That is St. George’s “true” story, how far literally true is of no moment; it is enough for us that a young soldier, in early days of Christianity, put off his armour, and gave up his soul to his Captain, Christ; and that his death did so impress the hearts of all Christian men who heard of it, that gradually he became to them the leader of a sacred soldiership, which conquers more than its mortal enemies, and prevails against the poison, and the shadow, of Pride, and Death.
And above all, his putting off his knight’s armour, especially the military belt, as then taking service with Christ instead of the Roman Emperor, impressed the minds of the later Christian knights; because of the law referred to by St. Golden-Lips (quoted by Heylyn farther on), “No one, who is an officer, would dare to appear without his zone and mantle before him who wears the diadem.” So that having thus voluntarily humbled himself, he is thought of as chiefly exalted among Christian soldiers, and called, not only “the great Martyr,” but the “Standard Bearer,” (Tropæophorus). Whence he afterwards becomes the knight bearing the bloody cross on the argent field, and the Captain of Christian war.
The representation of all his spiritual enemies under the form of the Dragon was simply the natural habit of the Greek mind: the stories of Apollo delivering Latona from the Python, and of Perseus delivering Andromeda from the sea monster, had been as familiar as the pitcher and wine-cups they had been painted on, in red and black, for a thousand years before: and the name of St. George, the “Earthworker,” or “Husbandman,”[2] connected him instantly, in Greek thoughts, not only with the ancient dragon, Erichthonius, but with the Spirit of agriculture, called “Thricewarrior” to whom the dragon was a harnessed creature of toil. Yet, so far as I know, it was not until the more strictly Christian tradition of the armed archangel Michael confused its symbolism with that of the armed saint, that the dragon enters definitely into the story of St. George. The authoritative course of Byzantine painting, sanctioned and restricted by the Church in the treatment of every subject, invariably represents St. George as the soldier Martyr, or witness, before Diocletian, never as victor over the dragon:[3] his story, as the painters tell it, corresponds closely with that of St. Catherine of Sinai;[4] and is, in the root of it, truth, and in the branching of it, beautiful dream, of the same wild and lovely character. And we might as well confuse Catherine of Sinai with Catherine of Siena (or for that matter, Catherine de Medicis!), as St. George of the Eastern Church with George the Arian. And this witness of painting remains simple and unbroken, down to the last days of Venice. St. Mark, St. Nicholas, and St. George are the three saints who are seen, in the vision of the Fisherman, delivering Venice from the fiends. St. George, first “of the seaweed,” has three other churches besides in Venice; and it will be the best work I have ever done in this broken life of mine, if I can some day show you, however dimly, how Victor Carpaccio has painted him in the humblest of these,—the little chapel of St. George on the “Shore of the Slaves.” There, however, our dragon does not fail us, both Carpaccio and Tintoret having the deepest convictions on that subject;—as all strong men must have; for the Dragon is too true a creature, to all such, spiritually. That it is an indisputably living and venomous creature, materially, has been the marvel of the world, innocent and guilty, not knowing what to think of the terrible worm; nor whether to worship it, as the Rod of their lawgiver, or to abhor it as the visible symbol of the everlasting Disobedience.
Touching which mystery, you must learn one or two main facts.
The word ‘Dragon,’ means “the Seeing Creature,” and I believe the Greeks had the same notion in their other word for a serpent, “ophis.” There were many other creeping, and crawling, and rampant things; the olive stem and the ivy were serpentine enough, blindly; but here was a creeping thing that saw!
The action of the cobra, with its lifted and levelled head, and the watchfulness of the coiled viper impressed the Egyptians and Greeks intensely. To the Egyptian the serpent was awful and sacred, and became the ornament on the front of the King’s diadems (though an evil spirit also, when not erect). The Greeks never could make up their minds about it. All human life seems to them as the story of Laocoon. The fiery serpents slay us for our wisdom and fidelity;—then writhe themselves into rest at the feet of the Gods.
The Egyptians were at the same pause as to their Nile Dragon, for whom I told you they built their labyrinth. “For in the eyes of some of the Egyptians, the crocodiles are sacred; but by others they are held for enemies. And it is they who dwell by the Lake Mœris, who think them greatly sacred. Every one of these lake people has care of his own crocodile, taught to be obedient to the lifting of finger. And they put jewels of enamel and gold into their ears, and bracelets on their forefeet, and feed them with the sacred shew-bread daily, and attend upon them, that they may live beautiful lives; and, when they die, bury them, embalmed, in holy tombs.” (Thus religion, as a pious friend, I observe, writes in a Devonshire paper the other day, leads to the love of Nature!) “But they of the city Elephantine eat their crocodiles, holding them nowise sacred. Neither do they call them crocodiles, but champsæ; it is the Ionians who call them “crocodiles,” because they think them like the little crocodiles that live in the dry stone walls.”
I do not know if children generally have strong associative fancy about words; but when I was a child, that word “Crocodile” always seemed to me very terrific, and I would even hastily, in any book, turn a leaf in which it was printed with a capital C. If anybody had but told me the meaning of it—“a creature that is afraid of crocuses!”
That, at least, is all I can make of it, now; though I can’t understand how this weakness of the lizard mind was ever discovered, for lizards never see crocuses, that I know of. The next I meet in Italy, (poor little, glancing, panting things,—I miss them a little here from my mossy walls)—shall be shown an artificial crocus, Paris-made; we will see what it thinks of it! But however it came to be given, for the great Spirit-Lizard, the name is a good one. For as the wise German’s final definition of the Devil (in the second part of Faust) is that he is afraid of roses, so the earliest and simplest possible definition of him is that in spring time he is afraid of crocuses; which I am quite sure, both our farmers and manufacturers are now, in England, to the utmost. On the contrary, the Athenian Spirit of Wisdom was so fond of crocuses that she made her own robe crocus-colour, before embroidering it with the wars of the Giants; she being greatly antagonistic to the temper which dresses sisters of charity in black, for a crocus-colour dress was much the gayest—not to say the giddiest—thing she could possibly wear in Athens.
And of the crocus, vernal, and autumnal, more properly the enchanted herb of Colchis, (see, by the way, White’s ‘History of Selborne’ at the end of its 41st letter) I must tell you somewhat more in next letter; meantime, look at the saffron crest in the centre of it, carefully, and read, with some sympathy, if you can, this true story of a crocus, which being told me the other day by one who, whether I call him friend or not, is indeed friendly to me, and to all whom he can befriend, I begged him to write it for your sakes, which he has thus graciously done:—