England’s St. George Flag: Forged in Centuries of Warfare against Islam

The Stream

England’s oldest national flag, the red cross of St. George on a white banner, is currently embroiled in controversy — particularly amid the nation’s ongoing migrant crisis. The more some Britons raise it aloft, the more others complain about it.

For those flying it, the flag represents pride in being English — reclaiming a symbol of national unity, heritage, and patriotism, no different from when other peoples display their own flags. Detractors, however — most of whom are reflexively anti-English, even if they share English DNA — insist it is a symbol of “far-right” extremism, racism, and xenophobia. To them, it represents exclusion and hostility toward migrants, the overwhelming majority of whom are Muslim.

The truth, however, appears to lie in the middle. English patriots are indeed rallying to their nation’s oldest flag as a collective act of defiance against what they see as an Islamic migrant takeover — one in which Muslims are being used to erode the nation, “groom” its women, and suppress English (particularly Christian) culture and heritage.

Meanwhile, both sides seem to be oblivious to the flag’s actual (and rather ironic) origins: the St. George banner was forged in the crucible of Christian warfare against Islam.

The St. George flag originated in the Middle Ages as both a military and religious emblem inseparable from the Crusades. The Knights Templar, founded in the early twelfth century, were the first to adopt it. As monks, their white mantles symbolized purity; as warriors sworn to fight Muslims to the death in defense of Christendom, the blood-red cross symbolized their readiness for martyrdom (which many experienced).

In the years after the Templars’ adoption, the symbol spread to other crusaders. It soon became linked to St. George, a third-/fourth-century Christian soldier martyred by the pagan Roman Empire for refusing to renounce Christ. In medieval imagination, George became the very embodiment of militant Christianity, a celestial knight who exemplified the willingness to die for Christ in battle against Islam.

Indeed, crusader chronicles repeatedly describe St. George appearing in visions or even in battle. During the storming of Muslim-held Jerusalem in 1099, Raymond of Aguilers, an eyewitness of the First Crusade, recorded: “The blessed George was seen in the army of Christ, fighting against the Saracens and giving victory to the faithful.”

Nearly a century later, during the Third Crusade (c. 1190), King Richard I — the Lionheart — regularly invoked George as his patron saint. His men likewise believed the warrior saint fought beside them. As one contemporary chronicler put it: “Saint George, the standard-bearer of the heavenly army, came to the aid of the Christians and overthrew the enemies of the Cross.”

Another century on, during the Ninth Crusade (c. 1270), Edward I — then a prince, later king — was no less devoted. He “commended himself and his men to the most blessed martyr George, whom he had ever taken as his special patron in war,” in the words of the chronicler, Walter of Guisborough.

Returning home, Edward I continued to elevate St. George as a symbol of chivalry, courage, and holy war. His grandson, Edward III, expanded this association further. By the mid-1300s, St. George and his banner — red cross on white — had become inseparable from English identity itself: a symbol of Christian England’s militant defense against external threats, above all the Muslim enemy. For centuries, the warrior saint’s flag inspired courage, chivalry, and an explicitly English sense of martial faith.

Because the flag originated with the Templars — who are the subject of my latest book, The Two Swords of Christ — let us close with a telling episode that shows how even Muslims feared St. George.

In 1187, near Nazareth, some 500 crusaders led by Templars were ambushed by 7,000 Muslims. Though heavily outnumbered, they fought valiantly until all were slain — except for one Templar knight. Offered the chance to surrender, he refused, fighting on alone until he had made a ring of Muslim corpses around him. The awed enemy, struck by his supernatural courage, became convinced that he was none other than St. George.

The contemporary Itinerarium Peregrinorum records the scene in full:

While the rest of his fellow knights (estimated to number 500) had either been captured or killed, he bore all the force of the battle alone and shone out as a glorious champion for the law of his God. He was surrounded by enemy troops and almost abandoned by human aid, but when he saw so many thousands running towards him from all directions he strengthened his resolve and courageously undertook the battle, one man against all. His commendable courage won him his enemies’ approval. Many were sorry for him and affectionately urged him to surrender, but he ignored their urgings, for he was not afraid to die for Christ. At long last, crushed rather than conquered by spears, stones and lances, he sank to the ground and joyfully passed to heaven with the martyr’s crown, triumphant. It was indeed a gentle death with no place for sorrow, when one man’s sword had constructed such a great crown for himself from the [enemy] crowd laid all around him. Death is sweet when the victor lies encircled by the impious people he has slain with his victorious right hand. And because it so happened that the warrior had been riding a white horse and had white armor and weapons, the Gentiles [Muslims], who knew that St. George had this appearance in battle, boasted that they had killed the Knight of Shining Armor, the protector of the Christians.

Such is the true origin of England’s St. George flag: forged in centuries of warfare with, and martyrdom at the hands of, Muslims.

Incidentally, that a Christian warrior saint is tied to a European nation’s long war against Islam — in this case, England — should be unsurprising; the need for such saints was ubiquitous across Christendom. One need only look to Spain’s patron saint, St. James Matamoros; that is, St. James the Moor — meaning, Muslim — Slayer.

The point is this: the St. George flag speaks far more directly to England’s present Muslim migrant crisis than most Englishmen who wave it — or denounce it — can begin to comprehend.

Put differently, the St. George flag is not a symbol of xenophobic paranoia, nor is it a mere relic of medieval piety: It is a stark reminder that those who forget history are doomed to relive it.

Raymond Ibrahim, author of Defenders of the West and Sword and Scimitar, is the Distinguished Senior Shillman Fellow at the Gatestone Institute and the Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum.