The cult of St George spread from East to West. In the fifth century he was honoured in Gaul. The monastery at Thetford, founded in the reign of Canute, was dedicated to him[91], and the churches of St George at Fordington (now a part of Dorchester) and Southwark were founded before the Norman Conquest. But although his feast day (23rd April) had been included by the Venerable Bede in his _Martyrologium_ it does not appear to have been generally observed in England till a later date. One of the payments in the Misae roll of 14 John (1213)[92] is dated as the day before the feast of St George, and this feast was included among the minor festivals by the Council at Oxford in 1222[93], yet it is not mentioned in the Constitutions of the Bishop of Worcester in 1240[94]. It is included in the list of saints' days drawn up by the Synod of Exeter in 1287, but it is not included in lists drawn up by Archbishops of Canterbury in 1332 and 1400, nor in one drawn up by the Bishop of Bath and Wells in 1342[95]. The explanation of this lies in the fact that St George was not a churchman's but a soldier's saint. It is to our crusading kings, Richard and Edward I, and to their followers that he owes a popularity that extends to numbers that do not reverence saints and would be hard put to it to name offhand half a dozen others. St George became especially popular among the crusaders, and his miraculous intervention was believed to have decided victory in their favour on several occasions. The early sculptured tympanum over the south door of St George's Church at Fordington is supposed to represent the saint intervening in behalf of the Christians at the battle of Antioch in 1098. The same subject occurs in a mural painting in the church at Hardham in Sussex[96]. Both painting and sculpture are assigned to the twelfth century. In both instances the saint is on horseback and carries a lance; with the butt end he strikes down the foe. Near the head of the lance is a gonfanon the fly of which is split into long tails. No sign of the cross now remains in the painting, but in the sculpture it is plainly visible at the head of this gonfanon. As the earliest representation in England of St George's flag, this sculpture is of especial interest. As already remarked in the previous chapter, the date at which the red cross on a white field first became associated with St George is not known. Jacobus de Voragine, the thirteenth century author of the _Legenda Aurea_, quotes an earlier history of Antioch as his authority for the statement that at the Siege of Jerusalem (1099) the Christians hesitated to ascend the scaling ladders until St George, clad in white armour marked with the red cross, appeared and beckoned them on.