"Statue dedicated to the patron saint of Cáceres. Located in the Plaza de San Jorge, in the heart of the monumental city. It was made by José Rodríguez in 1963. Made in bronze. It represents the Saint riding a horse at the moment of lance the dragon.
According to legend, the troops of Alfonso XI entered the citadel through a passage, and surprised its inhabitants by the attack, the defeat of the Muslims was evident. At a hasty order given by the Ka'id, they ran quickly to open one of their dungeons in the underground, from which a giant and furious beast emerged. The dragon, began to charge the Christian troops, who began to feel subdued and cornered. They retreated in fear among such a horrific and extraordinary animal, which frightened everyone with its claws and mouthfuls of fire. Before they were devoured, they prayed to San Jorge, who engaged in a unique battle against the saurian, which he managed to kill after a fierce and fierce struggle with a certain amount of fire. The Muslims, seeing themselves helpless, surrendered and handed over the square to the Christians."
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"Saint George ( Greek : Ge?????? Georgios ; Classical Syriac : Giwargis ; Latin : Georgius ) is the name of a Roman soldier executed in Nicomedia on account of his Christian faith, for which he is revered as a martyr . He is believed to have lived between 275 or 280 and April 23 , 303 . According to the golden legend he was "of the lineage of the Cappadocians", which is why he is sometimes mistakenly identified with the Arian bishop Saint George.
His popularity in the Middle Ages has led him to be one of the most venerated saints in the different Christian beliefs and even —in a phenomenon of syncretism— in the Afro-American and Muslim religions of the Middle East, especially Palestine, where they call him Mar Djíries (Arabic Christian) or Al-Jádr (Arabic both Christian and Muslim).
Legendary life of Saint George
The legend —possibly originating in the fourth century— tells the story of George, a Roman who, after the death of his father — Gerontius, an officer in the Roman army — moved with his mother Polychronia to her hometown, Lydda — present -day Lod , in Israel —. There, Policronia was able to educate her son in the Christian faith and soon after coming of age she joined the army. Due to his charisma of him, Jorge did not take long to ascend and, before he was 30 years old, he was a tribune and you come , being assigned to Nicomedia as a personal guard of Emperor Diocletian (284-305).
In 303, the emperor issued an edict authorizing the persecution of Christians throughout the empire, which continued under Galerius (305-311). Ordered to participate, George confessed that he, too, was a Christian, and Diocletian ordered him to be tortured into apostasy, to no avail. For this he was ordered executed and was beheaded before the walls of Nicomedia on April 23, 303. Witnesses convinced Empress Alexandra and an unnamed pagan priestess to convert to Christianity and join George in martyring him. Once dead, Jorge's body was sent to Lydda for him to be buried.
The above story is dubious at best. However, the veneration of him as a martyr began relatively early. There is news through pilgrim accounts of a church built in Diospolis (ancient Lydda ) in his honor during the reign of Constantine I , which became the center of the Eastern cult of George.
Around the years 518–530, the archdeacon and librarian Theodosius relates that Diospolis was the center of George's cult. An anonymous pilgrim from Piacenza mentions the same thing around 570.
The church was destroyed in 1010 and later rebuilt by the Crusaders . In 1191 and during the Third Crusade (1189–1192), the church was again destroyed by the forces of Saladin . A new church was erected in 1872 and still stands today.
During the 4th century, veneration of the saint spread from Palestine to the rest of the Eastern Roman Empire . In the 5th century his popularity reached the western part of the Roman Empire.
Canonization
In 494, George was canonized by Pope Gelasius I , but included him along with "...those whose names are justly revered, but whose deeds are known only to God."
This statement would not prevent the creation of various apocryphal stories about his life, several of them full of miracles . According to the Catholic Encyclopedia , the oldest preserved text on the saint's life is found in the Acta sanctorum , identified by scholars as a fifth-century palimpsest .
Towards the end of the sixth century, the Irish abbot Adomnán , of the abbey on the island of Iona , relates some of the Eastern legends of George collected by the Gallic Bishop Arkulf on his pilgrimage to the Holy Land in the year 680.
In early Islam , the Christian saint joined—through religious and cultural syncretism —with the Jewish prophet Elijah , the Jewish Samaritan preacher Phineas , and the Islamic saint al-Hadr ('the green one', from the Arabic hadir ) to form a religious figure who was and still is revered in the Middle East.
The name of al-Hadr is more commonly transcribed as al-Khidr or al-Khadir , while for Spanish speaking al-Jadir or al-Jidr would be more correct .
Al-Khidr 's story with the prophet Moses in the Arabic Qur'an , al-Qur'an al-Karim where he is called Musa , is found in surah 18, Surat al-Kahf . It is a mystical and Gnostic history of Sufism , the esoteric science of Islam.
The Legend of the Dragon
In the 9th century, another popular story appears: Saint George on horseback as the winner of a dragon . This story, which is part of the Golden Legend , is also known as "Saint George and the Dragon", and is the probable origin of all fairy tales about princesses and dragons in the West .
It should be noted that the legend is recounted in various parts of Europe (such as the Greek myth of Perseus) and Asia Minor as its own, so the details vary according to local lore.
There is an Orthodox Christian tradition that places Saint George's encounter with the dragon in Beirut ( Lebanon ), 1 where he is the city's patron saint.
The medieval Western legend begins with a dragon making a nest in the spring that provides a city with water. As a consequence, the citizens, in order to obtain water, had to separate the dragon from the fountain, offering him a pair of sheep daily. When the sheep no longer sufficed, they began to offer him a daily human sacrifice, which was decided at random among the inhabitants. One day the local princess was selected.
In some stories the king appears, her father, crying out for the life of his daughter, but without success. As she was about to be devoured by the dragon, George appears on one of her journeys (often on horseback), confronts the dragon, kills it, and saves the princess. The grateful citizens abandon paganism and embrace Christianity .
History, formerly considered true, has been progressively abandoned. On the other hand, few doubt that it contains a rich religious symbolism, for which various interpretations have been proposed:
An old Christian interpretation of the myth: George would be the believer, the white horse the Church, and the dragon would represent paganism, idolatry , temptation, and Satan .
Some secular historians consider the story to have roots older than the Christian ones. In Cappadocia , as one of the first regions to adopt the saint, there may have been an integration of pagan elements. A candidate for predecessor of Saint George is the "god" Sabatius , heavenly father of the Phrygians , known as Sabazius by the Romans. It is argued that the image of him on horseback rolling over a snake would be the origin of the popular image of Saint George on a white horse.
On the other hand, the story of George and the dragon has many elements in common with the ancient Greek myth of the Ethiopian princess Andromeda and her savior and later husband Perseus , who defeated the gorgon Medusa and the sea monster Ceto . In both cases there is a dragon/gorgon with his beheading, a princess and a reward, in one case marriage, in the other the conversion of the city. Some of the George and the Dragon legends set the action in Libya (formerly all of North Africa west of Egypt ), meaning the action in both cases is set in distant "magical" realms.
Finally, the origin could be in an alternative manifestation of Saint Michael the Archangel , who is at the head of the heavenly hosts. In other words, Georgius was the incarnation or avatar of the archangel Michael , the commander-in-chief of the host of heaven ( Joshua 5:13-15; Daniel 8:25, 10:13, 12:1; Zechariah 3:2 ; Jude Thaddeus 1:8; Revelation 12:7)
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