ABSTRACT
The popularity of St George within the Latin Kingdom is usually ascribed to his vocation as a soldier and his status as a figure of exemplary faith, and the ways in which these attributes resonated with a ‘crusading’ population. Through a Maguire-inspired analysis of a single St George icon, this chapter tests the sufficiency of such an explanation. By its end, the icon’s implied narrative and details of setting appear to communicate George’s value as a saint particularly efficacious in the East and the icon’s format, style, iconography, and Greek characters appear as a pictorial language uniquely capable of invoking him. In so doing, St George illuminates a larger devotional and artistic agenda designed not simply to draw out easy affinities but rather to give roots to the Latin Kingdom’s recently established and ever-developing community.
