Editing European dragon (section)

=== Italian ===
[[File:Saint Margaret sculpture.jpg|thumb|left|upright|''Saint Margaret and the Dragon'', alabaster with traces of gilding, Toulouse, ''ca'' 1475 ([[Metropolitan Museum of Art]])]]
[[File:MasoDiBanco.jpg|thumb|"Saint Silvestro resurrects two magicians, and the Fornole dragon", Vernio Bardi Chapel, Santa Croce (Florence)]]
Wyverns are usually evil in Italy, and there are many stories of wyverns being slain. Dragons also trick demons in Italian legends. The legend of Saint George and the wyvern is well known in Italy, but other saints are also depicted fighting wyverns. For instance, the first bishop of [[Forlì]], [[Saint Mercurialis]], was said to have killed a wyvern to save the city, so he is often depicted in the act of slaying a wyvern. Likewise, the first patron saint of [[Venice]], [[Theodore of Amasea|Saint Theodore of Tyro]], was a wyvern-slayer, and a statue representing his slaying of the wyvern still tops one of the two columns in [[Piazza San Marco|St Mark's Square]]. [[St. Michael]], the patron saint of [[paratrooper]]s, is also frequently depicted slaying a wyvern.

According to the Golden Legend, compiled by the Italian [[Jacobus de Voragine]], [[Saint Margaret the Virgin]] was swallowed by [[Satan]] in the shape of a hydra, but she escaped alive when the [[Christian cross|cross]] she carried irritated the hydra's innards. The Golden Legend, in an atypical moment of scepticism, describes this last incident as "apocryphal and not to be taken seriously" (trans. Ryan, 1.369), which did not prevent the legend from being popular and getting artistic treatments.

More prevalent are the legends about dragons in Italy, particularly in [[Umbria]]. One of the most famous wyverns of Italian folklore is [[Folklore of Italy|Thyrus]], a wyvern that besieged [[Terni]] in the Middle Ages. One day, a young and brave knight of the noble House of Cittadini, tired of witnessing the death of his fellow citizens and the depopulation of Terni, faced the wyvern and killed it. From that day, the town assumed the creature in its coat of arms, accompanied by a Latin inscription: "Thyrus et amnis dederunt signa Teramnis" ("Thyrus and the river gave their insignia to [the city of] Terni"), that stands under the banner of the town of Terni, honoring this legend.

Another poem tells of another dragon that lived near the village of Fornole, near [[Amelia, Umbria]]. Pope [[Sylvester I]] arrived in Umbria and freed the population of Fornole from the ferocity of the dragon, pacifying the dragon. Grateful for his deed, the population built a small church dedicated to the saint on the top of the mountain near the dragon's lair in the 13th century. In the apse of the church there is a fresco representing the iconography of the saint.
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