XXVI PREFACE
During the seven years in which George had been 7 lis mother and sisters and betrothed had all died, and the only kinsman of his left in Diospolis was his mother's brother called Andrew. When Andrew heard of the good tlings promised by Christ to those who should build a shrine to the name of George, he pulled down the house in which George had lived, and began to build at his own cost a small martyrium in which to deposit his body) Finding the work very expensive he fell into great grief} fearing lest he should be unable to complete the building) which he had begun; but George appeared to him by night, and showed him a place in the ground where he had hid- den money durimg his life-time, and with this, and the help of his neighbours, he completed the building which was consecrated by Abba Theodosius the Bishop of Jerusalem on the 7th day of Athor. Soon after the consecration of the shrine it was wrecked by one of Diocletian’s generals called Euchios, but it was afterwards rebuilt and greatly enlarged by the emperor Constantine. When the emperor Theodosius IL had reigned twenty years, he built a church in honour of George, and he gathered together the Bishops from all parts of the world, among them being Theodotus, Bishop of Ancyra, to the consecration of it.
The most cursory examination of the Coptic version | of the martyrdom of George is sufficient to show that the | writer of it, or of the Greek text from which the Copti - version was probably made, was fully acquainted with | certain facts relating to the persecution of the Christians | by Diocletian; but it is also clear that the names of the
