he employed an eloquent prelate—probably Acacius—as a "tongue." He belonged to the Acacian section of the party, and was consequently obnoxious to the semi-Arians, who "deposed him" in the council of Seleucia. He allowed the notorious adventurer Aetius, founder of the Anomoeans or ultra-Arians, to officiate as deacon at Alexandria, after having been ordained, as Athanasius tells us (de Synod. 38), by Leontius of Antioch, although he afterwards "compelled" the Arian bishops of Egypt to sign the decree of the Acacian synod of Constantinople of 360 against Aetius (Philost. iii. 2). He induced Theodore, bp. of Oxyrynchus, to submit to degradation from the ministry and to be reordained by him as an Arian bishop (Lib. Marcell. et Faustini, Sirmond. i. 135). He managed to keep the confidence of Constantius, who congratulated the Alexandrians on having abandoned such "grovelling teachers" as Athanasius and entrusted their "heavenward aspirations" to the guidance of "the most venerable George" (Athan. Apol. to Const. 30, 31). But George was far from recommending his form of Christianity either to the orthodox or to the pagans of Alexandria. "He was severe," says Sozomen, "to the adherents of Athanasius," not only forbidding the exercise of their worship, but "inflicting imprisonment and scourges on men and women after the fashion of a tyrant"; while, towards all alike, "he wielded his authority with more violence than belonged to the episcopal rank and character." He was "hated by the magistrates for his supercilious demeanour, by the people for his tyranny" (Soz. iv. 10, 30). He stood well with Constantius, who was guided theologically by the Acacians; and it was easy for the "pope" of Alexandria to embitter his sovereign (as Julian says he did, Ep. 10) against the Alexandrian community, to name several of its members as disobedient subjects, and to suggest that its grand public buildings ought by rights to pay tax to the treasury (Ammian. etc.). He shewed himself a keen man of business, "buying up the nitre-works, the marshes of papyrus and reed, and the salt lakes" (Epiph. Haer. lxxvi.). He manifested his anti-pagan zeal by arbitrary acts and insulting speeches, procured the banishment of Zeno, a prominent pagan physician (Julian, Ep. 45), prevented the pagans from offering sacrifices and celebrating their national feasts (Soz. iv. 30), brought Artemius, "duke" of Egypt, much given to the destruction of idols (Theod. iii. 18), with an armed force into the superb temple of Serapis at Alexandria, which was forthwith stripped of images, votive offerings, and ornaments (Julian, l.c.; Soz. l.c.). On Aug. 29, 358, the people broke into the church of St. Dionysius, where George was then residing, and the soldiers rescued him from their hands with difficulty and after hard fighting. On Oct. 2 he was obliged to leave the city; and the "Athanasians" occupied the churches from Oct. 11 to Dec. 24, when they were again ejected by Sebastian. Probably George returned soon after he had quitted the Seleucian council, i.e. in Nov. 359. The news of Julian's accession arrived at Alexandria Nov. 30, 361. George was in the height of his pride and power: he had persecuted and mocked the pagans (Socr. iii. 2; Maff. Frag.; Ammian.), who now, being officially informed that there was an emperor who worshipped the gods, felt that the gods could at last be avenged. The shout arose, "Away with George!" and "in a moment," says the Fragmentist, they threw him into prison, with Diodorus and Dracontius, the master of the mint, who had overthrown a pagan altar which he found standing there (Ammian.). The captives were kept in irons until the morning of Dec. 24. Then the pagan mob again assembled, dragged them forth with "horrible shouts" of triumph, and kicked them to death. They flung the mangled body of George on a camel, which they led through every part of the city, dragging the two other corpses along with ropes, and eventually burned the remains on the shore, casting the ashes into the sea.
The Arians, of course, regarded George as a martyr; and Gibbon took an evident pleasure in representing "the renowned St. George of England" as the Alexandrian usurper "transformed "into a heroic soldier-saint; but bp. Milner (Hist. Inquiry into the Existence and Character of St. George, 1792) and others have shewn that this assumption of identity is manifestly false, the St. George who is patron saint of England being of an earlier date, though of that saint's life, country, or date we have no certain information, such traditions as we possess being given in the next art.
[W.B.]
Georgius (43), M., Apr. 23 (Μεγαλομάρτυς, Bas. Men.); traditionally the patron saint of England, a military tribune and martyr under Diocletian at Nicomedia, A.D. 303. He was a native of Cappadocia and of good birth. Some time before the outbreak of the great persecution he accompanied his mother to Lydda, in Palestine, where she possessed property. As soon, however, as he heard of the publication of the first edict (Feb. 23, 303), he returned to Nicomedia where, as some think, he was the celebrated person who tore down the imperial proclamation, and then suffered death by roasting over a slow fire (Eus. H. E. viii. 5). [DIOCLETIAN.] The earliest historical testimony to the existence and martyrdom of St. George is an inscription in a church at Ezr᾿a or Edhr᾿a, in S. Syria, copied by Burckhardt and Porter, and discussed by Mr. Hogg in two papers before the Royal Society of Literature (Transactions, vi. 292, vii. 106). This inscription states that the building had been a heathen temple, but was dedicated as a church in honour of the great martyr St. George, in a year which Hogg, by an acute argument, fixes as 346. (For another view, however, which assigns the inscription to 499 see Böckh's Corp. Inscript. Graec. ed. Kirchhoff, t. iv. No. 8627.) His name occurs again in another inscription in the church of Shaka, 20 miles E. of Ezr᾿a, which Hogg dates a.d. 367. (Böckh, l.c. No. 8609, cf. 8630; for other instances of transformations of heathen temples into churches and hospitals in the 4th and 5th cent., see Böckh, l.c. 8645, 8647.) The council assembled at Rome by pope Gelasius, a.d. 494 or 496 (Hefele, Concil. i. 610, iii. 219, ed. Paris, 1869), condemned the Acts of St. George, together with
