Saint George and the Dragon

Cult, Culture, and Foundation of the City

Pasquale Maria Morabito

University of Messina, Italy

Sacrificium civitas est.

St. Augustine, De Civitate Dei.

Super aspidem et basiliscum ambulabis,

et conculcabis leonem et draconem.
Psalm 90

T
he figure of St. George fighting the dragon is an icon in the Eastern and
Western world: the topos of the glorious and sacred image, the Saint
on horseback with shield and spear, opposite to the winged monster,
comes from ancient times and places, subject to devotion and dedication. From
Palestine to England, from the Balkans—according to the sources, George was
born in Cappadocia—to Catalonia (San Jordi), the figure of the saint defines,
morphologically, one of the most important martyrological cults in the Mediter-
ranean area. Following the insights of René Girard, which describe the violent
origins of human culture, I propose to analyze, through the traditional image of
St. George, the foundation of the “enclosed city”1 model of the Mediterranean
city during the Middle Ages, with particular reference to the sacrificial origins
Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture, Vol. 18, 2011, pp. 135–154. ISSN 1075-7201.
© Michigan State University Board of Trustees. All rights reserved.

135
136 Pasquale Maria Morabito

of living space. The term “enclosed city” refers, specifically, to the earliest insti-
tution of the Mediterranean city in the Christian sacral area. We recall, among
other things, that the culture of the people who cultivate and the civilization of
those who build the city limits are linked by common reference to the cult, and
not just etymologically. Worship, cult, and culture are, in fact, invested even in
the mythical-ritual moments of a single human being on earth, in their anthropo-
logical, historical and institutional, and political-symbolic modes. The continu-
ity between the ancient world, medieval, and the modern can be analyzed and
understood through the cults, the stories, and the legends of patron saints and
the rituals related to the different moments of the organization of the medieval
city space, and their politico-religious persistence in the modern city. From the
time of the ancient rite of moenia signare aratro, in which there was no distinction
between the ruling figure as supreme military chief, king, or priest, the first form
of a built space has defined, ambiguously, the peaceful order that, within walls,
exercises control over undifferentiated nature. With Romano Guardini, we can
see the character of an area that needs to be put into shape, connecting the physis
to nature on the one hand, and blind to the power inherent in cratos on the other.
This connects, therefore, the themes of the city and of fear as a political feel-
ing. Here culture is changing nature, and maintaining an antinomian dimension
in which culture intersects with nature. Romano Guardini’s thought allows us
to suggest a possible morphology of the city. “Pure culture would be absence
of place, artificiality, it would be the cessation of instinct, corruption of blood,
separation from the land, disease and destruction. Pure Nature, by contrast, is
opacity, servitude, lost in impulse and construction.”2

THE CITY

In Judeo-Christian tradition, the city is considered as a negative reality. The

first mention of the city that we find in the Bible is in the story of Cain and
Abel, where Cain is described as a builder of cities.3 After his crime, Cain is
presented as the ultimate wanderer who tries to mend his ties with the earth
and the human community that have been severed by his violent act.4 Instead
of being considered the place where humans reside, the city is presented as an
artificial product, made by humans to protect themselves, following a transgres-
sion that has destroyed the organic bonds of community. This view becomes
explicit in successive references to biblical cities. In the figures of the Tower of
Babel (Gen. 11:1–9) and the city of Sodom (Gen. 18–19), we have a situation
similar to the story of the Garden of Eden, in which human beings aspire to
Saint George and the Dragon 137

build their fate entirely by themselves, hence moving away from the precepts
of the Lord. Later, another city makes its appearance. This is Jerusalem, the
city of God, based not on human wisdom but on the divine promise. But even
here, in the practice of injustice, the holy city can become a prostitute, just as
in the cities of pagans, such as Babylon the Great.5 In the New Testament, the
disciples recognize Jesus as a righteous king. But Jesus himself dies thrown out
of the city (Heb. 13:12–14), and he confirms with his shocking death that he
does not belong to the Kingdom of this world. Since that time, Christians have
resided as “strangers and pilgrims” in the city of man.6 St. Augustine will clarify,
through the doctrine of two cities, the relationship between membership in
the human community and the sequela Christi: the Civitas Dei and the Civitas
homini, opposing, but not conflicting, in hoc saecula. This image of the two cit-
ies is crystallized in Rome: the Eternal City will be the expression of a conflict
between the new Babylon—home of disorder, chaos, the Antichrist—and the
new Jerusalem, the Universal Church, the heaven, the patria beata. From Book
X of De Civitate Dei we can trace a genealogy of the city. From Cain and Abel
to the martyr, the mediator and life-giver of the urban medieval center, the city
is ordered from the new places of worship. Peter Brown writes: “The Christian
Mediterranean and its extensions to the east and northwest came to be dotted
with clearly indicated loci, where Heaven and Earth met. The shrine containing a
grave or, more frequently, a fragmentary relic, was very often called quite simply
‘the place,’ loca sanctorum, ό τόπος.”7 Thus, the transition from pagan to Christian
worship is dedicated to adaptation to local conditions. In particular, for urban
areas, we can speak about a “mythical-ritual graft” of Christian foundation upon
the pagan; of a “political appropriation” of the extra-urban areas characterized
by religious superstition, of a “process of acculturation” that includes a number
of intermediate stages, which last for centuries and are marked by more than
a simple confrontation with paganism, by nothing less than a demystification
through evangelization.

ICON

The cycle of Carpaccio at the Scuola di San Giorgio agli Schiavoni in Venice, a
massive production of paintings and images, is the occasion for a reflection on
the anthropological and theological-political figure of the Holy Knight in battle
with the dragon, and on the foundations of ritual, political, and cultural space.
The series of paintings—made between 1502 and 1507—includes, in
addition to the well-known panel, St. George Killing the Dragon (figure 1), The
138 Pasquale Maria Morabito

Triumph of St. George (figure 2), The Baptism of Selenites (figure 3), The Daughter
of Emperor Gordian is Exorcised by St. Tryphon (figure 4), St. Jerome and the Lion
(figure 5), The Funeral of St. Jerome (figure 6), The Agony in the Garden (figure 7),
The Calling of St. Matthew (figure 8), and The Vision of St. Augustine (figure 9).
The story of George is directly inspired by the medieval hagiographical
texts of the martyrs, especially by the Passiones (dating from around the year
1000), the records of the Acta Sanctorum, and in particular the story of the
Legenda Aurea by Jacopo da Varagine (1293). The epic of the Holy Martyr on
horseback in the act of defeating the dragon and saving the maiden, with the
fortified town standing in the background, has been a recurring iconographic
theme since ancient times. Over time and in various places, many similari-
ties are found in the iconography of Saint Michael (beginning in Gargano, in
the south of Italy, then spreading throughout Europe), St. Mercurial (or St.
Mercurius, of oriental origin), and Saint Theodorus (as documented in the
same Acta Sanctorum); and going backward in time, the legend of St. George
recalls similar images in the Egyptian cosmogony, the solar god Horus stab-
bing a crocodile, a symbol, like the dragon devil, of the destructive energies
of chaos. This figure connected to chaos, the undifferentiated sea, appears in
many stories of origins. The dragon, the crocodile, depicting the sea monster
in the cosmogony of Phoenician origin, is the enemy, the abyss that the deity
repels during creation. The fight with the dragon, the depiction of evil, brings
us back to biblical, Egyptian, and Mesopotamian themes. This image we find,
moreover, also in Northern Europe’s sagas, as well as in Indian and Chinese
cosmologies. It is for this reason that the icon of Saint George and the Dragon
speaks about humanity, and more specifically about human culture, not just
about particular traditions and devotions, scattered randomly in various parts
of the world. The canvases of St. George and St. Tryphon are elongated, as if to
emphasize the character of the epic story that is going to be told: the first “step”
of reading is described.

VIOLENT FOUNDATION

The desolate landscape, symbolizing a space uncultivated, undifferentiated,

marks the morphology of an intra and extra Moenia, a determinatio negatio, in
Baruch Spinoza’s definition.8 This is the work of man on himself, this slow dres-
sage described by Nietzsche in Zur Genealogie der Moral: the founding of the
city, its places, its lines, its boundaries and walls are bearers of meaning. It is a
defined space, determined by dialectical oppositions: inside-out, order-chaos,
 ART RESOURCE, NEW YORK, NEW YORK

Figure 1. Vittore Carpaccio, St. George Killing the Dragon, Scuola di San Giorgio agli Schiavoni, Venice.
139
 140
ART RESOURCE, NEW YORK, NEW YORK

Figure 2. Vittore Carpaccio, The Triumph of St. George, Scuola di San Giorgio agli Schiavoni, Venice.
 ART RESOURCE, NEW YORK, NEW YORK

Figure 3. Vittore Carpaccio, The Baptism of Selenites, Scuola di San Giorgio agli Schiavoni, Venice.
141
 142
ART RESOURCE, NEW YORK, NEW YORK

Figure 4. Vittore Carpaccio, The Daughter of Emperor Gordian is Exorcised by St. Tryphon, Scuola di San Giorgio agli Schiavoni, Venice.
 143
ART RESOURCE, NEW YORK, NEW YORK

Figure 5. Vittore Carpaccio, St. Jerome and the Lion, Scuola di San Giorgio agli Schiavoni, Venice.
 144
ART RESOURCE, NEW YORK, NEW YORK

Figure 6. Vittore Carpaccio, The Funeral of St. Jerome, Scuola di San Giorgio agli Schiavoni, Venice.
 145
ART RESOURCE, NEW YORK, NEW YORK

Figure 7. Vittore Carpaccio,

The Agony in the Garden,
Scuola di San Giorgio agli
Schiavoni, Venice.

Figure 8. Vittore Carpaccio,

The Calling of St. Matthew,
ART RESOURCE, NEW YORK, NEW YORK

Scuola di San Giorgio agli

Schiavoni, Venice.
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ART RESOURCE, NEW YORK, NEW YORK

Figure 9. Vittore Carpaccio, The Vision of St. Augustine, Scuola di San Giorgio agli Schiavoni, Venice.
Saint George and the Dragon 147

sacred-profane, differentiated-undifferentiated. This is an absolute negation, sav-

ing, exclusive, definitive. Interior space exists only by differing from the outside.
George, we have seen, is Saint, martyr, and soldier. But his name means
“farmer.” He is a farmer in arms to defend the faith, or a soldier of Christ, a
cleric devoted to the cultivation of fields. Culture comes from colere, cult and
culture deriving from the same root: the act of cultivating and defining the
ground, creating an enclosed space, a sacred boundary. And here we find the
original relationship between employment and demarcation of land, religious
rituals and the earliest culture. Following Carl Schmitt, this is the creation of a
primordial nomos, a law, but also a well-defined spatial location, with its own
cults and rites: this is the first meaning of culture.9 This is a culture that “needs
its martyrdoms.”10 The morphology of the area brings us very close to the triple
figure commemorated in George, the farmer’s myth of the soldier of God, the
bearer of the three fundamental aspects of our culture, presented as an emblem.
I refer, of course, to the theory of George Dumézil, that the institutions of Indo-
European civilization can be summarized as representing three major func-
tions: those of Jupiter, the priest and the saint; Mars, the warrior; and Quirinus,
the farmer. Dumézil writes:

The main elements and gears of the world and society are broken down into three
areas that are harmoniously related, in descending order of dignity, sovereignty with
its magical aspects and legal ceiling in a kind of expression of the sacred, physical
strength and value, whose most visible manifestation is the war victory, and fertility
and prosperity, with all sorts of conditions and consequences, almost always meticu-
lously analyzed and represented by a large number of related but different deities.
The grouping Jupiter Mars Quirinus, with nuances peculiar to Rome, corresponds
to the prototypical lists observable and predictable in Scandinavia as in Vedic India.11

The Holy Knight is an image of composite expression that nevertheless

unites in one person the functions of combat with spear and shield, protection
of the ritual function, and production, the “three needs that are everywhere the
essential: power and sacred knowledge, attack and defence, nutrition and well-
being for all.”12

“HOW CAN VIOLENCE STOP VIOLENCE?”

The mutilated bodies, skulls, bones, of humans and animals—they have pierced
my hands and feet, I can count all my bones13—the remains after an apparently
148 Pasquale Maria Morabito

violent fight, located in this “extra-mural” space, gradually turns into the swamp,
then into the sea. From above, the impregnable fortress seems impassive to the
call that violence itself is unique to that safely enclosed space.
At first glance, this seems to be the message conveyed by the bridge: yes,
because it is a bridge. The two figures—the dragon on the left, the rider and
the horse on the right—are held in balance with each other, in the tension of
the duel. The posture (armor against armor, teeth against spear, dark against
dark) indicates a clash between doubles.14 Similia similibus curantur. Certainly,
the result is a sagittalis15 image: this definition brings us to the two possible
models of culture that Carpaccio conveys through the bridge. The bridge is syn-
onymous with change but also with mediation: the lineage of pontifex is traced
to Romulus (Cain) but also to Saint Peter. The bridge is therefore a symbol
of the foundation of a cultural order, the transition from a state of nature. It is
terrifying to contemplate the remains scattered on the unholy ground; we can
recognize here the Hobbesian homo homini lupus. We can see here culture’s first
steps, the violent process of humanization (the longest time in human history,
as Nietzsche will say) caught on the canvas as a frame. Homo homini draco.
This exercise of contemplation painted by Carpaccio initiates, in this first
“level” of reading, a meditation about violence. “How can violence cast out vio-
lence?” wonders René Girard, paraphrasing the Gospel apocopation “How can
Satan cast out Satan?” The image of the battle immortalized in paint, the bridge
between nature and culture, between the man and the beast, is not enough,
for Carpaccio, to represent the history of the human community. The legend
of the providential intervention of George is connected with the consumption
of a sacrificial rite: the girl, the daughter of the king, is the victim who is about
to be swallowed by the dragon, who periodically receives the gift of a young
citizen to quench his thirst for violence. When he faces the dragon, this totemic
animal ritually fed by the community, this traditional guardian of the threshold
between the realm of the living and death’s kingdom,16 George qualifies himself
as a magician and exorcist, but also as a doctor and priest. The Christian graft
onto archaic worship reveals the wisdom of the Fathers: the figure of George
and the dragon is an example of the process of Christianization.
Returning to the cycle of Carpaccio, let’s have a look at The Triumph of St.
George (figure 2). Besides the meditation on violence, the knight and the demon
now enter the space of the cultured city of Silene. The dragon, the “noontide
demon,”17 is now defeated, but not killed or even torn by the lance of the Saint: the
wound is apparently healed. Even in his posture, the terrible monster now seems
to be a domesticated animal. He crawls on the ground, his ears are down, under
the double threat of George’s sword and under the geometric architecture of the
Saint George and the Dragon 149

palace in the center of Silene. Again, two determinatio-negatio, sword and perim-
eter, violence and institutional power. The beast is in no way killed, expelled,
refused, but linked, held at bay. The step forward in the process of hominization
is secured, the element of intra moenia keeping at bay chaotic violence.
Violence misleading violence can then be interpreted by the figure of order
taking on the disorder, the city hosting the tamed dragon, the monastery giving
asylum to the lion. This seems to be the sense of the next painting. After the
baptism of the converted Selenites (figure 3), Carpaccio shows the miracle of
St. Tryphon taming the basilisk (figure 4): another city is released from the
beast. Again, the violence is tamed, the undifferentiated chaos becomes order.
Beside St. George—dragon or lion, it makes no difference—Carpac-
cio paints the cycle of St. Jerome (figures 5–6). George is the beginning, the
foundation, the bridge of the acculturation and hominization process: violence
is expelled through a series of mythical-ritual fights with the dragon and the
baptism of the citizens. Jerome (figure 5) lets the lion into the monastery,
among the terrified monks: he cares for him, according to the legend, curing the
king of beasts by removing a thorn from a leg wound, thus ensuring his eternal
loyalty. So the cultural path stabilizes safe walls, but retains the possibility of
chaos being shaped, restrained, controlled within them. The cultural aspect is
enhanced by an additional element. The action against the enemy as if it were
an ally is here the wisdom of the Fathers, who reuse the mythical foundation so
instrumental ad maiorem gloria homini.
After the image of the “double” represented by the bridging figure of the
dragon rider, here is the attempt to domesticate the animal part of man. The
fulfillment of this attempt is made a concrete historical event by the Incarnation.
Christ, true God and true man, leading humankind toward striving for perfec-
tion, from animal to man (hominization, George) from man to man (domes-
tication, Jerome) from man to God (Christ). Paul writes to the community in
Corinth: “For however many are the promises of God, their yes is in Christ” (2
Cor. 1:20a). The painting The Agony in the Garden (figure 7) is cut horizontally
into two parts: the apostles lie asleep in the bottom half of the painting, while
in the higher part we find the figure of Jesus in prayer and agony (his robe is red
to signify his forthcoming sacrifice). The man in the middle is asleep, while the
divine is already projected in a vertical dimension. The last painting, The Vision
of St. Augustine (figure 9), thus represents the last stage of the journey, that of
understanding. The Doctor of the Church seems to contemplate the mystery of
human and divine in his study, in the page of an open book, pen raised in the act
of someone trying to write the appropriate word. His dress is white, but beneath
it one spots the crush Episcopal purple, the red cloth that recalls the end of the
150 Pasquale Maria Morabito

room, behind the glorious Christ. The contemplative dimension introduces

us to new times, those of the Civitas Dei, founded on the blood of Christ and
the martyrs. The three degrees of the iconographic path proposed by Carpac-
cio may be thus coordinated: from the battlefield (the time of the Sacred, the
bridge between animal and man, the violence that expels violence, the double
determinatio-negatio) of St. George, the mystery of Incarnation (Christ in the
garden) to the understanding of the Scriptures ( Jerome is, among other things,
the author of the Vulgate), the contemplative vision of Augustine. But in the
last painting, next to the figure of the saint, a small white dog was painted by
Carpaccio. A sign, perhaps, that the beast is inside us, still.

VICTOR QUIA VICTIMA

The political space is renovated thanks to the powerful intervention of the Holy
Knight. The liberation of the princess—and the city—from the yoke of civil
order in the dragon represents Christianity. Out of this process emerges a vision
of space derived from myth, showing the sacrificial dimension of the founda-
tion of the town.18 The political balance/sacred ritual stems from a scheme that
we can take from the example of Cain, as stated by St. Augustine, or the sug-
gestions given by the labyrinth in the palace of Knossos on Crete, where the
format of this balance is exemplified in the bond between the throne room and
the underground cavern where the Minotaur awaits the sacrificial victims. In
archaic ritual repetition, which draws from paganism, the pattern order–chaos–
sacrifice–order occurs in a circular loop, seamlessly. Returning to the Legenda
Aurea, the balance between intra and extra moenia is broken by the intervention
of St. George, which restores new life—in baptism—to the city of Silene. The
Legenda’s interpretative scheme refers therefore to a new Christian ritual.
This story depicted in paintings and icons seems to be simply a description
of a model that Van Gennep called an “entrance rite, a rite of passage and taking
of local possession.”19 But the new religio20 reveals an absolutely new rite.
The site of undifferentiated chaos is freed by a new kind of hero. The epics
of Horus, Baal, Tammuz, Mithra Varathegua, and Pegasus reiterate the same
story. In Christian hagiography, in fact, the moment of glory is secondary and
functional to the cult of the martyr. The legends of victory are credible start-
ing only from the Acta Sanctorum and Passiones. The city of Silene is freed and
restored by Saint George only after he has suffered appalling torture and vio-
lent death for Christ. Besides the most celebrated painting of the Holy Knight
fighting the dragon, there are indeed many icons of St. George’s martyrdom,
Saint George and the Dragon 151

depicting several tortures after his refusal to renounce the Christian faith. It is
no coincidence that George is defined by the Greek tradition as a megalomar-
tire. The same tradition designates the Holy Knight as tropàiophoros, the one
who brings the trophy, the winner.21
Victor quia victima, winner because victim, is a definition of Augustine that
makes this character perfectly adherent to martyrdom, to the figure of Christ
himself.22 The martyr, figura23 of Christ, is capable of helping the city as a victim.
Saint Paul delineates this aspect of victimizing theology: “Because he himself
suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.”24
We find him in the famous Song of the Suffering Servant from the Book of Isa-
iah: “By his wounds we are healed.”25 St. Augustine juxtaposes the concept of
martyrdom with that of hero: the Miles Christi is not just a moralizing allegory.
The armor depicted in the images is not revered symbolic tinsel. George the
Martyr rejects the military Roman model, suffering for the Christianitas that
turns into empire, the Church itself.26

NOTES

1. The construction of the city is symbolically oriented toward a center, the center of forces
and the center from which it receives direction and strength. The town we are dealing with
is enclosed, “strengthened” in a double sense: as an area defended by walls erected in a
bounded perimeter, and as a place founded by a collective force.
2. R. Guardini, Natura, Cultura, Cristianesimo (Brescia, Italy: Morcelliana, 1983). Concerning
the concept of culture and logos, see also Giuseppe Fornari, Da Dioniso a Cristo (Genoa:
Marietti, 2006).
3. Gen. 4:17. The New American Bible of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops
(NAB), 1970.
4. See René Girard, La Violence et le sacré (Paris: Grasset, 1972). On Cain and Abel, see also
Maria Stella Barberi, “Adamo ed Eva avevano due figli,” in Politiche di Caino: Il paradigma
conflittuale del potere, ed. Domenica Mazzù (Ancona-Massa, Italy: Transeuropa, 2006),
77, and M. S. Barberi, Misteryum e ministerium: Figure della sovranità (Turin: Giappichelli,
2002, 159–197). On violence and the Bible, see Giuseppe Fornari, “L’albero della colpa
e della salvezza. La rivelazione biblica della violenza,” in Politiche di Caino: Il paradigma
conflittuale del potere, 159–197. See also Enzo Bianchi, Adamo, dove sei? (Bose, Italy: Qiqa-
jon, 1990), 211. Curiously, the legend of the foundation of Rome tells about two brothers,
Romulus and Remus. The history is very well known, but the collective memory of a
violent city’s foundation returns to a kind of geological stratification, where ritual, tale,
and myth are postponed continually. See the insights of Michel Serres, Roma, il libro delle
fondazioni (Florence: Hopefulmonster, 1991).
5. See Is. 2:2–4. The Book of Revelation, by St. John, will take back the image of Babylon as a
satanic model of the city.
152 Pasquale Maria Morabito

6. See 1 Peter 2:11.

7. Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1980), 1011.
8. Baruch Spinoza, Epistola L: “Quia ergo figura non aliud, quam determinatio, et determina-
tio negatio est; non poterit, ut dictum, aliud quid, quam negatio, esse.” Everything because
of its existence is a negation of something else, writes the philosopher. Equally, the dimen-
sion of intra moenia exists as a negation of extra moenia. See Baruch Spinoza, Epistolario,
trans. A. Droetto (Turin: Einaudi, 1954), 79.
9. Carl Schmitt underlined the importance of the relationship between culture, rituals, and
law, and the possession of land, sacred space, and the organization of political space. See
Carl Schmitt, Der Nomos der Erde (Berlin: Duncker and Humblot, 1997), part I, chapter 4.
10. Friedrich W. Nietzsche, Zur Genealogie der Moral: Eine Streitschrift (Leipzig: Homeyer
Verlag, 1887), 49.
11. Georges Dumézil, La religione romana arcaica (Milan: Rizzoli, 1977), 154.
12. Dumézil, La religione romana arcaica, 154.
13. Ps. 22:16–17.
14. About the reciprocity of the duel, see of course René Girard, Battling to the End (East
Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2010).
15. See M. Serres, Rosso e Nero (Florence: Hopefulmonster, 1990).
16. Dracon comes, according to Macrobius, from the Greek derkeim, to see, to watch. In
ancient times, people believed that the eye of the dragon belonged to the nature of the
sun. The dragon is often described as a guardian of temples, oracles, public buildings, and
treasures. Macrobius, Saturnalia, I, XXI, Latin text from critical edition by Ludwig von Jan
(Quedlinburg and Leipzig 1852), web edition by William Thayer, http://penelope.uchicago.
edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Macrobius/Saturnalia/home.html (accessed September 26,
2010).
17. Roger Caillois on the “noontide demon.” According to the Bible, in fact, the south would
be conducive to demons: “Do not fear the terror of night nor the arrow that flies by day,
the pestilence that walketh in darkness, nor the demon of noon” (Ps. 91:5–6.). The fatigue
of the day at its warmest point, the need for a rest in the afternoon, would create a “lower”
level of tension in man in his perpetual struggle with lurking evil. At midday, the intensity
of supervision is minimal, as is the length of the shadow; the passage of the sun is at its
zenith; it is the decisive hour that marks the culmination of the ascent of the sun, now
passing, a terrible critical moment, as in Caillois’s complexe du midi: “the abandonment
of action and will, the weakening from the heat of noon, the dozing senses and conscious-
ness, a general passivity and boredom with life (acedia).” R. Caillois, Le Mythe et l’homme
(Paris: Gallimard, 1938), 29. It is the time, as attested by Homer, at which sacrifices were
usually offered. In the south, in ancient Greece, the day seems to divide into two parts.
It is probable that the sacrificial rites (the time of the sacred sacrum facere), and the rites
of transition take place effectively at noon. This tradition has since been undermined by
the demon night, which is around midnight, from medieval times. See R. Caillois,” Les
démons du midi,” Revue de l’Histoire des Religions 53, 1937, no. 115, pp. 142–173; no. 116, pp.
54–83, 143–186 (trad. it. di A. Pellissero, I demoni meridiani, a cura di C. Ossola, Torino,
Bollati Boringhieri, 1988).
Saint George and the Dragon 153

18. See Girard, La Violence et le sacré.

19. A. Van Gennep, Les rites de passages (Paris: Picard, 1909). Marcel Mauss writes about this
kind of rite, describing it as a symbolic migration: the myth of the young hero or a god
versus a monster. It is a substitution rite (the old divinity replaced by a young one), a
sacrifice, a renovation rite. See H. Hubert and M. Mauss, “Essai sur la nature et la fonc-
tion du sacrifice,” in M. Mauss, Oeuvres, “Les fonctiones sociales du sacré” (Paris: Minuit,
1968), 1:291–93.
20. For the semantic richness of the word, the necessary reference is to St. Augustine, De
Civitate Dei, X, 1–2–3. In his work, Augustine distinguishes two kind of religio: the cultural
system on which the identity of a community is founded (a “theological-political face”),
and the gift of grace (caritas). Concerning this, see also Jakob Speigl, “Der Religionsbegriff
Augustinus,” Annuarium Historiae Conciliorum, 27/28 (1995–96): 29–60.
21. See André Grabar, Martyrium: Recherche sur le culte des reliques et l’art chrétien antique
(Paris: Collège de France, 1946).
22. St. Augustine, Confessiones, X, 43.
23. Concerning the concept of figura, the source of culture and its incorporation by the Church
Fathers, it is essential to refer to Eric Auerbach. The figure rather than a simple metaphor
becomes in fact “real prophecy.” See Erich Auerbach, “Figura,” trans. Ralph Mannheim, in
Scenes from the Drama of European Literature (New York: Meridian Books, 1959), 11–76.
24. Heb. 2:18.
25. Isa. 53:5.
26. The theological-political features of the St. George figure would return as the foundation
of the Church, born under the Roman Empire and heir of its legal representative force, as
acknowledged by Thomas Hobbes. He writes: “The papacy is but the ghost of the Roman
Empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof.” Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1998), 463. Concerning the interpretation of this quotation, Carl
Schmitt writes: “In Hobbes there is no idea about succession” (Carl Schmitt, Glossarium,
10 January 1949, Milan: Giuffrè, 2001, 379–380). Hobbes, with his “anti-roman sentiment”
(Carl Schmitt, Römischer Katholizismus und Politische Form: Stuttgart, Klett Corta), didn’t
recognize the tradition of the katechon, the “braking power” described in St. Paul, 2 Thess.
The conscious rejection of the Hobbesian tradition of the katechon brings up ghosts and
does not see the universality of personal principle that it hands down. Concerning this
insight, see Maria Stella Barberi, Mysterium e Ministerium, 95. See also Wolfgang Palaver:
“Hobbes and the Katéchon: The Secularization of Sacrificial Christianity,” Contagion:
Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture 2 (Spring 1995): 37–54.
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