For England and St George: Dissecting the Role of a Dragon Slayer

The criss-cross red slashes of blood stained the flag of peace. But there was a reason for this.

St George is the soldiers' saint, a Roman general who died a violent death for his Christian faith.

There was no surrender. No giving in. No rushing into the hedgerow to save your skin. George stood tall, when all around him people fled in terror.

War was his modus operandi and, in him, all of the ancient traditions of Mithras could find a Christian outlet. His was a world of courage, bravery and victory. His name was yelled as a war cry, with the blood pumping and the testosterone high, from the Crusades to the Hundred Years War.

Only for the soldiers. Always for the soldiers.

But then, carried on the lips of those coming home from war in the Middle East, came a secondary tale concerning the soldiers' saint. It was one guaranteed to see St George win the hearts and minds of all good English folk - the women and children, elderly and infirm, none of them soldiers, but suddenly happy to embrace a new patron saint of their nation.

St George killed dragons, didn't he?

There were a lot of Gods and Goddesses in ancient Rome. There were large deities to take care of world-wide events; and small household ones to protect the home.

Then there was Mithras. In the high imperialism of the vast Roman Empire, he marched with the soldiers to war.

Mithras could wrestle with a bull and bring it down; and his worship was steeped in blood. Out on the battlefield, at close quarters, with the flash of the dagger and sword, Mithras was there.

He waited until you saw the whites of their eyes, when all that stood between life and death was your own skill and luck. That's when Roman soldiers learned if Mithras was on their side. When the blood pumped in screams and disorientation. When either you fell or the man before you. When you didn't panic, even until you were the last man standing and the battle was won.

There was more!  Seven levels of initiation, conducted in secret underground, which singled out the heroes and ejected the cowards. Anyone could rise through these ranks. No privilege of birth nor worldly goods could grease this passage into the Mysteries. A lowly legionnaire could shake hands with a Senator, because who knew who lurked behind the mask in darkness.

A brave soul, standing fast against whatever the Mithraic Masters devised, could become a member of a secret sect and an exclusive inner circle. A certain handshake, or codewords spoken in the outside world, could see them fast-tracked in promotion to the top.

Which Roman soldier worth his laurels would give up that for the Christian God of women and slaves?  A God preaching peace and turning the other cheek. Where would he be, when a barbaric longsword is bearing down?

'Blessed are the peace-makers,' was utter garbage, when their entire foreign policy was a study in gaining more territory. Roman imperial might looked set to take over the world.

Despite all of this, Christianity was slowly gaining strength in the heart of Rome, not least because it had attracted the sympathy of many noble ladies.

The last thing that a Roman soldier wants, when he comes home from a tour of duty, is to discover that his wife has turned Christian. The women had spotted one of the major pros in favor of the new religion. It would keep their husbands from disappearing for months or years at a time! All that they had to do was to convert too.

This worried the Emperor. To nip it in the bud before it threatened the whole imperial army, Diocletian banned Christianity from the military. Every soldier professing that faith was to be arrested; and everyone else should make a sacrifice to Mithras. A bull would be appropriate (and would have the great bonus of feeding whole armies out of the men's own pockets, at least until all of the beef was gone).

Hence he was there when Diocletian pronounced his edict against all Christians in the military. George had been raised in a Christian household. His devotion to God had not presented any conflict of interest until now.

Perhaps he thought he could talk the Emperor into retracting the order. Maybe he simply couldn't lie. So George spoke up.

Nothing worked. But how could it?  George was a soldier with his own concerns. He had reached his position through the nepotism of his father. He'd been unable to move through the Mithraic ranks, because that would involve acknowledging Mithras.

It would come down to the might of Mithras against the all powerful God of the Christians. A deity of war against the perceived God of Peace.

All over the Roman world, his peers and counterparts would be waiting for George to fail. He had been outed as something less; something effeminate in such a masculine world. If the young man capitulated now, he would have his land and money, but his reputation would be in tatters and the whole army would know that the Christian God was no match for any Roman deity.

So George saw it through to the finish. He would face down trials more torturous than anything encountered in the Mithras temples. He would show them that it could be done with Christ alongside him and maybe that would reverse the edict.

Some things are easier to deduce. Given the context, then seven tortures would have been appropriate. They would have represented the seven gates of Mithras. A fitting test for this soldier's endurance; and the only thing which might have stood a chance of converting the on-looking military.

Of all of the methods of torture fixing themselves to his legend, one or two stand out. There's the bull being set upon him. The symbol of Mithras, which George evidently killed (the story goes that his prayers brought an oxen back to life). An alternative telling is that he was fastened into the belly of a 'metal ox' (a kind of barrel) filled with nails and spikes, then dragged with that revolving around the arena.

He had struck a profound psychological blow against the forces of Paganism, and pulled off a public relations coup for Christianity.

Emperor Diocletian had no option but to ultimately order it finished. George was stretched out for his head to be struck off.

It's around this point that Empress Alexandra attempted to intervene. She must have recognized the humiliation of her husband, but George was known to her. She'd watched all of this with no real sympathy with the whole Mithraic cause. She was a woman, not a military man, and this seemed like just so much testosterone fueled posturing.

So she declared herself a Christian, in front of the whole arena.

Diocletian was betrayed and furious, but he wasn't about to be cuckolded by the Empress. He signaled for George's decapitation to go ahead. In the high drama of the moment, more than a few on-lookers were appalled, when they would ordinarily have been baying for blood.

No doubt that the Emperor anticipated his wife would simply sit down and shut up. She did not. She still declared herself a Christian and so he ordered her execution too. Dragged out into the arena, Alexandra was beheaded before the crowd.

It was all enough to convert a Mithraic Priest, who had just witnessed his God matched by another. But he had also seen the sacred rituals desecrated by the inclusion of a woman. (No females allowed in the Mysteries of Mithras.) He too stepped forward in defense of Christ and he too was decapitated.

It's said that over a thousand soldiers were killed that day, as they chose Christ over Mithras in that bloody arena. Whether they were originally Christians too, or converted on the spot, the legends never say.

But the surviving Roman legionnaires, and every military personnel hereon, had their Christian Soldier Saint and that man was George.

Even St George's cross was taken as a spoil of war. It had originally belonged to another soldier-saint, St Ambrose, who was superseded in popularity by St George. Victor takes all.

It was handed to the French, during the Crusades, as Pope Urban II decreed that all participating Christian nations should distinguish between themselves by different colored crosses. The English weren't impressed with their allocation, so simply started wearing the French colors on their tabards.They were supposed to be decked with a white cross on red instead.

Philip II of France graciously gave up and agreed to swop the national crusading colors in 1188.

But that was a political coup for the warring English. The red cross on a white background was more than a representation of Christianity. It had a dual meaning in its own right.

For a start, it was on the flag of the dominant Genoese navy. Their sailors would mistake English ships for their own and turn their impressive military might into protecting them. The Doge of Genoa quickly got wise to this one and had words with Richard I. England was forced to pay an annual tribute for the privilege of using Genoese naval protection.

Secondly, this was St George's flag! Many nations went into the Crusades, but their colors merely told them apart. Yellow cross on a white background, there was Italy. White cross on a red background, that was now France; and so on.

But England went out wearing the colors of the solders' saint; right into a war where Christian soldiers need their saints.

St George was not an English saint. Both sides were invoking him and his name was a war cry all over Europe. But in the Crusades, St George and England became so irrevocably linked that the colors came to symbolize the whole endeavor.

It could be that Roman soldiers engaged in the invasion of Britain might have mentioned George at the time. He was certainly known by the 7th century, as he was mentioned in the writings of the Venerable Bede.

But even with the English coup of securing his flag in the Crusades, St George wasn't so very important back home in England. He was the soldiers' saint, that was all. The men could indulge in their divine bro-mance all that they liked, but the country already had a patron saint. St Edmund the Martyr was doing the job well enough.

But then a few things happened, nearly all at once, which raised George's status amongst the ladies too.

Only those gallant gentlemen willing to honor their ladies would qualify to wear a garter; and they would be part of a select inner circle led by the King. And just to ensure that everyone understood the inherent manliness here, then the garter would be fastened by the medallion of St George.

The ladies were charmed. The gentlemen nodded their understanding. The Order of the Garter was formed; and St George finally made a benevolent impact on the lives of English noblewomen.

Something else happened in England in 1348, as it did in much of the rest of the world. It was to shake everyone's faith, many in the whole of Christianity, but specifically in the ability of St Edmund the Martyr to protect his country.

The Black Death arrived and, between 1348 and 1350, over a quarter of the population of England was dead. For the survivors, the entire social order was in chaos, with the Peasant's Revolt signalling the end of feudalism and a lot more besides.

For the English Christians, the climate was right to swop patron saints and they all felt like soldiers now. St George was already a favorite of the men; while the women had started to view him as a symbol of chivalry. That could only be good for them.

None of this was the deciding factor. They just eased the way and placed St George up there on the shortlist of candidates. But he was the one who won.

Did anyone mention that St George slays dragons?

The Welsh Revolt of 1294 nearly succeeded. Madog ap Llywelyn's forces secured the entire of North Wales and took most of the castles that symbolized the English occupation.

Edward I had arrived to quell the uprising, but ended up besieged in Conwy Castle. It was humiliating to the English and their monarchy, when he'd had to summon the navy to help him escape.

Nevertheless, the rebellion was put down, as were others in 1301, 1314 and, more seriously, in 1316. None of this left England feeling very safe though, especially since a Welsh noble family managed to claw back their borderlands in 1327.

By 1370, there was yet another close shave, when Owain Lawgoch achieved French support to free Wales from English occupation. Unfortunately, the French King Charles V proved unreliable. Three times, during that decade, the army was poised to take back Wales; and three times Charles recalled them from Welsh shores to fight in French wars instead.

Finally, in 1400, came the uprising led by Owain Glyndŵr. This was successful! The war turned Wales into a republic for the next twelve years; and briefly saw the Welsh Red Dragon enjoying hitherto unseen influence over English politics too.

Incidentally Y Ddraig Goch (the Red Dragon) comes from a story from the Black Book of Carmarthen and a vision of Merlin. The white dragon (Anglo-Saxons, aka the English) and the red dragon (Welsh) had a fight and the former won. But the red dragon wasn't dead and it limped away to lick its wounds. Time passed and the red dragon healed. The two fought again and this time the red dragon won. They never did battle again.

In short, the Welsh flag is telling the English that one day Wales will be truly independent. In the 14th century, it appeared that time was right now.

Some metaphors can go too far, but this one worked out well for the English.

In his youth, Emperor Diocletian had been nicknamed Dacian, or dragon. This was fine while he was in the Roman army; and still great once he became its Emperor. Once he'd ordered the execution of George and the story had been used in Christian conversions all over the Empire, then 'Dacian' became a real dragon.

By the time the Speculum Maius was being written in 1226, then George had literally killed a dragon. Moreover, Empress Alexandra had relocated from the center of a bloody Roman arena, into a new station under a Syrian tree.

She was threatened by the dragon (her husband/Paganism), but she was saved by the bravery of George (Christianity). The word 'saved' isn't stretched to the edges of its definition, if you consider that she converted to Christianity at the end there.

Author Jacobus de Voragine took the bare bones of that story and, in 1260, wove it into a Medieval best-seller called The Golden Legend. Now was included all kinds of knightly elements and chivalrous love stories.

All just ripe, in fact, for the English court, where it finally reached around the time that Edward III was creating the Order of the Garter in the name of St George. All of this against a backdrop of the Black Death breaking faith with St Edmund the Martyr; and a series of Welsh uprisings, leading to insecurity in England, all done under the banner of a red dragon.

Edward was well versed in his Arthurian legend. He'd used it twice, in symbolism and furniture. He would have known precisely what Y Ddraig Goch meant. Now he could answer it with a flag of his own. The soldiers' saint, the dragon slayer, St George Patron Saint of England!