equestrian statue of S. George ; and he was answered by Dr. Samuel Pegge, in 1777, in a paper read before the Society of Antiquaries. Gibbon, without much investigation into the ground of the charge, assumes the identity of the Saint and the Arian prelate. “The odious stranger, disguising every circumstance of time and place, assumed the mask of a martyr, a saint, and a Christian hero; and the infamous George of Cappadocia has been transformed into the renowned S. George of England, the patron of arms, of chivalry, and of the Garter[1].”
The great improbability of such a transformation would lead one to question the assertion, even if on no other ground. Arians and Catholics were too bitterly hostile, for it to be possible that a partisan of the former, and a persecutor, should be accepted as a saint by the latter. The writings of S. Athanasius were sufficiently known to the Mediævals to save them from falling into such an error, and S. Athanasius paints his antagonist in no charming colours. I am disposed to believe that there really was such a person as S. George, that he was a martyr to the Catholic faith, and that the very
- ↑ Gibbon’s Decline and Fall, chap, xxiii.
