European dragons: Why is St George so globally popular?

Mention a dragon to millions of Europeans and one of the first images that comes to mind will include George – the saint who slayed one. 

Or did he? And anyway, who was he? More to the point, how did a Greek member of the Roman army, who died in the Syria/Palestine region, come to be venerated from England to Ethiopia and Moscow to Rio de Janeiro, by millions of Christians and some Muslims, too?

It's a complicated story - but let's try to break it down…

Who was (Saint) George?

George – or more likely Geórgios, to give a more accurate transliteration of his often anglicized Greek name – is thought to have been born in the third century CE; we don't know exactly when and we don't know his surname. 

Most people agree he was born in Cappadocia, which these days is in Türkiye, to Greek parents – except that his mother was originally from the Roman province of Syria Palaestina, so when her husband died she took the boy back there. 

George joined the Roman army but didn't hide his belief in the then reasonably new religion of Christianity. As this was a few years before Emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity, believers were still enthusiastically persecuted; and so, in the year 303, an unrepentant George was decapitated. 

For many of us, that would be the end of the story. But George was destined for a long afterlife. 

Firstly, his steadfast refusal to renounce his faith led the young Christian religion to anoint him as a martyr. Churches were built to honor him, first in Palestine, then Cappadocia, then through the Byzantine Empire which at the time included most of the the coastal areas of the eastern Mediterranean. In 494, Pope Gelasius canonized him as a saint. 

So far, so typical – the Catholic Church now has around 10,000 saints. But what made George so special that he would become the patron saint of countries and cities across Europe, Africa and South America?

In a word: war. 

Wars and crosses

You may have noticed that people who support different religions don't always rub along amicably. Indeed, religious wars litter human history. 

One particularly famous series of battles was the Crusades, during which the Latin Christian church - led by the Pope in Rome - spent hundreds of years sending military expeditions to attempt to 'reclaim' Jerusalem and the surrounding area from Muslim control. 

An unlikely Christian victory at the Battle of Antioch in 1098 was partially accredited to an apparition of George inspiring the soldiers. The following year he was credited with another unexpected appearance at Jerusalem, and soon he was becoming totemic to the new breed of chivalric military orders.

By the middle of the last millennium, these bands of fighting knights – such as the English Order of the Garter – began to fight under heraldic banners. The Italian republic of Genova, which had adopted George as its patron saint, fought under a banner featuring a red cross on a white background – and it proved a popular color scheme. 

Whether because of Genovese naval protection, Christian solidarity or a widespread liking of a rather natty color scheme, that red cross is now central to many flags – not just in England but Barcelona (George is Catalonia's patron saint too), Almeria, Aragon, Sardinia and naval jacks from Italy to Latvia and Ukraine. 

And that's not to mention Georgia – although, while the locals were certainly early believers in the St George story, the country's name is now thought to be a linguistic coincidence. 

Special mention too for Portugal, whose navy officers would go into battle with the war-cry of "St George!". Thanks to the Portuguese diaspora those sailors were helping to establish, George is also the patron saint of the Brazilian army cavalry, not to mention the state of Rio de Janeiro. 

Before we leave the battlefield, a simple but pertinent question: If he was adopted by the Crusaders, why is George also venerated by some Muslims? Some Islamic sources describe him as a prophetic figure, and it seems his legend has become intertwined with others. Many believe praying to him can aid the childless and the sick, particularly the mentally ill. 

But what about the dragon?

Ah yes, the dragon – in all this blood-soaked, flag-waving excitement we'd almost forgotten. 

Dragons in various forms have appeared in a wide array of cultures, from ancient to modern: Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Zoroastrian, Greek and Chinese, among many others. 

While dragons are revered and protected in many cultures, the Indo-European mythological storybook has many examples of a hero slaying a dragon – from Greek god Zeus battling the hundred-headed Typhon, through Norse god Thor smashing the sea-monster Jormungandr with his hammer, to the Old English epic in which the aging king Beowulf is mortally wounded by a dragon but kills it with the help of a brave young aide. 

Scholars argue as to when St George was first linked with his own iconic draconicide – some say it was as early as the sixth century AD, not long after George became a saint. By the 13th-century Latin text Golden Legend, all the best bits had been included into what you have to say is a rattling good story. 

That version has been variously set in Cappadocia, then in what is now Libya, and latterly in Oxfordshire, England – as various tale-tellers have spun the story to suit their local audience. But whatever the setting, certain narrative strands remain.

Firstly, there's a dragon eating sheep, which rather upsets the locals. But when it, er, scales up to eating a shepherd, the townsfolk suddenly get less upset and decide to leave two sheep per day for the hunger interloper as a sacrifice.

However, eventually the flock stock runs out and, in a narrative twist you might not have expected, the desperate locals somehow decide to leave children instead. This being decided by lottery, eventually the king's own daughter is selected for sacrifice and left tied to a rock.

It's at this point that St George enters the picture. He stabs the dragon with his lance, then subdues it by making the sign of the Christian cross. Tying the girl's girdle around the suddenly chilled-out dragon's neck, he leads it back into town and promises to kill it… on one condition.

The muscular martyr's ultimatum is that he'll only slay the dragon if the townspeople all convert to Christianity. They do, so he does, and it's then up to the storyteller to decide whether St George subsequently wanders off to do more enthusiastic conversion elsewhere, or settles down and marries the princess. 

It's a classic heroic story – the damsel in distress, the triumph over fear, the joyous public, the religious authority. No wonder, perhaps, that St George went on to become venerated around the world. That it hardly feels fair to the dragon has seemed somewhat secondary…

Subscribe to Storyboard: A weekly newsletter bringing you the best of CGTN every Friday