The Etiquette of the Saintly Dragon Fight (i)

Abstract

The episodes and motifs that structure the narrative course of the dragon-fight as it is most typically found in the hagiographical tradition (the tradition of the saints’ Lives) are laid out and analysed in detail. The analysis is based on some two hundred examples (Appendix B). The motifs include the dragon’s inhabiting of caves, wells, and tombs; its monopolization of springs, its marauding, its production of pestilential breath, its fieriness; the saint’s spiritual preparations for battle, his deployment of prayers, of the sign of the cross, and of his stole against it; his exorcistic banishment of it, in the fashion of a demon, beyond water, to the wilderness, or to the abyss; otherwise, his killing of it, and his disposal of its carcass; his conversion of the local community, and his memorial construction of a church or monastery.