Saint George's Head

Author(s): Kenneth M. Setton

Source: Speculum , Jan., 1973, Vol. 48, No. 1 (Jan., 1973), pp. 1-12
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Medieval Academy of
America

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2856266

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 A JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL STUDIES

Vol. XLVIII JANUARY 1973 No. 1

SAINT GEORGE'S HEAD*

By KENNETH M. SETTON

WHEN discussing my remarks for this occasion, the executive secretary of the
Academy asked me to mix some measure of personal reminiscence with whatever
scholarly effort I might have in mind. It is always pleasant to be asked to do
something that you would like to do anyway, but whenever the first person ap-
pears in the following narrative, I want you to remember that I am doing what
he requested. History is a fascinating subject. We pursue it because we cannot do
otherwise. We are impelled by curiosity, which sometimes leads us into strange
byways.
Among the colorful eccentrics who move in and out of the life of David Copper-
field, and throw his own personality into the shade, is one Mr Richard Babley,
always known as Mr Dick, who was beset by the constant and disturbing vision
of King Charles I. Mr Dick believed that in one way or another he had himself
managed to inherit some of King Charles's troubles, although he was never sure
exactly what they were. Mr Dick had some difficulty recalling the precise date of
the king's execution, but he was dismally aware that his Majesty had lost his
head. On one occasion, being reminded that the date was 1649, Mr Dick ques-
tioned David Copperfield further, and of course Charles Dickens has Master
Copperfield himself recount the conversation:
". . . Do you get that date out of history?"
"Yes, sir."
"I suppose history never lies, does it?" said Mr Dick, with a gleam of hope.
"O dear, no, sir!" I replied, most decisively. I was ingenuous and young, and I
thought so.
"I can't make it out," said Mr Dick, shaking his head. "There's something wrong,
somewhere.... The mistake was made of putting some of the trouble out of King
Charles's head into my head...."

Mr Dick's disquietude over "King Charles's head" has become proverbial in

English to denote an odd obsession. My own difficulty has lain less with the

* This paper was given as the presidential address after the annual dinner of the Mediaeval
Academy on 15 April 1972 at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles.

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 2 Saint George's Head

English monarch than with the English patron, St George, allegedly of Lydda in
Palestine. In fact, if you can believe it, I was for someyears troubled about what
had happened to St George's head - until I found it last year, as will become
clear by the end of this paper. I am not, however, concerned with the scholarly
(and controverted) problem of the first appearance, either in art or in literature,
of the legend of St George's slaying the dragon and thus rescuing a beautiful
princess. Although the legend could ultimately go back to Perseus, who freed
Andromeda from the serpent, or to Isis's son Horus, the hawk-faced Egyptian
god, who slew the terrible Set Typhon, the late J. B. Aufhauser claimed that the
legend of St George as a dragon-slayer first appears in Byzantine and European
art and literature of the twelfth century, and allegedly has no antecedents in
Syrian, Arabic, and Coptic hagiographic texts.' But Aufhauser puts the beginning
of the legend too late,2 for a clearly identified St George slays a dragon in the
chapel of St Barbara at Soganli (in Cappadocia) where the ensemble of wall
paintings is dated by a commemorative inscription of 5 May 1006 (or possibly
1021).3 Although St Theodore was slaying dragons long before St George, I think
it only proper to note that the latter was also engaged in this meritorious under-
taking by the end of the first millennium. At least ninety-four mural paintings of
St George have been identified on the walls of village churches in England, and
many more than this have doubtless succumbed to time, dampness, and white-
wash. Most of these paintings were done in the fifteenth century (but one is appar-
ently as early as 1135), and the slaying of the dragon is much the most popular

1 Cf. Joh. B. Aufhauser, Das Drachenwunder des hl. Georg in der griechischen und lateinischen
(berlieferung, Leipzig, 1911, pp. 169-70, 237-46, and Hippolyte Delehaye, Les L4gendes grecques des
saints militaires, Paris, 1909, pp. 115-17, who insists, however, that the Horus myth (as depicted, for
example, in a famous fourth- or fifth-century bas-relief in the Louvre, which shows Horus slaying Set,
who is represented as a crocodile) has nothing at all to do with the (late) legend of St George as the
dragon-slayer. In the seventeenth century the great Bollandist hagiographer Daniel Papebroch had
already anticipated Aufhauser's contention that this legend was not older than the twelfth century,
"Quandonam ea [fabula de dracone dicta] primum coeperit scriptis tradi, difficile est indagando
assequi: Ante annum millesimum centesimum, nihil eius fuisse in Europa scitum, probat scriptorum
omnium antiquiorum silentium" (Acta Sanctorum, Aprilis tom. iII [1675, repr. Paris and Rome,
18661, p. 106A).
2 Josef Myslivec, "Svati Jiri ve vfchodokfesfanskem umeni" (St George in East-Christian Art),
Byzantinoslavica v (1933-34), 357, 373-74 (in Czech, with French summary), puts the legend too
early, calling attention to an apparently non-existent bas-relief of St George slaying the dragon on
the north wall of the Armenian church of Aght'amar, which was probably built between 915 and 921
on an island in the south of Lake Van. Actually St Theodore slays the dragon at Aght'amar while
"St George is shown trampling a man who in some monuments is designated as the Emperor Dio-
cletian" [or the Persian king Dadianus] (Sirarpie Der Nersessian, Aght'amar, Church of the Holy
Cross, Cambridge, Mass., 1965, p. 24 and plates 49-50, where however St George is not shown, and cf.
Arme'nag Sakisian, Pages d'art arm6nien, Paris, 1940, pp. 55 if.). Miss Der Nersessian provides, in
her notes, a good deal of bibliography which is not repeated in this paper.
3 Guillaume de Jerphanion, Les Eglises rupestres de Cappadoce, 2 vols. of text, 3 albums of plates,
Paris, 1925-42, II-I (1936), pp. 311, 322 and note 4; II-2 (1942), p. 390; plates 187, no. 2, and 189,
no. 2. The inscription is dated 5 May of the fourth indiction during the joint reign of Constantine VIII
and Basil II. The year is given, but partially obliterated; it must be either 1006 or 1021; Fr Jer-
phanion prefers the earlier date. Cf. also Marcell Restle, Byzantine Wall Painting in Asia Minor,
trans. Irene R. Gibbons, 1 vol. of text, 2 vols. of plates, Recklinghausen, 1967, i, 160-61.

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 Saint George's Head 3

theme.4 But as the art historian's interest in St George has grown through the
years, that of the liturgist seems to have declined, and although his feast day has
been retained in the liturgical calendar, its celebration has been reduced to a local
and optional observance.
With the growth of the dragon legend St George became a romantic figure,
patron not only of England, but also of Catalonia, Aragon, and Portugal, and
protector of more than a hundred Italian cities. My attention will be fastened
upon St George in connection with Aragon-Catalonia, but of course his slaying of
the dragon exercised an immense influence on both Byzantine and Italian Renais-
sance art. The theme has received its finest expression (has it not?) in Pisanello's
fresco in the Church of St Anastasia in Verona, in Donatello's marvelous statue
in the Bargello in Florence, and in Carpaccio's paintings in the Scuola di S.
Giorgio degli Schiavoni in Venice. Although the norms of female beauty may
change from one generation to the next, I think the princess whom St George
rescues in Pisanello's fresco is one of the handsomest female figures painted by
any artist during the Quattrocento.
Although it is not clear why the amiable Mr Dick's uncertain mind got so
befuddled over "King Charles's head," I can explain my interest in St George's
head, for I dealt with the precious relic in a book called the Catalan Domination of
Athens, which the Mediaeval Academy published almost twenty-five years ago.
Two years ago I returned to this subject in a book on The Catalans in Greece,
which will soon appear in Catalan and Castilian (under the imprint of Ayma S. A.
Editora in Barcelona). Once again, therefore, I encountered St George's head,
and this time I could use the full texts now available in Antoni Rubio i Lluch's
Diplomatari de l'Orient catala, to which I would add tonight an unpublished docu-
ment of singular interest from the Venetian Archives. But my treatment of the
relic was still necessarily rather sparse, and so I am taking this opportunity to
enroll you all in the knightly order of those who are interested - by this time I
hope you are interested - in St George's head. At the beginning of the 1380's,
when the Order of St George was established at Livadia in central Greece, King
Pedro IV of Aragon provided that its members, all nobles, should wear a white
mantle with a red cross. But you will need no such colorful garb as we enter the
precinct of the past, in search not of the holy grail but of an historic relic, which
still exists.
But you do need to know something, as I am sure most of you do, about the
history of the Catalan Grand Company. In the employ of the Byzantine govern-
ment from 1303 to 1305, this Company of Catalan and Aragonese mercenaries
fought the Turks in Asia Minor for a while, and then after a series of extraordi-
nary adventures entered the service, in 1310, of Walter I of Brienne, the last
French duke of Athens. The lordship and duchy of Athens was of course one of the
states founded more than a century before by the Fourth Crusaders. When
Walter of Brienne failed to pay the Catalan Company, they fell out with him,
and their differences soon led to Walter's defeat and death on the battlefield of
4 Ethel C. Williams, "Mural Paintings of St. George in England," Journal of the British Archaeo-
logical Association, 3rd ser., XII (1949), 19-36, lists and locates the ninety-four paintings.

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 4 Saint George's Head

the Cephissus on Monday, 15 March 1311. Five days before disaster overtook
him, however, Walter was mustering his forces near the castle town of Zeitounion,
the modern Lamia, where he made out his will, leaving 100 hyperperi to the
Church of St George of Livadia (a Seint Jourge de la Levadie, cent parpres).5
Livadia is on the road from Thebes to Delphi. At this time the head, which I have
been seeking, was certainly the chief relic in Livadia, where I assume it had been
kept since at least the Fourth Crusade. The Grand Company acquired it with
the conquest of east central Greece in 1311, and the relic figures prominently in
the documents even after the Catalan loss of Athens in 1388, Neopatras (Hypate)
in 1394, and the island of Aegina in 1451.
Being a soldier himself, and indeed a mounted knight, St George had a great
appeal for the crusaders. Along with his fellows, Sts Mercurius and Demetrius,
he helped save Antioch on 28 June 1098 from Kerbogha, the Turkish governor of
Mosul, during the most critical juncture of the First Crusade.6 Very likely he
assisted the crusaders again a year later in the easy occupation of Ramla and
Lydda, and they restored his church at Lydda after the Moslems burned it down
as they abandoned the site at the approach of Robert of Flanders.7 But as for the
head of St George in the church at Livadia, to which Walter of Brienne left 100
hyperperi, I do not know whether it first came from the Holy Land or from
Constantinople,8 where the warrior saint was much revered, or whether it was
suddenly brought to light by some medieval miracle in Livadia itself. If one
hoped to find some reference to Livadia in the Greek and Latin texts of the
Miracula S. Georgii, so carefully edited for us by Aufhauser,9 he would be dis-
appointed. Although these texts are by and large rather late, and there are many
edifying tales to be found in them, they shed no light upon the miracles which the

I For the text of Walter of Brienne's will see Henri d'Arbois de Jubainville, Voyage pal 6ographique
dans le d6partement de l'Aube, Troyes and Paris, 1855, append., no. II, pp. 336-37, and cf. Gabriel
Millet, Le Monast0re de Daphni, Paris, 1899, p. 39, note. Walter also left 200 hyperperi to Our Lady
of Athens (i.e. to the Parthenon, the cathedral church of Athens) and 200 to the Franciscans in
Athens; 200 to Our Lady of Thebes, 200 to the Dominicans, and another 200 to the Franciscans of
Thebes; 200 to Our Lady of Negroponte (Chalcis, in Euboea); 200 to the Great Church of Corinth,
200 to Argos, and 200 to Daulia; but only 100 to the church of Boudonitza, as to that of St George of
Livadia.
6 Louis Brehier, ed., Histoire anonyme de la premiere croisade [Gesta Francorum et aliorum Eieros
limitanorum], Paris, 1924, chap. 29, p. 154. Peter Tudebode, who like the anonymous author of the
Gesta accompanied the First Crusaders, tells the same story, substituting St Theodore for St Mer-
curius (Eistoria de Hierosolymitano itinere, xi, 8, in the Recueil des historiens des croisades, Eistoriens
occidentaux, III [Paris, 1866, repr. 1967], 81), but neither Raymond of Aguilers, who was also present
at the battle of Antioch, nor Albert of Aachen mentions any such celestial vision.
7 Cf. William of Tyre, vii, 22, and Acta Sanctorum, Aprilis tom. In, pp. 110-11; Gesta Francorum,
chap. 36, ed. Brehier, p. 192, and Tudebode, Iter Hierosolymitanum, xiii, 13, REC, Mist. occ., III, 102;
Hippolyte Delehaye, Les Legendes grecques des saints militaires, pp. 46-47.
8 According to Antony of Novgorod, who visited Constantinople about 1200, the upper part of the
saint's head was then preserved in the monastery of St George of Mangana, east of the Seraglio
Palace (Count Paul Riant, Exuviae sacrae constantinopolitanae, 2 vols., Geneva, 1877-78, II, 225, and
cf. I, 40, and II, 28, 29), but St George appears to have had more than one head (cf. in general Acta
Sanctorum, Aprilis tom. III, pp. 115-19).
9 J. B. Aufhauser, Miracula S. Georgii, Leipzig: Teubner, 1913.

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 Saint George's Head 5

sacred relic of St George was undoubtedly producing at Livadia, in the heart of

the Catalan duchy of Athens, before the middle of the fourteenth century, for by
this time the fame of the relic had spread from Greece to faraway Catalonia and
Aragon.
A century ago Count Paul Riant dilated on the "enthusiastic cult of relics" in
the middle ages. Relics had a great religious value in themselves, and bestowed
protection and prestige upon their possessors. They attracted pilgrims to certain
centers, where the pious spent their money. Relics were important in both public
and private life, and (as Riant says) the proofs of their importance may be read
on almost every page of the ecclesiastical history of medieval Europe.10 The head
of St George at Livadia figures in more than a score of Catalan documents issuing
from the royal chancery between 1354 and 1409, and from these documents we
can easily perceive how important this relic was to three kings of Aragon-
Catalonia. These texts also give us a peculiar insight into the mentality of the age.
Although there were one or two other well authenticated heads of St George,
the first references to our relic occur in a series of letters dated 1 and 5 December
1354, which King Pedro IV of Aragon sent to Ramon Bernat de Sarbou, vicar
general of the duchies of Athens and Neopatras; Roger de Lluria, marshal of the
Catalan Company in Greece; Michael Oller, a prominent ecclesiastic and dean
of the Latin cathedral of Thebes; Blasco de Alagona, grand justiciar of the king-
dom of Sicily; Orlando of Aragon, a bastard son of the late King Frederick II of
Sicily (d. 1337); and others who might be giving advice to Frederick of Aragon-
Randazzo, then the Catalan-Sicilian duke of Athens and Neopatras (1348-1355).
Don Pedro also wrote to the aldermen and syndics of the Catalan municipalities
in Greece. In every letter he expressed his ardent desire to obtain possession of
St George's head, which was then preserved in the castle of Livadia.1"
On 17 March 1355, letters accrediting one Francisco Colomer, a member of
Don Pedro's household, were sent to various notables in Sicily and in Greece, and
Colomer's instructions were to go to Sicily and thence to Greece, where (hope-
fully) he might secure the head of St George, for which his Majesty intended to
build a monastery somewhere in his domains. If the Catalan authorities in Sicily
and their compatriots in Greece would relinquish the head, Don Pedro would use
all his influence in Avignon to have the interdict lifted from the Athenian duchy,
for the Company had with occasional remissions labored under the ban of the
Church ever since their first occupation of Boeotia and Attica. He would also
try to include the Company in any peace or truce which he made with the
Venetians.12 Although the Athenian duchy was an appanage of the independent
kingdom of Sicily, Don Pedro regarded his countrymen everywhere as his loyal

10 Riant, Exuviae, i, pp. 2viii if.

11 A. Rubio i Lluch, ed., Diplomatari de l'Orient catala (1301-1409), Barcelona, 1947 [hereafter
abbreviated as Dipl.], does. ccxiv-ccxvII, pp. 293-95, dated at Alghero (in Catalan Sardinia) on I
and 5 December 1354.
12 Dipl., docs. ccxvIII-ccxxi, pp. 295-97, dated at Cagliari (in Catalan Sardinia) on 17 March
1355, Colomer's mission being "'que 1 dit senyor [the king of Aragon-Catalonia] haie la testa del
benayrat Sent Jordi a la avocacio del qual el enten hedificar monastir en sa terra. . ." (p. 297).

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 6 Saint George's Head

subjects (naturals nostres), and he clearly saw nothing amiss in asking the
Catalans in Greece to give up the renowned relic for the benefit of their home-
land.
They did not do so, however, and almost twenty years later (on 18 August
1374) we find King Frederick III of Sicily, who was also duke of Athens and
Neopatras, seeking to appoint a cleric of Catania to the church of St George of
Livadia, which Frederick claimed as a living within the royal right of collation.'3
The king's letter contains no mention of St George's head, which was probably
kept for greater security in the castle rather than in the church at Livadia.
Frederick III died in July 1377, and two years later amid confusion in Sicily and
Greece the duchies of Athens and Neopatras passed directly under the Crown
of Aragon.
Don Pedro IV was still alive, and acquisition of the ducal fiefs probably re-
vived his ambition to get hold of the elusive relic at Livadia. The old king was
taking a great interest in the Aragonese-Catalan military Order of St George
(la empresa nostra de sent Jordi), to which in May 1381 he appointed three of the
chief Catalan nobles in Greece, directing the then vicar general to give each of
the new cavallers the white mantle with the red cross, "which we and the nobles
and knights who are [enrolled] in the said Order wear every Saturday and on St
George's day [23 April]." The vicar was to receive the fealty and homage of the
new knights in the king's name, according to the statutes of the Order, and the
king even sent the vicar the white material to make the mantles so that the
Graeco-Catalan knights might wear exactly the same garb as their fellows in
Aragon-Catalonia.14
A year later, in May 1382, Don Pedro IV was asked to establish a detachment
of the Order in the castle of Livadia, which he was pleased to do "inasmuch as
the head of the said saint is there, and it is a notable relic."'"5 One might well
assume that under the circumstances he would renew his efforts to get possession
of the "notable relic," for the Catalan states in Greece were tottering, and would
soon fall. Navarrese mercenaries seized Thebes in the spring of 1379, and the
Florentine adventurer Nerio Acciajuoli took Athens in early May 1388. But the
sources provide us with no further word of the relic until 1393, some six years
after the death of Don Pedro (on 5 January 1387), when St George reared his
head again during the reign of Pedro's humanist son, King John I, who was
stirred into unaccustomed activity by what he thought was the chance at long
last to bring the coveted cranium to Catalonia.
On 13 April 1393 Don John wrote the governor of Sardinia to acknowledge a

13 Dipl., doc. cccxIIvI, p. 435.

14 Dipl., does. CDXCIV-CDXCVI, pp. 551-52, dated at Saragossa on 18, 20, and 22 May 1381.
15 Dipl., doc. DXII, p. 563, dated at Valencia on 9 May 1382: ". .. nos sia estat suplicat que
guessem ordenar que n lo dit castell fos ordre de eavalleria de sent Jordi per tal com hi es lo cap del
dit sant qui es notable reliquia, volem e ns plau que ns certifiquets quins eavallers hi poriem ordenar
ne quina renda les poriem asignar e fets nos saber vostre enteniment." Don Pedro wanted further
information from his vicar general in Greece as to what stock of knighthood he could rely on in the
duchies overseas.

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 Saint George's Head 7

dispatch which the latter had just sent him. The governor had learned from
the skipper of a ship on its return voyage from the Athenian duchy that a Gascon
soldier of fortune, Bertranet Mota de Salahia, "who is one of the chief captains in
the said duchy," had recently taken the city of Livadia, where he had found the
head of St George. Since Bertranet was a great friend of the Catalan-Sicilian
magnate Guillermo Ramon de Moncada, son of a former vicar general of the
Greek duchies, it might be possible to get the head with his assistance and that
of John's brother Martin, who later succeeded him as king of Aragon. Martin
was the father of the then titular duke of Athens and Neopatras (1391-1394),
also named Martin, who had married the heiress to the kingdom of Sicily. The
consent, if not the assistance, of both Martins was doubtless considered neces-
sary to secure the relic, and so John wrote his brother (also on 13 April), explain-
ing the situation to him and stating that Bertranet Mota wanted to sell the
relic, "to which we have a very great devotion, as you know well," to King
Richard II of England. John asked his brother to have Guillermo Ramon write
to Bertranet and make every possible effort to see "that the head should come
into our possession and not that of any other prince." In another letter of the
same date John appealed directly to Guillermo Ramon for his help,16 but it was
all in vain, for John never got St George's head, nor (for that matter) did King
Richard II, for whom the relic would have been a glorious addition to the chapel
of the Order of the Garter at Windsor. After all, St George was also patron of the
English Order, which Richard's grandfather had founded almost half a century
before.
When King John I died in May 1395, Catalan rule in continental Greece had
already been stamped out by the Navarrese, the Florentines, and of course the
Turks. But about the same time a Catalan noble named Alioto (Aliot) de Cau-
pena acquired the island of Aegina, whether by marriage or otherwise,'7 and
(what is more) somehow or other he also acquired the head of St George,
presumably from Bertranet Mota. Thus on 21 December 1399 King Martin I
of Aragon wrote his son Martin, the king of Sicily, that he had learned Alioto
had "the head of the blessed martyr and knight of Jesus Christ, my lord St
George ... , head, patron, and intercessor of our house." The letter has a fami-
liar ring. Since one John Poyllo, apparently a Sicilian subject or a vassal of the
younger Martin, was a great friend of Alioto, the Aragonese king wanted his son
to send Poyllo immediately to the island of Aegina to get hold of the sacred relic.
Martin I also wrote to Alioto on the same day, requesting the relic and informing
him that he was sending John Poyllo to receive it, and got a letter off to Poyllo
with full instructions as to his procedure.18
If John Poyllo ever got to Greece, he failed to get the head of St George from
his friend Alioto de Caupena, the Catalan lord of Aegina. Some months later a

16 Dipl., docs. DCXXXVII-DCXXXIX, pp. 666-68.

17 Cf. Chas. Hopf, Chroniques greco-romanes in4dites ou peu connues, Berlin, 1873, pp. 474, 475,
with whom R. J. Loenertz, "Athenes et Neopatras: Regestes et notices pour servir 'a 'histoire des
duches catalans (1311-1394)," Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum, xxv (1955), 178, 180, takes issue.
18 Dipl., does. DCLIII-DCLV, pp. 680-83, dated at Saragossa on 21 December 1399.

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 8 Saint George's Head

report reached King Martin I that the relic was in Paris, for when in the course
of his European travels the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus arrived at
the French capital in early June 1400, three members of his suite, a bishop and
two other religious, were said to have brought the head of St George with them.
Word was promptly sent to Don Martin that they would be willing to part with
their treasure for a suitable consideration, but the king was doubtful about the
matter, because he had heard that Bertranet Mota had either given up the head
to the Emperor Manuel or pawned it to the Venetians. Martin asked his in-
formant to be sure that the bishop and his two companions actually had the relic
before he accepted the informant's offer to negotiate on his behalf for its ac-
quisition.'9 But the three Byzantines were either deceived or deceivers. They
did not have the true relic, for on 27 February 1402 Don Martin wrote again to
Alioto de Caupena that he knew the head of St George was on the island of
Aegina, and he beseeched Alioto to send it by some trustworthy person to Cata-
lonia, and to be assured that his Majesty would more than amply reward him
for his compliance.20 Alioto kept the head.
About seven years later, however, in June 1409 Don Martin entertained high
hopes of getting the relic when Alioto apparently contemplated a voyage to
Catalonia, and sent his nephew Arnau Guillem ahead with a letter to the king.
Arnau described the relic of St George and certain other relics which Alioto also
had on the island of Aegina, whetting his Majesty's ambition to possess them.
It is no wonder, therefore, that Don Martin wrote Alioto a cordial letter on 26
June, assuring him of an enthusiastic welcome at the Catalan court, "e haurem
singular plaer que ns aportets lo cap de mossen Sant Jordi e les altres reliquies.'
Very likely Alioto never made the intended visit to Catalonia, and in any event
Martin never got the relic which his father had first tried to obtain sixty-five
years before.
Don Martin was not the last Aragonese monarch, however, who sought to
obtain the Aeginetan trophy if we can believe a report gathered by the Bol-
landists in the Acta Sanctorum. It relates to a miracle, and requires some be-
lieving. Alfonso V the Magnanimous, king of Aragon, Sicily, and finally Naples,
knowing of the treasure at Aegina, nurtured the same desire as his predecessors
to possess it. Preferring to employ tact and money rather than force, Alfonso
nevertheless sent a pirate named Bernard of Villamarina to the island. The latter
explained his mission to the frightened islanders, who yielded to what the
Greeks call 7rELcLavayK2, or force under the guise of persuasion. They surrendered
St George's head, accepting (I assume) the king's money, and the pirate carefully
stowed the relic away aboard his galley. He had hardly started the voyage west-
ward, however, when he ran into a sudden tempest, which snatched the light of
day from his crewmen in a foreboding fall of darkness. As death seemed to be
descending upon them, they turned for safety to St George's head. It was gone!

19 Dipl., doc. DCLVI, pp. 683-84, dated 28 July 1400.

20 Dipl., doc. DCLXIX, p. 693.
21 Dipl., doc. DCXCVIII, p. 720.

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 Saint George's Head 9

But Bernard of Villamarina and his crew managed somehow to set their sails for
Aegina, and reaching the shore safely, they told the islanders what had hap-
pened. As apprehension gave way to amazement, they all went to the place where
the caput sanctissimum was kept. And need you be told that it had been miracu-
lously returned to its accustomed place. St George had no intention of leaving
Aegina, not yet anyhow, nor of allowing a price to be put on his head. Also he
did not like pirates, as was clear to Bernard of Villamarina, who sailed off with
empty hands, and with prayers to St George for calmer seas and forgiveness for
his insolent temerity. Obviously, as is stated in our account, profane hands should
never touch sacred relics.22
The Caupena family, which possessed the head of St George, held the island
of Aegina and the mainland stronghold of Piada in the Argolid, just northwest
of Epidaurus, throughout the first half of the fifteenth century, the last frag-
ments of Catalan dominion in Greece. In 1425 the Caupenas requested and re-
ceived Venetian protection, proposing that if their house should die out, Aegina,
Piada, and their other possessions should pass into Venetian hands. In The
Catalans in Greece I have tried to trace the fortunes of the family from the
Deliberazioni Mar in the Venetian Archives. In 1451 Antonello de Caupena,
the lord of Aegina, died without direct heirs. For years he had been at odds with
his uncle Arnau, whom he had driven from the island. By his last will and test-
ament Antonello left Aegina to Venice, disregarding the claims of his uncle, and
the Venetian Senate accepted the bequest for fear that the island might pass into
hostile hands.23
The Venetians were great collectors of relics, but it seems to have taken them
a decade to learn that such a treasure as St George's head lay within their easy
grasp. According to an unpublished senatorial record of 20 August 1462, how-
ever, "As we have recently been informed, the head of the blessed martyr George
is preserved on the island of Aegina, and everyone readily understands how much
veneration is due this relic, and that it would be appropriate to our respect for
God and our religion to take pains to secure this relic .... . The Senate therefore
passed a motion directing the capitaneus maris, if he was going to Negroponte
and Aegina, or (if he was not) some other officer going into the Aegean, to take
possession of the relic by all prudent means and quite without violence. The
relic was to be sent to Venice and placed in the Benedictine abbey of S. Giorgio
Maggiore, on an island smaller than Aegina. Since it is obviously hard to tell the
skull of a saint (even from that of a sot), the captain must take care not to be
deceived.24 And so the relic of St George finally left Greece and came not to

22 Acta Sanctorum, Aprilis tom. iII, p. 134.

23 Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Mar, Reg. 4, fol. 80v.
24 Mar 7, fol. 79v, dated 20 August 1462: "Quemadmodum nuper nobis relatum est, in insula
Legene reconditum est caput Beati Georgii martiris que quidem reliquwa quanta veneratione digna
sit facile quisque intelligit eonveniatque honori Dei et religioni nostre operam dare habendi reliquiam
istam propterea: Vadit pars quod de re ista scribatur capitaneo nostro maris quod si conti[nlget eum
versus Nigropontem et insulam ipsius Legene se conferre operam dare debeat per omnes illos utiles
et bonos modos qui sue prudentie videbuntur habendi ipsam reliquiam ut conduci possit hue Venetias

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 10 Saint George's Head

Barcelona but to Venice, where on 13 December 1462 it was solemnly received

at the abbey of S. Giorgio Maggiore, and placed in a beautiful chapel.25
Almost everything on the island of S. Giorgio has changed since that December
day in 1462 when a flotilla of eight Venetian vessels arrived at the abbey after a
voyage of twenty-two days from Aegina. The blare of trumpets which marked
their appearance frightened the Benedictines, who gathered on the shore with
their abbot to find out what was happening. Their fear was transformed into joy
when they realized that the sacred relic had finally arrived, tanto gratius, quanto
insperatius, and they received it with all due honor and reverence.26 Although
the Benedictines were first established on the cypress-clad island of S. Giorgio
toward the end of the tenth century, the existing complex of abbatial buildings
is the work of Andrea Palladio in the sixteenth century and of Baldassare Lon-
ghena in the seventeenth.
It was a rich era, artistically, but Napoleon sold the Venetians down the river
Brenta, so to speak, in the treaty of Campo Formio in October 1797, and the
Serene Republic ceased to exist. The Italian states were falling apart, the Holy
See among them. S. Giorgio Maggiore was the scene of Cardinal Barnaba Chiara-
monti's election as Pope Pius VII in March 1800, but the abbey was suppressed a
half dozen years later. Manuscripts and works of art were scattered, and in
1851, during the Austrian domination of the Veneto, the abbatial buildings were
converted into a provincial artillery headquarters. S. Giorgio reached the nadir of
desecration and destruction. Barracks were installed in the "long sleeve" (manica
lunga) of dormitories. Horses were stabled here, a kitchen mess put there; build-
ings were altered; filth and rubbish accumulated. But a generation ago Count
Vittorio Cini rescued the island and its buildings from the shameful desuetude
into which they had fallen. The splendor that Palladio and Longhena gave the
site has been restored. Various social and cultural institutions have been estab-
lished on the island, and are thriving, the most notable being the Fondazione
Cini, whose activities are well known to you. The Benedictines have of course
long since returned to S. Giorgio, but their ranks are thinning, and last spring
[May 1971] there were only nineteen of them to conduct the services, attend to
tourists, and perform scores of daily tasks.
As I wondered, over the years, at the changes taking place on the island of
S. Giorgio, I wondered also about the fate of the relic which the kings of Aragon
had been so anxious to acquire. Had it survived the spoliation of the abbey dur-
ing the first two decades of the nineteenth century? The incredible rebirth of the

et dari ac collocari in monasterio Sancti Georgii Maioris sicut digne mereatur. Et si non esset ac-
cessurus ad illas partes, hoc ipsum mandatum facere debeat illis galeis nostris que ad loca ipsa se
conferrent: declaretur tamen ipsi capitaneo quod persuasionibus et bonis modis studeat habere
reliquiam predictam: per vim vero nihil tentare debeat, advertendo etiam quod in habendo reliquiam
ipsam non decipiatur. De parte 128, de non 0, non sinceri 3."
25 Acta Sanctorum, Aprilis tom. iii, pp. 133-34, an imaginative and somewhat inaccurate account,
and cf. Stefano Magno, Annali veneti, ad ann. 1462, in Charles Hopf, Chroniques greco-romanes,
Berlin, 1873, p. 202.
26 Acta Sanctorum, Aprilis tom. iII, p. 134CD.

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 Saint George's Head 11

island in our time is probably the most remarkable, and certainly the most
verifiable, of all St George's miracles. In the early 1950's, shortly after the
publication of Catalan Athens, I tried to learn whether the famous head was still
preserved at the abbey. I made inquiries of three monks whom I found conversing
before (of all places) an altar dedicated to St George. They had never heard of
St George's head. I read all the inscriptions I could find in the church, but none
of them gave any indication of the present repository of the relic. One of the
monks suggested that, if the monastery had ever possessed the relic I described,
it had probably got lost long ago. I tried again in 1959 and in 1961, half-heartedly
I must admit, because I had lost hope of finding the head, which was becoming
something of an obsession, like King Charles's head.
Once more in May 1971, however, to my wife's amusement, I returned to the
quest, and she came with me. Once more I asked several monks about St George's
head, but one after the other they knew nothing about it. This time, however, I
persisted. Did they have a collection of relics? They did. Was there a custos
reliquiarum? They decided there was, and directed us to Don Tarcisio Panizzolo,
a most obliging and amiable young man, who was quite willing to show us the
relics. He produced a set of keys, and invited us to follow him. We went through
halls and up stairs, and finally reached an upper chapel called the "hall of the
conclave" since it was the scene of the papal election of 1800. To the left of the
altar was a large locked closet. The shelves were full of relics. Over the altar,
incidentally, hung a painting by Carpaccio of St George slaying the dragon, a
replica of the one in the Scuola degli Schiavoni.
Don Tarcisio brought out a relic of St George, a porous-looking piece of bone
the size of a handball. I was not enough of an anatomist to identify it, but I
knew it was no part of a head. Don Tarcisio expressed courteous regret at my
disappointment. He showed us other relics, but I was only interested in St
George. There seemed to be no reliquaries of gold or silver; the precious metals
must have disappeared in the early nineteenth century. Don Tarcisio pulled
down a large gilt wooden reliquary from the right side of the top shelf; I have
forgotten what it was, but it was no part of St George. Then he noticed another
large reliquary, also of gilt wood, in the left corner of the top shelf. It was hard
to reach, and he retrieved it with difficulty; I was most grateful for his effort,
but it all seemed futile. As he lowered the reliquary, however, and its contents
came into sight, my pulse quickened. It was the top of a skull, with a gold band
encircling it. At least some gold, I thought, had escaped the marauders of the
past. There was an inscription on the band, in Greek capitals which in my haste
I took to be of the later fifteenth century. The quest had ended. The inscription
identified the relic as the cranium(q K4apa) of St George. E"pflKa! It was an exciting
moment; I forgot to copy the inscription. I told Don Tarcisio of the extraordinary
history of this relic. He wanted me to go over and tell the patriarch what I had
told him. I thought it would be better to send him photocopies of the relevant
documents, published anad unpublished, which I did in August when we had
returned home.
Don Tarcisio gave us a tour of the abbey, and we left in a satisfied but con-

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 12 Saint George's Head

templative mood, taking the vaporetto back to the Riva degli Schiavoni. We
walked through the Piazza di S.Marco, quite oblivious to the crowds gathering in
the late afternoon. This is not an era of historical romanticism; such a time will
come again; but it was strange to have rediscovered the head of St George, the
object of royal desire, and to have put it back into the reliquary of its own
history. The early hagiographers thought that St George had perished in Dio-
cletian's persecution, on the eve of the Christian victory. As we began with
Dickens, so now we may conclude with some lines from Robert Southey, which
provide an epitaph to these reflections:
He came to ask what he had found,
That was so large, and smooth,
and round....
"'Tis some poor fellow's skull,"
said he,
"Who fell in the great victory."

THE INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED STUDY

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