Sacred Relic of Saint George Sacred Relic of Saint George The sacred relic of Saint George was one of the most famous of relics, after the True Cross and Holy Lance, and was the arm of the Saint George (d. 303), ordered killed by the Roman Emperor Diocletian for his failure to renounce his faith in Christ. George, a secondary patron saint of the First Crusade, played a significant role and provided other relics, as the occupation of his tomb at Lydda (now Lod, Israel) marked the first Latin bishop of Israel as well as a service to ask for his intervention. The arm was
George of Cappadocia part of the city, dragging the two other corpses along with ropes, and eventually burned the remains on the shore, casting the ashes into the sea. The Arians regarded George as a martyr; and Edward Gibbon took an evident pleasure in representing "the renowned St. George of England" as the Alexandrian usurper "transformed" into a heroic soldier-saint; but Bishop Milner (Hist. Inquiry into the Existence and Character of St. George, 1792) and others have shown that this assumption of identity is manifestly false, the St. George who is patron saint of England being of an earlier date, though of that