Items related to St George and the Dragons (Standard Edition): The Making...
Synopsis
St George’s Day has become a popular celebration and topic of debate. But who was St George? How did this Palestinian martyr become England’s patron saint and an icon of English culture? And what is his relevance for today’s secular, multicultural England? In this survey, which contains over 150 black-and-white illustrations, Oxford-trained historian Michael Collins clearly presents what modern research, sometimes surprisingly, has discovered about how the legend of St George the dragon-slayer grew up and the origin of the cross of St George, the myriad ways the figure of St George appears in English culture, and what St George has to do with English identity. The roles of Richard I, Edward III and Henry VIII in making St George England's patron saint are discussed. With a foreword by Professor Emeritus Dan Brown, this highly-readable, thought-provoking celebration of English culture shows how St George can be reinterpreted for our times while remaining true to our English heritage. English yet international, revered both by Christians and Muslims, St George is a multicultural figure who symbolizes universal values. Anyone interested in St George will find a wealth of information and stimulating discussion in this book. Journalists, teachers and clergy will find it useful. Guides to further reading provide ample resources for further study and enjoyment of English heritage.
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From the Author
During travels made during my teaching career I have been a member of the Royal Society of St George, a charitable, cultural and social organization (Patron: HM The Queen) which in many countries provides a meeting point for British expatriates. While in Vancouver I became intrigued by St George himself as an elusive, possibly mythical, sometimes controversial figure, and decided to try to get the bottom of why his tradition took hold in England and took the form it did there.
Thus followed ten years of research which nearly came to an end when the website where I was reporting my findings unaccountably disappeared in 2007. Then two years later a kindly internet marketing expert, Jim R. Graham, showed me how to recover the pages from The Wayback Machine. At that point I resolved to write up my research in the more permanent form of a book and to give a more coherent account of the part the figure of St George had played in England over the centuries and of what the saint might stand for today.
The results appeared in St George in English History on Kindle last November and in March 2012 the printed version became available on amazon under the title St George and the Dragons. The book includes more research findings on the medieval period, a Conclusion, an index and some 150 colour illustrations.
The figure of St George best known in England today was actually invented by the Tudors but is still relevant.
The traditional figure of a Greek martyr at Constantinople has been transformed by later research into that of the son of a sheikh put to death in Palestine for protesting against the worship of Hercules and Apollo, the patron gods of the Roman army. Controversially, I suggest that the name georgios (earth-tiller) suggests that the saint was close to the people and, as hinted at by an ancient inscription in Syria, his martyrdom may have resulted from a popular uprising against tyranny and oppression. It is also possible that St George may have come from Nubia and been black.
While the tradition of St George had a brief brilliant flowering in the 15th century, our ideas about him stem from the Tudors. St George was made England's patron saint by Henry VIII, whose scholars invented a link with Richard I. Meanwhile Edward III's Order of the Garter was scarcely known outside royal circles and St George was only one of its patrons. As champions of English independence against France and Spain, the Tudors promoted St George as a symbol of a true pre-Catholic Christianity brought to England in the 1st century. Thus he became a Protestant, patriotic, military symbol displacing all other non-Biblical saints.
The adoption of the cross of St George by English soldiers was also much later than widely believed. Although William the Conqueror knew about St George, even by 1188 English crusaders were not wearing the red-and-white of St George's cross but white crosses on blue. It was the French who wore red. This did not represent St George but their country of origin. The cross of St George became the regular badge of the English army only around 1300.
Meanwhile, although Sunday School stories about St George and the Dragon, invented by an Italian archbishop in The Golden Legend in 1275, soon became popular, the longest English account of St George, the 14th-century South English Legendary, said nothing about the dragon at all but focused on St George surviving a series of tortures. St George and the Dragons also claims that Spenser's Faerie Queene was much more important than The Golden Legend in creating the English tradition of the saint. St George also has connections with King Arthur and the Round Table.
The Protestant version of the myth was heavily boosted by imperial propagandists and their commercial and clerical allies in the late 19th century. But the romantic version of our ''island'' story failed almost as soon as it was fabricated. Like much else of the imperial myth, it was left in ruins on the Flanders fields of World War I. Is the tradition of St George the soldier saint worth refurbishing? Over the centuries he has become a universal symbol of justice and fair play. Perhaps he also stands guardian over the moral boundaries to the use of force to uphold these and other values.
The book has been richly illustrated to reveal the changing ways St George has been seen over the centuries. Wall paintings recently discovered in English parish churches are published possibly for the first time in a printed book, courtesy of Dr Anne Marshall.
From the Back Cover
St George's Day has become a popular celebration and topic of debate. But who was St George? How did this Palestinian martyr become England's patron saint and an icon of English culture? And what is his relevance for today's secular, multicultural England?
In this richly-illustrated survey, Oxford-trained historian Michael Collins reveals what modern research has discovered about how the legend of St George the dragon-slayer grew up, the fantastic variety of ways the figure of St George appears in English culture, and what St George has to do with English identity.
With a foreword by Professor Emeritus Dan Brown, this highly-readable, thought-provoking celebration of English culture shows how St George can be reinterpreted for our times while remaining true to our English heritage.
English yet international, revered both by Christians and Muslims, St George is a multicultural figure who symbolizes universal values.
Anyone interested in St George will find a wealth of information and stimulating discussion in this book. Journalists, teachers, clergy, tourists and exhibition organizers will find much of value here. Guides to further reading provide ample resources for further study and enjoyment of English heritage.
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