Little is known about St George.
Pope Gelasius set the tone late in the fifth century when he listed George among those saints ‘whose names are rightly reverenced among us, but whose actions are known only to God.’
If there really was a St George, the most likely candidate appears to be George of Cappadocia who sold bacon to the Roman army in third-century Turkey.
According to Gibbon’s Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire, he ‘raised himself by the talents of a parasite’ and by flattery or bribery, secured the lucrative army bacon contract.
‘He accumulated wealth by the basest arts of fraud and corruption,’ Gibbon said, ‘but his malversations were so notorious, that George was compelled to escape from the pursuits of justice.’
George’s next caper was to become a bishop, then Archbishop, ‘and each moment of his reign was polluted by cruelty and avarice.’
Yet someone seems to have decided that George would be a good chap to worship and Christian scribes began appending wondrous stories to the life of St George.
The bacon business was replaced by heavenly myths and miracles.
Although his association with Britain may date back to the seventh century, his position as patron saint of soldiers was established by King Richard I, The Lion Heart, in the late-12th century, at the time of the Crusades.
In 1222, the Council of Oxford declared April 23 to be St George’s Day and he replaced Edward the Confessor as England’s patron saint in the 14th century.
He is also patron saint of Aragon, Catalonia, Georgia, Lithuania and Genoa, and the second patron saint of Venice after St Mark.
St George is also patron saint of soldiers, archers, cavalry, chivalry, farmers, riders, saddlers and lepers.
The dragon-slaying story seems to have emerged when George was adopted as England’s patron saint.
The ‘dragon’, of course, may not have been a dragon at all, but a nickname for the tyrant Emperor Diocletian, who persecuted Christians.
Because of doubts over his existence, St George was demoted to ‘optional worship’ by Pope Paul VI in 1969 but Pope John Paul II reinstated him to full membership of the calendar of saints in 2000.