Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index


  • Record Number: 14585
  • Author(s)/Creator(s): Riches , Samantha J. E.
  • Contributor(s):
  • Title: St. George as a Male Virgin Martyr [the author argues that Saint George's representation borrowed from the female virgin martyrs to establish his virginity as a third gender; stories and images also emphasized his chastity by his connection to the Virgin Mary and his defeat of sexualized dragons].
  • Source: Gender and Holiness: Men, Women, and Saints in Late Medieval Europe.  Edited by Samantha J. E. Riches and Sarah Salih.  Routledge, 2002.  Pages 65 - 85.
  • Description:
  • Article Type: Essay
  • Subject (See Also): Gender George, Martyr and Saint Hagiography Iconography Martyrs Transgendered Practices Violence Virginity
  • Award Note:
  • Geographic Area: General
  • Century: General
  • Primary Evidence:
  • Illustrations:
  • Table: Six figures. Figure One "Saint George Tortured with Millstones," mid-seventeenth-century illustration of mid-fifteenth-century glass, formerly at St. George's Church, Stamford (Lincolnshire) (London, British Library, Add MS 71474, fol 158 )(William Dugdale's "Book of Monuments"). Figure Two "Saint George Threatened," desk-end of south side of quire, 1477- 1484 (Windsor Castle, St. George's Chapel). Figure Three "Saint George Dismembered and Boiled," desk-end of south side of quire, 1477-1484 (Windsor Castle, St. George's Castle). Figure Four "The Torture of Empress Alexandra," miniature from a mid-fifteenth-century German life of St. George (London, British Library, Add MS 19462, fol. 54). Figure Five "The Obeisance of Saint George Before the Virgin Mary," desk-end of south side of quire, 1477-1484 (Windsor Castle, St. George's Chapel). Figure Six "Saint George and the Dragon," from the fifteenth-century roodscreen at Somerleyton, Suffolk.
  • Abstract:
  • Related Resources: Riches starts by interrogating the classifications of saints that scholars and patrons often use, such as royal saint, cleric saint or virgin martyr. She argues that these categories tell us more about the concerns of those writing about the saint, than t
  • Author's Affiliation:
  • Conference Info: - , -
  • Year of Publication: 2002.
  • Language: English
  • ISSN/ISBN: 0415258219