Interim Saints - April 23rd

FELIX, FORTUNATUS and ACHILLES, martyrs (A.D. 212)

Saint Felix was a priest, sent with two deacons, Fortunatus and
Achilles, into Gaul by S. Irenaeus of Lyons.  They were overheard
singing, "All the world shall worship thee, sing of thee, and praise
thy power," and were denounced to the governor Cornelius, who consigned
them to prison.  But escaping from prison by night, they entered the
temple of Jupiter, and broke a very beautiful amber statue of the God
that adorned it.  For this they were re-taken, and their heads struck
off.

GEORGE, martyr (A.D. 285)

Martyr, patron of England, suffered at or near Lydda, also known as
Diospolis, in Palestine, probably before the time of Constantine.
According to the very careful investigation of the whole question
recently instituted by Father Delehaye, the Bollandist, in the light of
modern sources of information, the above statement sums up all that can
safely be affirmed about St. George, despite his early cultus and
pre-eminent renown both in East and West (see Delehaye, "Saints
Militaires", 1909, pp.45-76). 
Earlier studies of the subject have generally been based upon an
attempt to determine which of the various sets of legendary "Acts" was
most likely to preserve traces of a primitive and authentic record.
Delehaye rightly points out that the earliest narrative known to us,
even though fragments of it may be read in a palimpsest of the fifth
century, is full beyond belief of extravagances and of quite incredible
marvels. Three times is George put to death-chopped into small pieces,
buried deep in the earth and consumed by fire-but each time he is
resuscitated by the power of God. Besides this we have dead men brought
to life to be baptized, wholesale conversions, including that of "the
Empress Alexandra", armies and idols destroyed instantaneously, beams
of timber suddenly bursting into leaf, and finally milk flowing instead
of blood from the martyr's severed head. There is, it is true, a
mitigated form of the story, which the older Bollandists have in a
measure taken under their protection (see Act. SS., 23 Ap., no. 159).
But even this abounds both in marvels and in historical contradictions,
while modern critics, like Amelineau and Delehaye, though approaching
the question from very different standpoints, are agreed in thinking
that this mitigated version has been derived from the more extravagant
by a process of elimination and rationalization, not vice versa.
Remembering the unscrupulous freedom with which any wild story, even
when pagan in origin, was appropriated by the early hagiographers to
the honour of a popular saint (see, for example, the case of St.
Procopius as detailed in Delehaye, "Legends", ch. v) we are fairly safe
in assuming that the Acts of St. George, though ancient in date and
preserved to us (with endless variations) in many different languages,
afford absolutely no indication at all for arriving at the saint's
authentic history. This, however, by no means implies that the martyr
St. George never existed. An ancient cultus, going back to a very early
epoch and connected with a definite locality, in itself constitutes a
strong historical argument. Such we have in the case of St. George. The
narratives of the early pilgrims, Theodosius, Antoninus, and Arculphus,
from the sixth to the eighth century, all speak of Lydda or Diospolis
as the seat of the veneration of St. George, and as the resting-place
of his remains (Geyer, "Itinera Hierosol.", 139, 176, 288). The early
date of the dedications to the saint is attested by existing
inscriptions of ruined churches in Syria, Mesopotamia, and Egypt, and
the church of St. George at Thessalonica is also considered by some
authorities to belong to the fourth century. Further the famous decree
"De Libris recipiendis", attributed to Pope Gelasius in 495, attests
that certain apocryphal Acts of St. George were already in existence,
but includes him among those saints "whose names are justly reverenced
among men, but whose actions are only known to God". 
There seems, therefore, no ground for doubting the historical existence
of St. George, even though he is not commemorated in the Syrian, or in
the primitive Hieronymian Martyrologium, but no faith can be placed in
the attempts that have been made to fill up any of the details of his
history. For example, it is now generally admitted that St. George
cannot safely be identified by the nameless martyr spoken of by
Eusebius (Hist. Eccles., VIII, v), who tore down Diocletian's edict of
persecution at Nicomedia. The version of the legend in which Diocletian
appears as persecutor is not primitive. Diocletian is only a
rationalized form of the name Dadianus. Moreover, the connection of the
saint's name with Nicomedia is inconsistent with the early cultus at
Diospolis. 
Still less is St. George to be considered, as suggested by Gibbon,
Vetter, and others, a legendary double of the disreputable bishop,
George of Cappadocia, the Arian opponent of St. Athanasius. "This
odious stranger", says Gibbon, in a famous passage, "disguising every
circumstance of time and place, assumed the mask of a martyr, a saint,
and a Christian hero, and the infamous George of Cappadocia has been
transformed into the renowned St. George of England, the patron of
arms, of chivalry, and of the Garter." "But this theory,says Professor
Bury, Gibbon's latest editor, "has nothing to be said for it." The
cultus of St. George is too ancient to allow of such an identification,
though it is not improbable that the apocryphal Acts have borrowed some
incidents from the story of the Arian bishop. Again, as Bury points
out, "the connection of St. George with a dragon-slaying legend does
not relegate him to the region of the myth, for over against the
fabulous Christian dragon-slayer Theodore of the Bithynian Heraclaea,
we can set Agapetus of Synnada and Arsacius, who though celebrated as
dragon-slayers, were historical persons". This episode of the dragon is
in fact a very late development, which cannot be traced further back
than the twelfth or thirteenth century. It is found in the Golden
Legend (Historia Lombardica) of James de Voragine and to this
circumstance it probably owes its wide diffusion. It may have been
derived from an allegorization of the tyrant Diocletian or Dadianus,
who is sometimes called a dragon (ho bythios drakon) in the older text,
but despite the researches of Vetter (Reinbot von Durne, pp.lxxv-cix)
the origin of the dragon story remains very obscure. In any case the
late occurrence of this development refutes the attempts made to derive
it from pagan sources. Hence it is certainly not true, as stated by
Hartland, that in George's person "the Church has converted and
baptized the pagan hero Perseus" (The Legend of Perseus, iii, 38). In
the East, St. George (ho megalomartyr), has from the beginning been
classed among the greatest of the martyrs. In the West also his cultus
is very early. Apart from the ancient origin of St. George in Velabro
at Rome, Clovis (c. 512) built a monastery at Baralle in his honour
(Kurth, Clovis, II, 177). Arculphus and Adamnan probably made him well
known in Britain early in the eighth century. His Acts were translated
into Anglo-Saxon, and English churches were dedicated to him before the
Norman Conquest, for example one at Doncaster, in 1061. The crusades no
doubt added to his popularity. William of Malmesbury tells us that
Saints George and Demetrius, "the martyr knights", were seen assisting
the Franks at the battle of Antioch, 1098 (Gesta Regum, II, 420). It is
conjectured, but not proved, that the "arms of St. George " (argent, a
cross, gules) were introduced about the time of Richard Coeur de Lion.
What is certain is that in 1284 in the official seal of Lyme Regis a
ship is represented with a plain flag bearing a cross. The large red
St. George's cross on a white ground remains still the "white ensign"
of the British Navy and it is also one of the elements which go to make
up the Union Jack. Anyway, in the fourteenth century, "St. George's
arms" became a sort of uniform for English soldiers and sailors. We
find, for example, in the wardrobe accounts of 1345-49, at the time of
the battle of Crecy, that a charge is made for 86 penoncells of the
arms of St. George intended for the king's ship, and for 800 others for
the men-at-arms (Archaeologia, XXXI, 119). A little later, in the
Ordinances of Richard II to the English army invading Scotland, every
man is ordered to wear "a signe of the arms of St. George" both before
and behind, while the pain of death is threatened against any of the
enemy's soldiers "who do bear the same crosse or token of Saint George,
even if they be prisoners". Somewhat earlier than this Edward III had
founded (c. 1347) the Order of the Garter, an order of knighthood of
which St. George was the principal patron. The chapel dedicated to St.
George in Windsor Caste was built to be the official sanctuary of the
order, and a badge or jewel of St. George slaying the dragon was
adopted as part of the insignia. In this way the cross of St. George
has in a manner become identified with the idea of knighthood, and even
in Elizabeth's days, Spenser, at the beginning of his Faerie Queene,
tells us of his hero, the Red Cross Knight: 
But on his breast a bloody Cross he bore, 
The dear remembrance of his dying Lord, 
For whose sweet sake that glorious badge we wore 
And dead (as living) ever he adored. 
We are told also that the hero thought continually of wreaking
vengeance: 
Upon his foe, a dragon horrible and stern. 
Ecclesiastically speaking, St. George's day, 23 April, was ordered to
be kept as a lesser holiday as early as 1222, in the national synod of
Oxford. In 1415, the Constitution of Archbishop Chichele raised St.
George's day to the rank of one of the greatest feasts and ordered it
to be observed like Christmas day. During the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries St. George's day remained a holiday of obligation
for English Catholics. Since 1778, it has been kept, like many of these
older holidays, as a simple feast of devotion, though it ranks
liturgically as a double of the first class with an octave. 
SAINT GEORGE AND THE DRAGON
The best known form of the legend of St. George and the Dragon is that
made popular by the "Legenda Aurea", and translated into English by
Caxton. According to this, a terrible dragon had ravaged all the
country round a city of Libya, called Selena, making its lair in a
marshy swamp. Its breath caused pestilence whenever it approached the
town, so the people gave the monster two sheep every day to satisfy its
hunger, but, when the sheep failed, a human victim was necessary and
lots were drawn to determine the victim. On one occasion the lot fell
to the king's little daughter. The king offered all his wealth to
purchase a substitute, but the people had pledged themselves that no
substitutes should be allowed, and so the maiden, dressed as a bride,
was led to the marsh. There St. George chanced to ride by, and asked
the maiden what she did, but she bade him leave her lest he also might
perish. The good knight stayed, however, and, when the dragon appeared,
St. George, making the sign of the cross, bravely attacked it and
transfixed it with his lance. Then asking the maiden for her girdle (an
incident in the story which may possibly have something to do with St.
George's selection as patron of the Order of the Garter), he bound it
round the neck of the monster, and thereupon the princess was able to
lead it like a lamb. They then returned to the city, where St. George
bade the people have no fear but only be baptized, after which he cut
off the dragon's head and the townsfolk were all converted. The king
would have given George half his kingdom, but the saint replied that he
must ride on, bidding the king meanwhile take good care of God's
churches, honour the clergy, and have pity on the poor. The earliest
reference to any such episode in art is probably to be found in an old
Roman tombstone at Conisborough in Yorkshire, considered to belong to
the first half of the twelfth century. Here the princess is depicted as
already in the dragon's clutches, while an abbot stands by and blesses
the rescuer. 

IBAR, bishop of Begery (A.D. 500)

According to some accounts, S. Ibar was bishop in Ireland before the
arrival of S. Patrick . . . That Ibar was a bishop before 465 is hardly
probable;  in all likelihood he was consecrated by S. Patrick.  His
school at Berg-erin was famous throughout the land, and a nursery of
saints.

ADALBERT, bishop of Prag, martyr (A.D. 997)

The saint finding it impossible to re-enter Prag, went north to preach
to the heathen in Prussia, and there he met his death, being set upon
by a party of Wends near Danzic, and thrust through with their spears.

JOHN, bishop of Holar (A.D. 1121)

The first resident bishop in Iceland was Isleif, son of Gizur.  The
episcopal residence was fixed at Skalholt, in 1084, and later still, in
1102, a second bishopric was erected for Holar, by B. Gizur, who saw
the necessity for dividing his enormous diocese . . . A suitable person
to occupy the new and important position of first bishop of the north
had to be discovered.  By vote of the people, John Ogmund's son was
elected. 

Oriens.

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