Saint George and the Dragon
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The episode of Saint George and the Dragon appended to the hagiography of Saint George was Eastern in origin,[1] 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;[2] 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.
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[edit] The legend
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. A translation of the original text of Jacobus de Voragine is linked below.
This town had a pond large as a lake where a plague-bearing dragon dwelled. To appease the dragon, the people of Silene used to feed it a sheep and a virgin every day, the virgin chosen by lottery.
It happened that the lot fell on the princess of Silene. 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; the people refused. The daughter was sent out to the lake, decked out as a bride, to be fed to the dragon.
Saint George heard of this state of affairs, and rode to the lake. The princess, trembling, sought to send him away, but George vowed to remain and fortified himself with the Sign of the Cross. (In the earliest version, where the dragon is more clearly a representation of paganism, or at least infernal power, the sign of the Cross itself was sufficient to defeat the dragon.)
The dragon reared out of the lake while they were conversing. Saint George 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 dog 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 killed the dragon before them. They would have rewarded him richly, but he asked only that they receive baptism; in some variants, he tells them before the death not to fear the dragon but to be baptized.
The king and the people of Silene converted to Christianity. 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 St. George slew the dragon was called Ascalon, named after the city of Ashkelon in the middle east. From this tradition, the name Ascalon was used by Winston Churchill for his personal aircraft during World War II (records at Bletchley Park), since St. George is the Patron Saint of England.
[edit] Origins
Many historians consider the roots of the legend to be older than Christianity itself. They note that the origin of the saint is said to be partly from Cappadocia in Asia Minor, and that Asia Minor was among the earliest regions to adopt the popular veneration of the saint. The region had long venerated other religious figures. These historians deem it likely that certain elements of their ancient worship could have passed to their Christian successors. Notable among these ancient deities was Sabazios, the Phrygian sky father, known as Sabazius to the Romans. This god was traditionally depicted riding on horseback. The iconic image of St. George on horseback trampling the serpent-dragon beneath him is considered to be similar to these pre-Christian representations of Sabazios. This myth in turn may derive from an earlier Hittite myth concerning the battle between the storm god Tarhun and the dragon Illuyankas. The story also has counterparts in other Indo-European mythologies: The slaying of the serpent Vritra by Indra in the Vedic and Hindu mythology, the battle between Thor and Jörmungandr in the Norse eschatological myth, the Greek myth of the defeat of Typhon by Zeus[3]. Parallels also exist in non-Indo-European traditions, for example the battle between Marduk and Tiamat in the Enuma Elish.
The person of Saint George may have been historical; dragon-slaying legends have also been attached to saints of unquestioned historical existence.
[edit] Treatment by artists
[edit] Contemporary retelling
- A comic book, Aliens vs. Predator Annual #1, retold the story with the dragon of the legend revealed to be a Predator (Predator).
- The Dragon Knight, a series of books by Gordon R. Dickson, adopted this story as a past event into its canon, significant in that dragons had since referred to humans as 'georges.' The story of St. George and the Dragon is referred to on occasion, but never told. The first book in the series, The Dragon and the George, is a retelling of a previous short story by the same author, "St. Dragon and the George".
- In the 1950s, Stan Freberg and Daws Butler wrote and performed St. George and the Dragon-Net (a spoof of the tale and of Dragnet) for Freberg's radio show. The story's recording became the first comedy album to sell over 1 million copies.
[edit] See also
[edit] Notes
- ^ Robertson, The Medieval Saints' Lives (pp 51-52) suggested that the dragon motif was transferred to the George legend from that of his fellow soldier saint, Saint Theodore Tiro. The Roman Catholic writer Alban Butler (Lives of the Saints) was at pains to credit the motif as a late addition: "It should be noted, however, that the story of the dragon, though given so much prominence, was a later accretion, of which we have no sure traces before the twelfth century. This puts out of court the attempts made by many folklorists to present St. George as no more than a christianized survival of pagan mythology."
- ^ In the iconography of Eastern Orthodoxy, George had been depicted as a soldier since at least the seventh century.
- ^ Mallory, J. P. (1989). In Search of the Indo-Europeans. Thames and Hudson. ISBN 0-500-27616-1.
[edit] References
- Loomis, C. Grant, 1948. White Magic, An Introduction to the Folklore of Christian Legend (Cambridge: Medieval Society of America)
- Whatley, E. Gordon, editor, with Anne B. Thompson and Robert K. Upchurch, 2004. St. George and the Dragon in the South English Legendary (East Midland Revision, c. 1400) Originally published in Saints' Lives in Middle English Collections
- Catholic Encyclopedia, "Saint George"
(Kalamazoo, Michigan: Medieval Institute Publications) (On-line Introduction)
[edit] External links
- St George and the Dragon Events and Ideas - Official Website for Tourism in England
- Medieval Sourcebook: The Golden legend: St George (English translation)
- "St George and the Dragon: the Golden Legend": analysis and commentary
- St George Unofficial Bank Holiday: St. George and the Dragon, free illustrated book based on 'The Seven Champions' by Richard Johnson (1596)
