Saint George; Champion of Christendom and Patron Saint of England (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: PART IV St. George in Art?Hostels?Mummers, and Relics of the Order IN art, England's Patron Saint has been represented by Fra Angelico,1 Raphael, Donatello, Mantegna, Della Robbia, Carpaccio, Tintorel, Albert Diirer and many other foreign artists, as an embodiment of the Christian soldier, armed with the breastplate of righteousness, the shield of faith?the spiritual knight who wears the helmet of Salvation, and the sword of the Spirit which is the Word or Power of God. Undeniably superior as these pictures arc, as works of art, in none of them, except perhaps those at Venice, is the story of the " Victorious One " set forth in such simplicity of spiritual meaning as in the old fresco on the walls of the Parish Church at Dartford, a favourite wayside halting place of kings, crusaders and Canterbury pilgrims on the high road to Canterbury and Dover. St. George is portrayed in armour on a white charger; on his breastplate a red cross. His helmet is adorned with a plume of three ostrich feathers. With his lance couched, the champion stands between the distressed damsel and the dragon issuing from a black cave wherein are seen bones and vestiges of its ravenous appetite. The lady thus saved from a cruel fate is evidently a princess from her attire of red velvet and ermine; beside her frisks a lamb, the emblem of innocence. Behind her deliverer is a castle and towers, having loopholes, and between them an arched gate, and, in a turret above, are the King and Queen anxiously awaiting their daughter's fate, upon whom the lot had fallen to be cast out of the city. As a work of art the old wall-painting is quaint rather than excellent; its chief value lies in the realization of that spirit of chivalry which prompts men to self-forgetful deeds of heroism. 1 Reproduced by S.P.C.K....