St George is the patron saint of England and St George’s Day is celebrated on the 23rd of April every year in this country. The English flag is also known as the flag of St George, the design being a red horizontal / vertical cross on a white background.


We do not have sole cliam to St. George as our patron as he is also the patron saint of Aragon, Canada, Catalonia, Ethiopia, Georgia, Greece, Gozo, Montenegro, Palestine, Portugal, Russia, and Serbia.


During the Christian Crusades knights and knights templar fought under the banner of St George with the red cross motif displayed extensively on their arms and armour.


The legend of St George is based on tales of George of Cappodocia, a Christian captain of the Ancient Roman army. The Roman historian Butler describes how George lost his head and won his Martyrdom by standing up to Christian persecution by the Emperor Diocletian. He was honoured as a saint by the English.


Anglo-Saxons in the early middle-ages and the day of the 23rd of April was set aside in the calender for feasting and


merrymaking in accordance with the approved fashion of all Englishmen and women.


In 1344, this feast was made memorable by the creation of the noble Order of St. George, or the Blue Garter, the institution being inaugurated


by a grand joust, in which forty of England’s best and bravest knights held the lists against the foreign chivalry attracted by the proclamation of the challenge through France, Burgundy, Hainault, Brabant, Flanders, and Germany.


In the first year of the reign of Henry V, a council held at London decreed, at the instance of the king himself, that henceforth the feast of St. George should be observed by a double service and for many years the festival was kept with great splendour at Windsor and other towns.


England was not the only nation that fought under the banner of St. George, nor was the Order of the Garter the only chivalric institution in his honour. Sicily, Arragon, Valencia, Genoa, Malta, Barcelona, looked up to him as their guardian saint; and as to knightly orders bearing his name, a Venetian Order of St. George was created in 1200, a


Spanish in 1317, an Austrian in 1470, a Genoese in 1472, and a Roman in 1492, to say nothing of the more modern ones of Bavaria (1729), Russia (1767), and Hanover (1839).


The legend of St George and the Dragon eminates from a story that a dragon makes its nest on a spring in the city of “Silene” in Libya , blocking it and refusing to move to allow the citizens to draw water u nless a daily human sacrifice was made.


The sacrificed person was made is chosen by drawing lots and one day the King’s daughter is chosen as the sacrifice.He is rep[orted to have begged the dragon to spare his daughter but all to no avail but as the princess is offered for sacrifice, good Christian Saint George appears, heroically slays the dragon and saves the princess.


As a result the city converts from its old pagan ways to Christianity.


History of ST George


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