Little Story of Saint George by Mediterrania

LITTLE STORY

Saint George

LITTLE STORY

Saint George Text: Narcís Sayrach Illustration: Pilarín Bayés Translation: Sheila Hardie

1st edition: July 2016 © Text: Narcís Sayrach © Illustration: Pilarín Bayés © Translation: Sheila Hardie © Editorial Mediterrània, S.L. Casp, 108, 8th floor 08010 Barcelona Tel.: 93 218 34 58 - Fax: 93 265 65 23 editorial@editorialmediterrania.com www.editorialmediterrania.com ISBN: 978-84-9979-487-7 LD: B-16690-2016 Photocomposition and Printing: Ormoprint, Barcelona

Saint George, a Catalan historical figure This brief history discusses an extraordinary person, Saint George, one of Catalonia’s most important historical figures. It would be hard to find anyone who has not heard of him; and the same cannot be said about other historical figures. Not only is he a figure that everyone knows, Saint George is loved by the Catalan people. Catalonia likes to be reminded of his presence and that is why people have placed images of the saint in prominent, significant locations across the country. This does not occur with any other historical figure in Catalonia. Saint George’s presence can be noted in many parts of the city of Barcelona, where his status as the “Cap i Casal” [“Head and Hearth”] of Catalonia is honoured. An interesting Saint George Itinerary in Barcelona could easily be designed. It could take in around 100 works, some of which are of great value.

If we walk through the Gothic quarter, we can find images of Saint George in and on the most representative buildings of the Middle Ages. On the beautiful keystone in the pavilion housing the Saint George fountain inside the cloister of Barcelona Cathedral, in 1467 Antoni Claperós carved in stone the figure of Saint George slaying the dragon. In the city hall, in a sculpture by Josep Llimona that stands at the foot of the staircase of honour, we can see Saint George depicted as a bold warrior, as if he were coming out to greet us. In the former Lieutenant’s Place, the sculptor Josep M. Subirachs represented Saint George on the splendid bronze door of the main room. In Saint Agatha’s Chapel, the former church of the count-kings of Catalonia, Saint George adorns a panel in the altarpiece created by Jaume Huguet. It is however in the Palau de la Generalitat (the Catalan seat of government) where this presence becomes most notable. Saint George presides over its two façades: the old or Gothic façade with the extraordinary medallion by Pere Joan (1418) and the current or Renaissance façade, with the equestrian sculpture by Andreu Aleu. Inside are even more interesting representations of the saint outside the Gothic quarter.

Everyone has heard of the modernist sculptural ensemble entitled “Cançó Popular” [Popular Song], which presides over the Palau de la Música Catalana concert hall. In it, Saint George emerges from amidst the people, brandishing a Catalan flag. We could also visit the Courthouse, the Sant Pau Hospital, the Casa de les Punxes (House of Spikes), the Casa Serra —the now headquarters of Barcelona Provincial Council—, the historic Quatre Gats café, etc. On Montjuïc, the city erected a monument in the square named after the saint. Josep Llimona sculpted a statute of Saint George on horseback, totally naked with a lance in his hand, his body learning forward, prepared to fight anything that might disturb the peace in the city he looks down upon. In Passeig de Gràcia, the façade of the Casa Batlló will immediately attract our attention: the balconies in the shape of skulls, the colour of the building, the dragon on the top, the cross… This is possibly one of the most unusual monuments that has ever been dedicated to Saint George. It is an allegory of the mythical scene of the fight between Saint George and the dragon. Antoni Gaudí wanted children to learn to love the patron saint of Catalonia and that is why he placed a sculpture in the kindergarten he built next to the Basilica of the Sagrada Família. This “Saint George Route” does not end in Barcelona. It continues in Mount Montserrat, Montblanc, Sant Jordi Desvalls (Gironès), the “Saint George Mountains” (Noguera), the “Gulf of Saint George” (Ebro Delta) and in Lleida City Hall. Saint George represents the whole of Catalonia. And he also represents places outside of Catalonia, in the Catalan-speaking countries, Alcoi and Banyeres de Mariola in Valencia, in Majorca, etc.

We find Saint George in the origins of our country

The Catalan monarchs and the Generalitat were the main promoters of Saint George in Catalonia

When Catalonia was beginning to form as a nation, locked away in the valleys of the Pyrenees since the creation of the so-called Marca Hispanica [Spanish March], we know that in 1032 one of the iconic figures of our history, Abbot Oliba, dedicated an altar in Ripoll’s Benedictine monastery to Saint George. So, the verses Father Cinto Verdaguer dedicated in the Virolai hymn to the Virgin of Montserrat could also be applied to Saint George: “Our history begins with your name”. Three centuries before, in the 8th century, Saint George was already well known in Catalonia.

The figure of Saint George inspired great devotion in the Catalan monarchs. In 1201, King Peter I the Catholic founded the Order of Saint George of Alfama in order to repopulate and protect the conquered land, which extended from Tortosa to Cambrils. Hi son, King James I, loved Saint George so much that he even felt his presence in the most decisive moments of his life, such as the conquest of Majorca —as he wrote in his Cròniques [Chronicles]— and of the city of Valencia, events that the painters Pere Niçard and Marçal de Sas depicted in two magnificent works. King Peter III the Ceremonious was, however, the monarch who was really noted for his zealous devotion to Saint George. In addition to founding different brotherhoods with his patronage, he undertook a series of actions so as to obtain the prized relic, the purported head of the Saint, which was at first held in Livadeia, then moved to the Island of Aegina, and is now kept in the Benedictine Saint George Monastery on the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore (Venice). This gave rise to a judicial dispute with the English monarch, who was also interested in obtaining it.

The mediaeval Generalitat [Government of Catalonia] —then known as the Diputació del General de Catalunya [Provincial Council of the General of Catalonia— played a very important role in the promotion of Saint George. Very early on, around 1200, it adopted Saint George as its patron saint. Since then, the Cross of Saint George has been the institution’s own symbol. The Government of Catalonia’s love for this figure was so great that it did not stop until it had managed to get the Catalan Courts to proclaim him the patron saint of all the Catalan people. First, they tried to achieve this when the Courts met in Monzón in 1436. But it was not until 17 April 1456 that the Courts, called to a meeting in the cloister of Barcelona cathedral, accepted the Government of Catalonia’s request and declared Saint George’s Day official and made him the patron saint of Catalonia.

Catalonia makes Saint George a national symbol With the Renaixença [Rebirth] revivalist movement at the end of the 19th century, which was characterised by the desire to recover the national identity, Catalonia looked to the past for signs of its own way of being, and found in Saint George the figure that best defined it. So, this was how Saint George became the symbol of the Catalan identity. This is shown in a large number of ways. Father Cinto Verdaguer, the key figure behind the revival of the language, chose the chapel in the town of Sant Jordi de Puigseslloses, on the plain of Vic, to celebrate his first mass. Significant institutions that were established after the start of the Renaixença adopted Saint George as their patron, including organisations such as the Centre Excursionista de Catalunya [Catalan Hiking Centre] (created in 1890), the Orfeó Català [Catalan Choral Society] (1891), the Institut d’Estudis Catalans [Institute of Catalan Studies] (1907)... and more recently, in 1951, in the middle of Franco’s dictatorship, a choir was created that was deliberately called the Coral Sant Jordi [Saint George’s Choir], clearly defying the totalitarian regime. Even more recently, at the end of 1988, the Amics de Sant Jordi [Friends of Saint George] Association was created, an entity closely related to Saint George “due to its loyalty to the land”. In addition to the creation of institutions, the esteem in which the figure of Saint George is held has been expressed in many ways. In 1899 and 1900, the Unió Catalanista [Catalanist Union] published two series of patriotic stamps bearing the image of the saint and produced coins with a beautiful Modernist figure of the saint designed by the sculptor Vallmitjana.

In 1956, the Guardó Sant Jordi de Cinematografia [Saint George Cinematographic Award] was created. In 1960, in response to the threat of Catalan literature being relegated as a second-class literature by the expansion of prizes for works in Spanish, the Premi Sant Jordi de Novel·la [Saint George Prize for Novels] was established. In 1979, the Autonomous University of Barcelona created the Medal of the University of Bellaterra with the figure of the saint. In 1981, the Government of Catalonia established the Creu de Sant Jordi [Cross of Saint George] award. In 1992, the Palau Sant Jordi [Saint George’s Palace], the symbol of the Barcelona Olympic Games, was opened. A long etcetera could be added as proof of the tribute Catalonia pays to its patron saint.

Saint George’s Day - books and roses Saint George’s Day is celebrated on 23 April. Although it is not an official public holiday, Catalonia has turned it into the most brilliant, civic and patriotic day. The historian Josep Benet describes it with these words: “Saint George’s Day is the most beautiful and most complete Catalan public holiday. The one Catalan people are most proud of, and at the same time, it is the feast most admired by foreigners who are lucky enough to be in Barcelona on that day. Although its origins lie in mediaeval Catalonia, it is the most lively and modern public holiday.” On that day, as in the Middle Ages, the Palau de la Generalitat is turned into a garden of roses. The red rose, the redder the better, is the rose of Saint George. It is the red of a martyr’s blood. Various stories have provided a poetic explanation of the origin of the lovely tradition of men giving roses to the women they love on this day. They say that when Saint George was decapitated, his head fell to the ground and a garden of red roses sprang up where the head had rolled. Other legends say that after Saint George killed the dragon in order to free the maiden it was about to devour, the animal melted into the ground and a red rose flowered on that very spot. The Saint then picked the rose and gave it to the girl. What is true is that this tradition originates from the time of the Diputació del General [Provincial Council of the General]. When the estates represented in the Courts came out of the Saint George Chapel in the Palau de la Generalitat, where they had celebrated the Saint’s feast day, they gave roses to their sweethearts. This highly symbolic gesture continues today. Moreover, Barcelona retains the tradition of visiting the Saint’s chapel: on Saint George’s Day, a long queue forms of people waiting to enter the Palau to pay tribute to the patron saint of Catalonia.

In 1926, the custom of giving books on Saint George’s Day began. The origin of this custom is somewhat incongruous, since it started during the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, who disbanded and outlawed the Mancomunitat de Catalunya [Commonwealth of Catalonia] and supported the institution of Book Day right across Spain in order to try to water down a feast that was so closely linked to the Catalan identity. Saint George, however, defeated this new dragon. Books, culture and language constitute in fact Catalonia’s raison d’être. Book Day, instead of being a distortive element, has been fully incorporated into the feast day and has enriched it. In recent years, Saint George’s Day has become internationally renowned. Since 1986, members of the Associació Japonesa d’Amistat amb Catalunya [Japanese Association of Friendship with Catalonia] have celebrated the holiday they call Sant Jordi’s Day and fill the streets of the main cities in Japan with bookstalls and flowers. In 1996, UNESCO declared Saint George’s Day as World Book Day thanks to an initiative by the Gremi d’Editors de Catalunya [Catalan Publishers’ Guild] with the support of the Government of Catalonia.

Saint George opens up the world to us You don’t have to travel far from Catalonia to realise that Saint George —this figure that the Catalan people feel belongs very much to them— also belongs to other people. Above all, Saint George is a religious figure: he is a saint. For the different Christian faiths —Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant— he played a key role in the first few centuries of Christianity. Hundreds and thousands of temples have been dedicated to him. It is therefore in these places where we can find Saint George: across Europe and in many other parts of the world. Buildings ranging from magnificent cathedrals, basilicas, monasteries and parish churches to smaller, humbler places of worship and chapels are named after this saint. Our figure is not only remembered in church names; on the contrary. Saint George belongs to the people. He is part of the people’s heritage, whether they are believers or not. We can find his image on many civil buildings. His name is given to many streets and squares and even towns. In France they are called Saint Georges; in Italy, San Giorgio; in Denmark, Sankt Jorgen; in Slovenia, Senjur, SvetiJurij or Jurjevo; in Galicia, Sao Xurxo or San Jorge, etc. We can also find geographical locations that have been named after this saint: lakes, islands, straits, gulfs, hills, etc. There is even a crater on the Moon called Saint George.

Seeing our saint so well represented all over the place, we should not be surprised that other nations have also adopted him as their patron saint, countries such as Portugal, the former Confederation of the Kingdoms of Aragon, England, Serbia, Greece, the former republics of Genoa and Venice, Lithuania, Russia, Georgia, Ethiopia... and a large number of cities. Travelling across the globe, we discover that our figure, the Saint George we identify ourselves with as Catalans, unites us with Europe and opens up the world to us. But just who was Saint George, in any case? Who was this figure, whose memory endures so well? Was he really such an extraordinary person that, after so many centuries, Catalonia —like many other nations— continues to be fascinated by him? His presence can be noted in a wide variety of ways in everyday life: programmes, invitations, participation in family or social events, coins, postage stamps, bookplates (ex libris), prints, postcards, comic strips and jokes bear the image of Saint George. There is a very wide range of objects that would make any collector happy. It is extraordinary to note how his image has been reproduced by artists throughout history: Dürer, Van Eyck, Carpaccio, Rafael, Tintoretto, Rubens, Velázquez, Goya and, more recently, Kandinsky and Dalí.

The historical figure of Saint George Until his death, Saint George was a very normal person, so much so that we know practically nothing about his life. Evidently, he was not Catalan. He was born in a very far off place called Cappadocia, a land with extraordinarily fantastic landscapes, which is today a region of Turkey. It is worth getting to know this country, with its troglodyte dwellings carved out of volcanic rock by erosion, creating whimsical forms. We know one thing about the real life of our saint: he died a martyr. In 303, the Emperor Diocletian issued an edict that obliged those who believed in Jesus as God’s only son to renounce their faith. Many Christians remained faithful to their beliefs and died as martyrs. Saint George was one of them. A tribune in the Roman army by profession, with his death Saint George proved his loyalty to his beliefs. He did not give in to pressure and that makes him an important figure. Unfortunately, we do not have the historic records that prove this death, or those of many other martyrs. The knowledge we have comes to us through the tradition of various Christian communities, who have kept it alive since his death. What was so special about the martyr George that he soon became the martyr par excellence? The Eastern Christian churches called him the megalomartyr, a Greek term that means “great martyr”. A few years after the death of Saint George, also in the 4th century, Saint John Chryostom qualified the former as the “prince of martyrs” and Saint Gregory Thaumaturgus described him as “illustrious and excellent”. The testimonial of George the martyr confirmed believers’ faith in very difficult circumstances. Very soon, the different Christian communities in the area these events took place, the Greeks, the Ethiopians, the Armenians, the Syrians and the Persians, dedicated temples to Saint George, and they began a cult that has continued to this day without interruption.

Certainly, there are people who deny the authenticity of Saint George, based on the lack of historical documents that accredit his existence. Others, because of the legends that also soon began to circulate about the figure of the martyr, have reduced him to a simple myth. This is not surprising bearing in mind that some people will deny the very existence of the Gospels.

The importance of being called George Names given to things often define them, and then turn out to be very appropriate. The word George comes from the Greek Georgos, which means farmer, a person who â&#x20AC;&#x153;works on the landâ&#x20AC;?. For the Catalans, the fact that George was a farmer, a man who loved and cultivated the earth, who identified with it, has made the figure of the saint more attractive; a figure who is also a martyr, a person with unquestionable loyalty. Saint George arouses in Catalan people feelings of patriotism, of being part of a nation, of a desire to be faithful to ourselves, to our roots, to our language and to our culture. Saint George leads us to be committed to our people. He has become one of the most beautiful and defining signs of our nation.

Saint George is a figure surrounded by legend What happens when there is a gap, a lack of data in history, as in the case of Saint George? The facts and the figures are converted into myth. This is not history, this is popular imagination. And the greater the figure, the more mythical explanations are created and the more the person is surrounded by them. The figure of our martyr has given rise to many beautiful legends. Here are a few of the most important ones. The passion or torture of martyrdom This is the oldest legend and the one most popular with the ancient Christian communities. It describes a series of acts of torture our martyr suffered before being beheaded: he had to walk across a wheel covered in knives, he was whipped, he had to stand in a bonfire, he was dragged along the ground tied to horses, he was poisoned, he was thrown into a lime kiln, etc. It is the narration of episodes of a Homeric struggle, emphasising the strength of the Christian martyr. Slaying a dragon to save the princess This is the universally known legend, written and disseminated by Jacobus de Voragine in 1264. It describes in rich detail and artistry the saintâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s brave fight against a dragon to save the princess from being devoured, before the terrified gaze of the whole city, who had been suffering from the havoc wreaked by this infernal beast. It is a story that recalls the great heroes of ancient mythology who also fought against evil. This legend had a great impact in the warring period of chivalry, the Middle Ages, which turned Saint George into the model of a good knight. Catalonia made a very lucid and up-to-date reading of this. Saint George, faithful to his people, saved them from all kinds of dragons, which prevented them from living in a just, free society.

The green Saint George In Arabic Saint George is known as al-Khiḍr which means “the Green One”. It is a belief held by people in Eastern Europe, especially Slovenia, that any place that our hero passed through, walked around or sat on became covered in greenery. The fact that Saint George’s Day is on 23 April, in the middle of spring, gives rise to this joyful, youthful, loving legend about our saint, a legend that fits in well with the Catalan tradition of giving roses on Saint George’s Day. The warrior legends There are many legends that have arisen from the wars in which Saint George took part alongside Christian warriors; at the Battle of Antioch with the Croats (1096); in Huesca alongside King Peter I; in the conquest of Barcelona, helping Count Borrell II, in the conquests of Majorca and Valencia —an event, mentioned by King James I himself—...

Conclusion Although, on the one hand, we know very little about the history of Saint George, on the other we know a lot about his presence in the history of our people and in that of many others in Europe and across the globe. Only a few of these things are described in this book, but many others have been left out. It is up to you, dear reader, to learn more about Saint George for yourself!

Little Stories of four great artists

ISBN: 978-84-9979-020-6