Good Evening
0:52 am
Sunday 29th November
 |
|||||||||||
About Most Read
We study your activity on LondonTown.com and this column suggests similar pages requested by other users in the last 30 days. 
|
 |
  The Legend...  Legend has it, a dragon forced a small city in Turkey to sacrifice up an unwitting member of their community every day to be killed. The victim was chosen by drawing lots and eventually the local princess’s name came up. She was offered to the dragon and was on the verge of dying when heroic George happens to swing by on his travels. He faces the dragon, slays it and saves the princess. The grateful citizens then abandon their ancestral Paganism and convert to Christianity. Unfortunately, the sobering truth is that unsurprisingly, although the dragon story exists in a number of different medieval literary versions and artistic representations it is without any historical foundation. Few doubt it contains religious symbolism and many many interpret George’s victory over the dragon allegorically as the victory of Christianity over Satan. The Man... So if he didn’t ‘officially’ slay dragons, who was St George? The traditional account of his life is considered to have originated in the 4th century and claims he was a soldier in the Roman Empire born into a Christian family. He led a prosperous career in the army and was soon promoted and became a member of the personal guard attached to the Roman Emperor Diocletian. This ruthless leader ordered the brutal persecution of Christians within Rome. George, however, stood his ground and refused to take part, confessing to being a Christian himself. Diocletian branded him a traitor and ordered him to be tortured and executed. He was decapitated and then subsequently worshipped as a martyr by surviving Christians. The Saint... It’s a little hazy as to how he became the patron saint of England but it's thought the cult of St George probably first reached the Kingdom of England when the Crusaders returned from the Holy Land in the 12th century. During King Edward III’s reign, George came to be recognised as the patron saint of England. Edward dedicated the chapel at Windsor Castle to the soldier saint who he regarded as representing the knightly values of chivalry. Shakespeare then took it upon himself to firmly immortalise the saint in our national conscious, referring to him in 'Henry V'. |
|||||||||
