St George’s Day

Henry V – Shakespeare

St George’s Day, the patron Saint of England. April 23rd is also the day on which William Shakespeare was born and died. Saint George died on the 23 April 303 and was a soldier of Cappadocian Greek origins, and a member of the Praetorian Guard for the Roman emperor Diocletian, he was sentenced to death for refusing to recant his Christian faith. He became one of the most venerated saints and martyrs in Christianity, and was especially venerated as a military saint since the Crusaders. In England, he was mentioned among the martyrs by the 8th-century monk Bede. The earliest dedication to the saint in England is a church at Fordington, Dorset that is mentioned in the will of Alfred the Great. During the Third Crusade in 1199, King Richard I visited the tomb of St. George in Lydda on the eve of battle. The next day he won a great victory. Following this triumph, Richard adopted St. George as his personal patron and protector of the army. Saint George did not rise to the position of “patron saint” of England, however, until the 14th century, when in 1348 Edward III of England chose Saint George as the patron saint of his Order of the Garter, and also took to using a red-on-white cross in the hoist of his Royal Standard.  However St George was still obscured by St Edmund, the traditional patron saint of England, whose flag was the white dragon until in 1552 during the reign of Edward VI when all saints’ banners other than St George’s were abolished in the English Reformation.