The idea that women are inherently virtuous, and that men need women to sanctify them is deeply ingrained. You won’t find either of these concepts in Scripture, but even commenters on this site can’t distinguish between the moral views of Courtly Love/Chivalry and the Bible.
SkylerWurden explains that the Courtly Love tale of St. George and the dragon is really teaching the Christian message, a message about the glorious power of the virtuous pagan woman:
I still don’t see it. The way I read the story is this:
St. George is representing the Christian ideal and Christianity here. The dragon is obviously the devil and the townsfolk are the pagans under the thrall of the devil, with the Princess representing the virtuous pagan (being that she is willing to sacrifice herself to save the townsfolk). St. George, with the power of Christ, wounds the devil, and the virtuous pagan girl gives him (now representing Christ) her virginity. Once she gives over her virginity to Christ, she can now snare the devil and instead of being controlled by him and under his boot, she is greater than him and has bound him up. That is, she has conquered temptation by handing over her virtue to God. As she leads the dragon back to the people, they see that the power of Christ and of virtuous living has conquered the dragon and are converted, and then St. George (again standing in for Christ) slays the dragon and ends releases them from slavery.
jbarruso explains that men can’t follow Christ (and have virtue) unless they love a woman:
You’ve missed the symbolism. The dragon is the beast inside every man externalized. No man is any good to anyone especially God until he’s tamed his inner beast. The way he does that is by obediently loving God and the way he demonstrates that is selflessly loving a woman. For a man this isn’t possible apart from the Lord Jesus the Christ. And the cross. The problem is mankind sees everything through our immense self. We believe the sun revolves around the earth and God around us. St. George is nothing without the Lord. So essentially George is obedient to the Lord as a sleighs his inner beast for the love of a woman ehich demonstrates his love for God. George does what Adam failed to do.
