Happy St George

The Real George
"Every moment of his reign was polluted by cruelty and avarice. The Catholics of Alexandria and Egypt were abandoned to a tyrant, qualified , by nature and education, to exercise the office of persecution."
– Edward Gibbon (The Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire, 23)


The mention of an unnamed martyr of Nicomedia by Eusebius seeded The Myth that was to become St George, though there is no evidence whatsoever that such a character ever existed!

The ‘real' George was rather different than the one portrayed in popular English Christian fiction. As Gibbon and others made clear, ‘St. George’ was a legendary accretion around a notorious 4th century bishop, George of Cappadocia (in modern Turkey). Even the Catholic Encyclopedia of saints concedes that the story was borrowed from some incidents involving the treacherous Turkish despot.

The future archbishop of Alexandria began his career as a money lender in Cilicia, Southern Turkey. By ‘assiduous flattery’ or other means he acquired the contract to supply the Roman army with bacon.

"His employment was mean; he rendered it infamous. He accumulated wealth by the basest arts of fraud and corruption; but his malversations were so notorious, that George was compelled to escape from the pursuits of justice."
Edward Gibbon (The Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire, 23)

Making his way to Palestine, George set himself up in the religion business at Diospolis , where he became a profane grandee of the ruling Arians. As a wealthy and influential opponent of the Catholics he was well-placed to take the bishop’s chair in Alexandria when Athanasius was driven into exile.

In his new lofty station George gave free reign to his greed, corruption and cruelty, establishing several commercial monopolies and pillaging the ancient temples.
"The tyrant…oppressed with an impartial hand the various inhabitants of his extensive diocese,"
Edward Gibbon (The Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire, 23)

.So incensed were the inhabitants that on at least one occasion George was expelled from Alexandria by a mob and troops had to be deployed to get him back into the bishop’s palace.
His end came with the elevation of Emporor Julian. The angry pagans of Alexandria (probably aided by Catholics) took their revenge on George by throttling the bishop and dumping his body in the sea. It seems highly probable that some supporters of the murdered bishop recovered what they claimed to be remnants of the erstwhile bishop and made off with them to the nearest centre of Arianism, Lydda in Palestine. Emperor Julian himself sequestered the extensive library which George had acquired.

Post-mortem success
Yet the notorious prelate was to achieve a nobility in death which had been denied to him in life. The family of George built him a tomb and a church to house it at Lydda, and the shrine soon attracted a profitable traffic in pilgrims. At the same time, in the mid years of the 4th century, the hierarchy of the church had been seriously alarmed by the apostasy of Emperor Julian (360-363) and a resurgent paganism. His brief reign had threatened their but recently gained temporal power and the hierarchs were desirous of every possible device to prevent such a calamity again.
The Catholic Church was more than prepared to overlook George's heretical and criminal past. The ‘official’ legend of St George was created to symbolize the complete and irreversible victory of Christianity over paganism. Hence the image of St. George as a fearless warrior, defeating enemies of the faith by Christian forbearance, no matter what trials were to be overcome. In many of the ‘traditions’ the climax of the story actually has George smashing pagan idols.
Evidently the George cult spread outwards from Palestine. In the late 6th century two churches were identified in Syria with inscriptions indicating the veneration of a martyr called "Georgios". By then, the venality of George's real life had either been forgotten or merely white-washed. Thanks to the creative scribblers for Christ two hundred years later, his name was attached to a colourful story of piety, fortitude, divine deliverance and – ultimately – a princess and a dragon.

"This odious stranger disguising every circumstance of time and place, assumed the mask of a martyr, a saint, and a Christian hero, and the infamous George of Cappadocia has been transformed into the renowned St. George of England, the patron of arms, of chivalry, and of the Garter."
Edward Gibbon (The Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire, 23)
Quite a success story for an unmitigated rogue – and bacon salesman.