അരുവാപ്പുലം പള്ളി പെരുന്നാൾ റാസ 
64)O perunall kodiyeat..Rev FR. K V PAUL
ST.GEORGE
| ഗീവർഗീസ് പുണ്യാളൻ | |
|---|---|
 വ്യാളിയെ കൊല്ലുന്ന വിശുദ്ധ ഗീവർഗീസ്, ഗുസ്താഫ് മോറേയോവിന്റെ സൃഷ്ടി | |
| രക്തസാക്ഷി | |
| ജനനം | ക്രി.വ. 256/285, ലിഡിയ, സിറിയ പലസ്തീന, റോമാ സാമ്രാജ്യം[1][2] |
| മരണം | ഏപ്രിൽ 23, 303, നിക്കോമീഡിയ, ബിഥിന്യാ, റോമാ സാമ്രാജ്യം[1][2] |
| വണങ്ങുന്നത് | റോമൻ കത്തോലിക്കാ സഭ ആംഗ്ലിക്കൻ സഭ പൗരസ്ത്യ ഓർത്തഡോക്സ് സഭ ലൂഥറൻ സഭ കോപ്റ്റിക് ഓർത്തഡോക്സ് സഭ ഇസ്ലാം[3] |
| ഓർമ്മത്തിരുന്നാൾ | ഏപ്രിൽ 23 |
| ചിത്രീകരണ ചിഹ്നങ്ങൾ | യോദ്ധാവിന്റെ വേഷത്തിൽ പടച്ചട്ടയോടുകൂടി, കുരിശിന്റെ അഗ്രമുള്ള കുന്തം കൊണ്ട്, വെളുത്ത കുതിരയുടെ പുറത്തിരുന്ന് വ്യാളിയെ കൊല്ലുന്ന നിലയിൽ. പാശ്ചാത്യദേശങ്ങളിലെ ചിത്രീകരണത്തിൽ "ഗീവർഗീസിന്റെ കുരിശ്", ഇദ്ദേഹത്തിന്റെ പതാകയിലോ, പടച്ചട്ടയിലോ ചേർത്തുകാണാം |
| മധ്യസ്ഥത | ലോകമൊട്ടാകെ പലതരം കാര്യങ്ങളുടെ മദ്ധ്യസ്ഥനാണിദ്ദേഹം |
 Saints Portal | |
If Gibbon's sketch of St. George's career be correct, that martial hero owes his position in the Christian calendar to no merit of his own. Born in a fuller's shop in Epiphania, Cilicia, he contrived to ingratiate himself with those above him by servilely flattering them, and so gradually rose from his original obscurity. A lucrative contract for supplying the army with bacon, proved, under his unscrupulous management, a mine of wealth; but as soon as he had made his fortune, he was compelled to fly the country, to escape the consequences of the discovery of his dishonest practices. He afterwards became a zealous convert to Arianism, and made himself so conspicuous in his new vocation, that he was sent by Constantius to supersede Athanasius in the archbishopric of Alexandria. To satisfy his avarice, the pagan temples were plundered, and the pagan and Christian inhabitants taxed, till the oppression became unendurable. The people rose and expelled the ex-contractor, but he was quickly reinstated by the army of Constantius. The accession of Julian was the signal for retribution.
George and two of his most obnoxious adherents were dragged to prison by the exultant Alexandrians, where they lay for twenty-four days, when the impatience of the people refused to wait longer for revenge. The prison doors were broken open, the archbishop and his friends murdered, and their bodies, after being carried through the city in triumph, thrown into the sea. This death at the hands of the pagans made the tyrant a martyr in the eyes of the Arians, and canonization followed as a matter of course. When the Arians re-entered the church, they brought back their saint with them; and although he was at first received with distrust, the sixth century saw him firmly established as one of the first order. The Crusades added to his renown. He was said to have fought for Godfrey of Bouillon at the battle of Antioch, and appeared toCoeur-de-Lion before Acre as the precursor of victory, and from that time the Cappadocian adventurer became the chosen patron of arms and chivalry. Romance cast its halo around him, transforming the symbolical dragon into a real monster slain in Lybia to save a beautiful maiden from a dreadful death.
Butler, the historian of the Romish calendar, repudiates George of Cappadocia, and will have it that the famous saint was born of noble Christian parents, that he entered the army, and rose to a high grade in its ranks, until the persecution of his co-religionists by Diocletian compelled him to throw up his commission, and upbraid the emperor for his cruelty, by which bold conduct he lost his head and won his saintship. Whatever the real character of St. George might have been, he was held in great honour in England from a very early period. While in the calendars of the Greek and Latin churches he shared the twenty-third of April with other saints, a Saxon Martyrology declares the day dedicated to him alone; and after the Conquest his festival was celebrated after the approved fashion of Englishmen.
In 1344, this feast was made memorable by the creation of the noble Order of St. George, or the Blue Garter, the institution being inaugurated by a grand joust, in which forty of England's best and bravest knights held the lists against the foreign chivalry attracted by the proclamation of the challenge through France, Burgundy, Hainault, Brabant, Flanders, and Germany. In the first year of the reign of Henry V, a council held at London decreed, at the instance of the king himself, that henceforth the feast of St. George should be observed by a double service; and for many years the festival was kept with great splendour at Windsor and other towns. Shakspeare, in Henry VI, makes the Regent Bedford say, on receiving the news of disasters in France:
Bonfires in France I am forthwith to make
To keep our great St. George's feast withal!'
Edward VI promulgated certain statutes severing the connection between the 'noble order' and the saint; but on his death, Mary at once abrogated them as 'impertinent, and tending to novelty.' The festival continued to be observed until 1567, when, the ceremonies being thought incompatible with the reformed religion, Elizabeth ordered its discontinuance. James I, however, kept the 23rd of April to some extent, and the revival of the feast in all its glories was only prevented by the Civil War. So late as 1614, it was the custom for fashionable gentlemen to wear blue coats on St. George's day, probably in imitation of the blue mantle worn by the Knights of the Garter.
In olden times, the standard of St. George was borne before our English kings in battle, and his name was the rallying cry of English warriors. According to Shakspeare, Henry V led the attack on Harfleur to the battle-cry of 'God for Harry! England! and St. George!' and 'God and St. George' was Talbot's slogan on the fatal field of Patay. Edward of Wales exhorts his peace-loving parents to
'Cheer these noble lords,
And hearten those that fight in your defence;
Unsheath your sword, good father, cry St. George!'
The fiery Richard invokes the same saint, and his rival can think of no better name to excite the ardour of his adherents:
'Advance our standards, set upon our foes,
Our ancient word of courage, fair St. George,
Inspire us with the spleen of fiery dragons.'
England was not the only nation that fought under the banner of St. George, nor was the Order of the Garter the only chivalric institution in his honour. Sicily, Arragon, Valencia, Genoa, Malta, Barcelona, looked up to him as their guardian saint; and as to knightly orders bearing his name, a Venetian Order of St. George was created in 1200, a Spanish in 1317, an Austrian in 1470, a Genoese in 1472, and a Roman in 1492, to say nothing of the more modern ones of Bavaria (1729), Russia (1767), and Hanover (1839).
In all the wide domain of the mythical and marvellous, no legends occur so frequently, or in so many various forms, as those which describe a monstrous winged serpent, or dragon, devouring men, women, and children, till arrested by the miraculous valour or saintly piety of some hero. In nearly all of these legends, a maiden, as the special victim of the monster, and a well, cave, or river, as its dwelling-place, are mixed up with the accessory objects of the main story. The Grecian mythology abounds with such narrations, apparently emblematical of the victory gained by spring over winter, of light over darkness, of good over evil. Nor was this pagan myth antagonistic to the language or spirit of Christianity. Consequently we find a dragon—as the emblem of sin in general, and paganism in particular—vanquished by a saint, a perpetually recurring myth running through all the ancient Christian legends. At first the monster was used in its figurative sense alone; but in the darker ages, the idea being understood literally, the symbol was translated into an acknowledged fact.
In many instances the ravages caused by inundations have been emblematized as the malevolent deeds of dragons. In the seventh century, St. Romanus is said to have delivered the city of Rouen from one of those monsters. The feat was accomplished in this very simple manner. On Ascension day, Romanus, taking a condemned criminal out of prison, ordered him to go and fetch the dragon. The criminal obeyed, and the dragon following him into the city, walked into a blazing fire that had previously been prepared, and was burned to death. To commemorate the event, King Dagobert gave the clergy of Rouen the annual privilege of pardoning a condemned criminal on Ascension day; a right exercised with many ceremonies, till the period of the first Revolution. This dragon, named Gargouille (a water-spout), lived in the river Seine; and as Romanus is said to have constructed embankments to defend Rouen from the overflowing of that river, the story seems to explain itself.
The legends of Tarasque, the dragon of the Rhone, destroyed by St. Martha, and the dragon of the Garonne, killed by St. Martial at Bordeaux, admit of a similar explanation. The winding rivers resembling the convolutions of a serpent, are frequently found to take the name of that animal in common language, as well as in poetical metaphor. The river Draco, in Bithynia, is so called from its numerous windings, and in Italy and Germany there are rivers deriving their names from the same cause. In Switzerland the word drach has been frequently given to impetuous mountain torrents, which, suddenly breaking out, descend like avalanches on the lower country. Thus we can easily account for such local names as Drachenlok, the dragon's hole; Drackenreid, the dragon's march; and the legends of Struth, of Winkelreid, and other Swiss dragon-slayers.
But the inundation theory will not explain all dragon legends. Indeed, it would be as easy for a supernaturally endowed power to arrest the overflowing of a river as to destroy a dragon, admitting there were animals of that description. But such a comparison cannot be applied to the limited power of an ordinary man, and we find not only saints, but sinners of all kinds, knights, convicts, deserters, and outlaws, figuring as dragon-killers. And this may readily be accounted for. In almost every strange object the ignorant man fancies he discovers corroboration of the myths learned in his childhood; and, as different periods and places exhibit different phenomena, legends in course of time are varied by being mixed up with other myths and facts originally unconnected with them. The mediaeval naturalists, too, by recognizing the dragon as a genuine existing animal known to science and travellers, laid a foundation for innumerable varieties of the legend. Thus, at Aix, the fossilized head of an extinct Saurian reptile is shewn as the veritable head of the dragon slain by St. Martha.
In churches at Marseilles, Lyons, Ragusa, and Cimiers, skins of stuffed alligators are exhibited as the remains of dragons. The best authenticated of all the dragon stories is that of the one said to have been killed by Dieudonne, of Gozo, a knight of Rhodes, and afterwards Grand Master of the Order, in the fourteenth century. The head of this dragon was carefully preserved as a trophy at Rhodes, till the knights were driven out of the island. The Turks, respecting bravery even in a Christian enemy, preserved the head with equal care, so that it was seen by Thevenot as late as the middle of the seventeenth century; and from his account it appears to have been no other than the head of a hippopotamus.
Real persons have, in some instances, been made the heroes of legends as wild as that of Perseus. The ignorant, unable to appreciate or even to comprehend the mere idea of literary fame, have ever given a mythical reputation to men of letters. In Italy, Virgil is still spoken of as a potent necromancer; and a sculptured representation of St. George and the dragon on the portal of a church at Avignon has conferred on Petrarch the renown of a dragon-killer. According to the tale, as Petrarch and Laura were one day hunting, they chanced to pass the den of a dragon. The hideous monster, less ravenous than amorous, attacked Laura; but the poet rushing to her assistance, killed the beast with his dagger. If the story be doubted, the narrator triumphantly points to the sculpture as a proof of its correctness; just as the painted representation of a dragon, on the wall of Mordiford church, in Herefordshire, has been innumerable times pointed out as the exact resemblance and memorial of a reptile killed by a condemned criminal in the neighbouring river Lug. To vulgar minds such evidence appears incontrovertible. As a local poet sings
'Who has not heard, of Herefordian birth,
Who has not heard, as winter evenings lag on,
That tale of awe to some—to some of mirth
Of Mordiford's most famous huge green dragon?
Who has not seen the figure on its church,
At western end outspread to all beholders,
Where leaned the beggar pilgrim on his crutch
And asked its meaning—body, head, and shoulders?
There still we see the place, and hear the tale,
Where man and monster fought for life and glory;
No one can righteously the facts assail,
For even the church itself puts it before ye.'
A fertile source of mythical narrations is found in the ancient names of places; legends being invented to account for the names, and then we are gravely informed that the names were derived from the alleged facts of the legends. Near Dundee, in Forfarshire, there is a well called The Nine Maidens' Well, and adjoining are places named respectively Pittempton, Baldragon, Strathmartin, and Martinstane. From these simple circumstances we have a dragon story, which may be thus abridged. A dragon devoured nine maidens at the well near Pittempton. Martin, the lover of one of the maidens, finding life a burden, determined to kill the reptile, or perish in the attempt. Accordingly, he attacked it with a club, striking the first blow at Strath—pronounced by the country people Strike — martin. The venomous beast was scotched, not killed, by this blow; but as it dragged — Scottice, draiglet — 'its slow length along 'through a morass, the hero of the adventure followed up the attack, and finally killed the monster at Martinstane. The dragon, like other great criminals of the olden time, made a 'last speech, confession, and dying declaration,' in the following words:
I was tempit (tempted) at Pittempton,
Draiglit (draggled) at Baldragon,
Stricken at Strikemartin,
And killed at Martinstane.'
The festival of the Rogations, anciently held on the three days preceding Ascension Day, were the prime source of dragon legends. During these days the clergy, accompanied by the church officers and people, walked round the boundaries of their respective parishes; and at certain pre-scribed spots offered up prayers, beseeching blessings on the fruits of the earth, and protection from the malevolent spirit of all evil. To a certain extent, the custom is still observed in many English parishes. In the ancient processions, there was always carried the image of a dragon, the emblem of the infernal spirit, whose overthrow was solicited from heaven, and whose final defeat was attributed to the saint more particularly revered by the people of the diocese or parish. On the third day of the processions, the dragon was stoned, kicked, buffeted, and treated in a very ignominious, if not indecent manner. Thus every parish had its dragon as well as its saint, with a number of dragon localities—the dragon's rock, the dragon's well, &c., so named from being the spots where the dragon was deposited, when the processions stopped for refreshment or prayer.
The processional dragon has descended down even to our own day. Previous to the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835, Snap, the famous Norwich dragon, annually went in procession with the mayor and corporation on the Tuesday preceding the eve of St. John the Baptist. Snap was a magnificent reptile, all glittering in green and gold. He was witty, too, bandying jokes on men and things in general, with his admiring friends in the crowd. Guarded by four whifflers, armed with drawn swords, Snap seemed to be quite at home among the bands and banners of the procession. But, true to his ancient traditionary instincts, though on that important anniversary the cathedral was strewn with rushes to receive the civic dignitaries in the olden manner, Snap never presumed to enter the sacred edifice, but sat upon a stone—the dragon's stone—till the service was concluded, and the procession resumed its onward march. But the act previously referred to has ruthlessly swept away Snap, with all the grand corporate doings and feastings for which the East Anglian city was once so famous. Yet the rabble, affectionately clinging to their time-honored friend the dragon, have more than once attempted to get up a mock Snap, to be speedily put to flight by the 'Move on there!' of a blue-coated policeman. Such are the inevitable changes of time.
Saturday, May 18, 2013
Thursday, May 2, 2013
Thursday, May 5, 2011
The cult of St. George in Kerala represents the antiquity and hybridization of different cultures among the Nasranis. Geevarghese Sahada is champion for indigenous concerns, one of the most venerated saints in Nasrani population.[1]
George was a good soldier and consequently rose through the military ranks of the time. According to the hagiography, in 303 Diocletian issued an edict authorizing the systematic persecution of Christians across the Empire. The emperor Galerius was supposedly responsible for this decision and would continue the persecution during his own reign (305–311 AD). George was ordered to take part in the persecution but instead confessed to being a Christian himself and criticized the imperial decision. An enraged Diocletian ordered the torture of this apparent traitor, and his execution. After various tortures, beginning with being lacerated on a wheel of swords, George was executed by decapitation before Nicomedia’s defensive wall on April 23, 303. The witness of his suffering convinced Empress Alexandra and Athanasius, a pagan priest, to become Christians as well, and so they joined George in martyrdom. His body was returned to Lydda for burial, where Christians soon came to honour him as a martyr.
The narratives of the early pilgrims, Theodosius, Antoninus, and Arculphus, from the sixth to the eighth century, all speak of Lydda or Diospolis as the seat of the veneration of St. George, and as the resting-place of his remains (Geyer, “Itinera Hierosol.”, 139, 176, 288). The early date of the dedications to the saint is attested by existing inscriptions of ruined churches in Syria, Mesopotamia, Egypt and Southern India and the church of St. George at Thessalonica is also considered by some authorities to belong to the fourth century. Further the famous decree “De Libris recipiendis”, attributed to Pope Gelasius in 495, attests that certain apocryphal Acts of St. George were already in existence, but includes him among those saints “whose names are justly reverenced among men, but whose actions are only known to God”.
The episode of St George and the Dragon was Eastern in origin. In the East, St. George has from the beginning been classed among the greatest of the martyrs. During the fourth century the veneration of George spread from Palestine to the rest of the Eastern and Western Roman Empire. It is belived to have reached Kerala at the same period.
St. George is most commonly depicted in early icons, mosaics and frescos wearing armour contemporary with the depiction, executed in gilding and silver colour, intended to identify him as a Roman soldier. After the Fall of Constantinople and the association of St George with the crusades, he is more often portrayed mounted upon a white horse. The best known form of the legend of St. George and the Dragon is that made popular by the “Legenda Aurea”, and translated into English by Caxton.
The cult of St George is related to the antiquity of Syrian Christians in Kerala. The St.George’s Forane Church at Edappally is established in AD 503 and St. George’s Church at Karingachira is established in AD 722.
There are various traditions and rituals associated with festivals and feast of Geevarghese Sahada in Kerala churches. In St. George Church, Edathua during the feast, the statue of St.George, decked in gold, was carried out in procession and placed on the dais at the centre of the Basilica. Processions were held everyday, and dazzling fireworks display highlighted in the initial as well as concluding day’s rituals. The right to carry the statue of St.George in procession is entrusted with people from Mavattam in Kanyakumari district.The statue of St george at Edathua is originally obtained from the St George church at Edappally which is established in AD 503. Thousands of devotees attend the St.George Church, Puthuppally to celebrate the annual feast of St George in the first week of May every year. A noon meal served to the pilgrims at church courtyard (Vechoottu), colorful ceremonial procession carrying the Gold Cross of the Church and fireworks are the main attraction of the feast. In Malayalam its called Vechootttu Perunal and meal is provided by the parishioners. Choottukatta Kathikal, Pindi Palli, chempeduppu are some of the cermenoies and rituals associate with St George feast at St. George’s Church in Chandanapally.
St George is the Patronage saint for snake bites and for helping to heal mental disorders as well as other ailments. Many of the old churches some rituals associated with St George and snakes.
St. George is the patron saint of many old churches in Kerala. St.George’s Forane Church Edappally ( AD 503 ), St. George’s Church Karingachira ( 722 AD), St.George Forane Church Aruvithura ( 1st centaury ), St. George Church Kadamattam (1st centaury ),St. George’s church Valiyapalli Kottayam ( 1550), St. George Church Edathua ( 1810 ), St. George’s Church Angamally, St. George’s Church Kumbalangi, St.George Church Puthuppally, St.George Church Muthalakodam, St. George’s Church Nedumabshery, St. George’s Cathedral Thozhiyur, St. George’s Church Chandanapally.
Picture Curtsey-1. Altar at St George Church Edathua 2. Centuries old St George statue at St George Church Angamali 3. Vechoottu Perunnal at St.George Church, Puthuppally 4. Annual feast of St George at Edathua
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