St George by Hans von Kulmbach c.1510
This brief on the life of St George was originally published in 2013. - Ed.
St George is patron saint not merely of England, but of Aragon, Catalonia, Ethiopia, Georgia, Greece, Lithuania, Palestine, Portugal and Russia. It is just a shame that nothing certain is known about him.
The tale of a distinguished soldier in the Roman army, who was tortured and martyred after tearing up the edict which instituted the Emperor Diocletian’s persecution of 303, is first found in Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History (c 325).
Eusebius, though, never accorded a name to this martyr, describing him simply as “a man of no mean origin”. It is pure conjecture to hazard that he might have been referring to St George.
