George, St, the especial patron of chivalry, and tutelary saint of England. Although venerated both in the Eastern and Western churches, his history is extremely obscure, the extant accounts containing very much less history than legend. The story in the Acta Sanctorum is that he was born of noble Christian parents in Cappadocia, became a distinguished soldier, and, after testifying to his faith before Diocletian, was tortured and put to death at Nicomedia, April 23, 303. By many writers, as by Gibbon, he has been confounded with the turbulent and unscrupulous Arian partisan, George of Cappadocia, who after a troubled life as army contractor and tax-gatherer became Archbishop of Alexandria, and after five years of misgovernment was torn in pieces by a furious mob. Most authorities, Catholic and Protestant, agree in admitting the great improbability of this identification. Dr Peter Heylin is of one mind in this matter with the Jesuit Papebroch, and Dean Milman with the Roman Catholic Bishop Milner. Whatever may be said of the unhistorical character of St George's martyrdom, the fact of his being honoured as a martyr by the Catholic Church, of churches being dedicated to him, and of the Hellespont being called 'St George's Arm,' is traced by Papebroch, by Milner, and by other writers to so early a date, and brought so immediately into contact with the times of the angry conflicts in which George of Cappadocia figured as an Arian leader, that it is impossible to believe that the Catholics of the East—while the tomb of Athanasius was hardly closed upon his honoured relics—would accept as a sainted martyr his cruel and unscrupulous persecutor. The St George of the Eastern Church was no doubt a real personage of an earlier date than George of Cappadocia, but beyond this we can say nothing of him. His name was early obscured in fable—one oriental story making him suffer as many as seven martyrdoms, reviving after each save the last. The same story exists even in Mussulman legends, whose Chwolson identifies the hero with the Semitic Tammuz.
The famous story of St George's struggle with the dragon is first found in Voragine's Legenda Aurea, but soon found its way into the office-books of the church, until left out by Pope Clement VII. To slay a dragon was a common exploit for the saints and heroes of Christendom as well as of Teutonic and Indian antiquity; and St George here touches so closely the common myths of the Aryan family as to have himself been explained, by Baring-Gould and others, as in this aspect merely a mythical form of the sun-god dispelling the darkness by his beams of light.
Churches were dedicated to St George from very early times; the Crusades gave a great impetus to his cultus, and he was adopted as the soldier-saint who led his votaries to battle. Many new chivalrous orders assumed him as their patron, and he was adopted as their tutelary saint by England, Aragon, and Portugal. In 1348 Edward III. founded St George's Chapel, Windsor, and in 1344 the celebrated Order of the Garter was instituted. See Baring-Gould's Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, and the article DRAGON.—The cross of St George, red on a white ground, was worn as a badge over the armour by every English soldier in the 14th and subsequent centuries. For the banner of St George, now represented in the Union flag, see FLAG.