ALB
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In a bid to give this rather esoteric thread some contemporary relevance here’s something that suggests pSt George might be a figure to slay the dragon that is Israel:
Good question. Probably to take a potshot at christianty. Nothing wrong with that. It’s easy and it’s fun and they deserve it. But it’s best not to claim something that can’t be solidly backed up.
Apparently in a footnote Gibbon says: “this transformation is not given as absolutely certain, but as extremely probable” if you can check. I have discovered that it’s not a copy of his whole book that I have but only a couple of chapters published by the Rationalist Press Association as “Gibbon on Christianity”.
Gelasius canonised George in the late fifth century, barely a century after the bishop’s assassination, whereas George of Lydda had supposedly died a further century before that.
You are not saying that the George that Pope Gelasius made a saint was Bishop George of Cappodocia, are you? It would have been the mythical “George of Lydda”, wouldn’t it ?
Gelasius ” also had cordial relations with the Ostrogoths, who were Arians (i.e. Non-trinitarian Christians), and therefore perceived as heretics from the perspective of Nicene Christians.[7]”
That looks like a quote from Wikipedia! Or did you find it in one of your pile of vellum-bound books?
Anyway, what are you saying? That Pope Gelasius made an Arian bishop a saint just to please the Ostrogoths?
The article you found on the internet (where would you be without it?) about the pork salesman is amusing but it does not actually claim, as you did on your original post, that it was George of Cappodocia who was made a saint but only that the St. George was based on him. Mind you, I wouldn’t put it pass a Pope to create a fictitious person to make a saint. They have done worse things.
A letter based on BD’s comments above is published is this week’s Weekly Worker:
https://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1491/letters/
The letter published immediately after from a group in Manchester is interesting as it seems to be putting a similar position as us, as long, that is, as they mean by communism what we mean by socialism.
Yes, this “could have” happened. Also there “could have” been a real Roman soldier called George who was “martyred” for being a christian. All sorts of things “could have” happened. The job of a historian is to try to work out, on the basis of any available evidence, what is most likely to have happened.
I wouldn’t have thought that there is enough (or any) definitive evidence to say that St George was the historical George of Cappodocia.
No, that’s not my view but your and my preferences and tastes are of no significance or relevance.
But to return to the subject, in your opening posting you claimed that the patron saint of England was “George of Cappodicia”, that this historical figure had been made a saint by the Catholic church and that thus contradicted their own dogmas since he had been labelled a heretic.
The Catholic Church denies that the George they made a saint was this historical figure but was someone else. So, for them, they didn’t made a heretic a saint.
Your claim then gets downgraded to the claim that the mythical figure called George who was made a saint (and for who the church concocted a life story) arose from some cult around George of Cappodicia.
Even if true this would still not justify a claim that the church had made George of Cappodicia, a designated heretic, a saint.
The alternative theory that “Saint” George never existed but is just a mythical figure (a bit like JC himself) seems more plausible.
Actually, I use Wikipedia nearly every day. It is a very useful source of information. Of course you don’t have to believe everything you read there but at least it gives a lead where to look if you want to check anything.
In the pre-Wikipedia days you had to have your own encyclopaedia or go to the local references library to look up the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Speaking of which:
“The 2010 version of the 15th edition, which spans 32 volumes and 32,640 pages, was the last printed edition. Since 2016, it has been published exclusively as an online encyclopaedia.”
At least this is what its entry in Wikipedia says. I have no reason to think that this is not true.
Have you room in your bedside for the 32 printed volumes?
I have nothing agsinst Gibbon. His Deckline and Fall of the Roman Empire is a good read. I’ve got the book but it’s also available online, here for instance:
https://gutenberg.org/cache/epub/25717/pg25717-images.html
The internet has made available for free all sorts of interesting texts to thousands who could afford to buy the books. Surely that can’t be bad, can it?
But you still haven’t said how you are going to stop your local parish priest getting you by pointing out that their St. George is not the same as Bishop George of Cappadocia who was not made a saint.
He seems to have been a nasty piece of work who suffered a fitting end:
Yes, but what if this isn’t a religious inconsistency? Your argument is undermined. As is your credibility. A mere parish priest might refer you to the Wikipedia entry on St. George, which says:
“Edward Gibbon argued that George, or at least the legend from which the above is distilled, is based on George of Cappadocia, a notorious 4th-century Arian bishop who was Athanasius of Alexandria’s most bitter rival, and that it was he who in time became George of England. This identification is seen as highly improbable. Bishop George was slain by Gentile Greeks for exacting onerous taxes, especially inheritance taxes. J. B. Bury, who edited the 1906 edition of Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall, wrote ‘this theory of Gibbon’s has nothing to be said for it’.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_George
I know you like to rely on 18th century authors but you seem to have got stuck there.
What is the evidence he was a follower of Arius? In fact what is the evidence that he even existed (any more than the dragon he is supposed to have slain did)?
Anyway, what’s all this got to do with anything?
But that was weeks ago. Has this got something to do with current events in Georgia where the crowds seem to be English supporters?
We know that but do the Scots Nats? I imagine Alba, the name of Alex Salmond’s breakaway party, is also based on a myth or at least a misrepresentation.
That’s a good point. I think I’ll send a letter to the Weekly Worker pointing this out, but in relation to TUSC rather than the CPB.
Meanwhile here is TUSC’s own take on how they did generally:
‘Best campaign since relaunch’, says TUSC results draft report
Interesting that “nearly a fifth of the candidates not members of any political party or group within the coalition.” That will mean that they will not be dyed-in-the-wool Leninists out to manipulate workers into following them as a vanguard by dangling “transitional demands” in front of them. Probably they will be ordinary trade union militants justifiably pissed off with the Labour Party.
I dare say that could be the case of some of the new members of SPRW itself. Our members who attended the SPEW meeting in Vauxhall on “Reform and Revolution” during the campaign reported that they were not allowed to give leaflet to all of the 8 present but were told that one would be sufficient. We left 2. Clearly, the leader of the meeting didn’t want the ordinary members there from investigating further what we have to say.
Here is the Weekly Worker’s take on the London elections:
“ London Assembly
The London Assembly is elected by a complex combination of a party list system plus constituency candidates. The Morning Star’s Communist Party of Britain stood in the party list element, while candidates from the Socialist Party of Great Britain and Tusc stood in constituencies. The party list element was headed by Labour (38.4%), followed by the Tories (26.2%), Greens (11.6%), Lib Dems (8.7%) and Reform UK (5.9%). The CPB ranked 13th at 0.4% (10,915 votes) – an improvement on last time, when it obtained 0.3%.
Among the constituency candidates, Labour took 10 seats, the Tories three and the Lib Dems one, with the Tories taking the ‘white flight’ areas of outer east London and the Lib Dems the outer south west, reflecting the Tory decline in Surrey. Outside the one seat the Lib Dems won, the Greens tended, though not invariably, to outpoll them. On the left, the two SPGB candidates both came in last, with just one percent of the vote.
Among the Tusc candidates, in City and East Lois Austin came in 7th (after an independent) with 4,710 (2%); April Jacqueline Ashley in Croydon and Sutton was 6th with 2,766 (0.7%); Andy Walker in Havering & Redbridge was 7th with 2,145 (1.3%); and Nancy Taaffe in North East was 6th with 5,595 (2.7%). These results show Tusc polling in the same range as the SPGB, though ahead of the CPB.”https://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1490/local-election-barometer/
