Running, jumping, climbing trees…

Happy St George's Weekend by xerones

image credit: xerones on Flickr

April the twenty third

All told, 23rd of April is quite a busy date. It’s World Book Day and the anniversary of the deaths of Cervantes and Shakespeare. If you agree with Isaac Newton it is the date upon which Jesus Christ was probably crucified and, of course, it’s St George’s Day.

As saints go, George ranks in the very highest bracket. He’s venerated in England, Lithuania, Palestine, Portugal, Aragon and Catalonia as the resident saint. He is also the patron saint of soldiers, chivalry, farmers and fieldworkers. Boy scouts are instructed to direct their thoughts towards him as are butchers and saddlers, and those that suffer from leprosy, plague or syphilis. Some have gone as far to claim that the Caucasian state Georgia actually derives its name from St. George, although, at closer inspection, the name probably stems from their word for farmer.

The man himself remains something of an enigma. Popular legend has him as a thorn in the side of Roman Emperor Diocletian, a favourite villain of the later Christian scribes. A pious man of noble birth he rose to the lofty position of a Roman cavalry officer before being captured and thrown into prison for his refusal to follow Diocletian’s orders and thereby persecuting his fellow Christians.

As the centuries rolled by, the cult of St George grew. Various anecdotes and colourful details were woven into his life story: tales that he had been tortured by the Romans before being executed and resurrected as many as three times swam through Dark Age folklore. One particularly imaginative fifth century scribe named Theodotus, claimed that St George was the stoic recipient of seven long years of torture, a worst moments of which he details here:

‘And they pounded him on a stone slab until the whole of his body and his bones were crushed to pulp … they beat his head with a hammer and with a rod of iron until his brains protruded through his nose … then the wicked king commanded them to bring a great iron saw and to saw him down the middle of his head and his belly and his feet .’

All stirring stuff, I’m sure you’d agree, and throughout the Dark Ages George saw his reputation explode into a hailstorm of myth and legend. Indeed, the clamour for a scrap of his legacy was well in evidence by the 8th Century when, it was claimed, that there were at least five of his heads in existence – one of which was the prized trophy of Pope Zacharias who had ‘amazed and delighted the credulous denizens of Rome by ‘finding’ a head of St George in the decaying Lateran palace.’

Later on one particularly vivid legend gained great and lasting popularity. It told of how St George, astride an ivory white horse, had slain a fire-spitting dragon to protect his people. The legend fitted perfectly with the image that Christians sought – and when an account of the escapade was published in written form in Legenda Santorum, an early book that chronicled the lives of saints, Saint George achieved lasting fame.

In England St George remained a national celebrity well into the Middle Ages. And it’s telling that in his moment of most dreadful peril on the fields of Agincourt, Shakespeare reached for the legacy of Saint George to inspire an English victory, giving King Henry V the immortal lines:

‘I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips, Straining upon the start. The game’s afoot: Follow your spirit; and, upon this charge Cry God for Harry, England and St George.’

*

An interesting antidote to all of this excitement comes from Edward Gibbon in his clean cut classic, The Decline and the Fall of the Roman Empire. He claimed that if there ever was such a character as St George, then he was probably a 4th century bishop named George of Cappadocia. Far from being a valiant Christian tearaway, this George lived the most base of existences. He began his life as a self-motivated cloth worker from southern Turkey who rose to prominence by stealth and due, in the main, to his luck to have landed a lucrative contract supplying the Roman Army with bacon. He ended his life not brave and martyred, but cruel and avaricious, Gibbon wrote:

‘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.’

Whatever the truth, whether he was a bone fide dragon slayer or corrupt pork salesman, Saint George became one of the most celebrated figures in Christian history. Today he retains a formidable presence across Iberia where St. George’s Day is celebrated with national holidays in Portugal, Aragon and Catalonia. In Barcelona you can find a particularly vibrant tradition.

On the morning of the 23rd April, street hucksters appear at the entrances to metro stations and makeshift stalls are swiftly assembled, lining the long stretch of La Rambla. Couples stroll along the streets in the spring sunshine, searching for a gift for one another. Tradition dictates that the men should buy their girlfriend or wife a red rose, whilst she would present him with a book in return. In a country fond of overt and spectacular cultural displays, there is something subtle and appealing about the Catalan celebration of La Diada de Sant Jordi.

A strange curiosity is that the English barely celebrate St. George’s Day at all. Most people treat the day with cool reserve and, for the most part, it passes without so much as the shy squeak of a spinster’s fart. When the Daily Mail, a newspaper so right wing that it makes Hitler look like a liberal, attempted to whip up national sentiment in 2006 by claiming that St George’s Day was on the verge of being scrapped it failed to make an impression at all. It appears that the English seem to have lost their passion for their patron saint.

If it’s a problem, then it can only be solved by herding up all the people back home and getting Ryan Air to fly them over to Barcelona for the day. An odd move perhaps, but it’s probably the best way of getting us all to rediscover our cultural heritage.