Most of the eastern icons of St. George depict him with a little guy sitting on the back of the horse. I've asked priests and monks who he is, but no one ever seems to know. But DeAnn Hertzog did some reading and here's what she discovered:
I did some research about the guy sitting behind St. George in Eastern Orthodox icons. I googled him and asked someone. That didn't give me any answers so I got a book from the library. Here's what it said:
"The most intriguing of these additional figures is a young boy whom we sometimes find perched on the crupper on George's charger. He is a specialty of eastern European art from quite on early period. We cannot be at all sure, however, whom this mysterious little figure is meant to represent. He may be George's servant, his 'coffee boy', as Osbert Lancaster calls him, perhaps even Pasicrates himself. But there have been a number of other interpretations. George Every, for example calls him 'a figure of Christ'. He has also been described as 'a young Paphlagonian rescued by St George when he was being carried away into slavery'. There seems to be no knowing. All we can really say is that for Byzantine painters the boy evidently provided an oppurtunity for introducing a lighter touch, almost an element of comic relief, into a subject which was otherwise so highly charged with emotion."
The book is called "Saint George:the saint with three faces" by David Scott Fox.
If you know who Pasicrates is let me know. From what I can find there were a few. It could be refering to the man who wrote down the story of George and claimed to be a contemporary of his, but actually lived much later. I don't know if this is the same Pasicrates who was a martyr from Cyprus.
I don't know who Pasicrates is. Any ideas?
4 comments:
Here's some info on Pasicrates who is mentioned in the quote. In another section of the same book the author writes about the earliest text about St George, a 5th century vienna manuscript , based on a greek original. The document claims that its truth is vouched for by "Pasicrates", George's faithful servant. This name appears in many of the stories of St George and many icons show him with the saint. This author states that, "'Pasicrates' turns out to have been a purely imaginary figure invented by early hagiographers."
(A hagiographer is a biographer of saints.)
I guess no one can know for sure the authenticity of Pasicrates or the actual identity of St. George's sidekick, but someone sent me a spiritual commentary on the icon. She suggested that both figures could represent St. George - the smaller one being the actual, human George and the larger one what he is able to accomplish through the power of God.
Can you give some information on the spiritual commentary? Is it Orthodox or Catholic?
The comments were the interpretation of someone I know. Rather than seeing something doctrinal, historical, or theological in the icon, her comments concerned spirituality - what we become in God as opposed to what we are in our natural strength.
The purpose of icons is to reveal all these things - historical information, theological truth, and spiritual guidance. I like the idea because it forces us out of the merely cognative and into the realms of creativity and imagination, both essential aspects of healthy spirituality.
Have you been learning anything else? Another favorite saint of mine is Saint Christopher. There are two - one depicted carrying Christ across a river (the name Christopher is actually an ancient title for one who bears the message of Jesus), and the second is a saint with the head of a dog.
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