This statue of Saint George is located on the bell tower of the St. George's Parish Church in Piran, Slovenia.
"Saint George was a soldier of Cappadocian Greek origins, member of the Praetorian Guard for Roman emperor Diocletian, who was sentenced to death for refusing to recant his Christian faith. He became one of the most venerated saints and megalo-martyrs in Christianity, and he has been especially venerated as a military saint since the Crusades.
In hagiography, as one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers and one of the most prominent military saints, he is immortalised in the legend of Saint George and the Dragon. His memorial, Saint George's Day, is traditionally celebrated on 23 April. (See under "Feast days" below for the use of the Julian calendar by the Eastern Orthodox Church.)
England, Ethiopia, Georgia, Catalonia, and several other nation states, cities, universities, professions and organisations all claim Saint George as their patron.
Very little is known about St George’s life, but it is thought he was a Roman officer of Greek descent from Cappadocia who was martyred in one of the pre-Constantinian persecutions. Beyond this, early sources give conflicting information.
There are two main versions of the legend, a Greek and a Latin version, which can both be traced to the 5th or 6th century. The saint's veneration dates to the 5th century with some certainty, and possibly still to the 4th. The addition of the dragon legend dates to the 11th century.
The earliest text which preserves fragments of George's narrative is in a Greek hagiography which is identified by Hippolyte Delehaye of the scholarly Bollandists to be a palimpsest of the 5th century. An earlier work by Eusebius, Church history, written in the 4th century, contributed to the legend but did not name George or provide significant detail. The work of the Bollandists Daniel Papebroch, Jean Bolland, and Godfrey Henschen in the 17th century was one of the first pieces of scholarly research to establish the saint's historicity via their publications in Bibliotheca Hagiographica Graeca. Pope Gelasius I stated that George was among those saints "whose names are justly reverenced among men, but whose actions are known only to God.""
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