[780] Dyer, 194, gives from Coates, Hist. of Reading, 221, the account for setting-up a ‘George’ in 1536. Dugdale, Hist. of Warwickshire, 928, has a notice of a legacy in 1526 by John Arden to Aston church of his ‘white harneis ... for a George to were it, and to stand on his pewe, a place made for it.’
[781] R. W. Goulding, Louth Records, quotes from the churchwardens’ accounts for 1538 payments for taking down the image of St. George and his horse.
[782] Representations, s. v. Windsor, Lydd, New Romney, Bassingbourne.
[783] For the legend, see Acta Sanctorum, April, iii. 101; Jacobus à Voragine, Legenda Aurea (1280), lviii; E. A. W. Budge, The Martyrdom and Miracles of St. George of Cappadocia: the Coptic Texts (Oriental Text Series, 1888). In Rudder, Hist. of Gloucestershire, 461, and Gloucester F. L. 47, is printed an English version of the legend, apparently used for reading in church on the Sunday preceding St. George’s day, April 23. Cf. also Gibbon (ed. Bury), ii. 472, 568; Hartland, Perseus, iii. 38; Baring-Gould, Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, 266; Zöckler, s. v. St. Georg, in Herzog and Plitt’s Encyclopedia; F. Görres, Ritter St. Georg in Geschichte, Legende und Kunst, in Zeitschrift für wissenschaftliche Theologie, xxx (1887), 54; F. Vetter, Introduction to Reimbot von Durne’s Der heilige Georg (1896). Gibbon identified St. George with the Arian bishop George of Cappadocia, and the dragon with Athanasius. This view has been recently revived with much learning by J. Friedrich in Sitzb. Akad. Wiss. München (phil.-hist. Kl.), 1899, ii. 2. Pope Gelasius (†495) condemned the Passio as apocryphal and heretical, but he admits the historical existence of the saint, whose cult indeed was well established both in East and West in the fifth century. Budge tries to find an historical basis for him in a young man at Nicomedia who tore down an edict during the persecution of Diocletian (†303), and identifies his torturer Dadianus with the co-emperor Galerius.
[784] Du Méril, La Com. 98. He quotes Novidius, Sacri Fasti (ed. 1559), bk. vi. f. 48vo:
‘perque annos duci monet [rex] in spectacula casum
unde datur multis annua scena locis.’
A fifteenth-century Augsburg miracle-play of St. George is printed by Keller, Fastnachtsspiele, No. 125; for other Continental data cf. Creizenach, i. 231, 246; Julleville, Les Myst. ii. 10, 644; D’Ancona, i. 104.
[785] Rabelais, Gargantua, iv. 59. The dragon was called Graoully, and snapped its jaws, like the Norwich ‘snap-dragons’ and the English hobby-horse.
[786] Cf. p. 138. The myth has attached itself to other undoubtedly historical persons besides St. George (Bury, Gibbon, ii. 569). In his case it is possibly due to a misunderstood bit of rhetoric. In the Coptic version of the legend edited by Budge (p. 223), Dadianus is called ‘the dragon of the abyss.’ There is no literal dragon in this version: the princess is perhaps represented by Alexandra, the wife of Dadianus, whom George converts. Cf. Hartland, Perseus, iii. 44.