Saint George (ca. 275/281 – 23 April 303) was,
according to tradition, a Roman soldier and priest in the
Guard of Diocletian, who is venerated as a Christian
martyr. In hagiography Saint George is one of the most
venerated saints in the Roman Catholic Church, and the
Eastern Catholic Churches. He is immortalized in the tale
of Saint George and the Dragon and is one of the Fourteen
Holy Helpers. He is regarded as one of the most prominent
military saints. Saint George is the patron saint of Aragon,
Catalonia, England, Ethiopia, Georgia, Greece, Lithuania,
Palestine, Portugal, and Russia, as well as a wide range of
professions, organizations, and disease sufferers.
A church built in Lydda during the reign of Constantine
(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 he was asserted to have been George.
By the time of the Muslim conquest in the seventh century,
a basilica dedicated to the saint in Lydda existed. The
church was destroyed in 1010 but was 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 Avvubid dynasty (reigned 1171–
1193). A new church was erected in 1872 and is still
standing.
During the fourth century the veneration of George
spread from Palestine through Lebanon to the rest of the
Eastern Roman Empire. By the fifth century the cult of
Saint George had reached the Western Roman Empire as
well: in 494, George was canonized as a saint by Pope
Gelasius, 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. "Saint George and his feast day began to gain
more widespread fame among all Europeans, however,
from the time of the Crusades.” The St. George's flag, a red
cross on a white field, was adopted by England and the
City of London in 1190 for their ships entering the
Mediterranean to benefit from the protection of the
Geonoese fleet during the Crusades and the English
Monarch paid an annual tribute to the Doge of Genoa for
this privilege. An apparition of George heartened the
Franks at the siege of Antioch, and made a similar
appearance the following year at Jerusalem. Chivalric
military Order of St. George was established in Aragon
(1201), Genoa, Hungary, and by Frederick III, Holy Roman
Emperor, and Edward III put his Order of the Garter under
the banner of St. George. In England the Synod of Oxford,
1222 declared St. George's Day a feast day in the kingdom
of England. The chronicler Froissart observed the English
invoking St. George as a battle cry on several occasions
during the Hundred Years’ War. In 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
localized shrine, as of Thomas Becket at Canterbury:
"Consequently, numerous shrines were established during
the late fifteenth century
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.
Sources:
According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, the earliest text
preserving fragments of George's narrative is in an Acra
Sanctorum identified