The Life
Saint George was born about the year 275 to a Christian family. His father was a Roman officer from Cappadocia. His mother was from the city of Lydda in Palestine. After his father’s martyrdom for Christ, his mother raised him with great care. He grew up tall, strong, and devout. He entered the Roman army as a young man and rose quickly. By twenty-five he was a tribune in the elite Praetorian Guard, in personal service to the Emperor Diocletian. When Diocletian launched his great persecution of the Christians in 303, George stepped forward in front of the imperial council and confessed himself a Christian. He was tortured for many days by every means the empire could devise, and the Lord delivered him from each torture so that many were converted by the wonders. Finally, on the twenty-third of April in the year 303, he was beheaded outside the walls of Nicomedia. He was twenty-eight years old.
When George was a small boy, his father Gerontius was killed for being a Christian. His mother Polychronia, who was from the city of Lydda in Palestine, took her young son and went home to her family. There she gave him everything: the best schooling, the best teachers, the deepest faith. She taught him about the Lord Jesus Christ herself, every day. She told him about his father’s death for Christ. She prepared him to be a man who would stand for the truth no matter what it cost. The whole heart of the great soldier was shaped in that small Palestinian household by his mother’s love and her holy memory.
George entered the Roman army when he came of age and rose quickly through the ranks. He was tall, strong, intelligent, and brave. By twenty-five years old he had reached the rank of tribune and was made a member of the Praetorian Guard, the elite bodyguard of the emperor himself. He served in the personal household of the Emperor Diocletian. The emperor admired him and promoted him to the rank of comes, or count. He had everything an ambitious young Roman could want. The empire was at his feet.
In February of 303, Diocletian called his senior officers and senators together in Nicomedia to issue the great edicts of persecution. The edicts ordered every Christian church to be destroyed, every Bible to be burned, every Christian official to be removed from office, and every subject of the empire to offer pagan sacrifice on pain of death. Saint George heard the edicts read out in his presence at the imperial council. The Lord moved in his heart. He stood up. Before the emperor himself, before all the senators and officers, he confessed himself a Christian. He denounced the worship of idols. He named Christ as Lord and God. The whole council fell silent. Diocletian, who had loved him, was at first stunned, then enraged. He gave him a chance to take it back. Saint George refused. The emperor ordered him arrested and tortured.
The persecutors tried everything to break Saint George. They struck him with wooden poles. They strapped him to a wheel set with iron blades and turned it. They buried him up to his neck in a pit of quicklime for three days. They put iron sandals studded with nails on his feet and made him run. They beat him with whips made of dried ox sinews. They gave him cups of deadly poison from a sorcerer. The Lord miraculously preserved him through every one of these. After each torture, he was made whole again. The witnesses began to be converted to Christ in droves. The sorcerer Athanasius, who had prepared the poison, believed and was beheaded. Two senators, Anatolios and Protoleon, came forward and confessed Christ; they too were beheaded. Most movingly of all, the Empress Alexandra, wife of Diocletian, watching from the side, came forward and confessed Christ in front of her husband.
The Church gives Saint George the special title Trophy-Bearer (in Greek, Tropaiophoros). A trophy in the ancient world was the great victory monument set up after a battle, made of the captured arms of the defeated enemy. The Church calls Saint George Trophy-Bearer because of the great victory the Lord won through him: the conversion of his fellow soldiers, the senators, even the empress; the multitudes brought to faith by his witness; the spread of his memory across the whole world after his death. He won more for Christ in those few days of his trial than most of us win in a lifetime.
After many days of torture in which the Lord miraculously preserved him, Saint George was finally condemned to death by the sword. On the morning of April 23, in the year 303, he was led out of the city of Nicomedia to a place outside the walls. He prayed quietly. He forgave his executioner. He bowed his head. He was beheaded with a single stroke of the sword. He was twenty-eight years old. His servant gathered up the holy body and carried it back to Lydda in Palestine, the home of his mother. There it was laid to rest. A great church was built over the tomb in the fourth century, and the relics rest there to this day.
These are the words of the Lord himself in the Gospel of Matthew, spoken to his disciples as he sent them out on their mission. Saint George knew these words by heart. When the moment came at the imperial council, he confessed Christ before the emperor and the senators and the entire imperial household. The Lord, faithful to his promise, has confessed Saint George before the Father in heaven, and has lifted him up as the Trophy-Bearer of his victory.
There is a famous story about Saint George that comes from a much later time — the eleventh century — not from the original synaxarion. According to the story, there was a city named Silene in Libya where a dragon was poisoning the country. The people had to feed it sheep, and when the sheep ran out, they had to feed it their own children, chosen by lot. One day the lot fell on the king’s only daughter. She went out to the dragon’s lair to die. Just then Saint George rode up on his white horse. He made the Sign of the Cross, struck the dragon with his lance, and rescued the princess. He told the city that he had killed the dragon by the power of Christ, and the whole city was baptized. Many Orthodox icons of Saint George show this scene, with the saint mounted, the lance lifted, and the dragon at his horse’s feet.
Saint George was twenty-eight years old when he died. He was a young soldier with everything before him. He gave it all up for Christ. The empire that killed him became Christian within a few decades. The emperor who condemned him is remembered now as a persecutor; Saint George is remembered as the Trophy-Bearer. The kingdoms of this world come and go. The Kingdom of Christ does not pass away. Saint George is the icon of that simple, truth, made visible in the body of one young man.