Apr 23 - St. George - The Soldier Who Would Not Bow

Host (Paul): Hi, welcome to Commemorations and Holy Days in the Anglican Church in North America Podcast, where we celebrate and remember the faithful departed, held in Christ's love, and consider their way of life so that we might imitate their faith. My name is Paul. Today we're going to be talking to Dakota about St. George. How are you doing today, Dakota?

Expert (Dakota): Doing really well, Paul. St. George is one of those saints where the real story is so much more interesting than the legend — and I love getting to explore that.

Host (Paul): Right, because honestly most of what I know is the dragon. So — who was George, actually?

Expert (Dakota): George was born around 275 to 280 AD, most likely in Cappadocia, in what is now Turkey. His father was probably a Roman army officer, and his mother may have been from Palestine near the town of Lydda. He grew up inside the Roman system, joined the military himself, and rose to at least a mid-ranking position — something like a tribunus. He was part of the establishment, not an outsider or a rebel.

Host (Paul): Which makes what came next even more striking.

Expert (Dakota): Exactly. In 303 AD, the Emperor Diocletian launched one of the worst persecutions of Christians in Roman history. He issued a series of edicts — ordering churches destroyed, scriptures burned, Christian soldiers dismissed — and ultimately demanded that Christians sacrifice to Roman gods. George refused. Tradition holds that he publicly protested one of those edicts, possibly even tearing it up in open defiance.

Host (Paul): That would have taken real courage. What happened to him?

Expert (Dakota): He was arrested, tortured, and executed on April 23, 303 AD, near Nicomedia — the imperial capital at the time, in modern Turkey. He was buried at Lydda back in Palestine, and veneration of him began almost immediately. A church was built over his tomb within a generation.

Host (Paul): So where does the dragon come from?

Expert (Dakota): Much later. The famous version appears around 1260 in a book called the Legenda Aurea — the Golden Legend — which was essentially the medieval world's bestseller, second only to the Bible in how widely it was read. The story of George killing a dragon to rescue a princess is legend, not biography. And interestingly, even the medieval Church knew this. Pope Gelasius, writing back in the late 400s, already affirmed George as a genuine martyr but admitted his specific deeds were — in his own words — "known only to God." That is a remarkably candid thing for the papacy to say.

Host (Paul): So what does the dragon actually mean, if it is symbolic?

Expert (Dakota): The dragon stands for evil, chaos, the powers that terrorize communities. George defeating it is a picture of God's kingdom breaking in and overcoming those forces. It points to something theologically real — just not biographically. His actual story is dramatic enough on its own.

Host (Paul): He also became a major figure for England, right?

Expert (Dakota): Enormous. By 1222, the Synod of Oxford had declared April 23 a feast day in England. Then in 1348, King Edward III founded the Order of the Garter and placed it under George's patronage. The red cross on a white field — the Cross of St. George — became England's emblem, and it is still part of the Union Jack today. He is also patron of Georgia the country, Ethiopia, and many others. One person's faithfulness shaped the imagination of whole nations for centuries.

Host (Paul): What is the theological heart of his story, do you think — especially for someone young listening today?

Expert (Dakota): I think it comes down to this. The Greek word for martyr is martys, and it simply means witness. George's death was his clearest statement of faith — a declaration that Christ is Lord, and Caesar is not. The early apostles said the same thing: "we must obey God rather than human beings." What matters is that the hope sustaining George was not about escaping this world. It was the conviction that God is renewing the world, that faithfulness here and now genuinely matters, and that death does not get the final word. And George was not a bishop or a theologian — he was a soldier, an ordinary person inside an ordinary institution, who faced an extraordinary demand and said no when going along would have been so much easier.

Host (Paul): That feels very relevant. Can we close with a prayer?

Expert (Dakota): Absolutely — this is from the Anglican tradition, for St. George's Day:

God of hosts, who so kindled the flame of love in the heart of your servant George that he bore witness to the risen Lord by his life and by his death: give us the same faith and power of love, that we who rejoice in his triumph may come to share with him the fullness of the resurrection; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Host (Paul): Amen. Thank you, Dakota — and thank you all for listening. St. George's Day is April 23rd. George's story leaves us with a question worth sitting with: when the pressure comes to conform, to stay quiet, to bow — whose voice will you listen to? We will see you next time.