George of Lydda
Saint George; George the Great-Martyr
Life and Ministry
George was a Greek officer of the Roman army from a Christian family in Cappadocia, born around AD 275, who rose under Diocletian to a position in the imperial guard at Nicomedia. The earliest source — a fragmentary fifth-century Greek passio from the church at Lydda, where his tomb was venerated from the fourth century onward — agrees on the basic outline: a Christian officer of the imperial bodyguard who refused to participate in Diocletian's edict of February 303 against the Christians and was executed for it at Nicomedia. The medieval story of George and the dragon is a twelfth-century European accretion and does not appear in any source before the Crusades.
Circumstances of Death
When Diocletian's first edict of February 303 ordered the destruction of churches and the burning of scriptures, George — by the early tradition — appeared before the emperor in court at Nicomedia, declared his Christian faith, and tore down the edict that had been posted in the city. Diocletian, who had personally known and trusted him, attempted over several days to dissuade him with offers of high office and wealth, then turned to threats and finally to torture. George was scourged, racked, and finally beheaded outside the city walls of Nicomedia on April 23, 303. His body was returned to his family's home at Lydda in Palestine and buried there, where the Church of Saint George stands to this day on the ancient foundation.
Legacy
George became one of the most universally venerated saints of the Christian world — patron of Georgia, of Ethiopia, of Catalonia, of Aragon, of Portugal, of Genoa, of Moscow, and of England by adoption (his banner replaced the Cross of Saint Edmund as the English flag in the late thirteenth century). His feast day, April 23, is also Shakespeare's birth and death day. He is one of only a handful of saints honored by Coptic, Orthodox, Catholic, Anglican, and Lutheran traditions alike, and one of the very few who is honored in the Quran (where he appears as Jirjis). Lydda remains his burial place.
Sources
Acts of George (Greek passio, fifth century with earlier core); Eusebius, On the Martyrs of Palestine; later accretions in Symeon Metaphrastes; Hippolyte Delehaye, Les légendes grecques des saints militaires (1909).