The Martyrdom of St. George in the South English Legendary

The Martyrdom of St. George. Saints’ Lives in Middle English Collections. Ed. Gordon Whatley, with Anne B. Thompson and Robert K. Upchurch. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute    Publications, 2004.

The Middle English text I'm covering in this post does not, unfortunately, involve the more well known tradition of St. George's episode with the dragon (although I'll be reading and posting about a text that does later today). Instead, much like the earlier tradition of St. George narratives, The Martyrdom of St. George revolves around the saint's pronouncement of of his Christian beliefs and the many subsequent attempts by the pagan prince, Dacian, to kill him. This is not a terribly long text, and this post will likely follow suit, but the primary issue that stands out to me in this text is violence. Excessive violence is commonplace in hagiography, the ordeals serving as a device that allows the saint in question to prove their steadfastness to and favor from God, but this poem in particular stands out to me as compacting a large amount of violence into a small amount of space (although the violent episodes are present in the text's longer analogues). The somewhat gratuitous nature of the torturing of St. George actually reminds me of a contemporary form of entertainment that involves a great deal of voyeuristic glorification of incredibly violent acts: hardcore wrestling.

Yes, the above image is of a wrestler being thrown through a burning table. A trend in professional wrestling that gained initial prominence in Japan, hardcore wrestling became a big phenomenon in the American wrestling world in the 90s and early 2000s. Headed by prominent wrestlers such as Terry Funk, hardcore wrestling was best known in the U.S. through a promotion called ECW, or Extreme Championship Wrestling, and was known for excessively violent matches involving regular use of tables, chairs, fiery brands, light bulbs, staple guns, shinai, and barbed wire. The performers in these hardcore matches were expected to bleed, take huge bumps (a term for being on the receiving end of a wrestling move, often devastating), and push the envelope on violence based spectacle for their audience. One of the more intense matches I witnessed, for example, had the ring surrounded by several troughs filled with light bulbs, nails, and/or thumbtacks. The objective was to throw your opponent into one of these troughs, although the specific win conditions beyond this was not clear.

In  The Martyrdom of St. George, the titular character is treated to a series of intense tortures, including but not limited to crucifixion, the ripping of his flesh with sharp hooks, and salt being pushed into those fresh open wounds. This is not enough to break George's spirit or end his life, as he is resurrected even when he is dropped upon a wheel made of swords, torn into small pieces, and covered with molten led (which George is unaffected by, laying in the molten metal "as he in rest were, forte that led attelast / Was al into the cold iturnd that boillede er so vaste" (69-70)). The detail and building levels of violence seem less aimed at George, who treats each with a surprising amount of nonchalance, and more at the reader of this poem. In comparison, the final blow that ends George's life, a beheading sword cut, seems tame and rather plain. What matters more, it appears, was witnessing the levels of violence and suffering they should cause. I could nearly expect to hear a chant of "ECW, ECW" emanating from the crowd watching George's torture.