Let's take a look at our emblem - the State Emblem of the Russian Federation.
Golden double-headed eagle on a red field.
Three historical crowns are depicted above the heads of the eagle, which symbolize the sovereignty of the country, as well as its parts - sovereign republics.
In the paws of an eagle - a scepter and orb. These are symbols of state power.
And on the chest of the eagle is a rider slaying a dragon with a spear. This is the victory of good over evil, the defense of the Fatherland. And the rider is St. George the Victorious.
It is about him that we will retell the old Russian story, which was translated from the Greek language back in the 11th century, and the last retelling that has come down to us was made in the 13th century. Of course, in order for us to read it, we have to translate the story from Old Russian into modern Russian.
But first, let's say a few words about St. George. He lived at the end of the third century from the birth of Christ in Cappadocia (Asia Minor, the territory of modern Turkey), which was then under the rule of the Roman Empire. As they say, he was the son of noble parents and joined the army at a young age. He was known as a wonderful, fearless warrior. He served in the troops of the Roman emperor Diocletian. In those centuries, pagan polytheism was the dominant religion in Rome, and Christians were attacked, thrown into prison, tortured, tortured in every possible way, demanding to renounce the Christian faith. So Saint George, who remained faithful to his Christian convictions, in his hour with patience and courage endured the tortures of his pagan persecutors and was executed in 303, only about thirty years old.
With the spread of Christianity in Byzantium, the veneration of St. George began, about a century from the 5th. Byzantine emperors considered him their intercessor. Their example was followed by the Russian princes.
And the famous prince of Kyiv Yaroslav the Wise at baptism took the name George.
From about the 10th century in Russia, especially in the southern Russian lands, St. George becomes almost the most revered among Orthodox saints.
The story about one of the episodes in the life of St. George - his victory over a monstrous serpent, that is, a dragon, and about the liberation of the king's daughter from imminent death, received the greatest fame. This is what is said in the old Russian story, which has come down to us from the distant XIII century and is called "The Miracle of George about the serpent." Here is what is told in this story.
In ancient times there was a city called Ebal. It was a large, populous city. Its inhabitants were pagans, worshiped wooden pagan idols, and, as the story says, "they turned away from God, and God turned away from them." This city stood on the shore of a large lake. And so it happened that a huge and terrible snake settled in this lake. Every day a snake came out of the depths, attacked people with a menacing whistle and dragged them to the bottom. Horror seized the inhabitants of the city of Ebal. They went to the king for advice. But what could the king do with the terrible serpent?
Here is how he answered them:
“To appease the serpent, every day we will give him one of his sons and one of his daughters. And when the turn comes to me, then I will give my daughter.
What was to be done? So in turn, both the supreme leaders and the most ordinary citizens gave the cursed snake one of their children.
Moaning and weeping stood in the city of Ebal.
And then the day came when all the inhabitants of the city gave their children to a terrible snake. Then they again went to the king and said to him:
“We all gave up our children, one by one. What would you like us to do next?
And the king answered them in great sorrow:
"I'll give you my only daughter."
And he called the servants, and called his daughter to him, and commanded, having dressed her in the best clothes, to take her to the shore of the lake. The tsar-father wept bitterly, all those close to the tsar and servants wept bitterly. But nothing can be done, they took the princess to the shore of the lake and left her there alone.
And this is what is said further in the old Russian story: “The holy and great martyr, sufferer for the faith of Christ George, a warrior honored by the Heavenly King, who lived even after death, shining with great miracles, by God’s permission, wishing to save us, perishing, and save our city from this misfortune, at the same hour he appeared on the spot in the form of a simple warrior, coming from the battle and hurrying to his native places.
St. George saw a luxuriously dressed girl standing on the shore of the lake, and asked:
- What are you doing here alone?
And the king's daughter, without explaining anything, only said to him:
“Get out of here quickly, sir, or you will perish.”
George didn't understand.
- Robbers, perhaps, are attacking here or something else?
Then she told:
- Here, in the lake, a terrible snake nests. You are young and handsome, I feel sorry for you, I beg you very much, get out of here so as not to die in the clutches of a terrible snake.
"Why don't you go and save yourself?" George asked her.
He asked to tell him the whole truth and promised not to leave her in trouble.
And then the tsar's daughter told him a sad story about her native city.
“Listen, my lord. I am the daughter of the king here. As you can see, this city is large and rich, there is plenty of everything in it, and my father does not want to leave it. But a terrible and bloodthirsty snake lives here in the lake and, leaving the lake, eats many people. And together with the king, my father, people decided, in order to appease the serpent, to give him a son or daughter in turn every day. The turn came to the father. And he decided, as promised to people, to give me, his only daughter, to be eaten by a snake. And now you know everything. Get out of here as soon as possible, otherwise you may not be saved.
Hearing this, Saint George exclaimed:
- Don't be afraid, girl!
And, looking at the sky, he raised a prayer to God and asked Him to show him mercy and cast the fierce beast at his feet, so that the people of this city would believe in one God and renounce their pagan, idol polytheism.
But then the king's daughter suddenly exclaimed:
- Run away from here, I hear the terrible whistle of an evil monster!
At the same moment, the waters of the lake churned, and a huge serpent appeared, and opened its terrible mouth, and, uttering a deafening roar, rushed at the girl and St. George. But the mighty warrior was not afraid and cried out:
- In the name of Jesus Christ, the son of God, submit, cruel beast, and follow me.
And, as the story says, “immediately, by the power of God and the great martyr for the faith of Christ, George, the knees of the terrible snake broke.”
And George turned to the princess, saying:
“Take off your belt and reins from my horse, tie them around the head of the serpent and lead him into the city.
She obeyed. And after her obediently trudged a terrible snake. Saint George walked ahead with his horse.
And in the city at that time there were weeping and groaning, and the king and queen were killed for their only daughter. And what do they see?
There is a warrior with a horse, and then their daughter leads a terrible monster on a leash.
And great fear fell upon them, but Saint George said to them:
— Do not be afraid. Just believe in Christ and you will see your salvation.
What is your name, warrior? the king asked him.
- His name is George.
And then all the inhabitants exclaimed:
“Through you we believed in one God and his son Jesus Christ!”
And Saint George drew his sword and cut off the head of the monster. The king and queen and all the saved residents of the city approached George and bowed to him, and praised him and God, by whose mercy the great miracle worker George performed this miracle.
And the king ordered to build a church in the name of St. George and decorated this church with gold and precious stones.
And St. George, seeing their faith, performed another miracle. He sent his shield to the inhabitants of the city and ordered it to be hung in the church above the altar. And his shield hung in the air, not held back by anything, as it is said in the story: "at all times on the faith of the unbelievers."
Let us add from ourselves that the main day of memory of St. George - the day of his death - is April 23, or May 6, according to the new style.
Where did the coat of arms of Moscow come from? Peter I explained it this way: “This has its origin from there, when Vladimir, the monarch of Russia, divided his empire among his 12 sons, of whom the Vladimir princes received this emblem of St. Yegori for themselves.”
It would seem that everything is plausible. St. George, or, as the people called him, Yegoriy the Brave, was one of the most revered saints in Russia, the personification of a defending warrior. Everyone knew the story of how, in ancient times, he delivered the inhabitants of one city from the "great serpent." The son of Vladimir Monomakh, the prince of Vladimir-Suzdal, Yuri Dolgoruky, chose the image of George the Victorious as his coat of arms, especially since the prince and the saint bore the same name (George, Gyurgiy, Yuri meant the same thing in the old days). Well, then St. George switched to the coat of arms of the heiress of Vladimir - Moscow, founded by the same Yuri Dolgoruky.
However, all this is just a beautiful legend. In ancient times, the Russian principalities simply did not have coats of arms, they are a feature of the exclusively Western Middle Ages. Neither Kievan Rus nor Byzantium knew heraldry in its classical sense. The very word "coat of arms" is based on a German root, meaning "inheritance". This is a symbol that has been passed down from generation to generation without change.
Russian princes, like European kings and barons, also used symbolic images, for example, on seals. But unlike the West, these emblems were not inherited, each subsequent prince chose a new symbol for himself. Usually the prince himself or the saint patronizing him was depicted on the seal. For a long time, Russians followed the Byzantine tradition, according to which a ruler in a crown or a saint with a halo around his head was depicted sitting on a throne or standing. In the West, the image on horseback was more familiar.
Seal of Yuri Dolgoruky
In Russia, the rider on the seal first appeared at Mstislav the Udaly, who at the beginning of the 13th century. invited Veliky Novgorod to reign, closely connected by trade with Western Europe. Alexander Nevsky, the ancestor of the Moscow princes, had a similar seal during his reign in Novgorod. On one side of the seal is depicted the prince "himself on horseback". On the other side, Saint Theodore Stratilat strikes a snake with a spear. He is on foot, but holds his horse by the bridle.
When, in 1318, the grandson of Alexander Nevsky, the Moscow prince Yuri Danilovich, was invited to Novgorod, he also made a seal for himself according to the “European fashion”. He was the first of the rulers of Moscow to use his heavenly patron George the Victorious as an emblem. But the figure of the holy rider-serpent fighter did not serve as a symbol of the Moscow Principality for long.
The next Moscow prince Ivan I Kalita (1325-1340) sealed the letters with a seal depicting his own patron saint, John the Baptist. Emblems made in the traditional Byzantine style were also worn by the heirs of Kalita Semyon the Proud (1340-1353) - St. Simon and Ivan II the Red (1353-1359) - John the Baptist. True, Ivan the Red also used another seal - a foot warrior fighting a dragon. The motif of the struggle with the snake - the personification of evil - is characteristic of ancient Russian and Slavic symbolism in general.
The emblem of the son of Ivan II Dmitry Donskoy (1359-1389) was Saint Dmitry of Thessalonica, standing in full combat armor. Under Dmitry Ivanovich, coins were minted for the first time in Moscow, on some the figure of a warrior with an ax was stamped, on others - an eagle turned sideways. The eagle - the king of birds, as well as the lion - the king of beasts, were the traditional emblems of the Grand Dukes of Vladimir, whose title then finally passed to the Moscow princes.
The heir of Dmitry Donskoy, Vasily I (1389-1425), had a seal with the traditional image of the patron saint - Basil of Caesarea, but an emblem with the figure of a horseman appears on another princely seal. There is a version that this symbol, similar to the Lithuanian coat of arms "Pursuit", Vasily I received from his wife, the daughter of the Lithuanian prince Vitovt Sophia.
Since Basil I, the horseman's emblem has become hereditary, that is, it has acquired the features of a coat of arms. The Moscow horseman, who was often called simply "The Rider" (rider), was depicted on a horse, he held in his hand either a spear, or a sword, or a hunting falcon. It should be noted that the "Rider" was not at all like the image of St. George on the icons of that time - riding a rearing horse, striking a dragon with a spear. Most importantly, the head of the saint was surrounded by a halo.
George the Victorious for a short time became a symbol of Moscow during the internecine war under Vasily II the Dark (1425-1462). The image of the saint was the emblem of the main enemy of Vasily II - his uncle, the specific prince of Zvenigorod Yuri Dmitrievich. Prince Yuri captured Moscow twice and was proclaimed Grand Duke. Yuri began his second reign with the fact that he began to mint a coin with the image of his heavenly patron - George the Victorious, striking a snake with a spear. But Yuri died after only two months on the throne.
On the seals of Vasily II, in addition to the “Rider”, there were other emblems - images of religious scenes, episodes of hunting. At the end of his reign, Vasily the Dark began to increasingly use the grand ducal symbol - a single-headed eagle sitting sideways.
The problem of developing a unified state symbolism arises under the son of Vasily II, Ivan III (1462-1505), who subjugated the rest of the Russian lands to Moscow. A new coat of arms of Russia appears - a double-headed eagle. This royal eagle, on the one hand, continued the tradition of grand-princely single-headed eagles on the emblems of Vladimir princes, on the other hand, it symbolized the claims of the ruler of Moscow to the imperial title.
Usually, the appearance of a double-headed eagle on the coat of arms of Russia is associated with the marriage of Ivan III to the Byzantine princess Sophia Paleolog. However, another version is that Ivan III adopted this coat of arms, almost identical to the coat of arms of the emperor of Germany (“Holy Roman Empire”), in order to indicate the equal status of his power with the most powerful state of the West.
But Ivan III did not forget about the emblem of the Moscow princes that has existed for a century. For the first time, this symbolism adorned Moscow - on July 15, 1464, an image of St. George the Victorious, slaying a dragon, carved from white stone by master Vasily Yermolin, was installed above the gates of the Frolovskaya Tower of the Kremlin. In 1491, in connection with the restructuring of the Kremlin, the white-stone horseman was placed in a temple in the name of St. George specially built in the Kremlin opposite the Spasskaya Tower.
Two symbols - "Rider" and a double-headed eagle - Ivan III combined on the state seal that appeared in 1497. An eagle was depicted on one side of it, and a mounted warrior was depicted on the other. The rider now struck the dragon with a spear, which brought him closer to the image of George the Victorious. However, the absence of a halo indicated that this was a secular horseman-ruler. The seal, as it were, personified his “double” title - “Grand Duke of Moscow” and “Sovereign of All Russia”.
Under the son of Ivan III, Vasily III (1505-1533), the double-headed eagle disappears for a while, and one Moscow horseman serves as the coat of arms of Russia. The double-headed eagle was returned to the state emblem by Ivan IV the Terrible. Having accepted the royal title in 1547, he, of course, could not be satisfied with the modest Moscow emblem. On the new state seal, the rider found a place in the middle of the eagle. True, in 1561 another seal appeared, where there was no rider. Instead, on the chest of the double-headed eagle was the personal emblem of Ivan IV - a unicorn.
The equestrian snake warrior in the center of the Russian eagle still did not contact St. George. From the ancient emblems, the interpretation of the rider as a ruler passed: “In the true Moscow reign, the seal is cut out - the king on horseback defeated the serpent.” In Western Europe, they were usually seen in the figure on the coat of arms of the heavenly patron. Therefore, when in 1659 the Russian embassy arrived in Italy, the Duke of Tuscany directly asked if Saint George was depicted on the chest of a double-headed eagle. To this, the Russian ambassador replied that no, "this is our Great Sovereign on argamak."
The consolidation of the understanding of the horseman-serpent as a Moscow emblem was hampered by the use of his image as a national, and not a city symbol. In particular, Russian coins carried it. Interestingly, in addition to silver money with the image of an equestrian spearman (“penny”), which circulated throughout the country, small copper coins were minted in some cities - pools with local symbols. In Moscow, not a rider was depicted on the pools, but a single-headed eagle sitting sideways - a symbol of the Grand Duke. Documents relating to intra-Moscow affairs were sealed with the seal of the Zemsky order - the administrative institution that managed the economy of the capital. This seal depicted the building of the order itself.
The final design of the emblem of the rider defeating the dragon, as the official coat of arms of Moscow, took place after Peter the Great's reforms. In 1722, by decree of Peter I, the King of Arms office was created in Russia, which the Governing Senate instructed in 1724 to present the coats of arms of all Russian cities. Francis Santi, a native of Piedmont (Italy), was invited to "dispatch heraldic art", and the Russian "painter" Ivan Chernavsky was given to help him.
The colossal task of compiling more than a hundred city coats of arms was delayed. In addition, Santi fell into disgrace. The drawing of the coat of arms of Moscow was made by Santi on the basis of the ancient seals he studied. The rider was depicted without a halo, as a warrior, not a saint; facing the audience to the right. Only in 1728, after the death of Peter I, did a description of the coat of arms of Moscow appear: “George on a white horse, defeating a serpent, yellow cape and spear. The crown is yellow, the serpent is black, the field is white all around, and red in the middle. This description is non-terminological. The compilers of the lists of coats of arms for banners probably had only color drawings of coats of arms without a detailed description of them, on which gold was transferred with yellow ocher, so they called the color of the crown and epanchi yellow. White color in heraldry is silver. Finally, this emblem, along with other city emblems, was approved by the Senate in 1730.
Coat of arms of Moscow 1730
The direction in which the Moscow rider is turned is a fundamental detail. On all ancient state seals, the rider is turned towards the viewer. Russian craftsmen approached the image on the seal realistically, turning the figure towards the viewer so that the weapon in the right hand could be seen.
At the same time, in Western Europe, according to the strict rules of heraldry, the figures on the coats of arms must be turned to the left (look to the right). This rule was established so that the horseman or, for example, the lion depicted on the knight's shield, which he held at his left side, did not seem to be running away from the enemy. For the Moscow rider, this resulted in a problem - either the right hand was not visible to the viewer, or the rider must hold the spear with his left hand. False Dmitry was the first to try to “turn” the Moscow rider in the European way at the beginning of the 17th century, but after his overthrow the rider was again turned to the right in the old way.
The coat of arms of Moscow, designed by Santi in the old Russian traditions, served the city for almost a hundred and fifty years with almost no changes. In the decree of 1781 on the approval of the coats of arms of the Moscow province, the description of the Moscow coat of arms almost completely repeats the description of 1730: “Moscow. St. George on a horse against the same as in the middle of the State Emblem, in a red field, striking a black serpent with a spear.
Coat of arms of Moscow 1781
But in the middle of the XIX century. it was decided to bring the coats of arms of Russian cities in line with the rules of Western heraldic science. The correction of the coats of arms was led by the "learned heraldist" Baron Bernhard Köhne. On the coat of arms of Moscow, approved in 1856, the rider was turned from the viewer to the left, in accordance with the laws of heraldry, and “dressed” from medieval armor into the attire of a Roman soldier in order to better match the image of St. George. The rider's cloak instead of yellow became azure (blue), the dragon turned from black into gold with green wings, and the white horse was named silver: , with a golden fringe, a horse, striking a golden dragon with green wings with a golden spear with an eight-pointed cross at the top. To stab the dragon on the left side, the rider in Köhne's drawing arched unnaturally in the saddle. In addition to the imperial crown, behind the shield, two golden scepters placed crosswise, connected by the St. Andrew's ribbon - a sign of the capital city, were added to the frame. The coats of arms of other provincial cities were framed with oak leaves.
Coat of arms of Moscow 1883
In addition to the turn of the rider, the question of the color of the cloak (epanchi) of the rider is also curious. In the decree of 1781, only the colors of the shield, horse and snake are named, respectively - red, white and black. To find out what the original, original colors of the Moscow coat of arms were, its detailed description given in the statute of the Order of St. George, approved by Catherine II on November 26, 1769, helps. This is the nearest official description that precedes the 1781 decree. In the middle of the order cross was placed the Moscow coat of arms: “... in a red field, St. George, armed with silver armor, with a gold cap hanging over them, having a golden diadem on his head, sitting on a silver horse, on which the saddle and all the harness are gold, a black snake, poured out in the sole, piercing with a golden spear. The change in 1883 of the yellow (gold) color of the rider's cloak to azure (blue) was, perhaps, the result of the desire of the heraldry to bring the colors of the Moscow coat of arms in line with the colors of the national flag of Russia - white, blue and red (the horse is white, the cloak is blue, the shield is red ). It is worth noting that the canonical, that is, approved by the church, color of the cloak of St. George is red, so on almost all Russian icons it is red, very rarely green, but not blue.
Muscovites have always loved their coat of arms and were proud of it. In the old days, the day of honoring the Church of the Great Martyr George - "Egoriev's Day" - on April 26 (May 6, according to New Style) was celebrated by the people as a kind of day of the city. The writer Ivan Shmelev described in his memoirs the conversation of Moscow apprentices on one of the “Egoriev days” of the 19th century:
- Moscow celebrates this day. Saint Yegoriy guards our Moscow with a shield and a copy, and therefore he is written in Moscow.
- How is it written in Moscow?
- And you look at the nickel, what is in the heart of our eagle? Moscow is written on the coat of arms: Saint Egoriy himself, ours, therefore, Moscow. I went from Moscow to all of Russia, from there Yegoriev's day.
In addition to the spring “Egoriy”, “George in the autumn” was also celebrated. On this day - November 26 (December 9, NS), 1051, Metropolitan Hilarion consecrated in Kyiv the first in Russia Church of St. George the Victorious, built at the behest of Yaroslav the Wise, whose name received at baptism was George.
After the revolution of 1917, the coat of arms of Moscow was abolished. The new coat of arms of the city with Soviet symbols was drawn up by the architect D. Osipov and approved by the Presidium of the Moscow City Council on September 22, 1924. The new coat of arms had Soviet and "industrial" symbols. In the minds of Muscovites, this coat of arms did not take root.
Coat of arms of Moscow 1924
On November 23, 1993, by order of the Mayor of Moscow “On the restoration of the historical coat of arms of Moscow”, its ancient coat of arms was returned to the capital. The provision on the coat of arms says: “On a dark red shield (the ratio of width to height is 8: 9), George the Victorious turned to the right in silver armor and an azure drag (mantle) on a silver horse, striking a black serpent with a golden spear.”
Coat of arms of Moscow 1993
So, merged into one turn to the right of Santi and a blue cloak from Kone. In addition, the modern execution of the coat of arms of Moscow sins with other oddities: - in the image of the coat of arms of Moscow, the rider, like the dragon, is black, which does not correspond to the blazon (description of the coat of arms). - a golden spear, mainly passing through a “silver” horse and rider, does not comply with the rule of tinctures. In heraldry, the imposition of gold on silver and vice versa is prohibited. The only accepted exception is the coat of arms of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.
Unlike the pre-revolutionary period, at present, the images of St. George on the coats of arms of Moscow, the Moscow Region (former province) and on the central shield of the Russian coat of arms differ from each other. The Moscow region placed in its coat of arms the image of St. George, made by Koene - an ancient horseman turned to the left; that is, on the two Moscow coats of arms, the riders look in different directions.
Coat of arms of the Moscow region
In tsarist Russia, the coat of arms on the chest of the state double-headed eagle always coincided with the Moscow coat of arms. This is not the case in the Russian Federation. The horseman-serpent fighter from the coat of arms of the Russian Federation is turned to the right side and is very similar to Georgy from the city coat of arms. However, the images are not identical. The Moscow horseman is armed with a golden spear, and the Russian one with a silver one; the horse under the Moscow rider gallops, under the Russian one - walks; the dragon on the Moscow coat of arms is flattened on its paws, on the Russian coat of arms the snake is turned over backwards and trampled under horse hooves.
Let's start from today. Let us turn directly to the image on the coat of arms of Moscow:
We see a rider in armor striking a strange creature with a spear, resembling a snake with four clawed paws, wings and a crocodile mouth. What is this strange animal, the victory over which needed to be immortalized in city symbols? Or maybe it's just a symbol? Exactly the same as this victory itself? ..
Let's look at earlier versions of this image (the coat of arms of Moscow, 1730): 
We see the same plot, but a little earlier - this is how it was in 1730. The Serpent's torso has noticeably shrunk here. However, it would be more correct to say that in the later versions, for some reason, two more paws were added to the Snake. Let's digress from the naive worldview, which today it is customary to attribute to our not-so-distant ancestors, let's focus on the symbolism characteristic of man at all times, and try to answer the question: who does this Serpent remind us of? Let's look at the following figure: 
Looks like it, doesn't it? But this is the coat of arms of one of the kingdoms of that period. To make it clearer, here it is in a modern interpretation: 
So who does St. George, if we turn to symbolism, and not take the drawing literally? He conquers the Kazan kingdom. The last of the drawings presents us with the modern coat of arms of the city of Kazan ...
Could it be that in honor of the victory over the great Kazan kingdom, a similar commemorative symbolism appeared on the coat of arms of the capital of the principality of Moscow? More than. But wait, was Kazan not taken by Ivan the Terrible? What does George have to do with it, after all, there were no “Georges” in power at that time? Surprisingly, the answer lies in the nickname of Ivan IV - "the Terrible."
As we remember, Greek names were popular in Muscovy at that time, and George was one of them. But this name has variations. For example - Yegoriy. This is how the Pomors called St. George, which can be seen on the example of the White Sea epic in verse, in such creations as “About Yegory the Brave” or “Egory and the Serpent”, which are presented in the writings of A.V. Markov, who discovered the epic culture at the beginning of the 20th century at the Pomors. So, "Egoriy" is not the only variant of the name "George". The second is more relevant to the content ...
Ivan IV was called the Terrible. However, taking into account the fact that for the entire time of his reign - 42 years! - about 4,000 people were executed, and all decisions were approved by the Boyar Duma, and against the background of the atrocities perpetrated by European rulers, it would be just right to reward him with the epithet "Peace-loving", and not "Terrible". It should be recognized that the nickname inherent in him would not be given for conducting domestic politics, but for something else. For what - it is clear: in addition to domestic policy, there is foreign policy. Terrible Ivan IV (as, indeed, his father) was nicknamed solely for his militancy.
But after all, in Greek, to which all the royal names go back, the word "warlike" corresponds to the name Igor. Igor... Yegor... What vowel should be preferred in this or that land? It is known that the common people did not call Tsar Ivan IV “Terrible”, and even the notorious “Kazan chronicler”, dedicated to the capture of Kazan, spoke of the tsar with respect. It is logical to assume that those who were close to power, well trained and undoubtedly spoke Greek, at least in a minimal amount, called the formidable king. So it turns out: Ivan the Warlike.
What is a nickname, if not a middle name? "Militant" - Igor (Egoriy) - George. On the other hand, “George” has its own meaning in Greek and means “farmer”. Would it be fair to put the "tiller" next to the "warrior" - George next to Igor? You can go into lengthy explanations that the scribes, as always, mixed everything up and turned the militant “Igor” through “Egoriy” into “George”. Of course, it could be so, but it is more likely something else.
Agree that such a grandiose event, which without a doubt is the victory over the greatest kingdom of Kazan, could not but be reflected not only in heraldry, but also in folk art. And it really had an impact. Maybe spontaneously, but most likely, thanks to the people specially trained by the sovereign of Moscow, heroic tales about the deeds of the Moscow prince began to appear in various lands of the principality of Moscow. One must think that it is precisely because of the centralized distribution and the legend agreed in detail that these legends differ so little and insignificantly from each other, whether in the Moscow lands, in the Yaroslavl, or in the Pomeranian.
But let's turn directly to this "folk" creativity. We are talking about the story of "Nikita Kozhemyak". In this tale, the notorious Serpent Gorynych appears, whom the hero Nikita will have to defeat. We are interested in one very characteristic fragment from this legend: the Hero and the Serpent are busy dividing the earth between them. Moreover, not somehow, but by land surveying, that is, they lay a wide ditch along the borders of their lands (kingdoms). In our case, the name George (Greek: farmer) perfectly reflects this process.
Of course, the plot of this tale can be considered a mere fiction, not related to our case, if it were not for a number of coincidences, which in the aggregate cease to be considered as such. So:
1)
and on the coat of arms of the Moscow principality and in the legend of Nikita Kozhemyak, the struggle with a certain Serpent is reflected;
2)
the winner of the Serpent on the Moscow coat of arms bears the name George, that is, the "farmer", the hero of the fairy tale and the Serpent itself do the same;
3)
to this day, in the area of the Volga River, traces of very old defensive structures have indeed been preserved;
4)
Nikita from a fairy tale, plowing with the Serpent between, translated from Greek - “Winner”, St. George (Greek: plowman) also bears the nickname "Victorious".
It becomes clear why the name “Ivan” is so popular in Russian fairy tales - “Ivan, by the grace of God, the ruler of all Russia and the Grand Duke”, is truly worthy of imitation. It no longer raises questions and why George the Victorious appears on the coat of arms of the Moscow Principality, striking the “Snake” - this is nothing more than a reflection of the plot about the capture of Kazan by Ivan IV. Moreover, it becomes clear what kind of "serpent" it is and what it symbolizes. Of course, this fantastic creature has nothing to do with the snake. This is nothing more than a symbol of the highest power - the Basilisk. The word also has Greek roots and means "king". "Basileus" and "Vasily" have the same meaning.
It would be very interesting to look at the map of Tartaria before Ivan the Terrible conquered the Novgorod, Kazan and Astrakhan kingdoms. Were they independent states or were they part of Tartaria? The earliest map we have of marked boundaries is dated 1593. (Author Gerard de Jode, Antwerp) shows them as parts of Muscovy. 
Probably, on the coat of arms of the Moscow principality, we can observe one of the stages of the fall of the Great Tartaria, which marks the capture of the Kazan kingdom. Let us pay attention to the fact that it was the symbol of royal power and Kazan - the basilisk - that turned out to be trampled on the Moscow and Russian emblems: 
It is probably no coincidence that Kazan was given such great importance. Probably, it was Kazan at that time that had full power over the surrounding principalities, and until its fall and the subsequent transfer of the capital to Tobolsk, it was the center of Great Tartaria.
P.S.: Pay attention to the three crowns that are present in the coat of arms of the Russian kingdom. Next time we will turn to the epic creation, which served as the basis for the plots of almost all the so-called Russian folk tales: “The Tale and the Three Kingdoms: Copper, Silver and Gold”, and at the same time we will try to find out where the three Russian kingdoms were located and where they disappeared: Slavia, Artania and Kuyavia.
As you know, St. George received the crown of martyrdom in 303 AD. And already on one of the forty ceramic icons found in Macedonia and dated from the 4th-6th centuries, we see him as a serpent fighter. That is, the serpent from early Christian times is iconographically the personification of infernal forces. Which is understandable, because even for biblical writers snakes are a symbol of deceit, ferocity, evil; they call the prince of darkness the same, only with the definition "ancient".
The earliest depictions of a rider from the plot of interest to us are found in the homeland of George - in Cappadocia, from the 10th-11th centuries. The image of the dragon, judging by the surviving heritage, first appears in Orthodox art on the pages of Lobkov's Greek psalter (9th century). The anonymous author of the miniatures interpreted the defeat of the reptile by the Baptism of Christ: “thou hast erased the heads of the serpents in the water: thou hast crushed the head of the serpent(Ps. 73:13-14). From the Greek myth of the Argonauts, it is known that after killing her own children, Medea flew away in a chariot drawn by two winged dragons. In turn, Demeter gave Triptolemus a chariot with the same team. The sea monster that guarded Andromeda is sometimes also represented by a winged reptile. However, on vases, coins, reliefs, wall paintings, we most often found Ladon, Python, the Theban dragon that belonged to Mars, and others only in the form of ordinary large vipers. Their lobkian "descendant" differs from the viper only in the presence of certain associative, rudimentary wings. But on one Egyptian fresco, the Sun Serpent is painted with developed wings and even with four paws, which, however, are not plastically connected with the wings. His Old Testament cousin, the Flying Serpent, is mentioned by the prophet Isaiah in a series of eschatological "characters" (Isaiah 34:15). It took Christian artists more than one century to "grow" the dragon's wings and, moreover, link them to the paws. It will acquire its textbook appearance only by the beginning of the 2nd millennium.
And here you are surprised, first of all, by one circumstance that no one noticed: how did the inakop appear on the wings of the representative of hell? After all, it was applied only to those details that indicated their Divine conditionality (clave, robes of the God-child and the Almighty, the cover of the Gospel, etc.)?
Why do we need wings for a creature that does not have a backbone (in any case, on the icons it looks like an invertebrate, like a worm)? It is clear that it cannot fly in this form. Here the meaning lies, of course, in symbolism. And yet, the question persists: why did the icon painters not depict a snake-dragon with a spine (something like a winged dinosaur, for example, as it was often engraved in the West, especially in the 17th century)? There were, I think, reasons for them to write this way and not otherwise.
Since the icon “The Miracle of George and the Serpent” shows us, first of all, the battle between good and evil, it is logical to analytically compare these two opposing images with each other.
And we will see: the holiness of the great martyr shines through the face, and this is how the image of God is revealed in man. It is such a face - the bearer of heavenly beauty, i.e. perfect- the ancient Greeks meant by the term eidos.
But the antagonistic opposite of him will always be a mask; the concept of her. Pavel Florensky initially associates with the word “mask” something “which marks something like a face, similar to a face and taken as such, but empty inside both in the sense of physical materiality and in the sense of metaphysical substantiality.”
You should pay attention to this "emptiness inside". In Russian, most of the words associated with the word “empty” have a negative meaning: “chatterbox”, “puffball”, “pushtovora” (barley flour porridge, i.e. “empty”), “kestrel” (except for birds, this is the name of an empty person, and also - stupidity and empty chatter; Belarusian “kestolga” - “empty head”), “voidness” (vacuity, lack of what is necessary), “empty saint”, “empty flower”, etc. Etymologically, “empty” is connected with the Old Prussian paust - “wild” and is related to the Greek pauo - “I stop”, hence the “desert” - a graceless, barren land, a habitat for evil spirits, and therefore - a field of spiritual warfare with it holy ascetics.
It is noteworthy that until the 17th century, on all Novgorod icons known to us, “The Miracle of St. George about the snake "there is no vegetation, the action truly takes place in the desert.
Even more surprising is another circumstance noted by Fr. Pavel Florensky:<...>both German legends and Russian fairy tales recognize the impure force as empty inside, trough-shaped or hollow-shaped, without a backbone - this basis of the strength of the body, false bodies and, therefore, false beings. The exact opposite example is the appearance of God to Moses: “You will see Me from behind” (Ex. 33:23). Although this does not mean the contemplation of the essence.
But here is an interesting opinion we had to hear from the talented theologian of the icon M.V. Vasina: ""Holiday", which is "idleness", also derives its meaning from "empty". Its meaning, however, is different. This emptiness is from the release of space for God. The capacity of the empty valley for the joy of God, for the Holy Spirit.
The dilapidated eidos has one perspective - the icon, the actual Platonic eidos has become obsolete, churched into the eikon, in another case it turns into an ideal-idol, overshadowing the truth (screen). Therefore, a language that is actually speculative with speculation and ideals is, in the strict sense, inappropriate in relation to the icon. By the way, the mask among the Greeks, also known as eidos, was preferable for them, more ontological than a face subject to change. It did not hide emptiness in itself, but preserved the transient from accidents. An awkward attempt at self-identity. With an imperious gesture of the essence, the unshakable source of all things in the cosmos, she was forced to determine e pours the fluctuation of facial individuals. It embodies the face according to the well-known Platonic expression, according to which the world does not exist for man, but man for the world. Therefore, for the Greeks, masking is an opportunity to talk about the eternal with human destinies, the perfect language of which was revealed by ancient tragedy.
Nevertheless, Marina Vadimovna Vasina speaks of the ancient attitude to the mask. And if “holiday” is etymologically connected with the word “empty” in the sense of “freeing up space for God”, then this is only one of the aspects in the understanding of this issue. After all, the Church deliberately did not accept any masks from the very beginning. It is no coincidence that a saying was born in Russian folklore: "In Russia, all the troubles are from the holidays." The Lord spoke in a parable about a house that was swept and cleaned, i.e. prepared for the feast, but evil spirits enter and live there. A holy place is never empty. Terrible words are spoken by Christ: “Behold, your house is left to you empty"(Luke 13:35). The Savior did not mean “the capacity of the empty valley for joy in God, for the Holy Spirit”! Still can draw a parallel between the concept of "emptiness" and gracelessness, evil, non-existence.
The thought repeatedly expressed by the Holy Fathers in the lips of Abba Dorotheus sounded like this: “Evil in itself is nothing, for it is not any kind of being and has no nature.” Therefore, the serpent is not a real biological reptile, but a false creature; "it becomes real (evil) in the perversion of the rational will, deviating from God to non-existence." According to the teaching of the Fathers, even demons still have free will, granted by the Creator to people and angels. We see the snake's wings, head, and legs, but everything in it is distorted to the point of ugliness: the wings became not angelic, but like those of bats, the head is not anthropomorphic, but animal, while the legs turned into paws. Meanwhile, according to Dionysius the Areopagite, the legs of the Angels symbolically indicate “mobility, speed and suitability for eternal rapid movement towards the divine. Why did theology depict the feet of holy minds with wings. Wings indicate, after all, the speed of ascent, heavenlyness, upward orientation and, thanks to the upward striving, remoteness from everything low; and the lightness of the wings - to the complete absence of earthiness and the possibility of a completely clean and unburdened rise.
The wing liners, called subferns, in our opinion, were depicted in order to give the wings the lightness that the Areopagite speaks of. But in most examples, snake wings do not have subferns. However, the legs-paws are always connected together with the wings and are always the same color as the head, i.e. there is a color semantic connection between the legs, wings and head, which is read thanks to the system of Dionysius. If “theology depicted the feet of holy minds as winged,” based on their eternal and impetuous movement towards the divine, then we are talking about the free choice of this movement by the Angels, in other words, we are talking about free will; a similar conclusion follows from the symbolism of wings. Freedom of will, we repeat, is also preserved among demons, but it is directed towards movement towards non-existence. The combination of wings and paws is based on the potentiality: "Wherever I want, I crawl and fly there." To the gift of freedom must be added at least one more: the ability to think. Here are the gifts of God left to the fallen angels and displayed by pictorial means: usually in a color that imitates gold, less often - white, red or some other, but always light-like, sometimes even the mentioned ink spear, burning on winged legs-paws and an animal head.
In those cases when subferns were painted under the wings of a serpent, ancient artists tried to only strengthen this idea.
The symbolism of the ridge, according to Dionysius the Areopagite, indicates "the totality of all life-giving forces." What life-giving power can a false being deprived of Divine grace have? Of course, none.
Hence, he has neither the "totality of life-giving forces", nor the ridge itself as unnecessary.
The awareness of the representative of hell, who did not have a spine, dictated to the icon painters not to write a la a Disney dinosaur with wings, but a winged snake without a spine, to interpret it as a false body.
Serpent and eidos are antithetical concepts.
In the Burial Order, liturgical theology testifies: “I am the image of Thy inexpressible glory, even if I bear the plagues of sins.”
The serpent, at most, is a mask.
On all Russian icons, St. George strikes him with a spear not in the eye, but in the mouth. Eyelids, according to Dionysius, symbolize the "storage of divine insights." Since the demons recognized and, recognizing him as the Judge, feared the Son of God, we venture to say that they also keep the divine understandings that they were aware of before being cast out from heaven. Therefore, the spear does not fall into the eye, but into the mouth. The main spiritual purpose of a human mouth is to proclaim the Word of the Lord, to be an instrument of the Logos, but the mouth of a serpent is a “translator” of blasphemy and lies. George strikes at the very core of evil - at the sting of death, which is almost always commented on in a hell of a fiery bloody tongue sticking out of a bared mouth. We see the same thing on an ancient ceramic icon from Macedonia.
Here the theme of the resurrection develops in a kind of hint. Let us recall the inspired “Announcement of St. John Chrysostom for Holy Pascha”: “Death, where is your sting? Hell, where is your victory? According to the ancient Slavic edition, St. George, "like a captive liberator"(troparion), addresses the liberated with a lesson. “Accordingly, in the most ancient Russian images of George the Warrior, the features of a preacher of Christianity, a martyr, predominate.” From spiritual death during life, the pagans, having been baptized, are resurrected as Christians into eternal life.
Painting and literature in Russia were two banks of the same river, called Orthodoxy.
Far from accidental is the curly hair of St. George. The characteristic roundness of the strands involuntarily evokes the old Slavic word vlna - “in about lna" (sheep's wool). In the Old Testament Church, a person, coming to God, along with other sacrifices, offered Him the wool of the slain animal, which was placed directly on the altar and burned. In the martyrdom of St. George iconographers saw, of course, self-sacrifice in the name of God; and curly hair drew attention to this.
Which, however, should not be taken as a norm that requires the isographers of all martyrs to write with curly hair. This is one of the many conceptual devices.
The icon shows us "secret and supernatural spectacles." A mystical battle unfolds between good and evil. But a strange picture: most often "George does not make efforts, his dominance over the enemy looks like something eternal and predetermined from above." In Novgorod icon painting until the 16th century. all the holy serpent warriors on horseback never cut a serpent with a sword, but stab it with a spear. And every time the hand of each warrior holds the spear without any sign of any tension. The spear and this "victory without effort" are obviously in a certain relationship.
And there really is a connection. You need to know the order of using weapons in a medieval battle. An explanation for this order is given by Academician D.S. Likhachev: "the spear was the weapon of the first skirmish and almost always broke in it." George wins with lightning speed, moreover, without breaking his spear, for he wins not so much with his strength as with God's.
For this reason, on the Ostroukhov icon, a shield with the face of the sun peeps out from behind the back of the Victorious. The shield is a symbol and attribute of protection: the word “protection” itself speaks of the protection of a person. It would be a mistake to see in the image of the sun "rudiments of a pagan solar cult." The sun is a fairly well-established symbol of Christ. Here the idea of the all-saving role of the Son of Man is carried out. And the fact that, with rare exceptions, St. George rides on a white horse and to the right (from the viewer), shows us Whose power drives the serpent fighter. According to Dionysius the Areopagite, the image of horses means "submissiveness and obedience, and the white ones indicate lordship and, as it were, a special kinship to the divine light, the black ones indicate secrecy." In the frequent Novgorod and Pskov “exceptions”, George sits precisely on a black horse, and if he gallops to the left, then on the left is the segment of the mandorla with Christ. This rule does not apply to Moscow and Suzdal monuments (especially from the 16th century).
After the interpretation of Dionysius the Areopagite, it is amusing to read that “the white horse looks like a symbol of spiritual purity” (of whom? Horses?!) and that “the shining white horse is a kind of apocalyptic “pale horse”. If the horse shines, then it is dazzling, not pale. The white color here is a symbol, a synonym for the transcendent Divine light penetrating this side of being. Therefore, the image of a white horse as an unsimilar symbol intimately reminds of the power of God conquering evil (we emphasize: power, not hypostasis). Linking the life of St. George with the Apocalypse is at least far-fetched and illogical. There was, of course, the so-called Apocryphal Apocalypse of St. George, but to associate it with the Revelation of St. John the Evangelist there is no reason.
The depiction of a black horse in this story goes back, presumably, to the well-known hagiographic edition, which speaks of the appearance of the Victorious in battle from the heavenly world. The icon painters wanted to emphasize the secrecy of this phenomenon in the Areopagitian way. And the most subtle of them, wanting to avoid black, symbolizing hell, replaced it with dark blue, or corrected "its semantics with blue-blue highlights." Which additionally drew the attention of the praying one to the belonging of the horse to the heavenly world.
The use of an unsimilar symbol in this case was quite justified, because corresponded to the spirit of the 82nd canon of the Trullo Council: it was required to “faithfully convey a specific historical image” of St. George "and in it to reveal another reality - a spiritual reality", "to convey by means of art, with the help of well-known symbolism, a reflection of divine glory." An unsimilar symbol was antinomically balanced by similar symbols (the hand of Christ or the half-length image of the Savior, snakes, hills ...). The unsimilar symbol was relegated to the background of the semantic plane, because it belongs to the unsolicited image of a horse. Its task is to bring out the image of St. George, to declare the hierarchical superiority of the Victorious over the enemy force.
The theme of the antagonistic struggle between light and darkness is obvious. It is especially noticeable on the icon from the village. Manihino: the snake crawls out here not from the water, but from the cave; diagonally from the cave to the mandorla, a well-read antinomy is built: "non-existence (darkness of the cave) - existence (Georgy's battle with the serpent) - super-existence (mandorla with the Hand of God)". The composition turns from corner to corner under the canopy of a cross, such as "Andreevsky", formed by the intersection of the mental diagonal from the cave to the mandorla with the diagonal of the spear. In the center of the icon is hidden the monogram "X", meaning the name of the One Whose power conquers evil.
The reduced position of the snake was shown by the fact that Princess Elizabeth led him on her own belt tied to the horn. , for the horn, according to Dionysius the Areopagite, is a symbol of invincibility; and in the Old Testament it expressed the power, honor and glory of kings.
Over time, the theme of snake fighting becomes so popular in general in European art that it began to displace all other motifs in the iconography of the Cappadocian great martyr-serpent fighter.
Not trusting the arts, the scientific world treated the Victorious in a completely different way.
Secular literary and art historians are that generation of European and Russian intelligentsia that has grown up and is growing up on a pro-pagan attitude to the world, for which there is “no difference between spirituality and art, between the lives of saints and fairy tales, between prayer and singing, between philosophy and theology”, - all of them, proud of knowledge and education, reduced the life of St. George only to legend, to folklore, to myth, in a word, to the game of collective or individual fantasy - to what they themselves, in fact, were engaged in. This even began to be considered good manners and a sign of the true "scientific".
It turned out a strange situation: the great martyr, who had once defeated one of the princes of lies, was “scientifically” turned ... into a false saint.
Yes, “for a long time two groups of biographies of St. George coexisted: the canonical and the apocryphal. The oldest representative of the second group is the so-called Vienna palimpsest, dating back to the 5th century. Papyrus fragments of the "Acts of George" of the VI century were found in 1937 in the Negev desert in Palestine. Following them, many similar Greek apocryphal texts appeared, which in scientific literature are usually called (according to the place of their storage) Athens, Venetian, Paris, etc. Their essence lies in the fact that the torment of St. George takes place under the fictional king Dadian in Persia ( but sometimes - in Lydda, as, for example, in the canon of Roman), in the presence of two to seventy-two kings, and the saint dies and resurrects three times. Along with the apocryphal lives, there are also a number of apocryphal miracles of the martyr, such as, for example, the miracle with the belt, the meeting with the demon, the already mentioned Apocalypse of St. George. “The Apocrypha gained great popularity among other Christian peoples, in particular in the Latin West, they were also preserved in Syriac, Arabic, Coptic, Ethiopian and other oriental languages. With the development of this genre of folk literature, the life of the saint was adorned with new fantastic details and an exaggeration of the power of torture and their number. In particular, the dissemination of non-canonical tales about the Great Martyr has assumed such proportions in the West that they fell under the prohibition of the so-called Decretum Gelasianum, which belongs, however, not to Pope Gelasius (492-496), but to a later time (such "ancientization" was supposed to give condemnation apocrypha by the Church more authority)".
But along with the apocrypha, “authentic, completely Orthodox in their spirit, free from fantastic details and consistent with historical reality, the texts of the biographies of St. George have been preserved. The life of the great martyr served as a theme for Byzantine writers and rhetoricians, such as Saint Andrew of Crete, Arcadius of Cyprus, Theodore Questor, Saint Gregory (George) of Cyprus, Patriarch of Constantinople. The Orthodox hagiography of St. George was worthily crowned by the work of the Byzantine theologian of the 10th century, the creator of the complete Orthodox Menaion, Blessed Simeon Metaphrastus.
For us, the path of transformation of St. George into a folklore hero, but in fact into a false saint, was, of course, unacceptable. Even the ancient Greeks called an awkward arrangement that resisted the form that arranged it, "meon", meaning " not- existent. Then, indeed, it will be necessary to agree with the decanonization of the saint, carried out by the Vatican in the twentieth century.
Which, of course, we cannot afford, knowing at least the deepest reverence for the Victorious by the Russian people to this day. A “false being” is not able to respond to prayers, help those who ask, and, moreover, be revered by Christians.
For us, the most reliable basis for analysis was the teaching of the Holy Fathers, a sober trust in the traditions of St. George and the view of the Orthodox Church on her own art.
Florensky Pavel, Priest. Selected Works on Art. - M .: Visual arts; Center for the Study, Protection and Restoration of the Heritage of St. Pavel Florensky, 1996. P.91.
See icons: 1) from the former collection of M.P. Pogodin (now in the Russian Museum), perv. floor. XIV century; 2) from the former collection of A.V. Morozov (now in the Tretyakov Gallery), second. floor. XIV century; 3) from the Lyubon churchyard (now in the Russian Museum), end. XIV - XV centuries. (although there is no image of a snake on this icon); 4) from s. Manikhino (now in the Russian Museum), c. ser. 15th century (?); 5) from the Arkhangelsk village. Litvinovo (now in the Tretyakov Gallery), perv. floor. or ser. XVI century; 6) from the former collection of N.P. Likhachev (now in the Russian Museum), early. XVI century; 7) from the former collection of I.S. Ostroukhov (now in the Tretyakov Gallery), perv. floor. XVI century; 8) from s. Shemenichi (northern province of Veliky Novgorod; now the icon is in the Russian Museum), con. 16th century And other monuments.
Koldasov Gennady. spiritual cycles. (Christianity and paganism) // Russian identity. - St. Petersburg, 2002. No. 9. P. 111.
Itinera hierosolymitana / Ed. P. Geyer // Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum latinorum. T. 39. (1898) P. 176.
Rystenko A.V. The legend of Saint George and the dragon. Odessa, 1909. S. 9-64.
George the Victorious is one of the most revered saints in Russia. Usually he is depicted with a spear trampling on a terrible serpent - a symbol of satanic forces ... However, this is far from the only miracle that this famous adherent of the Christian faith performed.
In the service of Caesar
The Holy Great Martyr George was born in the 3rd century AD in the Asia Minor region of Cappadocia, during the reign of Emperor Diocletian. His parents were Christians. When the emperor began the persecution of the Christian faith, Father George was tortured to death, and his mother moved to her homeland in Palestine.
On that day, he emerged victorious in all games, and, returning home, told his mother about his promise. She baked a cake, and the little one went to church and placed it in front of the altar. At this time, merchants entered the temple. They saw the pie and reasoned like this:
Why is he a saint? Let's eat it, and leave the incense in the temple!
And so they did. But when the cake was eaten, the merchants could not leave the church, as all the doors disappeared somewhere. Then the merchants placed silver and gold coins in front of the altar and fervently prayed to the saint. After that, they were finally able to find the doors and went outside. The news of this quickly spread throughout the country, and believers began to send money to build a new temple. Later, a large stone church was built on them.
Legend of the Serpent
But the most famous miracle of St. George is associated with his victory over the serpent.
According to legend, not far from the city of Beirut on the Mediterranean Sea there was a lake in which a huge man-eating snake lived. The inhabitants of the city were pagans and every day they sacrificed their children to the monster.
The turn came to the only royal daughter. She was taken to the shore of the lake and left there. She began to wait for a snake to crawl out of the water and devour her. But then he appeared before her on a horse, with a spear at the ready. Having made the sign of the cross, the hero plunged his spear into the snake. Then he ordered the girl to throw her belt around the neck of the monster and lead him along. When they came to the city, passers-by began to shy away from the monster in horror. But the saint exclaimed:
Do not be afraid, trust in the Lord Jesus Christ and believe in Him. It was He who sent me to you to get rid of the serpent.
After this, St. George finished off the serpent in the city square with a large crowd of people, and from that day on, all the inhabitants of the city believed in Christ and were baptized. At the site of the murder of the monster, a temple was built in the name of the Most Holy Theotokos and in honor of the Holy Great Martyr George, who from now on was called the Victorious. It is said that many miracles were also performed in this temple.