The Rest Is History - 462. St George: Dragon-Slayer

Episode Date: June 19, 2024

The image of Saint George astride his horse, sword and spear in hand, slaying a dragon, is one of the most iconic iconographical spectacles of all time. But what was the historical truth of this deeply mythologised figure? The conventional take on his story is well known: once, long ago, there lived a pagan king who refused to honour the one God. As punishment, a terrible dragon was sent to ravage his lands, and his daughter sent to supplicate the beast. Until, the saintly George rode up to save the girl and the king’s soul…herein lies an important feature of the historical George: his piety, with the earliest sources casting him as a Christian martyr from Cappadocia, gruesomely tortured and killed in the 3rd century BC. Over time the legend has changed and evolved; from the courts of English monarchs such as Edward I and Henry VIII, who celebrated his chivalry to buttress their regimes, to his many religious and ideological detractors. Throughout it all, though, George stands apart from the ranks of Christian saints. But why?  Join Tom and Dominic as they trace the historical Saint George and his famous slaying of the dragon. From the earliest accounts of him in the Near East, to the cults of the medieval era, the reformation, Tudor pageantry, and the introduction of the St George’s flag. Fearsome 17th century dragons, mythical beasts, and miraculous resurrections all feature… EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal ➼ https://nordvpn.com/restishistory Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee! *The Rest Is History LIVE in 2024* Tom and Dominic are back onstage this summer, at Hampton Court Palace in London! Buy your tickets here: therestishistory.com Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Assistant Producer: Tabby Syrett Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. I can't spell it right. So you just give a fake name, your cafe name, Julia. But the more you use it, the more it feels like you're in witness protection. Wait a minute. What kind of espresso drinks does Julia like anyway? Is it too late to change your latte order? But with an espresso machine by KitchenAid, you wouldn't be thinking any of this because you could have just made your espresso at home.

Shop now at KitchenAid.ca. In the 3rd century, a Turkish Roman soldier joined a growing cult and was executed for it, inspiring other martyrs. When the cult later became the official religion of the Roman Empire, the soldier inspired a popular cult of his own in Palestine. The empire persisted as a religious power structure in Europe and the Middle East, and many churches were dedicated to that Turkish soldier right across the territory of the old empire,

from the Levant in the east to Britain in the west. The military cults became associated with orders of knighthood across Europe in the Middle Ages. When England split away from the church still run from Rome, all banners of saints except for that of the Turkish soldier were banned. He was just too popular. At some point, a myth about dragon slayer became attached to that soldier. He became adopted as the patron saint of many territories he never set foot in. Georgia, Ethiopia, Aragon and Catalonia, Portugal, Brazil, Bulgaria, Moscow, Serbia and Montenegro and England. Tom, that was a top faith leader, the former president of the humanists, no less, Professor Alice Roberts, writing on the website formerly known as Twitter on the 23rd of April 2021. So she was writing, Tom, on the feast day of the most famous dragon slayer of all, wasn't she?

Absolutely. St. George. So we did a previous episode on dragons, didn't we? But we didn't mention him. And that's because I think he deserves an episode all to himself. He's a saint who is also an archetype, an archetype of courage, of good overcoming evil. So one of the countries that Alice Roberts didn't mention in that list of territories that have St. George as their patron saint was Malta. And Malta, Dominic, is one of three countries in the world to feature a dragon on its flag. So do you know the other two?

Wales, of course, Wales. Wales is one. And I'm going to go with somewhere like Bhutan. Correct. Very good. Oh my gosh. Was it Bhutan? So you have won the pub quiz.

That's excellent. Wow. So people often get those two, but Malta as well, because the flag of Malta has the George Cross on the top side of it. Of course it does. Yeah. And the George Cross, of course, it's the highest honour for courage, isn't it? Yeah. That's awarded to civilians. So for acts

of the greatest heroism or for most conspicuous courage in circumstances of extreme danger. And it was famously given to Malta in 1942 to mark its heroism during the siege of it in the Second World War. And it was then incorporated into its flag the following year. And even after independence

the Maltese were so proud of it that they kept it. Yeah. Love Malta. And in the middle of that St. George cross, you have this emblem of St. George on his horse riding down a dragon. And obviously, Tom, the reason he's there is not just because, you know, lots of kings called George. It's because St. George has become the embodiment of heroism, courage. It's why English kings in Shakespearean plays or sort of sub-Shakespearean films draw their sword and cry, God for Harry, St. George and England, as they ride to smite the French.

Well, Dominic, I mean, you remember we did an episode on the founding of the Order of the Garter. And specifically in the context of the Hundred Years' War, the king who's really into St. George is Edward III, who institutes the Order of the Garter in 1344. And he does it on the 23rd of April. And there are various saints who are patrons of the Order. So there's the Virgin Mary, there's St. Edmund, the king of East Anglia who got feathered by Viking arrows, and there's Edward the Confessor. But there's the Virgin Mary, there's St. Edmund, the King of East Anglia who got feathered by Viking arrows, and there's Edward the Confessor. But there's no question that St. George is the most important of those patrons. And that's why it's badge. You have a garter encircling the arms

of St. George, which famously it's a red cross on a kind of white background. And its very first seal showed Edward III kneeling before St. George, who is clad in the armor of a knight. Inspiring. Very inspiring, Tom. Yeah, absolutely inspiring. And there's no question, I guess, that particularly the figure of George on a horse killing a dragon, I would say is one of the most familiar visual representations of a saint. You know, no matter where, everyone would recognize is one of the most familiar visual representations of a saint. You know, no matter where, everyone would recognize that pretty much. But I think it's also true to say that if the 23rd of April, St. George's Day, is a celebration of courage and of

the triumph of good over evil, it's also very much become a festival of scoffing, one might say. Some people might even say sneering, Tom. Possibly, yes. So on Twitter, every April the 23rd, it's part of the festivities that people go and say he didn't exist and he didn't fight a dragon and so on. Well, the Turkish soldier business. All of that, yes. But the thing is, this is not a recent phenomenon at all.

I mean, it has a very, very long history. And so Alice Robertson, that said that St. George was spared being banned in the Reformation. This is not a recent phenomenon at all. It has a very, very long history. Alice Robertson said that St. George was spared being banned in the Reformation. Actually he wasn't. There were definite moves to get rid of St. George from radical Protestants. Of course, the king who rules over the Reformation at its most radical is Edward VI, the son of Henry VIII. Under him, the associations of the VIII. And under him,

the associations of the Order of the Garter with St. George were explicitly banned. And there's a kind of very humanists on Twitter moment in 1551 at the great garter feast on the 23rd of April is held at Greenwich. And Edward VI, very much as though he's having a sneer on Twitter, he asks all the assembled lords of the garter, my lords, I pray you, what saint is St. George that we here so honor him? And then its treasurer answers him by talking about, you know, that he slew the dragon, hurrah. And Edward just collapses into fits of giggling.

Yeah. And he says, oh, really? Well, show me the sword. So he is playing the skeptic. I always thought there was something deeply insufferable about Edward VI, and I'm glad to have my suspicions confirmed. Yeah, I mean, there was kind of slightly priggish quality to him. But of course, he's an enthusiastic proponent of the Reformation at its most skeptical of papist mummery, Dominic.

Well, he has been awakened, Tom, hasn hasn't he he's been awakened by the fire of evangelicalism so he's literally woke yes he has been awakened and this is why in 1553 which is the year he will die but he's still around on the 23rd of april the links of the garter to saint george are dismissed as obscure superstitious and repugnant opinions yeah so radical protestants i mean the whole george killing a dragon, they thought that was nonsense. Who would ever have imagined that humanists and radical Protestants would have so much in common? It's a point that's never been made on the residence history. If only someone could write a book about this. But here's the thing. This is what's so intriguing. The doubts about St. George are not just Protestant. Because at the end of the fifth century a pope is said to

have worried about exactly the same thing so pope galatius the first who was pope in the 490s i mean he basically said these stories are all mad and at this point he wasn't even worrying about the dragon he was kind of worrying about the most basic stories told about saint george right and he said that they were all bogus and therefore these are not read in the Holy Church of Rome to deny anyone even the slightest opportunity to sneer at them. It was as though he was looking forward to social media in the 21st century. Actually, as long as St. George has been celebrated, there have been people who've said, we don't know anything about him. The stories that are being told about him are mad. Now, it's fair to say that Galatius is not actually doubting that George existed. And he does, well, in this thing that is attributed to him, we'll see whether he actually said it in

a minute, but he says that George does rank as one of the saints whose glorious struggles are known better to God than to human beings. But I think it reflects a desire on the part of Christian scholars to kind of winnow out the chaff. It's not just a kind of a Protestant or a humanist thing to imagine that evidence has to be stress tested and that when there are things that are obviously bogus or mad, you should get rid of them. I mean, this is something that has been a theme throughout Christian history. And of course, if you're an anti-clerical kind of person, an anti-Christian person, that doesn't quite fit into your version of Christianity, where Christianity is all mad, superstitious, depraved and whatnot. You can understand why this doesn't

get the attention, maybe. It's not as emotionally satisfying for Christianity's critics to say, actually, they are more sceptical than we thought. Well, I mean, Protestants want to sneer at Catholics and humanists want to sneer at Protestants, but I think they're all part of the same tradition, which is what makes it so interesting. But obviously it's much easier to kind of stress test the historicity of a saint in the 21st century or even the 16th century than it was in the Latin West amid the implosion of the Roman Empire. I mean, that's a real challenge. So Galatius is Pope in Rome at a time when the empire in the West has completely imploded. And how do you work out what sources are reliable?

I mean, it's absolutely telling that actually these opinions that are attributed to Galatius actually don't seem to have been written by him at all. They were probably, I think most scholars think, written by someone writing in Gaul about 50 years later. And it's a real problem because, of course, the church is all about the miraculous. I mean, at the heart of Christian teaching is the idea of something that is, by definition, supernatural and fantastical and not merely bounded by the limits of kind of earthly possibility. But at the same time, you don't want things that might seem kind of so miraculous that

they seem ridiculous. It's hard to know whether to draw the line, Tom. Yeah. And I think the thing that's fascinating about George, maybe more than any other saint, is that he is the saint who perhaps more than any other one becomes a focus for stories that channel a very, very deep need that is kind of running deep in popular opinion. And for that very reason, perhaps, is kind of viewed with suspicion by the intellectual elites, you know, from the 5th century right the way up to the 21st.

So let's get to it. In that opening faith leader quote, the 3rd century, a Turkish Roman soldier joined a cult. Can we even get back as far as the 3rd century? I mean, he may well have lived in the third century, but if he did, the stories about him are first told 200 years later. Or the sources, rather. Yeah. The huge problem is we have no sources that are contemporaneous with a George if he lived. And I think that that is something that Catholic writers in late antiquity are aware of and are wrestling but equally i think the reason for george's popularity is that he's like a kind of lake into which all kinds of streams

of popular stories flow yeah and the first thing that he's a focus for isn't dragon slaying but for having been a martyr and martyrs for christians you know in the roman world are the kind of the shock troops of the church they are the holiest they are the people who don't have to wait around for the final judgment to get to heaven they go straight there they're seated at the feasting table of god yeah so the stories that are told about george's martyrdom kind of take all the familiar elements and kind of crank them up to a massive pitch so the stories that are told and these are from the fifth century so as you said about 200 years after after George is supposed to have lived, they vary in the details, but you can kind of distinguish a basic outline. And what they say is that George is probably from

Cappadocia, which is in the middle of what is now Turkey, but of course wasn't Turkey then. So George was not a Turk. There's no way George could have been a Turk. I mean, the Turks are like thousands of miles away on the steppes of Central Asia. Of course. So George is a Greek. George is a Greek name. Yeah. Gorgios. And there's kind of various traditions about where he was actually brought up. So there is a tradition that derives from a manuscript that was found quite recently when they were kind of shifting monuments to build the Aswan Dam. And in this, George grew up in Nubia. But what the sources agree is that he rises very high in the imperial service, perhaps as a civil servant. But the general tradition, which becomes kind of canonical, is that he is a soldier, that he's a

warrior fighting in the armies of Caesar. So one of the institutions, one of the great institutions of the empire, either way. Yeah. So it's either the civil service or the army, and he becomes associated with the army. He is baptized and he is then ordered by a heathen emperor to sacrifice to Apollo. He refuses and he then just suffers tortures that are so hideous that they kind of verge on the comical. So in one version of the story of george he is forced into shoes that have iron spikes inside them he has his skull crushed he then has 60 nails hammered into it and then just for good measure he has molten lead poured down his throat he's still alive at this

point he's then placed in a kind of giant hollow bronze bull which again has kind of sharp nails inside it and the bull is kind of revolved round and round so that these nails are kind of giant hollow bronze bull, which again has kind of sharp nails inside it. And the bull is kind of revolved round and round so that these nails are kind of driving into anyway. So, so all, all very horrible. And then in another account, he is broken on a wheel with knives and this kills him. He's restored to life by St. Michael, who we talked about in the previous episode, the captain of the angels who fights Satan in the great battle. Yeah. When he's restored to life, understandably everyone in the heathen emperor's kingdom is in the great battle. Yeah. When he's restored to life, understandably, everyone in the heathen emperor's kingdom is very impressed by this.

And so they all mass conversions. And the king is furious, continues trying to finish George off. So boils George alive, saws him in two, molten lead poured down his throat. Yeah. And George is brought back to life by Saint Michael three times in a row. And actually, if you win a martyr's crown, you go straight to heaven. You'd think George would be getting a bit frustrated by this, but he does finally win his martyr's crown on the fourth attempt on the 23rd of April. And the entire kingdom is converted except for the emperor, but his empress is converted. So the female members of the royal family are converted.

Fair play to the emperor though. I mean, he's sticking to his guns. He's sticking to his principles. So basically, this is the Marvel equivalent of a martyr. This is pumping up all the stories about martyrdom to a kind of superhuman level. And I think that's why it's so popular. And it's why, you know, intellectuals, clerical scholars are embarrassed about it. It seems to them absurd and over-sensational and kind of threatening because it makes the martyrdom narratives that are so important to the church just seem a bit far-fetched. But also it kind of complicates the way we think about these narratives, right? We assume they're all one thing.

But within the genre, there would perhaps have been as much diversity of quality as there was within you know any modern narrative in other words there would have been stuff at the highbrow end yeah and this is very much a populist story those sort of lowbrow the dan brown of martyrdom narratives yeah i think a kind of superhero film perhaps more right because for some reason george has become a figure who attracts these kind of stories. And the more he attracts the stories, the more he becomes the kind of the emblematic martyr. Right. All of which kind of the question hanging over this is, well, you know, did he actually exist? And I think it's impossible to say.

But is it not possible to say that a fantastical story like this, merely because it's become fantastical and the versions we have of fantastical does not mean there are no trace elements. The story must have begun somewhere. Either you believe somebody literally invented it from nowhere, or you believe there was a soldier who converted and that from that humble beginning, a fantastical story was later created. I think so. And it's kind of widely felt that the likeliest context for George, if he did exist, was the great persecution that's launched against the church by the Emperor Diocletian. We did a whole episode about him for the World Cup, didn't we, a couple of years ago? He launches this basically to kind of extirpate the church at the beginning of the fourth century. And all the sources agree that George is being martyred for refusing to sacrifice to

pagan gods. And they also agree that this happens in the eastern half of the Mediterranean world, where the persecution was at its most brutal. So I would say the likelihood is that he is someone possibly in the imperial service who is martyred in the early fourth century under diocletian yeah i mean even that is you know it's been disputed but i would say that's the likeliest it's a reasonable best guess right yeah so beyond that kind of very difficult to know because of course having a famous martyr is something that i mean it's a brilliant thing to have yeah and so various places kind of compete over him so one favorite favorite location for him is Lida, which is modern day Lod, which is just south of Tel Aviv in Israel. His mother is supposed to have been the Komei who was in charge of the city.

His relics were buried there. I mean, if they really were his relics, we don't know. And Lida undoubtedly becomes the kind of the main center for his cult in the Eastern Mediterranean. But it has to be said again that the evidence for this is quite late and you know there are other places so joppa joffa where the great skeleton of the sea monster was brought by scourers hey maybe that sea monster which was actually what a whale or something like that yeah how disappointing so i was going to say there's your saint george and the dragon exactly Perseus rescues a princess from a sea monster there and that does seem to have echoes of the George theory but again the problem with that is that these stories are much much later and it seems

very unlikely that there's a kind of direct continuity. I mean I agree it is a very very tempting correlation between Perseus and George is intriguing, but it's hard to see how that tradition would have migrated. But we'll come to where the stories of George might have come from later. One other intriguing possibility is that the first great history of the church that we get written by a guy called Eusebius, who was a bishop in Palestine and a biographer of Constantine. He writes that when Diocletian had his decree announcing the persecution of the church proclaimed in Nicomedia, which is kind of the northwest corner of what's now Turkey, and that's where Diocletian was based. Isnik, famous for its tiles.

Yeah. An unnamed man of high rank goes up to this edict and he tears it down and he publicly destroys it. And Eusebius says that this man was the first Christian in Nicomedia to be martyred and that before he was executed, he was brutally tortured and that he bore all his torments with incredible courage. So people have thought maybe this is St. George. I mean, maybe this was an act that was seen to be so heroic that this man became a focus for these stories. Yeah. A man of high rank, right? A man who's in one of the big imperial institutions. Yeah. But we don't really know.

And I think that the fact that we don't know is precisely why he is such a brilliant focus for fantastical stories. He's kind of like blotting paper, just soaking them up. And of course, this is why in the long run, George becomes famous, not for his martyrdom, but for fighting the dragon. And this is a much later tradition. So one of the reasons for doubting that the story of George is influenced by pagan memories of Perseus at Joppa is that we don't really get any evidence for George fighting a dragon

until the 7th century. So in the 7th century, we get wall paintings in a church in Cappadocia, where George, of course, is meant to have come from. And it shows him on horseback, and he's spearing a pair of serpents that are twining around a kind of tree. A century later, in northern Macedonia, a terracotta plaque has been found that shows him not on a horse, but spearing serpents that have human heads. And then in the 11th and 12th centuries, you start to get the first narrative accounts of him killing a dragon. And it seems that these stories may have originated in Georgia, where St. George is incredibly popular. Yeah, but Georgia is not named after St. George, right?

It's often been said that, and it was thought that in the Middle Ages, but it seems rather disappointingly that no, it seems to come from a Persian word, which is very sad. And these stories are then translated into Greek and then in the 13th century into Latin. And what's interesting is that the basic plot has elements of all the original martyrdom stories. So you have heathen kings, you have female royals who were rescued by St. George, but now of course it has a dragon and that just makes it much, much more exciting. So should I tell the basic plot of George and the Dragon? Do you like that? Tom, I would, but only after I've had a break for an advert. Of course.

So let's have a cliffhanger moment here while we wait with bated breath for Tom to tell us the story of St. George and the Dragon. But in the meantime, we will have a word from our sponsors. Chiara, it means smart in Italian. Too bad your barista can't spell it right. So you just give a fake name. Your cafe name.

Julia. But the more you use it, the more it feels like you're in witness protection. Wait a minute. What kind of espresso drinks does Julia like anyway? Is it too late to change your latte order? But with an espresso machine by KitchenAid, you wouldn't be thinking any of this. Because you could have just made your espresso at home. Shop now at KitchenAid.ca

I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. Welcome back to The Rest Is History. Tom, I cannot wait to hear what happened between St. George and the dragon.

I'm so glad, Dominic. In which case, I will plunge straight in. Yeah, do. So this is basically the earliest version, and it comes from various sources, but they basically agree. So there's a pagan king. He refuses to worship the true God. So God sends a dragon to punish him. And this dragon, as dragons do, kind of lurks in a lake and causes

general havoc. All the subjects of the king are furious that he's brought this on them. And so what the king suggests is that everyone should offer up a child of theirs in sacrifice to try and appease the god who has obviously sent this terrible monster. And every day a child is chosen by Lot and sacrificed to the dragon. Finally, the lot falls on the king's own daughter. And every day a child is chosen by lot and sacrificed to the dragon. Finally, the lot falls on the king's own daughter and the king is desperate, doesn't want to sacrifice the princess, but everyone insists. So the princess gets led out to be left for the dragon. At which point George comes riding by on his horse and he gets the full story from the princess. And he says, brilliant, I'm going to take the dragon on.

But you need to believe in my God. Yeah. And if you do that, then you need have no fear. The dragon comes out from the cave. George approaches the dragon. And rather disappointingly, he doesn't kind of draw his sword. He makes the sign of the cross. And the dragon is immediately tamed.

And George then takes the girdle of the princess and leashes the dragon with it and the princess then leads it back into the city and everyone in the city is terrified at the sight of this dragon coming in but george says don't worry it's all fine all you've got to do is accept you know the true god and everything will be brilliant and they all accept the true god they profess their belief in the trinity george now draws out his sword kills the dragon and everyone in the city is baptized well so that's the basic plot there's a lot going on there tom but almost all of it is very familiar right just making a note of all those details i know we're going to go into them in a second but the dragon by the water source the lake the regular offering of a, the prominence of the king's daughter, the stuff with the girdle, the conversion at the end.

I mean, you talked about superhero narratives earlier on. I mean, it's so common to us in 21st century popular culture that a narrative will basically be a composite of elements of existing narratives. And that seems so obviously the case here, doesn't it? Yeah. Well, so people who listened to our previous episode will recognize a lot of those elements from the stories of Greek myth. And I think that the link between the story of George and those Greek myths, with one exception, it's not direct, but it's mediated by the fact that stories of Christian saints are

actually drawing on those stories of Greek myth from very, very early on. So actually there are loads of saints who confront dragons. Most of them are not military. Most of them are kind of doing it by the power of prayer or whatever. The earliest one we have is the late second century AD. I mean, that's incredibly early. It comes in a life of St. Thomas, Doubting Thomas, who goes to India, the apostle there. And there's this story in it. He's in India. He discovers a handsome young man who's lying dead.

The apostle immediately knows that this must be the work of a dragon. No sooner has he come to this conclusion than out comes the dragon from his cave. And the dragon has a kind of chat with him and says that actually he killed the boy because he had witnessed the boy having sex with a woman. And this woman was one that the dragon had fallen in love with. And what was more, they'd been doing it on the Sabbath. So the dragon is saying, I'm perfectly justified in having killed him. Dragon is a jealous Puritan.

Yes. But St. Thomas isn't having any of this. And he makes the dragon suck the venom out of the dead boy and the boy is restored to life and the dragon has got all this poison he kind of blows up like a balloon and explodes and all the venom goes kind of splattering everywhere and it may not sound much like the story of george but you can again see that there are kind of elements so you've got a dragon in a lair he's doing harm to kind of people who are local, the saint arrives, the saint tames and kills the dragon.

And this is a pattern that is repeated over and over and over again. So I mentioned Daniel Ogden's great book on how the stories of dragons have emerged over the centuries, The Dragon in the West. And he has a list of over 200 of these stories. And the thing is, they're all remarkably similar. They're very conservative, the same pattern over and over again. has a list of kind of over 200 of these stories. And the thing is, they're all remarkably similar. You know, they're kind of very conservative, the same pattern over and over again. But this is why George is interesting because he is a warrior. He's a saint, but he is also a soldier. So Tom, just going back to that point and thinking about what you were talking about

in our previous podcast about the history of dragons, Christian writers in the Roman world, you know, no one has sort of said to them, there's been a massive cultural shift now. So the classical legends- It's part of their mental furniture, yeah. It's totally part of their imagination. I mean, they're steeped in that world. They're completely immersed in it. I mean, obviously, it'd be fanciful to think that they wouldn't be telling stories that would be infused with elements of Greek and Roman mythology. So the fighting of the monsters and all that stuff. I mean, I think that's right. Having said that, of course, they

are aware that there's been a cultural shift because they have converted or they have been born again. Yeah, but they haven't dumped all their previous furniture, to use your expression. No, absolutely not. But I'm just saying that I think that there is an obvious Christian antecedent for this, which is the figure of St. Michael, who we've mentioned quite a lot already, the captain of heaven, the warrior archangel who fights a dragon. I think that's the kind of the obvious example. And the issue with that is that because he's an archangel, you know, he hasn't left any

relics. He doesn't have any bones. Right. Do archangels not have bones? How does that work? No, they're kind of, no. They're boneless, like Ramsay MacDonald. They're incorporeal. Right. Do archangels not have bones? How does that work? No, they're kind of, no. They're boneless, like Ramsay MacDonald. They're incorporeal.

Right, okay. So that's a source of frustration. Whereas with St. George, if you kind of, you model St. George on St. Michael, then you can have all the relics and it's kind of, he's more accessible, I guess. So I do think that St. Michael hovers behind these stories, but I agree that of course, if you live in particularly the Greek-speaking part of the Roman Empire, of course, you're going to be familiar with all these stories. And that's why perhaps the story of Perseus and Andromeda informs the stories about saints rescuing princesses or saving women or even young men, as in the example of St. Thomas,

and that these then translate into the story of St. George. Well, because just think about how it would work, right? Imagine that you convert to Christianity when you're 20 or whatever. Presumably you're sitting there for the first, let's say, eight, 10 years of your life. I know that the stories are not children's stories in the same way that they are perceived as being children's stories today, the Greek myths. But there's no doubt that you would be told a story about Perseus and Andromeda or Heracles and his labours or Theseus and the labyrinth and stuff. I mean, of course you would. They're part of the common currency. It is ubiquitous as the Beatles music is today. So it would make sense that when you become a Christian

or when you really get into Christianity, your sense of what is, you know, the frameworks for the stories you tell are dictated by not just the Bible, but also the other tradition that is there at the same time. But I think that in the case of George, it's not like he's being modeled on the story of Persians and Andromeda.

I think that the elements of those Greek myths of dragons that live in caves and, you know, heroes fight them, that that has been kind of mediated and adapted by people who are writing stories of those Greek myths of dragons that live in caves and, you know, heroes fight them. Yeah. That that has been kind of mediated and adapted by people who are writing stories of saints who confront dragons. And then the massive innovation with George sometime around the sixth, seventh, eighth century is that he is a martial saint. He is a warrior saint. He's a soldier. Right. And so then that just kind of lights the touch paper for reanimating all these kind

of traditions and stories. And is that why he is on a horse? Because that is an innovation, right? That previously these people were never on horseback. Yeah. And I think that this is the thing where there might be a direct link between the Greek myth and the figure of George. And it's not a narrative. It's a kind of, it's an image because the image of a saint on a horse is something that does reach back kind of to, um, it's kind of, you know, fourth, fifth century perhaps. And it's something that's very popular in Egypt. And you have an unnamed rider who has a halo, his spear on the bottom has a cross and he is spearing a kind of supine serpent kind of lying at his feet and there is this inscription the one god conquers all and it's clear that this in turn

derives from the figure of a greek hero called bellerophon who rides the winged horse pegasus yeah and spears a monster called the chimera which in in the classical form, it's a compound of a lion, a goat, and a snake. This is an image that goes all the way back to archaic Greece, 6th, 7th century BC. But we know it's incredibly popular, even with Christians, because actually there's a mosaic found in Dorset at Hinton St. Mary. It's the famous one that people have probably seen. It's got a kind of beardless mosaic of Christ looking a bit like Apollo. But there's another one that's also in a kind of roundel that shows Bellerophon spearing the chimera. So this idea of a man on a horse

spearing a monster that is a symbol of evil, this is something that Christians seem to have been happy with. And I think that it generates image of a figure on horseback spearing a monster, and that this is why the stories of St. George killing the dragon are so instantaneously popular once he becomes associated with them. And although that image is specific to the Byzantine world, it's an image that emerges from the Greek half of what had been the Roman Empire. But you can also see why a martial figure on horseback fighting a dragon would have appealed to the knights of Latin Europe in the Middle Ages. And I think it's really telling that the cult of St. George starts to take off

in Latin Christendom in the 11th century, which is when you start getting knights emerging as the kind of the shock troops of Christendom in the West, and particularly the Normans actually. So the Normans, they famously conquer England, but they're also fighting in Sicily, often against the Byzantines. So they may well have picked it up there. And there's an account late in the 11th century that the Normans are fighting the Saracens who were based in Sicily. And St. George appears before them in shining armor, carrying a white banner decorated with a cross. So is this where the flag of St. George comes from? The famous image of the white banner with the cross? That sounds very like the flag of St. George. Well,

is the cross red? That's the key thing. We don't know because the Normans, of course, lots of them go on the first crusade. And before the walls of Jerusalem, when they're attempting to storm the city, George is described as appearing to them again. And this time he's described as wearing white armor marked with a red cross. So again, that's kind of intriguing. Is the red cross on a white background? Is there something going on there with the purity of white and red being the blood of Christ or something like that? I suppose so.

Yeah. And so it's often claimed that Richard the Lionheart picks up on this and this is how it comes back to England. He's always shown in the flag of St. George on his tunic. But the truth is that actually that's not true. Oh no, Tom, don't do this. So shockingly, in the third crusade, it's the French who wear red crosses and the English wear white ones. Well, some of us think the French legally should still be wearing. I mean, you know, if only the royal family had the decency to press their claim, the French would be wearing red

crosses to this day. I suppose. But I think what that suggests is that in the 12th century, certainly there isn't a clear identification of a Red Cross on a white background, first of all, with Crusaders per se, and secondly, with St. George as being a kind of a figure who can be associated with England. And it's really not until the 13th century. So that is when the tradition of George fighting the dragon has been translated into Latin. And so it's accessible that you start to get this sense that his arms are a plain red cross on a white field. Are we now into, let me just think about my medieval kings, we're now into the Edwards, are we? The 13th century? We are. So the English king who first adopts this

cross, this cross of St. George, the red cross on a white background as his emblem is Edward I. And he does it during his wars of conquest in Wales. The dragon. Exactly. So Edward had been on crusade. So he would be familiar with this. But of course, we talked about this yesterday, the dragon is the emblem of Wales. And so you can see how this would have gelled very, very neatly with Edward's requirements. But as we also said at the beginning of the program, it's actually Edward III with the Order of the Garter who really institutionalizes the place of St. George in the English court. Because up until that point, Edward I and Edward III's devotion to St. George was personal

to them. But what Edward III does is to say, no, we're putting this at the heart of court ritual. And you can see over the course of the 14th century that this is starting to percolate out. So by 1385, during the reign of Richard II, the English are going off to fight against the Scots. And the ordinances of war that are issued for that campaign command that everyone in the English army should wear the cross of St. George and that if any Scot is found wearing it, then he should be put to death immediately. And I think that that suggests that you're starting to see a kind of wave of popular enthusiasm for it, partly because the story is so good. I mean, it's kind of very dramatic.

And also amazingly, because people do still think dragons are real things. Yeah. So a decade later, in 1395, there were reports that a fierce dragon is terrorizing large parts of England. I mean, it's amazing. So you can see why the stories of St. George would appeal to the king and to the kind of high chivalric element. But you can also see how it would have cut through with people who were afraid that there were dragons out in woods. So, Tom, we should have actually talked about this in the last episode, but just a tiny

tangent and you just have to give me an answer. When did people stop thinking dragons might be real? There are reports of dragons, you know, as late as the 17th century. 17th century. I think it's around there. I mean, I don't think many people do then. With the kind of disenchantment of early modern Europe. Yeah.

Throughout the Middle Ages, people do genuinely seem to have believed in dragons. Right. That was a tangent. But go on. Henry V is all over St. George, isn't he? Yeah. So Henry V is also, I mean, he loves St. George. And so when he relaunches The Hundred Years' War, we'll be doing an episode on Henry V

in the summer. Yeah. Great scenes. He, at Harfleur, the French port that he captures, he raises the banner of St. George. And at Agincourt, his battle cry is is in the name of almighty God and St. George. And this consolidates a view that if you're a successful warrior King, then you have St. George on your side. So you've got Edward I who conquered Wales. You've got Edward III, who's a massive lad. And you've got Henry V who won the battle of Agincourt. Against that, Edward II, who was useless,

Richard II, who was useless, and Henry VI, who was useless. None of them had any time for St. George. No coincidence. And so I think you start to get an idea bedding down that if you are a successful warrior king, then you back St. George. And if you're a wuss, you don't.

So then we get into the Tudors. Now, interestingly, the Tudors are kind of having their cake and eating it aren't they because they do fly the dragon because famously henry tudor lands at milford haven in wales he marches through wales he tries to actually mobilize a sense of welshness by flying his dragon and all of that kind of thing but basically they want to lay claim to both parts of the picture. They do. The dragon and the soldier. Yeah, they do. And I mean, Henry VII, he's got his dragons everywhere. And also, of course, he's famously mean. I mean, he never liked spending money on anything. And so understandably, his treasure assumes, well, I better cut back on the garter celebrations on

the 23rd of April. And henry's furious about this you know he says no you know this is the one thing that we have to spend money on it's really really important saint george is the patron of england right and henry seventh is actually so devoted to george that in 1505 he obtains the saint's shin bone from the king of france so that's that's real commitment yeah and so it's not surprising then that Henry VIII, who loves his tournaments, who loves his flags, who loves his chivalry. I mean, he's a huge St. George fan. And he actually has an image of St. George kind of engraved on his armor. He's the first English king to mint a coin with an image of St. George on it.

And this is very well known internationally. So it's not just in England that St. George is coming to be seen as somehow the particular guardian. This is also something that is starting to get international currency. So in 1526, there is a pageant in Rome and Henry is portrayed as St. George. Now, of course, we know what's coming. So the Reformation is coming. But even when it does, Henry, he's not going to get rid of St. George. No. He's basically a Catholic. He just doesn't want the Pope.

Right. And he is going very much with the grain of popular opinion. St. George is becoming a genuinely popular saint by this point. You have guilds dedicated to him. You have great processions on his feast day. Loads of portrayals of him going up in churches. Why wouldn't he be? He's fun. But also, if there are any remaining members of the League of Humanists or whatever they're called listening, the fact that he's not English is

utterly beside the point because saints don't work in that way, right? I mean, he wouldn't be the saint of Catalonia, of Aragon, of all these other places if people were narrowly nationalistic about their saints. But I think it also makes him, in a way, slightly less threatening perhaps to the reformers than the English saints who for centuries and centuries have been particularly associated with shrines. So you think of Thomas Beckett, English, St. Edmund, we mentioned the Martyr King, St. Cuthbert in Durham, Edward the Confessor in Westminster. These are saints whose bones are in place because they are associated with the locations where they lived and died.

And I think that that kind of makes them more threatening to Protestant reformers. It makes it more important that they got rid of. And that's why the shrines of all of those saints, to varying degrees, are attacked during the process of the dissolution of the monastery. So the shrine of Thomas Beckett is famously kind of publicly destroyed. Edmund's shrine is destroyed. Cuthbert's shrine is destroyed. Cuthbert's bones are reburied because they're still nervous of them. And Edward the Confessor, his shrine is destroyed. His bones are buried elsewhere. And then after the reign of Edward VI, people think, well, we can't get rid of Edward the Confessor. So he kind of lurks around. But with George, it's kind of different. The very unreliability of the traditions that everyone had told about him, all the stuff that

had made Edward VI laugh actually makes him perfectly suited to the kind of the settlement that elizabeth presides over where you have a protestant church but with kind of catholic garnishing so here's the interesting thing that these people were real edward the confessor or thomas beckett let's say thomas beckett was a real person and so the existence of his cult and the existence of his bones or whatever to a reformer is an affront because they would say we know he was a real person he's a historic figure of course he doesn't have miraculous powers that's all total tosh yeah and of course he's an affront to the king yeah because Thomas Beckett was killed on orders of a king but with George the very fact that he's fun that he's a superhero you know that it's grey area, whether it exists or not, means that if you're a former, he's not so insulting. Because at some point you just say, come on, he's a bit of a laugh.

He's an inspirational story. You know, no one's making great claims. I suppose his shinbone is a bit of a problem. What happened to his shinbone? I'm sure that must have been destroyed. But I agree. I think his kind of semi-fictional character makes him perfectly suited to not just the church, but actually the broad popular culture of the Elizabethan age. So the famous example of this is the Fairy Queen, the great epic written by Edmund Spencer, which opens with St. George, who Spencer calls the Red Cross Knight. And he is

commissioned by the Fairy Queen, Gl so aka elizabeth the first to go out and perform various deeds of chivalry including killing a dragon so he's clearly saint george and he is charged with looking after the beautiful and virtuous una who is clearly meant in allegory for the church of england yeah and the dragon that the Red Cross Knight kills is Catholicism. So, I mean, it's intriguing. St. George is, you know, if you are a stern, strict, puritanical, finger-wagging, hot Protestant, St. George is the worst kind of invented saint. But it still doesn't stop him being cast as the defender of Protestantism against Catholicism. So he's incredibly flexible.

You can kind of make of him what you want. Is it also easy to make him a foe of Catholicism or champion of Protestantism because he's sufficiently far east, as it were, that he's not too deeply implicated with the papacy? You know, if he is from what is now, you know, Israel or he is from what is now Turkey. Yeah. He's kind of not tainted by Romishness. Yeah. And I think the kind of the locations of his battles are in a kind of fantasy land. Yeah.

So if you think of the famous paintings of him, the cello painting or whatever, you know, these aren't real places. These are the dimensions of fairy tale and myth. Yeah. And that in turn means that actually, if you want to to you can situate saint george's birthplace any place you want so there's a guy writing under elizabeth in the 1590s called richard johnson who writes a book called the seven champions of christendom which are various countries patron saints but saint george is the first one and he he is the dominant figure in this book and you'll

be delighted to know dominic he is born in the midlands son of coventry yeah so actually you know he wasn't born in cappadocia he was born in coventry i think that's very plausible yeah i like that and of course the other reason why i think saint george gets cemented in as the patron saint of england in the elizabethan period and isn't jettisoned over the centuries that follow is that the 23rd of april his saint's day, is also the day on which Shakespeare supposedly is born and dies. Yeah. So perfect. England's national poets.

Perfect synergy. Yeah. And I think that that's why St. George works as a patron saint, actually. I mean, the fictional quality of him is absolutely the point. Yeah. Celebrations of national identity or patriotism in England tend to be associated with either great royal spectacles, in which actually St. George doesn't really play any part at all, because it's all about the history of the institution,

or sport. And it makes sense to have somebody who perhaps didn't exist, who is occupying a sort of slightly grey, fantastical area. I mean, if Thomas Beckett or Edward the Confessor was our national saint, they would have been cancelled for some historic offence, wouldn't they? 10 or 20 years ago. Yeah, I mean, I think Beckett or Edward the Confessor, I mean, it would revolve around the royal family again. It would revolve around England's relationship to the crown.

And I think, although, of course, St. George has always been associated with royalty, it's because of royal patronage that George comes to take on the status that he does in the English imagination. He's not dependent on it. And I think that the very fact that his story can be rewritten and retold in so many ways makes him very, very flexible. So sure, he has been adopted by the far right, but he's also a very ironic figure. The people who are dressing up in, you know, chain mail to go to football matches. Yeah. They're doing it in a mood of almost self-mockery. Totally they are.

Yeah. It's fun. There's no political significance to that. Anyone who thinks there's a political significance to wearing a crusader outfit to go and watch England play Slovenia or something is demented as far as I'm concerned. But I mean, obviously there is a kind of slight element of an issue with the fact that he's associated with crusading. So you could imagine that Muslims in England might feel slightly uncomfortable with having a patron saint like that for their country.

But he's not a crusader though. He's not a crusader. But more than that, he's highly venerated by Muslims. Okay, perfect. So Al-Tabari was a massive fan. He told the martyrdom story and kind of hyped it up even more. So actually, St. George is one of the few Christian saints who historically was highly venerated by Muslims. So I think he's a very flexible figure. And although I've gone on record, I'm not going to lie, I'd love to see St. Cuthbert as England's national saint. Tom, you're not going to win that one. Give up. No, I know I'm not. I'm not going to lie. I'd love to see St. Cuthbert as England's national saint. Tom, you're not going to win that one. Give up.

No, I know I'm not. I do think that people shouldn't take it too seriously. What do you think about the sort of social media crazed humanist professors dissing St. George? Well, I think it's all part of a broad tradition. Again, you know, let everybody enjoy it whichever way they want. And of course, the irony is that as you so often say, Tom, I'm going to say it for you because I just, I know your methods. They are merely representing

one wing of Christianity, aren't they? Absolutely. Well, it's lovely to see the presence of humanists following a great papal tradition. Yeah, very good. All right. So I think we can safely say

St. George is definitely a friend of the show. I think so. Yeah. And maybe the dragon as well. Yeah, we're like the Tudors in that regard. We're very like the Tudors.

We're basically Henry VII and Henry VIII and I'll leave you to work out which. Yeah. Right. Tom, thank you very much for that.

That was a forensic tour de force. Thank you, Dominic. Always a pleasure. We will be back next week with something very different. I don't know what it is. I'm sure it'll be amazing.

So we'll see you then. Thank you very much, Tom. And goodbye. Bye-bye. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews,

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