St George, Patron Saint of England
George served in the Roman army and lies buried in Israel, yet he makes an ideal patron for England.
1346
Roman Empire (Roman Era) 27 BC - AD 330
© Josep Renalias, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 3.0.
The ornate roof of the Chapel of St George at Windsor Castle in Berkshire, the chief residence of the Monarch, is today emblazoned with banners and devices of all kinds. An ill-informed prejudice against banners depicting Christ and his saints gripped the Church in the sixteenth century Reformation, but the Court exercised royal privilege and continued to parade the banners of St George and his distinctive emblem, a red cross on a white background. That subsequently became the flag of England and forms part of the flag of the United Kingdom.
Introduction
It is sometimes said that England’s patron saint, St George, is not very English. Yet Britain in his day was part of the Roman Empire, and George refused to help the Roman Emperor send troops against his own people, meddle with the Church or impose cruel and arbitrary punishments — all key provisions of The Great Charter of 1215. You can’t get more English than that.
IN 1552, the government of King Edward VI forbade banners depicting Christian saints, as the Protestant Reformers who now dominated the English Church considered all sacred imagery idolatrous. An exception was made, however, for banners of St George. George, a Roman soldier executed in 303 for defying an order to persecute Christians,* had been enduringly popular in the army and at Court since Richard the Lionheart went to the Holy Land on the Third Crusade in 1189-1192.
Outside the army, ordinary English people thought more fondly of King Edward the Confessor, who reigned just before the Norman invasion, of King Edmund, martyred by Danish invaders in the ninth century, and of Cuthbert, Bishop of Lindisfarne, whose banner was carried to victory against France’s Scottish allies at Neville’s Cross in 1346.* But in 1348, Edward III dedicated the royal chapel at Windsor Castle to St George and instituted the Knights of the Garter in his honour, in gratitude for the saint’s intervention at Crécy two years earlier.
The Church commemorates the martyrdom of St George on 23rd April, and the translation of his relics to Lod on 3rd November. On the martyrdom of St George, see St George the Triumphant Martyr. On the spirit of the Great Charter of 1215, see The Signing of the Great Charter.
