Since I had bloged on St George's Day, I asked myself why there were a maiden and a lamb following St George. After having visited the Victoria and Albert Museum, I know. There the story is pictured in the Retable of St George, a huge fifteenth-century gilded altarpiece from Valencia.this is how the story goes. On his crusade, St George comes to the city of Selene in Libya where a dragon demands for a maiden and a lamb for his daily lunch. The very day St Georges arives in Selene, the dragon has just claimed for the king's daughter. St Georges promises to kill the dragon if the king himself, his family and the whole city is going to be baptized. St Georges kills the dragon, the city is relieved and the inhabitants jump into the baptismal font (2nd row, 1st picture).
St George then travels to the next city (2nd row, 2nd picture) where the king Dacian seems to be specialised in cruelty. And he doesn't want to change his religion. What then follows is pictured on the bloodthirsty side panels of the retable.
Only if you can stand it, read this blog entry until the very end. St George is tied to a cross and gets nails driven through his body (2nd row, 3rd picture), is poisoned (2nd row, 4th picture), streched out on a rack and gets his skin ripped to shreds with flesh hooks (3rd row, 1st picture), is set between two wheels full of swords (3rd row, 3th picture), cut in half (3rd row, 4th picture), placed in a cauldron of molten lead (4th row, 1st picture), dragged naked through the streets (4th row, 3rd picture) and finally beheaded (4th row, 4th picture).
In medieval times one rather wasn't too sensitive, I would think.
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