GEORGE, ST, or GEORGE of Cappadocia; a name whereby several orders, both military and religious, are denominated. It took its rise from a saint or hero famous throughout all the East, called by the Greeks Μηγαλενάζιος, q. d. great martyr.
On some medals of the emperors John and Manuel Comneni, we have the figure of St George armed, holding a sword or javelin in one hand, and in the other a buckler, with this inscription; an O, and therein a little
P
Λ, and ΓΕ—ΓΙΟC, making Ο ΑΓΙΟΣ ΓΕΟΡΓΙΟΣ, Ο
O
holy George. He is generally represented on horseback, as being supposed to have frequently engaged in combats in that manner. He is highly venerated throughout Armenia, Muscovy, and all the countries which adhere to the Greek rite: from the Greek, his worship has long ago been received into the Latin church; and England and Portugal have both chosen him for their patron saint.
Great difficulties have been raised about this saint or hero. His very existence has been called in question. Dr Heylin, who wrote first and most about him, concluded with giving him entirely up, and supposing him only a symbolical device; and Dr Pettingal has turned him into a mere Basilidian symbol of victory. Mr Pegg, in a paper in the Archæologia*, has attempted to restore him. And, finally, Mr Gibbon† has sunk him into an Arian bishop in the reigns of Constantius and Julian.—The bishop alluded to,
GEORGE the Cappadocian, was so surnamed, according to our author, from his parents or education; and was
born at Epiphania in Cilicia, in a fuller's shop. "From this obscure and servile origin he raised himself by the talents of a parasite: and the patrons, whom he assiduously flattered, procured for their worthless dependent a lucrative commission or contract, to supply the army with bacon. His employment was mean: he rendered it infamous. He accumulated wealth by the basest arts of fraud and corruption; but his malversations were so notorious, that George was compelled to escape from the pursuits of justice. After this disgrace, in which he appears to have saved his fortune at the expence of his honour, he embraced, with real or affected zeal, the profession of Arianism. From the love, or the ostentation, of learning, he collected a valuable library of history, rhetoric, philosophy, and theology; and the choice of the prevailing faction promoted George of Cappadocia to the throne of Athanasius." His conduct in this station is represented by our historian as polluted by cruelty and avarice, and his death considered as a just punishment for the enormities of his life, among which Mr Gibbon seems to rank his "enmity to the gods."
The immediate occasion of his death, however, as narrated by ecclesiastical writers, will not probably appear calculated to add any stain to his memory. "There was in the city of Alexandria a place in which the heathen priests had been used to offer human sacrifices. This place, as being of no use, Constantius gave to the church of Alexandria, and George the bishop gave orders for it to be cleared, in order to build a Christian church on the spot. In doing this they discovered an immense subterraneous cavern, in which the heathen mysteries had been performed, and in it were many human skulls. These, and other things which they found in the place, the Christians brought out and exposed to public ridicule. The heathens, provoked at this exhibition, suddenly took arms and rushing upon the Christians, killed many of them with swords, clubs and stones: some also they strangled, and several they crucified. On this the Christians proceeded no farther in clearing the temple; but the heathens, pursuing their advantage, seized the bishop as he was in the church, and put him in prison. The next day they despatched him; and then fastening the body to a camel, he was dragged about the streets all day, and in the evening they burnt him and the camel together. This fate, Sozomen says, the bishop owed in part to his haughtiness while he was in favour with Constantius, and some say the friends of Athanasius were concerned in this massacre; but he ascribes it chiefly to the inveteracy of the heathens, whose superstitions he had been very active in abolishing.
This George, the Arian bishop of Alexandria, was a man of letters, and had a very valuable library, which Julian ordered to be seized for his own use; and in his orders concerning it, he says that many of the books were on philosophical and rhetorical subjects, though many of them related to the doctrine of the impious Galileans (as in his sneering contemptuous way he always affected to call the Christians). "These books (says he) I could wish to have utterly destroyed; but lest books of value should be destroyed along with them, let those also be carefully sought for."
But Mr Gibbon gives a different turn to the affair
George. of George's murder, as well as relates it with different circumstances. "The Pagans (says he) excited his devout avarice; and the rich temples of Alexandria were either pillaged or insulted by the haughty prelate, who exclaimed, in a loud and threatening tone, 'How long will these sepulchres be permitted to stand?' Under the reign of Constantius, he was expelled by the fury, or rather by the justice of the people: and it was not without a violent struggle, that the civil and military powers of the state could restore his authority, and gratify his revenge. The messenger who proclaimed at Alexandria the accession of Julian, announced the downfall of the archbishop. George, with two of his obsequious ministers, Count Diodorus and Darcontius master of the mint, was ignominiously dragged in chains to the public prison. At the end of 24 days, the prison was forced open by the rage of a superstitious multitude, impatient of the tedious forms of judicial proceedings. The enemies of gods and men expired under their cruel insults; the lifeless bodies of the archbishop and his associates were carried in triumph through the streets on the back of a camel; and the inactivity of the Athanasian party was esteemed a shining example of evangelical patience. The remains of these guilty wretches were thrown into the sea; and the popular leaders of the tumult declared their resolution to disappoint the devotion of the Christians, and to intercept the future honours of these martyrs, who had been punished like their predecessors, by the enemies of their religion. The fears of the Pagans were just, and their precautions ineffectual. The meritorious death of the archbishop obliterated the memory of his life. The rival of Athanasius was dear and sacred to the Arians, and the seeming conversion of those sectaries introduced his worship into the bosom of the Catholic church. The odious stranger, disguising every circumstance of time and place, assumed the mask of a martyr, a saint, and a Christian hero; and the infamous George of Cappadocia has been transformed into the renowned St George of England, the patron of arms, of chivalry, and of the Garter."
Knights of St GEORGE. See GARTER. There have been various other orders under this denomination, most of which are now extinct; particularly one founded by the emperor Frederic III. in the year 1470, to guard the frontiers of Bohemia and Hungary against the Turks; another, called St George of Alfama, founded by the kings of Arragon; another in Austria and Carinthia; and another in the republic of Genoa, still subsisting, &c.
Religious of St GEORGE. Of these there are divers orders and congregations; particularly canons regular of St George in Alga, at Venice, established by authority of Pope Boniface IX. in the year 1404. The foundation of this order was laid by Bartholomew Colonna, who preached in 1396, at Padua, and some other villages in the state of Venice. Pope Pius V. in 1570, gave these canons precedence of all other religious. Another congregation of the same institute in Sicily, &c.
St GEORGE del Mina, the capital of the Dutch settlements on the Gold coast of Guinea, situated seven or eight miles west of Cape-coast castle the capi-
tal of the British settlements there. W. Long. 5'. and N. Lat. 5°.