St. George's historicity cannot be established with complete certainty but a Christian cult reverence for a St George definitely existed in Lydda (just South of modern day Tel Aviv) from the mid-300s AD.

As he was a martyr, emphasis has remained with the events surrounding his death. It is likely that the historical George was executed during a persecution of Christians by the Emperor Diocletian from 303AD. Eusebius of Caesarea, writing in the 320s, records a Christian noble tearing down an imperial decree proscribing adherence to Christianity and who was thus put to death in the Empire’s Eastern capital, at the time, of Nicomedia. However, it is speculation that St George and this Christian noble were the same person.

As for George’s actual life, historiography of George ascribes him to have been a soldier from a ethnically-Greek Christian family from Asia Minor. The name Georgos comes from the Greek for “farmer” and Eusebius’ account was the first mention of the name, which subsequently became widespread.

As for the story of George and the Dragon, that came about in the 1200s, when a French scholar Jacobus de Voragine collected a number of Eastern hagiographies called the Golden Legend. George is described as saving the city of “Silena, in the province of Lybia” (not Libya), from a dragon on the condition that they convert to Christianity if he did so. Once victorious, he then left to eventually be martyred.

The military-saint was used by English King Edward III as a holy figure to campaign under during the Hundred Years War from the 1330s, as well as to be the patron saint of his new princely Order of the Garter, and thus the cult of St George of Lydda was born in England.

Sources: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and Fordham Medieval Sourcebook.

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