts of the greatest heroism or for most conspicuous courage in circumstances of extreme danger, it's

and it was famously given to Malta in 1942 to mark its heroism during the siege of it in the Second World War. And it was then incorporated into its flag the following year. And even after independence, the Maltese were so proud of it that they kept it. Yeah, love Malta. And in the middle of that St. George cross, you have this emblem of St. George on his horse riding down a dragon. And obviously, Tom, the reason he's there

It's not just because, you know, lots of kings called George. It's because St. George has become the embodiment

of heroism, courage. It's why English kings in Shakespearean plays or sub-Shakespearean films draw their sword and cry, God for Harry, St. George and England, as they ride to smite the French. Well, Dominic, you'll remember we did an episode on the founding of the Order of the Garter. And specifically in the context of the Hundred Years' War, the king who's really into St. George is Edward III, who institutes the Order of the Garter in 1344.

And he does it on the 23rd of April. And there are various saints who are patrons of the order. So there's the Virgin Mary, there's St. Edmund, the King of East Anglia who got feathered by Viking arrows. And there's Edward the Confessor. But there's no question that St. George is the most important of those patrons. And that's why it's badge. You have a garter encircling the arms of St. George, which famously it's a red cross on a kind of white background.

and its very first seal showed Edward III kneeling before St. George, who is clad in the armour of a knight. Inspiring. Very inspiring, Tom. Yeah, absolutely inspiring. There's no question, I guess, that particularly the figure of George on a horse killing a dragon, I would say, is one of the most familiar visual representations of a saint.

you know, no matter where, everyone would recognise that pretty much. But I think it's also true to say that if the 23rd of April, St George's Day, is a celebration of courage and of the triumph of good over evil, it's also very much become a festival of scoffing, one might say. Some people might even say sneering, Tom. Possibly, yes. So on Twitter, every April the 23rd, it's part of the festivities that...

People go and say he didn't exist and he didn't fight a dragon and so on. Well, the Turkish soldier business. All of that. Yes. But the thing is, this is not a recent phenomenon at all. I mean, it has a very, very long history. And so Alice Robertson that said that St. George was spared being banned in the Reformation. Actually, he wasn't. There were definite moves to get rid of St. George from radical Protestants. Right. Interesting.

So, of course, the king who rules over the Reformation at its most radical is Edward VI, the son of Henry VIII. And under him, the associations of the Order of the Garter with St. George were explicitly banned. And there's a kind of very humanists on Twitter moment in 1551 at the Great Garter Feast on the 23rd of April is held at Greenwich. And Edward VI...

I think very much as though he's having a sneer on Twitter. He asks all the assembled lords of the garter, "My lords, I pray you, what saint is St. George that we here so honor him?" And then its treasurer answers him by talking about, you know, that he slew the dragon, hurrah. And Edward just collapses into fits of giggling. And he says, "Oh really? Well, show me the sword." So he is playing the skeptic. I always thought there was something deeply insufferable about Edward VI.

And I'm glad to have my suspicions confirmed. Yeah, I mean, there was kind of slightly priggish quality to him. But of course, he is, you know, he's an enthusiastic proponent of the Reformation at its most skeptical of...

Papist mummery, Dominic. Well, he has been awakened, Tom, hasn't he? He's been awakened by the fire of evangelicalism, so he's literally woke. Yes, he has been awakened, and this is why in 1553, which is the year he will die, but he's still around on the 23rd of April, the links of the garter to St. George are dismissed as obscure, superstitious, and repugnant opinions. So radical Protestants, I mean, the whole George killing a dragon thing, they thought that was nonsense. Who would ever have imagined...

that humanists and radical Protestants would have so much in common. It's a point that's never been made on the residence history. If only someone could write a book about this. But here's the thing. This is what's so intriguing. The doubts about St. George are not just Protestant.

Because at the end of the fifth century, a Pope is said to have worried about exactly the same thing. So Pope Galatius I, who was Pope in the 490s, I mean, he basically said these stories are all mad. And at this point, he wasn't even worrying about the dragon. He was kind of worrying about the most basic stories told about St. George. And he said that they were all bogus. And therefore, these are not read in the Holy Church of Rome to deny anyone even the slightest opportunity to sneer at them.

So it was as though he was looking forward to social media in the 21st century. Yeah. Actually, as long as St. George has been celebrated, there have been people who've said, no, we don't know anything about him. The stories that are being told about him are mad. Yeah.

Now, it's fair to say that Galatius is not actually doubting that George existed. In this thing that is attributed to him, he says that George does rank as one of the saints whose glorious struggles are known better to God than to human beings.

But I think it reflects a desire on the part of Christian scholars to kind of winnow out the chaff. It's not just a kind of a Protestant or a humanist thing to imagine that evidence has to be stress tested and that when there are things that are obviously bogus or mad, you should get rid of them. I mean, this is something that has been a theme throughout Christianity.

Christian history. And of course, if you're an anti-clerical kind of person, an anti-Christian person, that doesn't quite fit into your version of Christianity, where Christianity is all mad, superstitious, depraved and whatnot. You can understand why this doesn't get the attention, maybe. It's not as emotionally satisfying for Christianity's critics.

to say, actually, they are more sceptical than we thought. Well, I mean, Protestants want to sneer at Catholics and humanists want to sneer at Protestants, but I think they're all part of the same tradition, which is what makes it so interesting. Yeah. But obviously it's much easier to kind of stress test the historicity of a saint in the 21st century or even the 16th century than it was in the Latin West amid the implosion of the Roman Empire. I mean, that's a real challenge. So Galatius is Pope in Rome at a time when the empire in the West has completely imploded. And

How do you work out what sources are reliable? It's absolutely telling that actually these opinions that are attributed to Galatius

actually don't seem to have been written by him at all. They were probably, I think most scholars think, written by someone writing in Gaul about 50 years later. It's a real problem because of course the church is all about the miraculous. At the heart of Christian teaching is the idea of something that is by definition supernatural and fantastical, and not merely bounded by the limits of earthly possibility.

But at the same time, you don't want things that might seem kind of so miraculous that they seem ridiculous. It's hard to know whether to draw the line, Tom. Yeah. And I think the thing that's fascinating about George, maybe more than any other saint, is that he is the saint who perhaps more than any other one

becomes a focus for stories that channel a very, very deep need that is kind of running deep in popular opinion. And for that very reason, perhaps, is kind of viewed with suspicion by the intellectual elites, you know, from the 5th century right the way up to the 21st. So let's get to it. In that opening faith leader quote, the 3rd century, a Turkish Roman soldier joined a cult.

Can we even get back as far as the third century? I mean, he may well have lived in the third century, but if he did, the stories about him are first told 200 years later. Or the sources, rather. Yeah. The huge problem is we have no sources that are contemporaneous with a George if he lived. And I think that that is something that Catholic writers in late antiquity are aware of and are wrestling. But equally, I think the reason for George's popularity is

is that he's like a kind of lake into which all kinds of streams of popular stories flow. And the first thing that he's a focus for isn't dragon slaying, but for having been a martyr. And martyrs for Christians in the Roman world are the kind of the shock troops of the church. They are the holiest. They are the people who don't have to wait around for the final judgment to get to heaven. They go straight there. They're seated at the feasting table of God. Yeah. So

The stories that are told about George's martyrdom kind of take all the familiar elements and kind of crank them up to a massive pitch. So the stories that are told, and these are from the 5th century, so as you said, about 200 years after George is supposed to have lived, they vary in the details, but you can kind of distinguish a basic outline. And what they say is that George is probably from

Cappadocia, which is in the middle of what is now Turkey, but of course wasn't Turkey then. So George was not a Turk. There's no way George could have been a Turk. No. I mean, the Turks are like thousands of miles away on the steppes of Central Asia. Of course. So George is a Greek. George is a Greek name. Yeah.

Gorgias. And there's kind of various traditions about where he was actually brought up. So there is a tradition that derives from a manuscript that was found quite recently when they were kind of shifting monuments to build the Aswan Dam. And in this, George grew up in Nubia. But what the sources agree is that he rises very high in the imperial service, perhaps as a civil servant, but the

The general tradition, which becomes kind of canonical, is that he is a soldier, that he's a warrior fighting in the armies of Caesar. So one of the institutions, one of the great institutions of the empire, either way. Yeah. So it's either the civil service or the army, and he becomes associated with the army. He is baptized.

He is then ordered by a heathen emperor to sacrifice to Apollo. He refuses and he then just suffers tortures that are so hideous that they kind of verge on the comical. In one version of the story of George, he is forced into shoes that have iron spikes inside them. He has his skull crushed.

He then has 60 nails hammered into it and then just for good measure he has molten lead poured down his throat. He's still alive at this point. He's then placed in a kind of giant hollow bronze bull which again has kind of sharp nails inside it and the bull

bull is kind of revolved round and round so that these nails are kind of driving into him. Anyway, so all very horrible. And then in another account, he is broken on a wheel with knives, and this kills him. He's restored to life by St. Michael, who we talked about in the previous episode, the captain of the angels who fights Satan in the great battle. When he's restored to life, understandably, everyone in the heathen emperor's kingdom is very impressed by this. And so they all mass conversions. And the

The king is furious, continues trying to finish George off. So boils George alive, saws him in two, molten lead poured down his throat. And George is brought back to life by St. Michael three times in a row. And actually, if

If you win a martyr's crown, you go straight to heaven. You'd think George would be getting a bit frustrated by this. But he does finally win his martyr's crown on the fourth attempt on the 23rd of April. And the entire kingdom is converted except for the emperor. But his empress is converted. So the female members of the royal family are converted. Fair play to the emperor, though. I mean, he's sticking to his guns. He's sticking to his principles. Yeah. Yes.

So basically, this is kind of, you know, this is the Marvel equivalent of a martyr. Yeah. This is pumping up all the stories about martyrdom to a kind of superhuman level. And I think that's why it's so popular. And it's why...

intellectuals, clerical scholars are embarrassed about it. It seems to them absurd and over-sensational and kind of threatening because it makes the martyrdom narratives that are so important to the church just seem a bit far-fetched. But also it kind of complicates the way we think about these narratives, right? We assume they're all one thing, but within the genre, there would perhaps have been as much diversity of quality...

as there was within, you know, any modern narrative. In other words, there would have been stuff at the highbrow end. Yeah. And this is very much a populist story. The sort of lowbrow, the Dan Brown of martyrdom narratives. Yeah. I think a kind of superhero film, perhaps more. Right.

Because for some reason, George has become a figure who attracts these kind of stories. And the more he attracts the stories, the more he becomes the kind of the emblematic martyr. Right. All of which kind of the question hanging over this is, well, you know, did he actually exist? And I think it's impossible to say. But is it not possible to say that a fantastical story like this, merely because it's become fantastical and the versions we have are fantastical, does not mean there are no trace elements? Then the story must have begun somewhere.

somewhere absolutely either you believe somebody literally invented it from nowhere or you believe there was a soldier who converted and that from that humble beginning a fantastical story was later created i think so and it's kind of widely felt that the likeliest context for george if he did exist was the great persecution that's launched against the church by the emperor diocletian we did a whole episode about him for the world cup didn't we a couple of years ago yeah he

He launches this basically to kind of extirpate the church at the beginning of the fourth century. And all the sources agree that George is being martyred for refusing to sacrifice to pagan gods. And they also agree that this happens in the eastern half of the Mediterranean world, where the persecution was at its most brutal. So I would say the likelihood is that he is...

someone possibly in the imperial service who is martyred in the early fourth century under Diocletian. I mean, even that is, you know, it's been disputed, but I would say that's the likeliest. It's a reasonable best guess, right? Yeah. So beyond that, kind of very difficult to know because of course,

Having a famous martyr is something that, I mean, it's a brilliant thing to have. And so various places kind of compete over him. So one favorite location for him is Lida, which is modern day Lod, which is just south of Tel Aviv in Israel. His mother is supposed to have been the Komez who was in charge of the city. His relics were buried there. I mean, if they really were his relics, we don't know. And Lida undoubtedly becomes the kind of the main center for his cult in the Eastern Mediterranean area.

But it has to be said, again, that the evidence for this is quite late. And, you know, there are other places. So Joppa, Joppa, where the great skeleton of the sea monster was brought by Scourers. Hey, maybe that sea monster, which was actually, what, a whale or something like that? Yeah. How disappointing. Because I was going to say, there's your St. George and the dragon. Exactly. And Perseus rescues a princess from a sea monster there. And that does seem to have echoes of the George theory. But again, the problem with that

is that these stories are much, much later. And it seems very unlikely that there's a kind of direct continuity. I mean, I agree, it is a very, very tempting correlation between Perseus and George is intriguing, but it's hard to see how that tradition would have migrated. But we'll come to where the stories of George might have come from later. One other intriguing possibility is that

The first great history of the church that we get written by a guy called Eusebius, who was a bishop in Palestine and a biographer of Constantine. He writes that when Diocletian had his decree announcing the persecution of the church proclaimed in Nicomedia, which is kind of the northwest corner of what's now Turkey, and that's where Diocletian was based. Isn't it?

Famous for its tiles. Yeah. An unnamed man of high rank goes up to this edict and he tears it down and he publicly destroys it. And Eusebius says that this man was the first Christian in Nicomedia to be martyred.

and that before he was executed, he was brutally tortured and that he bore all his torments with incredible courage. So people have thought maybe this is St. George. I mean, maybe this was an act that was seen to be so heroic that this man became a focus for these stories. Yeah. A man of high rank, right? A man who's in one of the big imperial institutions. Yeah. But we don't really know. And I think that the fact that we don't know is precisely why he is such a brilliant focus for fantastical stories. He's kind of like

blotting paper, just soaking them up. And of course, this is why in the long run, George becomes famous not for his martyrdom, but for fighting the dragon. And this is a much later tradition. So one of the reasons for doubting that the story of George is influenced by pagan memories of Perseus at Joppa is that

We don't really get any evidence for George fighting a dragon until the 7th century. So in the 7th century, we get wall paintings in a church in Cappadocia, where George, of course, is meant to have come from. And it shows him on horseback, and he's spearing a pair of serpents that are twining around a kind of tree. A century later, in northern Macedonia, a terracotta plaque has been found that shows him not on a horse, but spearing serpents that have human heads. Right.

And then in the 11th and 12th centuries, you start to get the first narrative accounts of him killing a dragon. And it seems that these stories may have originated in Georgia, where St. George is incredibly popular. Yeah. But Georgia is not named after St. George, right? It's often been said that, and it was thought that in the Middle Ages, but it seems rather disappointingly that no, it seems to come from a Persian word, which is very sad. Right. And these stories are then translated into Greek and then in the 13th century into Latin. And...

What's interesting is that the basic plot has elements of all the original martyrdom stories. So you have heathen kings, you have female royals who are rescued by St. George, but now of course it has a dragon and that just makes it much, much more exciting. So should I tell the basic plot of George and the dragon? Do you like that? Tom?

Tom, I would, but only after I've had a break from an advert. Of course. So let's have a cliffhanger moment here while we wait with bated breath for Tom to tell us the story of St. George and the dragon. But in the meantime, we will have a word from our sponsors.

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Find the detail that moves you with immersive dining experiences from Sapphire Reserve. Chase, make more of what's yours. Learn more at chase.com slash sapphirereserve. Cards issued by JPMorgan Chase Bank and a member of FDSE. Subject to credit approval. Welcome back to The Rest Is History. Tom, I cannot wait to hear what happened between St. George and the Dragon. I'm so glad, Dominic. In which case, I will plunge straight in. Yeah, do.

So this is basically the earliest version and it comes from various sources, but they basically agree. So there's a pagan king. He refuses to worship the true God. So God sends a dragon to punish him. And this dragon, as dragons do, kind of lurks in a lake and causes general havoc. All the subjects of the king are furious that he's brought this on them. And so what the king suggests is that everyone should offer up a child of theirs in sacrifice.

to try and appease the god who has obviously sent this terrible monster. And every day a child is chosen by Lot and sacrificed to the dragon. Finally, the lot falls on the king's own daughter and the king is desperate, doesn't want to sacrifice the princess, but everyone insists. So the princess gets led out to be left for the dragon, at which point George comes riding by on his horse and he gets the full story from the princess and he

He says, brilliant. I'm going to take the dragon on, but you need to believe in my God. And if you do that, then you need have no fear. The dragon comes out from the cave. George approaches the dragon and rather disappointingly, he doesn't kind of draw his sword. He makes the sign of the cross and the dragon is immediately tamed. And George then takes the girdle of the princess and leashes the dragon with it. And the princess then leads it back into the city. And everyone's

Everyone in the city is terrified at the sight of this dragon coming in. But George says, don't worry. It's all fine. All you've got to do is accept the true God and everything will be brilliant. And they all accept the true God. They profess their belief in the Trinity. George now draws out his sword, kills the dragon, and everyone in the city is baptized. So that's

the basic plot. There's a lot going on there, Tom, but almost all of it is very familiar, right? Just making a note of all those details. I know we're going to go into them in a second, but the dragon by the water source, the lake, the regular offering of a child, the prominence of the king's daughter, the stuff with the girdle, the conversion at the end. I mean, you talked about superhero narratives earlier on. I mean, it's so common to us in 21st century popular culture that a narrative will basically be a composite of elements of existing narratives.

And that seems so obviously the case here, doesn't it? Yeah. Well, so people who listened to our previous episode will recognize a lot of those elements from the stories of Greek myth. Yeah. And I think that the link between the story of George and those Greek myths, with one exception, it's not direct, but it's mediated by the fact that

Stories of Christian saints are actually drawing on those stories of Greek myth from very, very early on. So actually there are loads of saints who confront dragons. Most of them are not military. Most of them are kind of doing it by the power of prayer or whatever. The earliest one we have is the late second century AD. I mean, that's incredibly early. It comes in the life of St. Thomas, Doubting Thomas, who goes to India, the apostle there.

And there's this story in it. He's in India. He discovers a handsome young man who's lying dead. The apostle immediately knows that this must be the work of a dragon. No sooner has he come to this conclusion than out comes the dragon from his cave.

And the dragon has a kind of chat with him and says that actually he killed the boy because he had witnessed the boy having sex with a woman. And this woman was one that the dragon had fallen in love with. And what was more, they'd been doing it on the Sabbath. So the dragon is saying, I'm perfectly justified in having killed him. Dragon is a jealous Puritan. Yes, but St. Thomas isn't having any of this. And he makes the dragon suck.

the venom out of the dead boy. The boy is restored to life, and the dragon has got all this poison. He blows up like a balloon and explodes, and all the venom goes splattering everywhere. It may not sound much like the story of George, but you can again see that there are elements. You've got a dragon in a lair. He's doing harm to people who are local. The saint arrives.

the saint tames and kills the dragon. Yeah. And this is a pattern that is repeated over and over and over again. So I mentioned Daniel Ogden's great book on how the stories of dragons have emerged over the centuries.

the dragon in the West. And he has a list of kind of over 200 of these stories. And the thing is, they're all remarkably similar. You know, they're kind of very conservative, the same pattern over and over again. But this is why George is interesting because he is a warrior. He's a saint, but he is also a soldier. So Tom, just going back to that point and thinking about what you were talking about in our previous podcast about the history of dragons, Christian writers in the

Roman world. No one has said to them, there's been a massive cultural shift now and

you know, so the classical legends. It's part of their mental furniture. Yeah. It's totally part of their imagination. I mean, they're steeped in that world. They're completely immersed in it. I mean, obviously it'd be fanciful to think that they wouldn't be telling stories that would be infused with elements of Greek and Roman mythology. So the fighting of the monsters and all that stuff. I mean, I think that's right. Having said that, of course, they are aware that there's been a cultural shift because they have

converted or they have been born again. Yeah, but they haven't dumped all their previous furniture, to use your expression. No, absolutely not. But I'm just saying that I think that there is an obvious Christian antecedent for this, which is the figure of St. Michael, who we've mentioned quite a lot already, the captain of heaven, the warrior archangel.

who fights a dragon. I think that's the kind of the obvious example. And the issue with that is that because he's an archangel, you know, he hasn't left any relics. He doesn't have any bones. Right. Do archangels not have bones? How does that work? No, they're kind of, no. They're boneless, like Ramsay MacDonald. They're incorporeal. Right. Okay. So that's,

that's a source of frustration. Whereas with St. George, if you kind of, you model St. George on St. Michael, then you can have all the relics and it's kind of, he's more accessible, I guess. So I do think that St. Michael hovers behind these stories, but I agree that of course, if you live in particularly the Greek speaking part of the Roman empire, of course, you're going to be familiar with all these stories. And that's why I

But perhaps the story of Perseus and Andromeda informs the stories about saints rescuing princesses or saving women or, you know, even young men, as in the example of St. Thomas. And that these then translate into the story of St. George. Well, because just think about how it would work, right? Imagine that you convert to Christianity when you're 20 or whatever. Presumably you're sitting there for the first, let's say, eight, ten years of your life,

I know that the stories are not children's stories in the same way that they are perceived as being children's stories today, the Greek myths. But there's no doubt that you would be told a story about Perseus and Andromeda or Heracles and his labours or Theseus and the labyrinth and stuff. I mean, of course you would. They're part of the common currency. It'd be as ubiquitous as the Beatles' music is today. So it would make sense that when you become a Christian or when you really get into Christianity, your sense of what is...

The frameworks for the stories you tell are dictated by not just the Bible, but also the other tradition that is there at the same time. But I think that in the case of George, it's not like he's being modeled on the story of Persians and Andromeda. I think that the elements of those Greek myths of dragons that live in caves and heroes fight them, that that has been mediated and adapted by people who are writing stories of saints who confront dragons.

And then the massive innovation with George sometime around the sixth, seventh, eighth century is that he is a martial saint. He is a warrior saint. He's a soldier. Right. And so then that just kind of lights the touch paper for reanimating all these kind of traditions and stories. And is that why he is on a horse? Because that is an innovation, right? That previously these people were never on horseback.

Yeah. And I think that this is the thing where there might be a direct link between the Greek myth and the figure of George. And it's not a narrative, it's an image. Because the image of a saint on a horse is something that does reach back to its fourth, fifth century, perhaps.

And it's something that's very popular in Egypt. And you have an unnamed rider who has a halo. His spear on the bottom has a cross. And he is spearing a kind of supine serpent kind of lying at his feet. And there is this inscription, the one God conquers all.

And it's clear that this in turn derives from the figure of a Greek hero called Bellerophon who rides the winged horse Pegasus and spears a monster called the Chimera, which in the kind of the classical form, it's a kind of compound of a lion, a goat, and a snake.

This is an image that goes all the way back to, you know, archaic Greece, the 6th, 7th century BC. But we know, you know, it's incredibly popular, even with Christians, because actually there's kind of a mosaic found in Dorset at Hinton St. Mary. It's the famous one that people have probably seen. It's got a kind of beardless mosaic of Christ looking a bit like Apollo.

But there's another one that's also in a kind of roundel that shows Bellerophon spearing the chimera. So this idea of a man on a horse spearing a monster that is a symbol of evil, this is something that Christians seem to have been happy with. And I think that it generates image of a figure on horseback spearing a monster, and that this is why the stories of St. George killing the dragon are so instantaneously popular once he becomes associated with them.

Although that image is specific to the Byzantine world, it's an image that emerges from the Greek half of what had been the Roman Empire. You can also see why a martial figure on horseback fighting a dragon would have appealed to the knights of Latin Europe in the high Middle Ages.

I think it's really telling that the cult of St. George starts to take off in Latin Christendom in the 11th century, which is when you start getting knights emerging as the shock troops of Christendom in the West, and particularly the Normans actually. The Normans famously conquer England, but they're also fighting in Sicily, often against the Byzantines.

So they may well have picked it up there. And there's an account late in the 11th century that the Normans are fighting the Saracens who were based in Sicily. And St. George appears before them in shining armor, carrying a white banner decorated with a cross. So is this where the flag of St. George comes from? The famous image of the white banner with the cross? That sounds very like the flag of St. George. Well, is the cross red? That's the key thing. We don't know. No.

Because the Normans, of course, lots of them go on the first crusade. And before the walls of Jerusalem, when they're attempting to storm the city, George is described as appearing to them again.

And this time he's described as wearing white armour marked with a red cross. So again, that's kind of intriguing. Is the red cross on a white background? Is there something going on there with the purity of white and red being the blood of Christ or something like that? I suppose so. Yeah. And so it's often claimed that Richard the Lionheart picks up on this and this is how it comes back to England. He's always shown in the flag of St. George on his tunic. But the truth is that...

Actually, that's not true. Oh no, Tom, don't do this. So, shockingly, in the Third Crusade, it's the French who wear red crosses and the English wear white ones. Well, some of us think the French legally should still be wearing. I mean, you know, if only the royal family had the decency to press their claim, the French would be wearing red crosses to this day. I suppose. But I think what that suggests is that in the 12th century, certainly, there isn't a clear identification of a red cross on a white background whatsoever.

First of all, with Crusaders per se, and secondly, with St. George as being a kind of a figure who can be associated with England. And it's really not until the 13th century. So that is when the tradition of George fighting the dragon has been translated into Latin. And so it's accessible that you start to get this.

sense that his arms are a plain red cross on a white field. Are we now into, let me just think about my medieval kings, we're now into the Edwards, are we? The 13th century? We are. So the English king who first adopts this cross, this cross of St. George, the red cross on a white background as his emblem is Edward I. And he does it during his wars of conquest in Wales.

The dragon. Exactly. So Edward had been on crusade. Yeah. So he would be familiar with this. But of course, we talked about this yesterday. The dragon is the emblem of Wales. And so you can see how this would have gelled very, very neatly with kind of Edward's requirements. But as we also said at the beginning of the program, it's actually Edward III with the Order of the Garter who really institutionalizes the place of St. George in the English court. Right. Because up until that point,

Edward I and Edward III's devotion to St George was personal to them. But what Edward III does is to say, "No, we're putting this at the heart of court ritual." You can see over the course of the 14th century that this is starting to percolate out. By 1385, during the reign of Richard II, the English are going off to fight against the Scots. The ordinances of war that are issued for that campaign command that everyone in the English army

should wear the cross of St. George, and that if any Scot is found wearing it, then he should be put to death immediately. I think that suggests that you're starting to see a wave of popular enthusiasm for it, partly because the story is so good. It's very dramatic. Also, amazingly, people do still think dragons are real things. A decade later, in 1395, there are reports that a fierce dragon is terrorising large parts of England. It's amazing.

So you can see why the stories of St. George would appeal to the king and to the kind of high chivalric element. But you can also see how it would have cut through with people who were afraid that there are dragons out in woods. So, Tom, we should have actually talked about this in the last episode, but just a tiny tangent. And you just have to give me an answer. When do people stop thinking dragons might be real? There are reports of dragons, you know, as late as the 17th century. 17th century. I think it's around there. I mean, I don't think many people do then. With the kind of disenchantment of early modern Europe. Yeah, 17th century.

Throughout the Middle Ages, people do genuinely seem to have believed in dragons. Right. That was a tangent. But go on. Henry V is all over St. George, isn't he? Yeah. So Henry V is also, I mean, he loves St. George. And so when he relaunches The Hundred Years' War, we'll be doing an episode on Henry V in the summer. Yeah. Great scenes. He, at Harfleur, the French port that he captures, he raises the banner of St. George. And at Agincourt, his battle cry is, in the name of Almighty God and St. George. And this...

This consolidates a view that if you're a successful warrior king, then you have St. George on your side. So you've got Edward I who conquered Wales, you've got Edward III who's a massive lad, and you've got Henry V who won the Battle of Agincourt. Against that, Edward II, who was useless, Richard II, who was useless, and Henry VI, who was useless, none of them had any time for St. George. No coincidence. And so I think you start to get an idea bedding down that if you are...

a successful warrior king, then you back St. George. And if you're a wuss, you don't. So then we get into the Tudors. Now, interestingly, the Tudors are kind of having their cake and eating it, aren't they? Because they do fly the dragon. Because famously, Henry Tudor lands at Milford Haven in Wales. He marches through Wales. He tries to actually mobilize a sense of Welshness by flying his dragon and all of that kind of thing. But basically, they want to lay claim to both powers.

parts of the picture. They do. The dragon and the soldier. Yeah, they do. And I mean, Henry VII, he's got his dragons everywhere. And also, of course, he's famously mean. I mean, he never liked spending money on anything. And so understandably, his treasure assumes, well, I better cut back on the garter celebrations on the 23rd of April. And Henry

Henry's furious about this. You know, he says, no, you know, this is the one thing that we have to spend money on. It's really, really important. St. George is the patron of England. Right. And Henry VII is actually so devoted to George that in 1505, he obtains the saint's shinbone from the King of France. So that's, that's real commitment. Yeah. And so it's not surprising then that Henry VIII, you

you know, who loves his tournaments, who loves his flags, who loves his chivalry. It does. I mean, he's a huge St. George fan and he actually has an image of St. George kind of engraved on his armor and,

He's the first English king to mint a coin with an image of St. George on it. This is very well known internationally. It's not just in England that St. George is coming to be seen as somehow the particular guardian. This is also something that is starting to get international currency. In 1526, there is a pageant in Rome and Henry is portrayed as St. George.

Now, of course, we know what's coming. So the Reformation is coming. But even when it does, Henry, he's not going to get rid of St. George. He's basically a Catholic. He just doesn't want the Pope. And he is going very much with the grain of popular opinion. St. George is becoming a genuinely popular saint by this point.

You know that you have guilds dedicated to him. You have great processions on his feast day. Loads of portrayals of him going up in churches. Why wouldn't he be? He's fun. Yeah. But also, if there are any remaining members of the League of Humanists or whatever they're called listening,

The fact that he's not English is utterly beside the point because saints don't work in that way, right? I mean, he wouldn't be the saint of Catalonia, of Aragon, of all these other places if people were narrowly nationalistic about their saints. But I think it also makes him...

in a way, slightly less threatening to the reformers than the English saints, who for centuries and centuries have been particularly associated with shrines. You think of Thomas Becket, English; St Edmund, we mentioned, the Martyr King; St Cuthbert in Durham; Edward the Confessor in Westminster.

These are saints whose bones are in place because they are associated with the locations where they lived and died. And I think that that kind of makes them more threatening to Protestant reformers. It makes it more important that they got rid of. And that's why the shrines of all of those saints, to varying degrees, are attacked today.

during the process of the dissolution of the monastery. So the shrine of Thomas Beckett is famously kind of publicly destroyed. Edmund's shrine is destroyed. Cuthbert's shrine is destroyed. Cuthbert's bones are reburied because they're still nervous of them. And Edward the Confessor, his shrine is destroyed. His bones are buried elsewhere. And then after the reign of Edward VI, people think, well, we can't get rid of Edward the Confessor. So he kind of lurks around

But with George, it's kind of different. The very unreliability of the traditions that everyone had told about him. All the stuff that had made Edward VI laugh actually makes him perfectly suited to the kind of the settlement that Elizabeth presides over, where you have a Protestant church, but with kind of Catholic garnishing. So here's the interesting thing, that these people were real. Edward the Confessor, or Thomas Speckett, let's say. Thomas Speckett was a real person.

And so the existence of his cult and the existence of his bones or whatever to a reformer is an affront because they would say, we know he was a real person. He's a historic figure. Of course he doesn't have miraculous powers. That's all total tosh. Yeah. And of course he's an affront to the king. Yeah. Because Thomas Beckett was killed on orders of a king. But with George, the very fact that he's fun, that he's a superhero, you know, that it's a great gray area, whether it exists or not, means that if you're a reformer, he

he's not so insulting because at some point you just say, come on, he's a bit of a laugh. He's an inspirational story. You know, no one's making great claims. I suppose his shinbone is a bit of a problem. What happened to his shinbone? I'm sure that must have been destroyed. But I agree. I think his kind of semi-fictional character makes him perfectly suited.

to not just the church, but actually the broad popular culture of the Elizabethan age. So the famous example of this is the Fairy Queen, the great epic written by Edmund Spencer, which opens with St. George, who Spencer calls the Red Cross Knight.

and he is commissioned by the fairy queen, Gloriana, so AKA Elizabeth I, to go out and perform various deeds of chivalry, including killing a dragon. So he's clearly St. George. And he is charged with looking after the beautiful and virtuous Una, who is clearly meant in allegory for the Church of England. And the dragon that the Red Cross knight kills is Catholicism. So, I mean, it's intriguing. St. George is, if you're

If you are a stern, strict, puritanical, finger-wagging, hot Protestant, St. George is the worst kind of invented saint. But it still doesn't stop him being cast as the defender of Protestantism against Catholicism. So he's incredibly flexible. You can kind of make of him what you want. Is it also easy to make him a foe of Catholicism or a champion of Protestantism because he's sufficiently Far East, as it were?

that he's not too deeply implicated with the papacy. You know, if he is from what is now, you know, Israel or he is from what is now Turkey. Yeah. He's kind of not tainted by Romishness. Yeah. And I think the kind of the locations of his battles are

are in a kind of fantasy land. So if you think of the famous paintings of him, the cello painting or whatever, these aren't real places. These are the dimensions of fairy tale and myth. And that in turn means that actually, if you want to, you can situate St. George's birthplace any place you want. So there's a guy writing under Elizabeth in the 1590s called Richard Johnson, who writes a book called The Seven Champions of Christendom, which are various countries' patron saints.

But St. George is the first one, and he is the dominant figure in this book. And you'll be delighted to know, Dominic, that he is born in the Midlands. Son of Coventry. Yeah. So actually, you know, he wasn't born in Cappadocia. He was born in Coventry. I think that's very plausible. Yeah, I like that. And of course, the other reason why I think St. George gets cemented in as the patron saint of England in the Elizabethan period is

and isn't jettisoned over the centuries that follow, is that the 23rd of April, his saint's day, is also the day on which Shakespeare supposedly is born and dies. Yeah, so perfect. England's national poet. Perfect synergy. Yeah. And I think that that's why St. George works as a patron saint, actually. I mean, the fictional quality of him is absolutely the point. Yeah. Celebrations of national identity or patriotism in England tend to be associated with

either great royal spectacles in which actually St. George doesn't really play any part at all because it's all about the history of the institution or sport and it makes sense to have somebody who perhaps didn't exist who is occupying a sort of slightly grey fantastical area I mean if Thomas Beckett or Edward the Confessor was our national saint they would have been cancelled for some historic offence wouldn't they 10 or 20 years ago yeah I mean I think

Beckett or Edward the Confessor, I mean, it would revolve around the royal family again. It would revolve around England's relationship to the crown. And I think, although of course St. George has always been associated with royalty, it's because of royal patronage that George comes to take on the status that he does in the English imagination. He's not dependent on it. And I think that

The very fact that his story can be rewritten and retold in so many ways makes him very, very flexible. So sure, he has been adopted by the far right, but he's also a very ironic figure. The people who are dressing up in chain mail to go to football matches. Yeah.

They're doing it in a mood of almost self-mockery. Totally they are. Yeah, it's fun. There's no political significance to that. Anyone who thinks there's a political significance to wearing a crusader outfit to go and watch England play Slovenia or something is demented as far as I'm concerned. But I mean, obviously there is a kind of slight element of an issue with the fact that he's associated with crusading. So you could imagine that Muslims in England might feel slightly uncomfortable with having a patron saint like that for their country. But he's not a crusader though.

He's not a crusader. Yeah. But more than that, he's highly venerated by Muslims. Okay. Perfect. So Al-Tabari was a massive fan. He told, you know, the martyrdom story. Hmm.

and kind of hyped it up even more. So actually, St. George is one of the few Christian saints who historically was highly venerated by Muslims. So I think he's a very flexible figure. And although I've gone on record, I'm not going to lie, I'd love to see St. Cuthbert as England's national saint. Tom, you're not going to win that one. Give up. No, I know I'm not. I do think that people shouldn't take it too seriously. What do you think about the sort of social media crazed humanist professors?

dissing St. George. Well, I think it's all part of a broad tradition. Again, you know, let everybody enjoy it whichever way they want. And of course, the irony is that as you so often say, Tom, I'm going to say it for you because I just, I know your methods. They are merely representing one wing of Christianity, aren't they? Absolutely. Well, it's lovely to see the presence of humanists following a great papal tradition. Yeah, very good. All right. So I

I think we can safely say St. George is definitely a friend of the show. I think so. Yeah. And maybe the dragon as well. Yeah. We're like the Tudors in that regard. We're very like the Tudors. We're basically Henry VII and Henry VIII, and I'll leave you to work out which. Yeah. Right. Tom, thank you very much for that. That was a forensic tour de force. Thank you, Dominic. Always a pleasure. We will be back next week with something very different. I don't know what it is. I'm sure it'll be amazing. So we'll see you then. Thank you very much, Tom, and goodbye. Bye-bye.