SAINT AND SOLDIER.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21165, 23 April 1932, Page 1 (Supplement)

SAINT AND SOLDIER.

HONOURED BY ENGLISHMEN.

BY SIATANGA

There was a time when April 23 was one of the greatest days in the English year. It is the festival date of St. George—the supposed anniversary of his martyrdom. No longer is it observed as once it was. Oh, these long-suffering English! They will help you make merry for St. Andrew and St. Patrick, but to press for honour as great for their own patron saint is far from them. Perhaps they have acquired a more tender conscience about sainthood than have some other peoples, and therefore make less to-do about it. Whatever the reason, they leave to banks and other staid institutions care for 1: is memory. In Rome, some years ago, when neglect of St. George was becoming pronounced, there was current a story of the English College there. On St.. George's Day, so 'twas said, a meditation, carefully divided into three parts, was read out in tho chapel. This is he wit ran. " Point I.: Let us consider that we know very little indeed about, St. George. Point II.: Let us consider that the little we do know is very doubtful. Point 111-: Let us consider that it is quite certain we shall never know anything more about St. George." These alleged verities have a Hibernian :ang and may have been formulated to give St. Patrick an advantage over St. George; but there is enough truth in then: to make them worth recall on each St. George's Day.

The historian Gibbon's identification of the saint with a certain infamous army contractor, named George of Cappadocia, who became the champion of the Arian3 and died in 361, is not very successful. Yet, difficult as it is to find sure footing amid the legends, there is a body of narrative having quite considerable credibility, when allowance is made for its quaintly miraculous clothing. Let us hie after it. Seeking Adventure. Born and educated in Cappadocia sometime in the third century, the saint set cut, in quite the approved style, even for saints, in search of adventure. He found it with a vengeance. Either at Selene in Libya or Berytus in Syria—you may take your choice, for the evidence is about fifty-fifty—he found the city in a terribly distressing condition- It was terrorised by a horrible dragon which, unless it had a damsel to devour every day, emitted a death-dealing stench. On the day of St. George's arrival it had fallen to the lot ol the king's daughter to be the compulsory meal, and she was going to her doom when the saint met ner 011 the road. He heard of her plight, and vowed he would overcome the dragon. Giving it battle, he made good his word, pinning the fearsome beast to the ground with his good sword Ascalon. Then he bound the monster with the girdle of the princess, and led it captive into the city. The people were affrighted, not, knowing what had befallen; but St. George bade them not to be a'raid. They should, he said, trust in tho Lord, who had aided him, and he baptised in the Christian faith; if they would do this, the animal should be slain before their eyes. As many as twenty thousand took him at his word. Then St. George took his sword once more, and with a mighty stroke slew the dragon. Of course, some versions of the legend make (he princess marry him, That ivould have been quife right and proper, though he was a saint. The story does not square with the picture on some coins we know, but it is none the less credible on that account. It must be criticised on different ground. Martyrdom. The old stories jbout St. George all agree that he was martyred in (he imperial persecution under Dacian. At first, according to these stories, he was put to various tortu-es, but through miraculous intervention they all proved powerless to hurt him. Next he was taken to assist in t ie sacrifices of a heathen temple, and great crowds came to witness his humilistion; but a flash of lightning destroyed the building and with it many of his enemies. Finally, however, he was beheaded; and the date devoted to memorial of his fate has been kept in evidence, that he died thus 011 April 23, 303. By the Eastern Church he was worshipped at the Great Martyr. The West ignored him until Geoffry de Bouillon, of knightly fame, gave him honour. When Richard {Lionheart went crusading he placed his country under the protection of St. George, who ! hus became its patron saint. This prosaic way of explaining the thing has not satisfied popular fancy, which has shifted the scene of this great happening to the Holy Land. There, on the authority of this other story, Robert of Normandy, son of the Conqueror, was laying seige (0 Antioch, and the Saracens came in great hosts to the town's relief. When Robert's task seemed hopeless, St. George appeared, dressed all in white, with a red cross on his banner, and at bis back was an army so huge that the Saracens rushed pellmell off in fright. After (hat, who would not have him as a patron saint? Behind this store of accumulated legend must be a good deal of fact—how much, of course, it is fcr folk to decide for themselves. What is impressively noteworthy is (he steadily maintained honour in which St. George was held in earlier English life and letters. Edward 111. dedicated to him the chapel at Windsor bearing his name, and alsD made him patron of the new order of (he Garter. In the first Prayer Book of Edward YI. St. George's Day wis a " red-letter day." Shakespeare's refeiences to St. George show how the Elizabethans icverenced him. Still, though the years rolled between, they could use the twice-raised cry in Marlowe's "Edward II.": St. George for England and the right. The Hole i:i the Picture.

The memorial da e has acquired added interest as the birthday and deathday of Shakespeare liimsellt is also the anniversary of Wordsworth's death, and Cervantes passed aivay on the very day that Shakespeare went. George IV. changed the celebration of his own birthday to St. fieorge's Day, and the festival was marked by an annual procession of mail coaches, gloriously bedight. Strangely, it has lost its attraction for the popular mind, but there is no good reason why Englishmen should be at all modest in their claim that it should come back again to popular, if not official, recognition. In the church of the convent of Zoographos on Mount Athos, in Greece, is a picture of St. G?orge that has a hole in it. It is said t:> have conveyed itself from Palestine, wilhout any human aid, like the sacred house of Loretto. The monks declare it to be no work of mortal painter. The holo is near the eyes of the saint, and in circumstantially explained. A free-thinking bishop from Constantinople, coubting the divine origin of tho picture, derisively thrust his linger at it—ind through it! A dangerous dare, for his finger stuck and eventually had to be cut off. The hole remains to remind the unbelieving of tho limits of human krowledgo and tho risks of laughing at things not understood. There are several possible interpretations of this vaunted miracle. One is that he who ventures to point the finger of scorn at St. Georpo should have a care lest his own good name suffer. And that's a thing to remember about all folk possibly, at hasL, as good as ourselves.