You have probably seen the picture somewhere: a knight in armor on a white horse, his lance raised high, and down below him a beaten dragon. It is one of the best-known images in the whole world. The odd thing is that the story behind it was told almost a thousand years after the man it shows had died. So tonight there are two stories to tell: first the legend, which is beautiful, and then the life, which is true.

The Legend of the Dragon

The legend says that in a city called Silene, in the north of Africa, there was a wide dark lake. A dragon lived in that lake, and the creature's breath poisoned the air of the whole city. To keep the monster quiet down in the water, the people agreed to bring two sheep to the lakeside every day.

The flocks grew smaller and smaller, until there was not a single sheep left. So the city made a terrible decision: instead of sheep, it would draw lots for a person. Every family's name went into the draw, and every morning the city woke up afraid of the name that might come out.

One day the name drawn was the king's own daughter. The king offered the people all his gold and all his silver to save the girl, but the people answered that he had made the law himself and it had to hold for everyone. The princess was led down to the edge of the lake, dressed like a bride, and there she waited, all alone.

That was when a soldier named George came riding along the road. He saw the girl crying and stopped to ask why.

"Ride away, sir," she said. "There is no sense in two of us dying."

George did not ride away. When the water opened and the dragon lifted its head, he made the sign of the cross, dug in his heels and drove his lance into the beast, which fell wounded into the mud. Then George asked the princess for the belt she was wearing. He slipped it round the dragon's neck, and the huge creature got up as meek as a puppy and padded along behind the two of them, right into the city.

The people ran in terror at the sight of it coming. George raised his hand and called out loudly:

"Do not be afraid. God has sent me here to free you from this dragon. Believe in Christ, be baptized, and I will finish him."

The king agreed, and so did the people. The legend says that fifteen thousand men were baptized that day, not counting the women and the children, and that the dragon was killed and dragged outside the walls by a line of ox carts. On that spot the king had a church built, and out of the church came a spring of water that healed the sick. When the king tried to load the soldier with presents, George asked that the money be shared out among the poor. Before he rode off, he left the king four plain pieces of advice: care for the churches, respect the priests, go to Mass attentively, and have compassion on people in need.

Where That Story Came From

That is the legend, and it is worth knowing that it is a legend. Nobody told any of it in the first centuries of Christianity. The dragon story turns up in a famous book of the Middle Ages, the Golden Legend, gathered together around the year 1260 — almost a thousand years after George died. The Church has never said that the dragon existed.

Why, then, did the whole world love that story so much? Perhaps because a dragon is a way of drawing something that will not fit into a photograph. Everyone knows a big fear, the kind that lives close by and leaves a whole town silent. The legend gave that fear scales and foul breath and a lake, and it showed one man with no army at all who did not run. Underneath the scales lies the true story — and it is braver still.

The Real Man

Historians know little about the George of flesh and blood, but they know what matters. There was a martyr named George who died for Christ at Lydda, a town in Palestine that is called Lod today. Very early on, Christians began traveling to his tomb to pray, and before long there were churches bearing his name all over the East. People simply called him the great martyr.

The rest reached us through tradition. George is said to have been born into a Christian family and to have become a soldier in the Roman army: a strong young man, well born, with his future already settled. In the year 303 the emperor Diocletian ordered the churches closed and the holy books burned, and soon afterwards everyone was made to offer incense before the images of the gods of Rome. Those who obeyed kept their rank and their life. Those who refused lost everything.

Tradition says that George walked into the public square, in front of everybody, and declared aloud that he was a Christian and would offer incense to no idol. They offered him money, high positions and the emperor's friendship. He thanked them, refused, and did not go back on it. He was arrested, ill-treated for days, and at last put to death by the sword, on a twenty-third of April.

Notice that there is no lake here, and no lance, and no white horse. There is a young man standing alone in a crowded square, saying no to an emperor who ruled the known world. The old documents did not even keep the emperor's name for certain, or the words George spoke. Around the year 495 a decree attributed to a pope named Gelasius carried a beautiful line about saints like him: they are men whose names are rightly honoured among us, but whose deeds are known to God alone.

The Saint the World Adopted

Over the centuries George's name crossed the seas. Pilgrims and soldiers carried the devotion from the East into Europe, and today he is the patron of England, of Portugal, of Georgia, of Catalonia and of Ethiopia, among many other places.

In Brazil, and most especially in Rio de Janeiro, Saint George is one of the best-loved saints there is. Many people call him the warrior saint. On April 23 the churches of Rio open before dawn and stay full all day, with Masses, a procession and a queue along the pavement; since 2008 the date has been a public holiday across the whole state. People arrive carrying flowers, they leave with a little picture in their pocket, and bands play at the church door until the sun goes down.

The Everyday Dragon

In the end, the legend and the life meet each other. The George of the Golden Legend faced a monster covered in scales to save a princess. The real George faced something far harder to draw: the wish to say yes, just to be left in peace.

His armor did not shine, and his lance was one small word, spoken calmly in front of powerful people. Perhaps that is why the world had to invent a dragon for him. It was the only way to show, in a single picture, how big that courage was.