Author's Notes: St. George
Everyone thinks that they know the story of St. George and to a certain
degree they do: knight kills dragon and marries princess.
Unfortunately, like a great many tales, the St. George tale is far more
complicated. For instance, was he an
actually person? So far he is thought to be much like King Arthur
in
that there probably was someone that provided the seed for the legend,
but the whole dragon-slaying thing is highly doubted. Another
series of questions is where and when did he live. He is said to
have hailed from Lydda near present day Joppa (that's in Israel by the
way) and as an interesting side note, in the ocean near his birthplace
is a rock where legend has it that the Princess Andromeda (see chapter
four) was chained. How an Ethiopian princess was chained to a
rock off the coast of Israel is anyone's guess. He served in the
Roman army and had his legendary fight with the dragon somewhere in
Libya. (Notice, none of these places are in England!)
Legend
also has it that St. George lived during the reign of Diocletian and
was martyred on the 23rd of April, 303 A.D. (his feast day.) It
is interesting that the patron of England looked more like a
dark-skinned Roman centurion than the fair crusader he is often
depicted as, but then, no one ever got the dragon right either.
For more information see the websites mentioned in the bibliography.