The Etiquette of the Saintly Dragon Fight (ii)

Abstract

A number of recurring sets of motifs of an elaborate kind and with a degree of independence from the principal narrative course (charted in Chapter 6) are documented and analysed here: the dragon and its great brood of serpents; the sacrifice of virgins to the dragon; the attempt to compel the saint to make sacrifice before an idol inhabited by a dragon; the saint’s revival of the boy that had been the dragon’s last victim; the sending of dragons back against the magicians that had unleashed them; and female dragon-fighting saints. Consideration is also given to some matters of ‘meta-narrative’ interest, namely the impact of the attribution of multiple dragon-fights to a single saint (e.g. Silvester and Fronto) and, more intriguingly, the impact of the attribution of fights against what is effectively the same dragon to different saints, as most notably in the case of the Dragon of Rome.