Saint George and the Worlds of Protection

This research investigates Saint George as a mythical, iconographic, and devotional figure of protection. Its central concern is not only the circulation of a long-lasting Christian image, but also the ways in which the warrior saint came to protect subjects and communities located in zones of vulnerability, conflict, or social eccentricity: monks, soldiers, the poor, workers, migrants, popular devotees, racialized groups, and various forms of life at the margins of order.

In its initial stage, the investigation is organized around three main fields. The first is Mount Athos, where I will spend a week researching the presence of Saint George in Orthodox monastic tradition, icons, monasteries, chapels, and narratives of spiritual protection. In this world, Saint George appears as martyr, celestial warrior, and defender against threatening forces, embedded in a religious landscape shaped by Byzantine long duration, liturgical memory, and specific forms of spiritual resistance.

The second field is Stockholm, where I have already conducted research on the monumental presence of Saint George. In the Scandinavian context, the image of the saint is especially significant because of its association with a society that, in the late Middle Ages, was marked by tensions of dependence, relative poverty, and political struggle before the powerful Danish crown. The figure of the horseman who defeats the dragon can thus be read as an image of collective defense, protection of the vulnerable, and symbolic affirmation before superior powers.

The third field is Rio de Janeiro, where I photographed the feast of Saint George and plan to expand the research through visits to Umbanda temples, festivities, and ritual practices. In Rio, Saint George occupies a singular position: popular Catholic saint, street figure, domestic image, protector of workers, the urban poor, peripheral devotees, and ambiguous figures of popular culture. His association with Ogum opens a decisive field for understanding how the myth of the warrior saint is resignified within Afro-Brazilian traditions, without reducing it to a simple equivalence between saints and orixás.

By bringing Mount Athos, Stockholm, and Rio de Janeiro into the same analytical field, the research seeks to understand how Saint George operates in very different contexts as an image of protection, combat, and dignity. The warrior saint makes it possible to examine the links between myth, iconography, popular devotion, and rebellion. In this sense, the study is directly connected to my research on insurgencies, rebellions, and peripheral political cultures, in which subaltern subjects build symbolic repertoires to confront violence, dependence, precarity, and domination.

The research is part of the international project Images in Transit: Byzantine Iconography beyond the Borders of the Orthodox World, developed within the cooperation between UERJ and Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Through Saint George, the project examines how sacred images cross borders and come to articulate, in new historical landscapes, protection, honor, resistance, belonging, and symbolic power.