Ora Pro Nobis

St George & the dragon; a familiar image, an obscure origin, and an icon perpetually shrouded in controversy. I have previously written on the identity of St George himself. What interests me now is his relationship with the English people, with their self-image, their history, and with their future destiny. What is it about St George that evokes such passion in some, hostility in others and indifference in most. It is not the anti-George stance taken by the leftist self-haters among our fellow Englishmen which surprises me, but the ambiguity in which he is held by the patriots of our nation. Our neighbouring British peoples take great pride in celebrating their patronal feasts. St Patrick’s Day is notoriously famous among even those with a tenuous claim to Hibernian blood. It is recognised in Ireland by a public holiday, as is the feast day of St Andrew in Scotland . This survival of the medieval cult of the saints in Scotland, a country whose people embraced Protestantism far more whole-heartedly than the English ever did, makes a lie of the assumption that devotion to St George simply withered away in England after the Deformation. The fact is that, apart from a period during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries when a state sponsored cult of St George flourished, with its centre in Windsor , the saint has never been fully accepted as the undisputed patron of the English. The cult of saints was once feverishly strong among the English, and its survivals are still strongly evident today, but our medieval forebears were notably parochial. Folk were likely to prefer devotion to a local holy well, relic or local saint, or the patron of their home parish or trade guild, than those with pretensions to patronage of the whole nation. Among pretenders to this title were St Edmund the Martyr, St Edward the Confessor and St Thomas of Canterbury, along with widely venerated but officially uncanonised figures such as Alfred the Great, King Henry VI & King Harold II. St George was beloved of the fighting clique which governed the country and patron of soldiers generally. Along with St Michael the Archangel, he was one of the holy warriors popular with the warlike Normans , and imported into this country by them. St George was recognised as the embodiment of devotion and Christian chivalry but did not enjoy universal appeal. Why the fuss then?

General observation of St George’s Day in England could have been introduced at any time since the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. This momentous event saw the decline of the party-hating puritan ascendancy that had attempted to suppress all religious and secular celebrations and also heralded the birth of the nation-state, with its emphasis on national, rather than regional or trade-specific identity. Since this time there has been a consistent patriotic lobby agitating for St George’s feast day to be given due public status. The advocates of such a move range from traditional-minded Anglicans to secular nationalists. Some lobbies, such as the long standing Royal Society Of St George have enjoyed royal patronage and high-level political support. The failure of this historical movement in their three century endeavour rests on the lack of consensus among Englishmen as to the relevance of St George himself, a controversy that has its roots in the high middle-ages. The partisans of St Edmund are still active among England ’s radical traditionalists. This St George’s Day just gone I saw the flag of St Edmund, a St George’s cross with the crown and arrows shield of St Edmund, flying over the beer garden of the Man of Kent in Rochester.

Personally I have no strong feelings whether St George’s Day should be made a public bank holiday or not. It would be nice, but I doubt it will actually change anything. A fresh wave of public sponsored St George’s Day events in 2008 & 2009 is very encouraging, and many people, including myself, already choose to take this day off as a holiday and make a point of celebrating it with friends and family. For most, another bank holiday will just be another occasion to swarm the pointless and characterless shopping malls that cover England like a disfiguring rash. Crucial to my understanding of the semi-mythical saint and his patronage of our dear land is the icon of St George slaying the dragon. This icon is so commonly depicted, on clothing, money, jewellery and in royal circles that we lose sight of its profound power. The image of St George overcoming his bestial foe is not only among the most potent of religious images, but it is a sacred heritage to contemporary England bequeathed to us by our Christian heritage. Never has the icon of St George been more relevant than it is today.

The familiar icon is directly based on the sacred image of St Michael, Prince of the heavenly Hosts, striking down the devil and trampling him underfoot. It is a simple and potent symbol; the divine power is victorious over the base anti-human forces of greed, darkness, ignorance, chaos, evil and worldliness personified as the devil. The great adversary is overcome and humans are freed from his bland, faceless tyranny. It is irrelevant to this discussion whether this profound symbol is of Christian origin or owes its genesis to Mediterranean , pre-Christian symbolism. The meaning is the same. The myth and the corresponding icon of George slaying the dragon and thereby rescuing the humankind once bound and prostrated to the fiend’s power, is a medieval development of the St Michael icon. A person, group, or dare I say a country, who takes this icon as their personal standard is consciously aligning themselves with the powers of justice, light, good and honour, and are committing themselves to oppose the forces of evil, death, oppression and injustice.

One would have to be naïve not to recognise that modern England is in the grips of the dragon. St George’s patrimony is enslaved to material greed, has been betrayed by self-seeking relativism and is ignorant of its spiritual heritage. We are in deep darkness and confusion. The English have drunk deeply of the poison chalice of pride, blindness and self-delusion. The dragon is consuming us at his leisure, and we are willingly offering ourselves up to his jaws.

On Thursday 23^rd April 2009 I on impulse wandered into the beautiful cathedral of St Andrew in Rochester , a stern Romanesque building that in my opinion ranks among the loveliest churches of England . I witnessed the end of a small, private ceremony in the nave, where the Bishop of Rochester was exchanging niceties with some officials in fancy looking livery. When the party had dispersed I took a look at the focus of the group. A handsome icon of St George and the Dragon had been presented to the Cathedral to mark the feast day, and stood on a small table in front of the main lectern with a single candle burning before it. Maybe it is time for us to again invoke the aid of our powerful defender and to invite St George to return and claim his patrimony.