An Investigation into St George – The Political Saint

In 1348, Edward III founded the Order of the Garter and declared St. George the patron saint of England, displacing Edmund the Martyr, who had held the position for centuries.

The official reason was honouring chivalric virtue, but the timing tells a different story. Edward had just claimed the French throne and needed a war saint unmarked by English regional politics. George, a Palestinian martyr whose deeds were “known only to God” according to a 5th-century Pope, proved perfect for the job.

The Replacement Nobody Questioned

Until the mid-14th century, England’s official patron was Edmund the Martyr, a king of East Anglia killed by Vikings in 869. Edmund had his own shrine at Bury St Edmunds, national festivals, and the kind of local baggage that came with every regional saint in medieval England.

For centuries, he served as England’s spiritual protector. His cult was established, his feast days observed across the kingdom, and his shrine was a major pilgrimage destination.

Then Edward III made his move.

Edward founded the Order of the Garter and declared St George its patron in 1348. The order’s statutes placed George alongside the Trinity, the Virgin Mary, and Edward the Confessor as primary intercessors for the English crown. Edward did not just add another saint to the mix. He reshuffled the entire spiritual hierarchy.

The timing was not coincidental. Edward had renewed his claim to the French throne in 1337, launching what would become the Hundred Years’ War. He had won a decisive victory against French forces at Crécy in 1346, proving English military might on French soil.

By 1348, he was planning expanded continental campaigns. Edmund, tied to East Anglia and memories of regional kingship, would not serve a monarch planning European conquest.

No contemporary sources record any debate about this replacement. No church councils were assembled to discuss the theological implications. The change happened through royal decree, embedded in the founding statutes of the Order of the Garter. Edward then declared George the order’s patron, and by extension, England’s.

The absence of recorded opposition suggests either remarkable unanimity or that questioning royal religious policy carried risks. Regional saints carried baggage. Thomas Becket reminded everyone of the conflicts between the church and the crown. Local martyrs like St Alban or St Cuthbert belonged to specific dioceses with their own political interests.

Edward the Confessor was royal but hardly martial. But George? He was nobody’s man, which meant he was everybody’s. A blank slate from Palestine carried no English factional allegiances.

The Convenient Martyr

Why George? The answer lies in what he lacked, not what he offered.

Pope Gelasius knew the problem back in 494 AD when he wrote about saints whose legitimacy was questionable. George appeared on his list of figures who were ‘justly reverenced among men, but whose actions are known only to God’.

By the late 5th century, George was widely respected across the Christian world, but even the Pope could not verify what he had actually done. This historical blankness was an advantage for Edward III. Without confirmed deeds, any quality could be projected onto George.

The Eastern churches had already transformed him into a military saint, complete with dragon-slaying credentials that appeared nowhere in early martyrdom accounts. The Crusaders discovered this warrior saint cult thriving in Palestine and Syria, imported it to the West, and watched it flourish.

The earliest martyrdom accounts describe torture and execution under Emperor Diocletian around 303 AD. Standard martyr material. But the details kept growing. By the 11th century, Georgian sources had added the dragon. By the 13th century, Jacobus de Voragine’s The Golden Legend, a hugely popular collection of saints’ lives, provided the full narrative: the Libyan city of Silene, the princess, and the dragon subdued by faith and lance.

George’s Palestinian origin helped Edward’s cause. It connected England to the Holy Land without the complication of the actual English Crusaders’ mixed record there. The Eastern military saint tradition provided ready-made imagery of mounted warriors and vanquished monsters. Perfect for a king who styled himself as Europe’s premier Christian warrior.

Consider the alternatives Edward rejected. English saints came with verifiable histories, documented miracles, and established shrine networks controlled by regional bishops. George offered none of this jurisdictional complexity. His cult centre in Lydda (modern-day Israel) was conveniently distant.

No English bishop could claim special authority over George’s legacy. He belonged to the universal church, which meant he belonged to whoever claimed him most effectively.

The Garter Gambit

The Order of the Garter was not just another knightly society. Founded in 1348, this exclusive military brotherhood was Edward III’s instrument for binding his military elite to his French ambitions. Limited to 26 members, including the king, it created an exclusive brotherhood dedicated to St George, the Virgin Mary, and Edward the Confessor.

But George got top billing as the order’s special patron.

The Garter was a political machine, built around four patrons but designed to centralise military loyalty under the king’s authority. Its original membership was hand-picked from Edward’s closest allies and military commanders: Henry of Grosmont, the king’s cousin and veteran commander who led the Crécy campaign; William de Bohun, Earl of Northampton; and Roger Mortimer, whose French royal connections helped legitimise Edward’s claim. These were the men who would prosecute Edward’s wars.

The order’s statutes specifically invoke George as its spiritual protector. The motto, Honi soit qui mal y pense (shame on him who thinks evil of it), functioned as a pre-emptive defence against criticism. Any challenge to the king’s new order could be tinted as unpatriotic, even sinful.

By placing the Order under George’s patronage, Edward gave his war council divine sanction. The language was all of gallantry, honour, and virtue. The reality was simpler. Edward needed his nobles committed to expensive foreign wars. Sacred oaths proved more effective than secular contracts. Knights who swore before God’s altar found it harder to change sides.

Garter ceremonies took place at Windsor Castle, in St George’s Chapel. The physical space reinforced the message. Here was English royal power, English military might, and a Palestinian saint merged into one symbolic system. George’s red cross became their identifier, appearing on banners, standards, and military badges across Edward’s armies.

The Crusade Connection That Wasn’t

Every popular history claims Richard I adopted St George during the Third Crusade. The story runs that Richard experienced a vision of George during the siege of Acre, then adopted the red cross banner.

It is compelling but contradicted by contemporary evidence.

Richard’s crusaders wore white crosses, not red ones. The white cross was the emblem assigned to English troops at the planning conferences of 1188, distinguishing them from French forces (who wore red crosses) and other national contingents.

No chronicle from Richard’s lifetime mentions special worship of George. No royal documents invoke him as protector. Richard’s own seal showed him mounted with sword and shield, but no George cross.

The Antioch story everyone cites happened nearly a century before Richard was born. During the First Crusade’s siege of Antioch in 1098, as Christian forces struggled to capture this strategic Syrian city, chroniclers described visions of St George appearing with other saints to help the desperate Frankish forces.

This became one of the foundational legends of George’s military power, but Richard had nothing to do with it. Later historians conflated the general crusading George cult with specific English adoption. The confusion is understandable. English crusaders encountered George worship in the East and brought stories home.

But individual devotion is not the same as national adoption. That waited until Edward III. The Richard I myth persists because it provides a more romantic origin story than Edward’s calculated political decision. Medieval nationalism preferred stories of divine inspiration over royal manipulation.

Edward I’s Welsh Experiment

The real English royal connection to George began with Edward I during his Welsh campaigns of the 1270s and 1280s. Royal accounts from 1277 record payments for banners bearing ‘the arms of St George’ and for armbands bearing the red cross on a white field for infantry.

This was not national adoption but tactical identification for specific campaigns. The context suggests calculation. Wales had its own saints, its own sacred sites. Imposing an Eastern military saint avoided engaging with Welsh religious tradition. The dragon connection might have played a role too. Welsh princes used dragon banners. Having England’s forces march under a dragon-slayer’s cross sent a message.

But Edward I did not elevate George beyond this military use. After returning from Wales, he presented offerings at Canterbury Cathedral that included a golden figure of St George and his horse. A nice gesture, but he also honoured Edward the Confessor, St Thomas Becket, and other saints. Royal accounts after Edward’s death show no special George veneration.

The Welsh campaigns were an experiment, not a conversion. Edward I had tested George as a military symbol in regional conquest. It worked well enough, but Edward I’s ambitions stopped at the Scottish border. Edward III’s reached across the Channel.

The Perfect War Saint

When you examine the evidence, Edward III’s choice of George seems less like sudden inspiration and more like a calculated political decision. George offered everything Edmund the Martyr could not provide for a king planning continental warfare.

Edmund died passively, tied to a tree and shot full of arrows by pagans. George died actively, defying imperial power and enduring spectacular tortures. One was a victim. The other chose his fate. For a king planning aggressive war, the distinction mattered.

The dragon legend, fully developed by 1348 through texts like The Golden Legend, provided perfect imagery. Dragons meant chaos, paganism, and foreign threat. The knight who defeats the dragon restores order, protects innocence, serves God through violence. Every element mapped onto Edward’s self-presentation as Europe’s premier Christian warrior.

Foreign origin paradoxically strengthened George’s English utility. A Palestinian martyr carried no regional English complications. Norman lords could not claim special connection through conquest geography. Saxon nobles could not invoke ancient tribal loyalties. George belonged equally to all Edward’s subjects, which meant he belonged especially to Edward.

The crusading associations proved invaluable. By 1348, the age of actual crusades to the Holy Land had passed, but the language of holy war remained potent. Edward’s French campaigns were not territorial aggression but divinely sanctioned efforts to claim his rightful inheritance. George, the Eastern saint beloved by crusaders, provided that divine sanction without requiring an actual crusade.

The blank historical canvas let Edward paint whatever picture served his needs. No inconvenient facts about George’s actual life constrained the narrative. He could be noble or common, soldier or tribune, whatever the moment required. This flexibility made George infinitely more useful than any historically verifiable English saint.

The Agincourt Afterglow

If Edward III had made George the patron saint for pragmatic reasons, Henry V’s victory at Agincourt in 1415 seemed to vindicate the choice. Facing a French army that outnumbered his forces by at least three to one, Henry invoked George in his pre-battle speech.

The subsequent victory was attributed to God and St George. Contemporary accounts confirm Henry’s troops shouted George’s name as their battle cry. The saint had evolved from Edward III’s political tool to England’s active battlefield protector. Shakespeare, writing two centuries later, crystallised the moment: ‘Cry God for Harry, England and St. George!’

The line became cultural scripture, fixing George’s association with English military glory. Agincourt changed everything. St George’s Day, 23 April, became one of England’s biggest celebrations.

The victory did not just prove Henry right about his French campaign. It seemed to vindicate Edward III’s original choice seventy years earlier. Divine approval, delivered on the battlefield. George had picked England as much as England had picked George.

Henry did not win because of divine intervention. He won due to better tactics, devastating longbow volleys, and French commanders making poor decisions. The muddy field that trapped French cavalry had nothing to do with a third-century Palestinian martyr. But George got the credit anyway, turning a tactical victory into proof of God’s favour.

The real mystery is not who George was, but how successfully Edward III erased the political calculation behind his adoption. Seven centuries later, we still think of him as England’s ancient patron saint rather than a 14th-century political innovation. That is the true measure of Edward’s success.

Sources

Sources include: Early church histories from Eusebius of Caesarea; papal decrees from the 5th century, including the Decretum Gelasianum; medieval hagiographies, most notably Jacobus de Voragine’s The Golden Legend; chronicles from the First and Third Crusades detailing events at Antioch and Acre; English royal accounts and statutes from the reigns of Edward I and Edward III, including the founding documents of the Order of the Garter; later historical analyses by Edward Gibbon; literary works by William Shakespeare that cemented the legend in English culture; and modern historical scholarship on the cult of saints, English patronage, and the Hundred Years’ War.