Ricardo Diaz de Rabago and Verdeguer
In our forms of expression, in the "categories" of our minds there are a number of concepts we use to express conflicting aspects, as history and legend; Myth and Reality.
Legend and myth coalesce fantasy, the imagination, Fiction, as opposed to reality, the historical, the empirical, or verifiable and affordable, and thus we categorize and define saying this is historic, this is legend; O well, This is myth, fable, this is real and true, coming up with this binomial to reduce stating this is true, and this is not it.
With these own mindsets of the West, world and culture we belong and set us, we find a rich and extensive biography, the life of San Jorge, in which these two opposing elements appear, thereby ushering a long history marked out over time by supporters and detractors of the Holy, both within the Church and outside it, going so far as to maintain the purity of faith to defend at all costs the historiography of the Holy or put into question, semiocultarla,… O from outside, to desacreditarla, him as myth, fable or legend. So it has come to today.
The figure of San Jorge, martyr of the reign of Emperor Diocletian, emerges in the early years of the fourth century, with rich and unusual strength, joining the group of martyrs belonging to the militia, like San Sebastian and San Mauricio. Devotion to the Holy extends throughout Europe, going beyond the continental boundaries and encompassing not only the Western Church but also the Eastern Church, with great strength and rootedness. And so we find it in places, villages, peoples, cities, parts, nations, chapels, iglesias, cathedrals, squares and monuments, military orders, and a great iconography at the "official", popular and family… San Jorge is a saint of a universal dimension. It is difficult to accept a collective error of such magnitude in space and time.
Unquestionably the passage through history, Century Iron, Middle Ages, the struggle for the defense of the faith, holy warriors, the Crusades, Eastern cultures, necessarily they have impregnated a range of attachments, in the "historic" or "critical". Is the fruit and consequence of its passage through time, at different times, and to be admired and revered by the faith of each people "from their own being and culture". It is the fruit of approach hero, the Holy, to town.
Another difficulty "critical" would be the presence or absence of data "historical ascertainable and assessable". Without going into this chapter, which would exceed the limits of a single article, we could say that evaluating everything with these scales or parameters would not have existed almost all men in their own and individualized uniqueness and personality, as "concrete" beings having disappeared ascertainable historical data. Not exact reduce everything to a "specific check" system and from there make statements.
Nor can reduce the faith of a people to sublimation of ancestral rites, the assumption and conversion of natural and primitive religions, the "Christianization" of archaic rituals.
There are however two very important elements to consider in this long process and usually omitted. One of important cultural value: "tradition" in its purest form. It is having arrived since the beginning of the fourth century to us, generation after generation, with all its greatness is an element to consider first magnitude. And this move from each other, is "traitor", This tradition, This passage through history, culture and generations has been enriched with a whole series of data, acts, places and elements to take into account.
The second is religious. The Church distinguishes between what is called in theological terms the "sensus fidei" and the "consesus fidelium". Is the life and faith of the Church is not reduced to doctrinal proposals, moral and theological, but one of his "authentic" sources "the sense of the faithful", el "sense of the faithful". It is the Church, God's people as such that is also custodian of the faith and life of the Church with their feelings. And the people has led to this famous Holy Martyr Church, Saint George. Because knowledge and truth are not the exclusive patrimony of the wise, the scientist, or teacher, There is also a popular knowledge rooted in the depths of the people, to which the wise and the scientist have to approach learning, express and proclaim.
It is perhaps the most appropriate way the placing on the San Jorge HISTORY dilemma or another LEYENDA but apparently very similar, but radically different: History and legend.
At the beginning we have said that there are figures that all property are history, reality; other myth, legend or fable. But it is also true and evident that there are real and concrete characters that can not be bounded by the limits of history, which by its very magnitude break the molds of the historical past to the legend. This has happened with the great figures and characters of the people.
It is the people that breaking the boundaries of history raises its character to hero status, myth, making legend.
I think therefore that the path of study St. George the Martyr, the reality of our pattern is a character that its significance has broken the mold and the categories of history to move to a place in the table of the great heroes of history transcending reach the highest category of people: the legend.
