Note 783 — Chapter X · THE MUMMERS’ PLAY

For the legend, see Acta Sanctorum, April, iii. 101; Jacobus à Voragine, Legenda Aurea (1280), lviii; E. A. W. Budge, The Martyrdom and Miracles of St. George of Cappadocia: the Coptic Texts (Oriental Text Series, 1888). In Rudder, Hist. of Gloucestershire, 461, and Gloucester F. L. 47, is printed an English version of the legend, apparently used for reading in church on the Sunday preceding St. George’s day, April 23. Cf. also Gibbon (ed. Bury), ii. 472, 568; Hartland, Perseus, iii. 38; Baring-Gould, Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, 266; Zöckler, s. v. St. Georg, in Herzog and Plitt’s Encyclopedia; F. Görres, Ritter St. Georg in Geschichte, Legende und Kunst, in Zeitschrift für wissenschaftliche Theologie, xxx (1887), 54; F. Vetter, Introduction to Reimbot von Durne’s Der heilige Georg (1896). Gibbon identified St. George with the Arian bishop George of Cappadocia, and the dragon with Athanasius. This view has been recently revived with much learning by J. Friedrich in Sitzb. Akad. Wiss. München (phil.-hist. Kl.), 1899, ii. 2. Pope Gelasius (†495) condemned the Passio as apocryphal and heretical, but he admits the historical existence of the saint, whose cult indeed was well established both in East and West in the fifth century. Budge tries to find an historical basis for him in a young man at Nicomedia who tore down an edict during the persecution of Diocletian (†303), and identifies his torturer Dadianus with the co-emperor Galerius.