The next Medieval Section AGM will take place on Saturday 9th April 2016 2pm at the Swarthmore Education Centre. Our AGM will be followed by a talk on St George and England by Samantha Riches who will be talking about the material in this largely international cult, and how St George relates to England, including the late Medieval material culture at Windsor, as seen in wall paintings, jewellery, etc.
The image of St George – the medieval knight on his horse, slaying a dragon – is so familiar that it is tempting to assume his history is a simple one, but the reality is very different. St George is one of the most significant mythic characters in Christian culture but he can also be found in other religious traditions, appearing in numerous different guises in cultures the world over. An important figure in Eastern Orthodox, Coptic and western European churches, his analogues can be found in Islam, Hinduism, Judaism and the Afro-Brazilian belief system Candomblé; he also makes frequent appearances in ‘pagan’ belief systems due to his identification with nature, springtime and healing.
With or without his dragon, St George has been repeatedly reinvented over the last 1,700 years. Samantha Riches explores this saint’s significance in nations as varied as Lebanon, Ethiopia and Estonia as well as his totemic role for the Roma people, and provides first-hand accounts of celebrations in Georgia, Greece, Malta and Belgium. She describes the inspiration that artists, poets and playwrights have found in myths of St George and considers the sometimes controversial political uses to which the saint has been put.
The first book to draw together many aspects of the international cult of St George alongside some of the evidence for elements in his English cult that have been largely forgotten, St George: A Saint for All published by Reaktion Books is a fascinating history of an enduring icon.
Samantha Riches is a cultural historian based at Lancaster University. She is the author of Gender and Holiness: Men, Women and Saints in Late Medieval Europe (2011) and St George: Hero, Martyr and Myth (2005).
Medieval Section of the Yorkshire Archaeological and Historical Society 