St. George Enthroned

Most people picture Saint George on a horse, driving a spear into a dragon. This icon, painted around 1501, shows the other George. He sits enthroned, frontal and still, dressed less like a soldier than a young prince, a martyr honoured at the rank of a ruler. The dragon story was a late medieval favourite, yet Orthodox tradition first knew George as a Roman officer executed for his faith in the early 4th century, and the enthroned image reaches back to that older idea of him. Bulgaria held a deep devotion to warrior saints, protectors who had stood against an empire and paid for it with their lives. He keeps the sword and the martyr's palm, the two things his cult never set down.