![\"MartinatSpeakersCorner\"](\"https:\/\/journeytojustice.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/MartinatSpeakersCorner.jpg\")
<\/p>\nThe true story of St. George: child soldier, migrant, prisoner of conscience, murdered for his beliefs<\/b><\/p>\n
When I realised the JtoJ presence at Speakers\u2019 Corner was on St George\u2019s Day, I thought I\u2019d find out a bit more about his story: not the dragon-slaying myth but what\u2019s known of the real person. It \u00a0appears he was born in the late third century to Greek Christian parents. His father was from Cappadocia in modern Turkey and his mother was from the region that includes today\u2019s Syria, Israel and Palestine. On the death of his father he left Syria and joined the Roman army as a teenager, rising to become one of emperor Diocletian\u2019s personal guards.<\/p>\n
All changed for George in the year 303 when Diocletian purged his army of Christians, who were arrested and ordered to offer sacrifices to the Roman gods on pain of death. George refused to renounce his faith and so was brutally tortured and beheaded in public in the city of Nicomedia in what is now Turkey.<\/p>\n
So we have a child soldier, a migrant, a prisoner of conscience and the victim of an egotistical, tyrannical, imperial ruler who carries out the ethnic cleansing of a faith community. Tortured and murdered for his beliefs in the very part of the world where such events are now taking place, it seems to me that George the real human being speaks to us today in a way the dragon slayer never can.<\/p>\n
Perhaps it\u2019s time for us to reclaim the man from the myth. If we peel away how he has been used by Crusaders, empire builders and warmongers, maybe we can embrace this young man who, though sucked into the belly of the imperial beast, refused to surrender his identity at the cost of his life. Our own world is full of Georges and this George \u2013 migrant, colonised, resistant, brave \u2013 is closer to who we are.<\/p>\n
So, on the principle that at JtoJ we know how stories of \u2018ordinary\u2019 people in the past who have stood up for justice can inspire us, George\u2019s was the story I told in Hyde Park. And I\u2019ll think of him every year when the day comes round, at last with fondness.<\/p>\n
Martin Spafford\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The true story of St. George: child soldier, migrant, prisoner of conscience, murdered for his beliefs<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6067,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[30,33],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeytojustice.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3486"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeytojustice.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeytojustice.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeytojustice.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeytojustice.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3486"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/journeytojustice.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3486\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6068,"href":"https:\/\/journeytojustice.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3486\/revisions\/6068"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeytojustice.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeytojustice.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeytojustice.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeytojustice.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}