Material Objects
The relief icon of St George and the Dragon is from late Byzantine, around the 14th to 15th century, and carved into white steatite. It is 2 cm long and 1.6cm wide, in the shape of a rounded rectangle, and is currently located in the British Museum. It portrays the story of a soldier who slays a malicious dragon who has been terrorizing the innocent people of a town.
The creature had been exploiting the villagers into paying him a tribute and when the villagers ran out of materialistic offerings, they started offering him human sacrifices. Eventually, when the land’s princess is taken as the next sacrifice, St George arrives to rescue her and kill the beast. The icon displays a side view of the soldier, astride on horseback, as he spears the dragon who lies dead under his hordes’s hooves. This dynamic view allows the viewer to witness all aspects of the heroic act, seeing the man’s victory over the cowering beast.
Icons acted as a link between the viewer and the saint that the icon depicted, and according to Byzantine theology, it was thought that the believer could directly communicate with that saint. This made icons an important object in prayers and rituals, allowing worshippers a closer connection to the figure they were praying to (Brooks 2009). Icons could be created from any material and ranged in size. They could take the form of large paintings and frescos adorning religious spaces, or be kept close in the form of pendants and miniature hand-held artifacts. The Byzantines also believed icons to have special properties, capable of providing healing, protection, and answers to prayers, and this made them a cornerstone of Byzantine worship, used by both soldiers and kings alike. Icons were marched into battle to ensure victories, perhaps invoking the spirit of the victorious saints they depicted, and they were even taken around the city just before Constantinople fell to the Ottomans in a final attempt to protect the city (National Gallery of Art, n.d).
The icon of St George and the dragon has certain areas where the details have been smoothed over and almost erased. St George's face along with much of his saddle and bindings of his horse are gone, from which we can infer that perhaps it was an artifact often used in prayer, rubbed between anxious hands over the years so that the precise features of the carving no longer remain.
Another similar artifact is the intaglio of St. Theodore Teron slaying a many-headed dragon. It is incised into agate, and dated 1300 or later. It is 3.4 cm long and 2.6 cm wide, so it is only slightly larger than the relief icon. The intaglio is housed in The Metropolitan Museum of Art where it is classified as a lapidary work-gem. The artifact is inscribed in Greek, and the front reads “Saint Theodore Teron” and the reverse reads “Jesus Christ, Lord, help your servant [whom] you, Holy One, know” (The MET, n.d). It is similar to the steatite relief icon in its dynamic display of heroic action, but unlike the relief icon, the intaglio’s details remained better preserved. This is because reliefs are created with a surface that is raised from the base plate, while intaglios are engraved into the material. This means that the image is embedded, thus protecting it from excessive wear.
Like St George, St Theodore is a military saint, and they were believed to be the protectors of the Byzantine Empire. Military saints were often portrayed as athletic characters engaged actively in some spirited action, unlike the depictions of monks and bishops with their serene poses (Ryder 2008). St Theodore is also striking his dragon down with his spear, his legs separated in a stance similar to St George, despite not riding a horse, and from the inscription on the back, we can assume that this intaglio could have also been used in prayer.