Abstract
The cult of St George in the Eastern Mediterranean is one of the most extraordinary examples of cohabitation among different religious communities. For a long time, Greek Orthodox, Latins, and Muslims shared shrines dedicated to the Cappadocian warrior in very different places. This phenomenon touches on two aspects of the cult—the intercultural and the transcultural—that should be considered separately. My paper mainly focuses on the cross-cultural value of the cult and the iconography of St George in continental and insular Greece during the Latinokratia (13th–14th centuries). In this area, we face the same phenomenon with similar contradictions to those found in Turkey or Palestine, where George was shared by different communities, but could also serve to strengthen the identity of a particular ethnic group. Venetians, Franks, Genoese, Catalans, and Greeks (Ῥωμαῖοι) sought the protection of St George, and in this process, they tried to physically or figuratively appropriate his image. However, in order to gain a better understanding of the peculiar situation in Frankish-Palaiologian Greece, it is necessary first to analyze the use of images of St George by the Palaiologian dynasty (1261–1453). Later, we will consider this in relation to the cult and the depiction of the saint on a series of artworks and monuments in Frankish and Catalan Greece. The latter enables us to more precisely interrogate the significance of the former cult of St George in the Crown of Aragon and assess the consequences of the rulership of Greece for the flourishing of his iconography in Late Gothic art.
Highlights
Parmi les saints de l’antiquité, nul n’a éclipsé la gloire de Saint Georges
Greek Orthodox, Latins, or Muslims shared shrines dedicated to the Cappadocian warrior in very different places
When we say that the cult of St George is ‘intercultural’, we are referring to the capacity of the saint to blur
Summary
It is very likely that this and other victories of Michel VIII over the Latins promoted the spread of the cult of St George, in northwestern Greece after the battle of Pelagonia (1259).7 This should explain the unusual setting of a colossal wooden statue or xoanon of St George It is likely that these extraordinary and uncommon 13th-century Palaiologan colossal statues of St George were perceived by both the local population and Byzantine host as talismans or protectors for this recently recovered area These giants—in the role of Byzantine icons—might have been perceived by the viewer as types of living being who were able to act and perform wonders in favor of the faithful. These depictions of a huge standing St George may be considered as a Byzantine response to the Latins, who were expelled from Constantinople in 1261 by Michael VIII Palaeologus but continued in their Greek lands to appropriate the image and relics of St George
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