Martyr · Great Among the Martyrs
Mar Girgis — Saint George, Prince of Martyrs
مار جرجس
Ⲁⲅⲓⲟⲥ Ⲅⲉⲱⲣⲅⲓⲟⲥ
4th Century
In Egypt, you don't need to explain who Mar Girgis is. His name is on metro stations, on church doors in every governorate, on the lips of mothers asking him to intercede for their children.
He is the soldier who looked an emperor in the eye and refused to deny his God. He is the one Egypt calls Sarie Al-Nadha — the one who is quick to answer.
The rest of the world knows him as Saint George, patron of England, of Georgia, of Ethiopia, of soldiers and farmers and scouts.
The Coptic Church gave him the title the world has never given him in English:
Amir Al-Shuhada — Prince of Martyrs.
Who Was Mar Girgis?
Mar Girgis was born around 270–280 AD in Cappadocia, in what is now central Turkey, to Christian parents of distinguished lineage.
His father, Anastasius, was a senior officer in the Roman army. His mother, Theobaste (also recorded as Polychronia in some traditions), came from Lydda — the ancient city in Palestine, today known as Lod — and it was her faith that shaped his.
His name tells you everything about how the world received him.
Mar: A Syriac title of high honor meaning "My Lord," reserved for the most venerable saints and bishops of the East.
Girgisis: is the Arabic and Coptic rendering of the Greek Georgios, which itself descends from the Greek Georgos: a farmer, a worker of the earth.
The Prince of Martyrs bore the name of a simple tiller of soil. The Church has always found beauty in that.
He was educated in law, Greek, and the martial arts, and followed his father into the Roman legions at around the age of seventeen. He rose quickly, distinguished himself in battle, and by his early twenties held the rank of Tribune — a senior officer in the imperial army. He was, by every measure of the Roman world, a young man with everything ahead of him.
Then the edicts came...
The Persecution That Changed Everything
Emperor Diocletian, who ruled the Roman Empire from 284 to 305 AD, launched what history calls the Great Persecution — the most systematic campaign against Christians the empire had ever attempted.
Beginning in 303 AD, he ordered churches destroyed, scriptures burned, Christians stripped of their rights, dismissed from public positions, and ultimately forced to sacrifice to the Roman gods or face execution.
The Coptic Church remembers this period as the Era of the Martyrs. It is so foundational to Coptic identity that the Coptic calendar itself begins its counting from 284 AD, the year Diocletian took power.
When you see a Coptic calendar today, the year it shows is counted from that moment. The blood of Egypt's martyrs is written into the way Copts tell time.
Mar Girgis was in Alexandria when he read one of Diocletian's edicts posted in public — a proclamation denouncing the Christian faith and its followers.
The Coptic Synaxarium records that he tore it from the wall.
He was immediately seized by soldiers and taken before the authorities. He had not acted impulsively.
He had given all his wealth to the poor and freed his servants beforehand.
He knew exactly what he was doing, and he did it with his hands open and empty.
When he was brought before Diocletian himself, he stood among seventy kings assembled around the emperor, and he spoke:
"For how long shall you pour your anger against the innocent Christians, and force those who know the true faith to adopt the faith that you are in doubt of, because it is fraudulent?"
He was twenty years old, and he said this to the most powerful man in the world.
Seven Years: The Martyrdom
What followed was not a single act of execution but a prolonged confrontation that the hagiographic tradition records as lasting seven years.
It is worth being transparent here: the great martyrdom accounts of the Church—including this one— are written in the genre of hagiography, which blends historical memory, theological commentary, and spiritual testimony.
They are not journalism.
But they carry truth of a different order, and the Coptic Church has kept this tradition for seventeen centuries for reasons that matter.
The Synaxarium records that Diocletian subjected Mar Girgis to unimaginable torments: his flesh torn by iron combs, his broken limbs bound to a wheel of spikes, his wounds systematically salted, and red-hot iron sandals laced to his feet. Yet, after each trial, the liturgy records that Christ appeared to him, healing his broken body. The tradition asserts he died and was raised three times—a symbolic echo of the Resurrection that testified to the early Church that Christ had already conquered death.
This endurance did not happen in a vacuum; it was evangelistic.
Empress Alexandra: Witnessing George's supernatural resilience, the Empress Alexandra (the wife of the Emperor, venerated as a saint on this same day) publicly confessed Christ, was arrested, and was executed.
Athanasius the Magician: Summoned to break George’s "magic" with lethal poison, the sorcerer watched in shock as George made the sign of the East over the cup and drank it without harm. Athanasius knelt, confessed the Christian faith, and was immediately martyred.
The Fall of the Idols: In a final, desperate bid to break the stalemate, Diocletian assembled the populace at a pagan temple, offering George a princely status if he would simply cast incense. George approached the stone statue of Apollo, signed it with the Cross, and demanded it speak. A voice cried out from the stone, confessing it was no god, and the idols crumbled to dust.
Exhausted and humiliated, Diocletian ordered George's beheading on the 23rd of Barmouda (May 1st, 307 AD).
A faithful servant gathered his remains and carried them back to Lydda, his mother's birthplace, where he was laid to rest.
His Liturgical Presence
Because Mar Girgis belongs to Egypt so completely, the Coptic Orthodox Church does not commemorate him once, but four times a year, marking the journey of his spirit, his relics, and his sacred spaces:
23 Barmouda (1 May): The primary feast of his Martyrdom and transition into glory.
7 Hatur (16 November): The commemoration of the consecration of his historic basilica in Lydda, built over his crypt.
3 Baouna (10 June): The consecration of the first churches dedicated to his name on Egyptian soil—originally at Beer Maa (the "Water Well") in the Oasis, and later at Birma near Tanta in the Delta.
16 Abib (23 July): The translation of his holy relics to the ancient Monastery and Church of Mar Girgis in Old Cairo (Masr Al-Qadima) under the papacy of Pope Gabriel V (the 88th Pope of Alexandria, 1409–1427 AD).
To this day, the chains that bound Mar Girgis remain preserved in the Convent of Saint George in Coptic Cairo.
Pilgrims flock to these iron links, wrapping them around their bodies in prayer, seeking the intercession of the soldier-saint who broke the chains of an empire.
Sources & References:
The Coptic Synaxarium: Record of the 23rd day of the Coptic month of Barmouda (The Martyrdom) and the 16th of Abib (Relic Translation). The official liturgical chronicle of the See of Saint Mark.
Eusebius of Caesarea: Ecclesiastical History (Historia Ecclesiastica, Book VIII, Chapter 5). Documenting the historical eyewitness account of the high-ranking Roman soldier who tore down Diocletian's anti-Christian edict.
Iris Habib El Masry: The Story of the Copts (Volume I, Cairo, 1977). Comprehensive narrative history outlining the localized Egyptian traditions of Mar Girgis's Alexandria defiance. Coptic Treasures Project.
The Claremont Coptic Encyclopedia: Entry on "George, Saint" (Volume IV, pp. 1139b-1140b). Scholarly documentation of the archaeological and liturgical footprints of Saint George in Egypt, including the Oasis and Delta church consecrations. Claremont Colleges Digital Library.