I 192 Bildliche Repräsentation figures represent the numerous rulers called by Dacian to participate in the religious dispute.14 The role of these scenes within the narrative about Saint George in Hradec remains unclear. A naïve viewer, informed only by the otherwise most popular Golden Legend, might see in Dacian the desperate king whose daughter was to be sacrificed to the dragon, because this text does not mention the messengers and the dispute, but instead starts directly from the confrontation with the dragon.15 Nevertheless, this reading poses a problem: Dacian appears in the legends, and later in the cycle, as the tyrant who inflicts violence on the saint. Would the desperate father, prepared to give anything to the saint who had saved his daughter, change his attitude to her rescuer so abruptly? The aforesaid sources include George among the kings called to the dispute, but there is no dispute depicted in this cycle, and the Latin fragment does not mention the battle with the dragon. Late medieval sermons celebrated the combat with the monster as a victory over the incarnation of evil.16 Nevertheless, in this pictorial cycle the victory over the dragon does not mean the final triumph of the saintly knight. After an interruption, caused by large areas of paint loss, we find him no longer in a victorious position. Even the change of his attire from knightly armour to a simple tunic, again decorated with the symbols of the Teutonic Order and covered by a mantle, symbolizes how his dominant identity changes from the role of a knight to that of a saint.17 The tyrant with the name Dacian appears several times in the cycle. One of these scenes is very similar to the introduction of the legend. Dacian once again sits on the throne and gives a sealed letter to a respectfully kneeling messenger. In this case, the content of the letter is known – Dacian is searching for a magician (“hie sant dacia[n] nach magier”; fig. 3, top left) to poison the saint, who has consistently refused to show his respect to the official pagan religion by worshiping idols. Sending a messenger with a letter was a standard form of communication at that time. It’s importance as a visual topos is attested by the fact that it was visually represented and interpreted at places located near to the Hradec cycle. In the so-called Liber depictus, illustrated only a few years later in the southern Bohemian town of Český Krumlov (Krumau), this topic not only appears repeatedly, but has a special parable devoted to it.18 Considering the known stylistic parallels between the Hradec cycle and the Liber depictus, it is reasonable to see both as products of a similar milieu.19 In the South Bohemian cultural context, the pictorial legend of Saint George was made richer by integrating these patterns into the narrative, with a function which remains unclear. The ambivalence of the introductory sequence can also be seen in the relationship of the knightly saint to the virgins. The Hradec cycle goes even further in developing this motif, adding before the fight with the dragon two more scenes, representing the departure of the knightly saint. Firstly, the mounted George turns back with a gesture of blessing towards a group of people standing at a city gate. The inscription (“hie nimt sant ge[org] abs[c]hied v[o]n den iuncvraw[en]”; fig. 6) stresses his farewell to young virgins, even if the visual message points in a slightly different direction, since the group also includes the figure of a bearded man. The relation to a virgin dominates in the second scene, too, where the riding saint gives encouragement to a sad virgin, sitting alone on a hill (“hie s[anct georg] muth ze d[er] iuncvrau auf den perc”; fig. 7). The image of the saint in medieval armour enabled the knights viewing it to identify with him. Insofar as a visual representation of the Teutonic Order’s coat of arms recurs several times on George’s armour, as well as on the protective covering of his horse, the question arises as to how important this option could be to the members of the religious order. The answer is partly given by images: the head of the saint remains bare, without a helmet, so that the viewer could clearly perceive his face, depicted in two-thirds profile, and admire his curly hair. In accordance with the values of courtly culture, the painter focused more on the beauty of the young man than on his military prowess. More remarkably, the saint’s head remains without a helmet even during his fight with the menacing dragon, which is as large as George’s horse (fig. 8). The surprisingly rich iconography of the Hradec cycle, which took its inspiration, directly or indirectly, from many sources, is a testimony to the complex processes which preserved, as well as changed, the oldest narratives.20 The simultaneous existence of continuity along with creative transformation is well illustrated with the sequence of George fighting the dragon. Confrontation with a dragon was a relatively new motif, important for Christian knights.21 The first examples of this motif from the Byzantine sphere date back to the tenth century.22 It then appeared on a seal from the cathedral chapter of Saint George in Bamberg, dated 1097, and in a picture in the late-twelfth century Pamplona Bible, preserved in the municipal
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