The 23rd of April is St. George’s Day, the feast day of one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers in Christian hagiography, a celebration of the saint who famously slew a dragon and rescued a princess in his youth.
St George the Dragon-slayer has been one of the most venerated and renowned saints of Europe, especially adored in Anglo-Saxon and Celtic cultures. One of the reasons St George was so popular in the British Isles, and became the patron saint of England, is the deep-rooted connection between this militaristic martyr and the pre-Christian god known as the Green Man, a vegetative deity or nature spirit that was worshipped throughout Europe and the Middle East.
As widespread conversions to monotheistic religions like Christianity supplanted the older pagan beliefs, the Green Man remained a covert but significant part of the ideology of the newer faiths. Many of the attributes of the Green Man — associations with growth, the colour green, oak trees, and heroism — were transferred to St George (sometimes called Green George). Painting of his deeds were frequently found on the walls of churches across Europe, and were especially prevalent in the UK until the advent of the Reformation, when proto-Puritans whitewashed over the religious frescoes (because God hates color and happiness in church, I suppose).
Although the saint is best known for killing the dragon, he was also traditionally said to bless crops, guarantee fertility, and usher in the return of spring. Not only was the Green Man kept alive in St George, throughout Europe, the motif of the Green Man has been depicted in the architectural features of many medieval churches or other religious sites for more than a thousand years.
The veneration of the Green Man as Saint George wasn’t exclusive to Europe, either. It was also a significant in the Middle East and Islam as well. St George is a prophetic figure in Islam and is associated with The Green Man, known as Al Khidr, ‘the Green One’, a Qur’anic figure who appears in order to instruct the worthy on the mysteries of God. Islamic tradition holds that he “lived among a group of believers who were in direct contact with last apostles of Jesus … was martyred under the rule of Diocletian and was killed three times but resurrected every time.” Inasmuch as St George was martyred for his belief in the God of Abraham, he is considered to have died in a state of Islam, or peace with the will of God. Most legends of St George in the Middle East feature resurrection, like the Green Man, as well as the saint making dry wood and pillars sprout vegetation.
There were (and still are) multiple mosques dedicated to the Green One, some of which were sites though to provide potential cures for infertility. Two of the most notable of the Green One mosques are the Qubbat Al-Khidr, which is located within the terraced site of the Dome of the Rock in Palestine, and the Uzbekistan mosque of Al-Khidr in Samarkand. His veneration is still particularly strong among the Muslims and Christians of Palestine and Lebanon, and several sites are claimed to be THE site where the saint killed the dragon a millennia ago. These sites, or water from rivers or springs in the area, are traditionally held to be able to miraculously restore health to sick children and the mentally ill. Even in modern Palestine most Christian households have a carved picture of St George (known as Mar Jirjes) near or over the doorway to invoke his protection.
Adoration for St George, the brave and the fertile, was paramount in the Medieval era. The martyr was the idealistic touchstone for King Edward III, who wanted to be as stalwart and noble as this warrior-saint. In 1348 the king created the Order of the Garter, modelled after the knights of the round table, a flagrant attempt to codify the English identity as the heirs of King Arthur and the Age of Chivalry. (The Green Knight from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight represents the Green Man, and “serves as both a monster antagonist and as mentor to Sir Gawain” as befitting a former god.) The Order was comprised of a very select group of 24 “Knights Companion” of the King, and it was a way to both reward his best fighters and allies and to bind them even more tightly to his cult of personality. Loyalty to King Edward, as the Knights of the Round Table were loyal to King Arthur, became a defining element of chivalry. As a result, King Edward was one of the few Medieval monarchs to never have to fear a revolt from his nobles.
When Katherina of Aragon came to marry King Edward III’s descendant, Arthur Tudor, in 1501 she was coming to the right place, from a religious standpoint. As with England, Saint George was the patron saint of the Crown of Aragon. According to Aragonese legend, God had sent Saint George, “who descended from Heaven riding on a horse, carrying with him a maroon cross to the battlefield” to rally the troops of Aragon against the moors to retake the city of Huesca for Christian ruler Pedro I of Aragon during the reconquista. After Arthurs untimely demise in 1502, Katherina was betrothed to the new Prince of Wales, the future King Henry VIII, but was left to languish in semi-bondage like the princesses of any archival tale. Once the old king died, however, the new king rescued her from her personal dragons and made her queen. During her early, happy years of marriage to Henry VIII, Katherina would have cheered him on in jousting tournaments as her own St George analogue while he fought for her honour as Sir Loyal Heart.
Even when King Henry VIII went bonkers and broke from Rome, he maintained the veneration of St George. The saint was so popular, and so embedded in British culture, that future Protestant kings, no matter how sternly anti-Catholic they might be, maintained the Order of the Garter and the adoration of St George. This why William Shakespeare’s Henry V was able to include the lines “God for Harry, England, and Saint George!” in its famous battle scene in spite of the fact Catholics were actively persecuted and actively retaliating with terrorism at the time the play was written and first put into production.
St George never went out of style, but his honour was sorely lessened in the Regency period, when King George IV established the Most Distinguished Order of St Micheal and St George in 1818 to recognise exemplary service in the diplomatic corps. This meant that even glad-handing and backstairs dealings on behalf of Great Britain was now a patriotic way to please the Lord God and defend England from metaphorical dragons. I’m sure it was considerably easier to drink port with the right people than it was to fight on a battlefield in full armour for the glory of king and country.
Saint George was again called into patriotic service during World Wars I and II. Not only were British soldiers reminded to defend their homeland as vigorously as St George had defended a damsel in distress. The patron saint of England was considered the ultimate moral booster … and good luck for the British. Great Britain chose St George’s Day in 1918 to launch a major naval counter-strike against Germany at the sea ports of Zeebrugge and Ostend, which was crucial to eventual maritime victory. Belief that St George WAS the essence of being a ‘good’ Englishman meant that even the handful of British fascists recruited to fight FOR Hitler’s Germany called themselves the Legion of St George to soothe their consciences.
Another Allied country that depended on St George in World War II was Russia. The saint, patron of Moscow, was used to urge Soviet soldiers to defend Mother Russia from German invasion. Even under the religiously repressive USSR, two of Russia’s most prestigious military decorations were nonetheless called the Cross of St. George and the Order of St. George, and an orange and black ribbon, the ribbon of Saint George, is still distributed as a symbol of the Soviet Union’s defeat of Nazi Germany in the second World War.
Everyone, it seems, needs a little hero-worship and dragon-slaying in their lives to remind themselves of what bravery really means. This is beyond religion, and part of the what it means means to be human — to conquer fear and save what you love. It never grows old, and it never stops being important to us, and it never stops reappearing in our lives. After all, what is Harry Potter’s defeat of Voldemort but another retelling of St George and the Dragon?