SAINT FIRST CLASS
        In 2000 Pope John Paul II upgraded St. George to national saint status, a rank already held by St. Andrew in Scotland, St. David in Wales and St. Patrick in Ireland. Thus was England, like the other countries of the British Isles, able to associate itself with a recognized major Christian hero.
        Unlike Ireland’s patron, St. Patrick, who was born to Celtic — or possibly Roman — parents in the 4^th century in Wales or Scotland, and Wales’s patron, the 6^th century Welshman St. David, St. George hailed from nowhere near Britain. St. George is the patron saint of England despite never having been there — except in legend.

PALESTINIAN SAINT
        Early (and questionable) histories claim that George was born in the late 3^rd century in Cappadocia, then a region of the Roman Empire — and now of central Turkey — that was home to an early Christian community founded by St. Paul. His parents are said to have been a Cappadocian nobleman and his Palestinian wife, both Christians. When his father died, George and his mother moved back to her home in Palestine where George would oversee the family lands.
        The Holy Land was at that time part of the Roman Empire, and the ruling emperor of the time, Dioclesian, was known for his severe persecution of Christians. Somehow, George became an important officer in the local forces of the Roman army. When George decried the harsh Roman treatment of Christians, he was imprisoned and tortured. Then, when he would not give up his Christianity, he was beheaded at the town of Lydda. Reportedly, Dioclesian’s empress, Alexandria, was so moved by the story of George’s martyrdom that she converted to Christianity, and then was also executed. His tomb — still in Lydda, near modern day Tel Aviv, Israel — became an object of pilgrimage for Christians, many of whom claimed miraculous healing of afflictions to health and hearth after their visits.
        George became a saint in Palestine as a cult grew up around his memory as the martyred soldier of Christianity. The image of St George on a white charger as a Christian soldier was perhaps especially important when Middle Eastern Christian communities found themselves under attack by the Saracen armies of the new religion of Islam starting 350 years later. At the beginning of the second millennium, the story of St. George became familiar to European armies in the Holy Land during the Crusades who adopted him as their patron saint.

ONWARD CHRISTIAN SOLDIER—OR WHAT GOES AROUND, COMES AROUND
        But why is St. George patron saint of England? Despite legends claiming his visits to Glastonbury and Caerleon (sites of King Arthur’s Camelot?), there is no indication that George ever traveled even as far as Mediterranean Europe, and got no closer to England than his native Turkey. It may be simply that George’s Christian soldier symbolism so closely resembles the romanticized chivalric code of Arthurian legend that St. George has become a naturalized saint in England. But today — especially in the light of current events in the Middle East — there are a new set of associations connecting St. George with England.
        Lydda, Palestine, was already home to a Christian community when Saint Peter was alive. Roman Emperor Septimus Severus made Lydda a Roman city in 200AD, although it continued to have a significant Jewish population until a failed Jewish revolt in 351AD brought it the wrath of Emperor Gallus. When the Byzantine Empire replaced Rome at the start of the European Dark Ages, Lydda was predominantly Christian and was called Georgiopolis after St. George, its most famous son.
        In 636AD the town was conquered by the 2^nd Caliph of Islam only four years after the death of the Prophet Mohammed, when the Islamic Empire was in its infancy. Caliph Omar was Mohammed’s successor whose conquests significantly enlarged the Islamic Empire. His goal was the creation of a "pure Islamic state", and his time is now considered the Golden age of the Islamic religion. (Omar was assassinated in 644AD in a mosque in the holy city of Medina by a Persian — called "Iranian" today.)
        European Crusaders took Lydda in 1099 and lost it to the great Saladin in 1187. Saladin was born in Takrit, in what is now Iraq, hometown of Saddam Hussein, who until last week ruthlessly pursued his dream to become the second coming of Saladin and create a greater Arab Islamic state free of Western influence. (Ironically, Saladin was Kurdish, not Arab, and Saddam Hussein vigorously oppressed the Kurdish minority of Iraq.)
        Few Jews lived in Lydda during the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire until a small Jewish community started in the 19th century, but this group was dispersed by Arab riots in 1921. When Israel gained statehood in 1948 and occupied Lydda, its Arab population — 80% Islamic and 20% Christian — abandoned the town. Today the town sits on the edge of Israel’s David Ben-Gurion Airport, home of the national airline, El Al. In 1936 the British, built the airport on the Lydda site during its occupation of Palestine.

NOT JUST ENGLAND; NOT JUST THE CHIVALROUS
        Since George was martyred in Lydda, Palestine, about 303 AD, Christianity has adopted him as one of its favorite sons. St George is venerated by Roman Catholics, the Church of England, by various Orthodox churches, and by the Christian churches of the Near East and Ethiopia. George’s reputed tomb can still be visited southeast of Tel-Aviv. An Egyptian nunnery claims to have a collection of his affects. St. George is the patron saint of Germany, the former Soviet republic of Georgia (yes, the country is named for him), Palestine, Portugal, Greece, and Lithuania, and he is a saint of especial importance in Estonia and Latvia. He is also the patron saint of the Spanish regions of Aragon and Catalonia, the Canadian provinces of Newfoundland and Labrador, and of the cities of Genoa, Moscow and Istanbul. It is no surprise St. George is the patron of soldiers and cavalry, and of horses, their riders and their saddlers. But he somehow is also the patron of lepers, syphilitics, and victims of the Black Death, of Boy Scouts, farmers, archers, butchers, and field workers.

AS ENGLISH AS SHAKESPEARE
        England has long claimed St. George as its own. Shakespeare tied St. George for all time to the most patriotic association with the Crown and Country when he had King Henry V call for brave inspiration at Agincourt,

"The game's afoot: Follow your spirit; and, upon this charge
Cry God for Harry, England and St George!"
                                                  HENRY V, Act III, Scene 1

        Perhaps William Shakespeare had a warm spot for St. George — he is believed to have been born on April 23, 1564. Of course, Shakespeare couldn’t have known that he would die on St. George’s Day in 1616.
        The Bard of Stratford was neither the first nor the last Englishman to adopt the symbolism of St. George to his nationalism. For centuries St. George has appeared in Mummers’ Plays during holiday celebrations. Many English towns and villages mark St. George’s Day with traditional English festivities including medieval beef and ale fairs.