martyrdom · 303
George is graded legendary in this dataset and the grade is not a modern verdict — it is close to the ancient one. The Decretum Gelasianum, a Roman list of about 500, put the acts of George among the books to be read with caution, on the grounds that they were written by heretics; and the Roman church, while never doubting that a martyr George existed, has always treated the narrative as unreliable. What is early is the cult, not the story. There was a martyr venerated at Lydda in Palestine by the fourth century, with a church over the grave, and the veneration spread very fast and very wide — east and west, and later into Islam as al-Khidr, though that tradition is out of this dataset's scope. The soldier, the emperor, the tortures repeated over seven years, and above all the dragon are accretions; the dragon is not attested before the eleventh century and reached the west with the crusades. What remains is a name in a place, and a great deal of art. This event is an auto-discovered row that had no profile and no attestation at all, which is how it came to be written.
What is left when a saint is almost entirely legend?
A grave at Lydda, a cult before the legend, and a church that said so at the time.