In Christian hagiography Saint George (ca. 275-281 — April 23, 303[2]) was a soldier of the Roman Empire, from the then Greek-speaking Anatolia (now modern day Turkey), and is venerated as a Christian martyr. One of the most venerated saints in the Eastern Orthodox Church and Oriental Orthodox Churches, he is immortalised* in the tale of George and the Dragon and is one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers. Saint George is the patron saint of the countries of Aragon, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Canada¹, Catalonia (Spain), China, England², Ethiopia, Georgia, Greece, Macedonia, Montenegro, Palestine, Portugal, Russia, and Serbia. Cities of which he is the patron saint include Amersfoort, Beirut, Ferrara, Freiburg, Genoa, Ljubljana, and Moscow. Saint George is also patron saint of soldiers (archers and cavalry, notably), chivalry, farmers and field workers, riders and saddlers. There are even some diseases that look to Saint George specifically for help, including those suffering from leprosy, plague and syphilis.

Saint George is also the patron saint of the Scouting movement. Many Scout troops in the United Kingdom take part in a Saint George's Day Parade on the nearest Sunday to April 23. A message from the Chief Scout is read out and the Scout Hymn is sung. A "renewal of promise" then takes place where the Scouts renew the Scout's Promise made at joining and at all Scout meetings. Many schools around the UK do allow students to wear their scouting uniforms in place of their school uniforms for that one day. On the Sunday nearest to April 23rd, scouts and guides throughout Britain parade through high streets and attend a special Saint George's Day service at their local church.

Saint George's Day is also the traditional occasion when the Queen announces new appointments to the Order of the Garter.

In 2007, Independent writer Yasmin Alibhai-Brown condemned Saint George’s Day celebrations in England for being too Anglo-Saxon and demanded that the day should celebrate the multicultural aspects of England today. The demand has not yet been met.

Saint George's Day is observed in most countries that celebrate it on 23 April, the traditionally accepted date of Saint George's death in 303 AD. For those Eastern Orthodox Churches that follow the Julian Calendar (the Old Calendarists), the 23 April (Julian Calendar) date of Saint George's Day falls on 6 May of the Gregorian Calendar in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Besides the 23 April feast, some Orthodox Churches have additional feasts dedicated to Saint George. The country of Georgia celebrates the Feast Saint George on 10 November (Julian Calendar), which currently falls on 23 November (Gregorian Calendar). The Russian Orthodox Church celebrates the Dedication of the Church of Saint George in Kiev by Yaroslav I the Wise in 1051 on 26 November (Julian Calendar), which currently falls on the Gregorian 9 December. The Scouting movement has been celebrating Saint George's Day on 23 April since its first years. In the Latin Rite Roman Catholic Church, 23 April has long been Saint George's feast-day. It is classified as an optional memorial, equivalent to a commemoration in the calendar as revised by Pope John XIII in 1960, and to a simple feast in the General Roman Calendar as in 1954. The feast is ranked higher in England and in certain other regions, though. It is the second most important National Feast in Catalonia, where the day is known in Catalan as Diada de Sant Jordi and it is traditional to give a rose and a book to a loved one³.

Saint George's Day is not celebrated as much in England as other National Days are around the world. The celebration of Saint George's Day was once a major feast in England on a par with Christmas from the early 15th century. However, this tradition had waned by the end of the 18th century. In recent years the popularity of Saint George's Day appears to be increasing gradually. BBC Radio 3 had a full programme* of Saint George's Day events in 2006, and Andrew Rosindell, MP for Romford, has been putting his argument forward in the House of Commons to try to make Saint George's Day a public holiday.

A traditional custom at this time was to wear a red rose in one's lapel, though with changes in fashion this is not as widely done. Another custom is to fly or adorn a Saint George's Cross flag in some way: pubs in particular can be seen on April 23 festooned with garlands of Saint George's crosses. However, the modern association of Saint George's Cross with sports such as football⁴, cricket and rugby means that this tradition, too, is losing popularity with people who do not associate themselves with those sports. It is customary for the hymn Jerusalem to be sung in cathedrals, churches and chapels on Saint George's Day, or on the Sunday closest to it.

However, there is a growing reaction to the recent indifference to Saint George's Day. Organisations* such as the Royal Society of Saint George (a non-political English national society founded in 1894) have been joined by the more prominent Saint George's Day Events Company (founded in 2002), with the specific aim of encouraging celebrations. They seem to be having some effect. On the other hand, there have also been calls to replace Saint George as patron saint of England, on the grounds that he was an obscure figure who had no direct connection with the country. However, there is no obvious consensus with whom to replace him.

Saint George's emblem (a red cross on a white background) is the flag of England, and part of the British flag. Saint George's emblem was adopted by Richard The Lion Heart and brought to England in the 12th century. The king's soldiers wore it on their tunics to avoid confusion in battle.

George is not commemorated in any early vita or acta that would have some merit as reflecting history and cannot be accounted a historical individual. Chief among the late sources is the Golden Legend, which remains the most familiar version in English, owing to William Caxton's 15th century translation.

The traditional legend offers a historicised* narration of George's encounter with his dragon (Saint George and the Dragon below).

It was said that an apparition of George heartened the Franks at the siege of Antioch in 1098, and made a similar appearance the following year at Jerusalem.

The modern legend that follows is synthesized from early and late hagiographical sources, omitting the more fantastical episodes, to narrate a purely human military career in closer harmony with modern expectations of reality.

Who was the real Saint George and what did he do to become England's patron saint?

Saint George was a brave Roman soldier who protested against the Romans' torture of Christians and died for his beliefs. The popularity of Saint George in England stems from the time of the early Crusades, when it is said that the Normans saw him in a vision and were victorious. Saint George is popularly identified with England and English ideals of honour*, bravery and gallantry, but actually he wasn’t English at all. Very little is known about the man who became Saint George.

Saint George is believed to have been born in Cappadocia (now Eastern Turkey) to a Christian family during the late third century. His father was from Cappadocia and served as an officer of the Roman army. His mother was from Lydda, Iudaea (now Lod, Israel). She returned to her native city as a widow along with her young son, where she provided him with an education. At the age of seventeen he joined the Roman army -- soon becoming renowned for his bravery. He served under a pagan Emperor, but he never forgot his Christian faith. He proved to be a good soldier and consequently rose through the military ranks of the time. By his late twenties he had gained the title of tribunus (Tribune) and then comes (Count), at which time George was stationed in Nicomedia as a member of the personal guard attached to Roman Emperor Diocletian. Emperor Diocletian gave him many important missions, and it is thought that on one of these he came to England. It is also thought that it was while he was in England that he heard that the Emperor was putting all Christians to death and so he returned to Rome to help his brother Christians.

In 303 Diocletian issued an edict authorizing the systematic persecution of Christians across the Empire. The emperor Galerius was supposedly responsible for this decision and would continue the persecution during his own reign (305—311). George was ordered to participate in the persecution but instead confessed to being a Christian himself and criticized the imperial decision. He pleaded with the Emperor to spare their lives. Diocletian did all he could to persuade Saint George to give up his faith, but he refused, so an enraged Diocletian ordered his torture and execution. After various tortures, including laceration on a wheel of swords, in which he was miraculously resuscitated three times, George was executed by decapitation before Nicomedia's city wall, on April 23, 303. A witness of his suffering convinced Empress Alexandra and Athanasius, a pagan priest, to become Christians as well, and so they joined George in martyrdom. His body was returned to Lydda for burial, where Christians soon came to honour* him as a martyr.

In 1222, the Synod of Oxford declared April 23 to be Saint George’s Day and a feast day in the Kingdom of England. He replaced Edward the Confessor as England’s patron saint in the 14th century. The chronicler Froissart observed the English invoking Saint George as a battle cry on several occasions during the Hundred Years' War. His rise as a national Saint George was aided by the very fact that the saint had no legendary connection with England, and no specifically localised* shrine.

A church built in Lydda during the reign of Constantine I (reigned 306—337), was consecrated to "a man of the highest distinction," according to the church history of Eusebius of Caesarea; the name of the patron was not disclosed, but later it was asserted to have been George. The church was destroyed in 1010, and later rebuilt and dedicated to Saint George by the Crusaders. In 1191 and during the conflict known as the Third Crusade (1189—1192), the church was again destroyed by the forces of Saladin(Sultan of the Ayyubid dynasty who reigned from 1171 to 1193). A new church was erected in 1872 and is still standing today.

During the fourth century the veneration of George spread from Palestine through Lebanon to the rest of the Eastern Roman Empire (though the martyr is not mentioned in the Syriac Breviarium) and Georgia. By the fifth century the cult of Saint George had reached the Western Roman Empire as well: in 494, George was canonised* as a saint by Pope Gelasius I, among those, "... whose names are justly reverenced among men, but whose acts are known only to God." In England, the earliest dedication to George (who was mentioned among the martyrs by Bede), is a church at Fordington, Dorset, that is mentioned in the will of Alfred the Great.

The Chivalric military Order of Saint George were established in Aragon (1201), Genoa, Hungary, and by Frederick III, Holy Roman Emperor. Edward III put his Order of the Garter under the banner of Saint George.

The establishment of George as a popular saint and protective giant in the West that had captured the medieval imagination was codified by the official elevation of his feast to a festum duplex at a church council in 1415, on the date that had become associated with his martyrdom, 23 April. There was wide latitude from community to community in celebration of the day across late medieval and early modern England, and no uniform "national" celebration elsewhere. As a token of the popular and vernacular nature of George's cultus and its local horizons, it was supported by a local guild or confraternity under George's protection, or the dedication of a local church. When the Reformation in England severely curtailed the saints' days in the calendar, Saint George's Day was among the holidays that continued to be observed.

The Legend of Saint George and the Dragon

During the early second millennium, George came to be seen as the model of chivalry, and during this time was depicted in works of literature, such as the medieval romances. Jacobus de Voragine, Archbishop of Genoa, compiled the Legenda Sanctorum, (Readings of the Saints) also known as Legenda Aurea (Golden Legend) for its worth among readers. Its 177 chapters (182 in other editions) contain the story of Saint George. The most famous legend of Saint George is of him slaying a dragon. There are many versions of the story of Saint George slaying the dragon, but the basics tend to remain the same. It is unlikely that he ever fought a dragon, and even more unlikely that he ever actually visited England. Despite this, Saint George is known throughout the world as the dragon-slaying patron saint of England. An example of the basic story is: A town was being terrorised* by a dragon. A young princess was offered to the dragon and when George heard about this he rode into the village, slew the dragon and rescued the princess.

The Legend of Saint George and the Dragon

Saint George traveled for many months by land and sea until he came to Libya. Here he met a poor hermit who told him that everyone in that land was in great distress, for a dragon had long ravaged the country.

"Every day," said the old man, "he demands the sacrifice of a beautiful maiden and now all the young girls have been killed. The king's daughter alone remains, and unless we can find a knight who can slay the dragon she will be sacrificed tomorrow. The king of Egypt will give his daughter in marriage to the champion who overcomes this terrible monster."

When Saint George heard this story, he was determined to try and save the princess, so that night he rested in the hermit's hut, and at daybreak set out to the valley where the dragon lived. When he drew near he saw a little procession of women, headed by a beautiful girl dressed in pure Arabian silk. The princess Sabra was being led by her attendants to the place of death. The knight spurred his horse and overtook the ladies. He comforted them with brave words and persuaded the princess to return to the palace. Then he entered the valley.

As soon as the dragon saw him it rushed from its cave, roaring with a sound louder than thunder. Its head was immense and its tail fifty feet long. But Saint George was not afraid. He struck the monster with his spear, hoping he would wound it.

The dragon's scales were so hard that the spear broke into a thousand pieces, and Saint George fell from his horse. Fortunately, he rolled under an enchanted orange tree against which poison could not prevail, so that the venomous dragon was unable to hurt him. Within a few minutes he had recovered his strength and was able to continue the fight.

He smote the beast with his sword but the dragon poured poison on him and his armour* split in two. Once more he refreshed himself from the orange tree and then, with his sword in his hand, he rushed at the dragon and pierced it under the wing where there were no scales, so that it fell dead at his feet.

The episode of Saint George and the Dragon appended to the hagiography of Saint George was Eastern in origin, brought back with the Crusaders and retold with the courtly appurtenances belonging to the genre of Romance. The earliest known depiction of the motif is from early eleventh-century Cappadocia; the earliest known surviving narrative is an eleventh-century Georgian text.

The dragon motif was first combined with the standardized Passio Georgii in Vincent of Beauvais' encyclopedic Speculum Historale and then in Jacobus de Voragine's Golden Legend, which guaranteed its popularity in the later Middle Ages as a literary and pictorial subject.

According to the Golden Legend the narrative episode of Saint George and the Dragon took place in a place he called "Silene," in Libya. There was no such place, the name being perhaps a corruption of Cyrene. The Golden Legend is the first to place this legend in Libya, as a sufficiently exotic locale where a dragon might be imagined.

This town had a pond large as a lake where dwelt a plague-bearing dragon that envenomed all the countryside. To appease the dragon in the past, the people of Silene had fed it a sheep every day, and when the sheep failed, they fed it their children, chosen by lottery.

It happened that the lot fell on the king's daughter. The king, distraught with grief, told the people they could have all his gold and silver and half of his kingdom if his daughter were spared, but the people refused. The princess was sent out to the lake, decked out as a bride, to be fed to the dragon.

Saint George by chance rode past the lake. The princess, trembling, sought to send him away, but George vowed to remain.

The dragon reared out of the lake while they were conversing. Saint George fortified himself with the Sign of the Cross, charged it on horseback with his lance and gave it a grievous wound. Then he called to the princess to throw him her girdle and put it around the dragon's neck. When she did so, the dragon followed the girl like a meek beast on a leash. She and Saint George led the dragon back to the city of Silene, where it terrified the people at its approach. But Saint George called out to them, saying that if they consented to become Christians and be baptised*, he would slay the dragon before them.

The king and the people of Silene converted to Christianity, George slew the dragon, and the body was carted out of the city on four ox-carts. "Fifteen thousand men baptised*, without women and children." On the site where the dragon died, the king built a church to the Blessed Virgin Mary and Saint George, and from its altar a spring arose whose waters cured all disease.

Traditionally, the lance with which Saint George slew the dragon was called Ascalon, a name recalling the city of Ashkelon, Israel. From this tradition, the name Ascalon was used by Winston Churchill for his personal aircraft during World War II.

Modern Russians interpret the story not as a killing but as a struggle -- against ourselves and the evil among us. The dragon never dies but the saint persists with his horse (will and support of the people) and his spear (technical means). This is a useful symbol for modern technocrats, especially in fields such as public health.