Sebastian

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Saint Sebastian
Image:Martyrdom Of Saint Sebastian.jpg
Soldier, martyr
Born	??
Died	287? (martyred)
Venerated by	Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Western Orthodox
Feast	January 20(Catholic), December 18(Greek Orthodox)
Attributes	Martyrdom
Patron saint of	Soldiers, plague, arrows, atheletes, (unofficially) youth, and male beauty

This article is about Saint Sebastian. See also Sebastian (disambiguation).

Saint Sebastian (traditionally died January 20,287, commemorated in his feast day) was a Christian saint and martyr, who is said to have died under the persecution of Christians by the Roman emperor Diocletian in the 3rd century. He is commonly remembered for in art and literature for being tied to a post and shot with arrows.

1 Meaning of name
2 Life
- 2.1 Hagiography
- 2.2 Historical evidence
3 Depictions in art and literature
4 Gay icon
5 Patronage
6 Saint Sebastian in popular culture
7 References
8 External links

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Meaning of name

Sebastian's name, though it receives an elaborately constructed etymology in Legenda Aurea, may actually derive from the cognomen "Sebastianus". The mortal remains of St. Sebastian are currently housed in a basilica which was built by Pope Damasus II in 367 (Basilica Apostolorum), on the site of the provisional tomb of St. Peter and St. Paul. The church, today called San Sebastiano fuori le mura, was rebuilt in the 1610s, under the patronage of Scipio Borghese.

Image:Sebastia.jpg

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Life

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Hagiography

The details of Sebastian's martyrdom were first elaborated by Ambrose of Milan (died 397), in his sermon (number XX) on the 118th Psalm. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, states that Sebastian came from Milan and was already venerated there in the 4th century.

According to his 5th-century Acta, still attributed to Ambrose by the 17th-century hagiographer Jean Bolland, he was a soldier who enlisted in the Roman army around 283. Diocletian, unaware that he was a Christian, appointed him as a captain of the Praetorian Guard. By 286, Sebastian was reportedly known for having kindly treated Christian prisoners due for martyrdom. Diocletian reproached him for his supposed ingratitude and ordered him executed by the arrows of the Mauretanian archers. He survived, and according to legend was healed by St. Irene, the widow of St. Castulus. Upon regaining his health he returned to preach to Diocletian. Subsequently the emperor ordered Sebastian to be clubbed to death.

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Historical evidence

Historians have noted that Diocletian only issued an edict authorizing the systematic persecution of Christians across the Empire in 303, placing the traditional death of Sebastian before the persecution. A skull that is said to be Sebastian's is held as relic in the basilica of Santi Quattro Coronati, in Rome. The church of San Sebastiano al Palatino, on a hill next to the Roman Forum, was built on the traditional place of his execution.

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Depictions in art and literature

"The earliest mosaic picture of St. Sebastian, which probably belongs to the year 682, shows a grown, bearded man in court dress but contains no trace of an arrow" (CE 1908). This method of execution made Sebastian a favourite for paintings. Sebastian is usually depicted in art as a somewhat effete youth tied to a stake and transfixed by several arrows.

In his novella Death in Venice, Thomas Mann hails the "Sebastian-Figure" as the supreme emblem of Apollonian beauty, that is, the artistry of differentiated forms, beauty as measured by discipline, proportion, and luminious distinctions. This allusion to Saint Sebastian's suffering, associated with the writerly professionalism of the novella's protagonist, Gustav Aschenbach, provides a model for the "heroism born of weakness," which characterizes poise amidst agonizing torment and plain acceptance of one's fate as, beyond mere patience and passivity, a stylized achievement and artistic triumph.

George Orwell's novel Nineteen-Eighty Four makes a reference to Saint Sebastian when the protagonist, Winston, fantasises about tying another character, Julia, to a stake naked and shooting her "full of arrows like Saint Sebastian."

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Gay icon

Sebastian has, over time, become a homoerotic icon. In Christian lore, Sebastian turned down the advances of Emperor Diocletian. Sebastian's status as a gay icon was first made explicit by Georges Eekhond in 1909, and the notion has recurred in literature. Oscar Wilde, for example, used the pseudonym of Sebastian in his declining years in Paris, while Yukio Mishima's autobiographical Confessions of a Mask describes his homosexual awakening on viewing Reni's St. Sebastian and Tennessee Williams wrote the poem "San Sebastiano de Sodoma," which reviews both the gay and religious sides of Sebastian.

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Patronage

Template:Main As a protector from the plague, Sebastian was formerly one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers. (That cult was suppressed in the reform of the Roman Catholic liturgy in 1969.) The connection of the martyr shot with arrows with the plague is not an intuitive one. In Greco-Roman myth, Apollo, the archer-god is the deliverer of pestilence; the figure of Sebastian Christianizes this familiar literary trope. The chronicler Paul the Deacon relates that Rome was freed from a raging pestilence in 680, by the patronage of this saint.

Sebastian, like Saint George, was one of a class of military martyrs and soldier saints of the Early Christian Church, whose cults originated in the 4th century and culminated at the end of the Middle Ages, in the 14th and 15th centuries, both in the East and the West. Details of their martyrologies may provoke some skepticism among modern readers, but certain consistent patterns emerge that are revealing of Christian attitudes. Such a saint was an athleta Christi, an "athlete of Christ", and a "Guardian of the heavens"

Saint Sebastian, along with Saint George, is the patron saint of the cities of Qormi (Malta) and Caserta (Italy).

In the Greek Orthodox Church, the feast day of Sebastian the Martyr is December 18. In the Roman Catholic Church, his feast day, set on January 20, is not mandatory.

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Saint Sebastian in popular culture

The iconic image of Sebastian stuck with arrows.

R.E.M.'s "Losing My Religion" music video, which combines the image of the saint with other religious imagery
Claude Debussy's "Le Martyre De Saint Sébastien", a musical piece inspired by the saint
Philip Glass includes a short musical piece titled "Saint Sebastian" in his score for the film Mishima, a reference to Mishima Yukio's Confession of a Mask in which a painting of St.Sebastian by Guido Reni plays a preponderant role in the main character's discovery of his own sexuality.
On the Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds album Murder Ballads, the song "O'Malley's Bar" includes a brief reference to Saint Sebastian.
A statue of the saint appears in the movie Carrie.
The chorus of the Patti Smith song "Boy Cried Wolf" references the means of Sebastian's death.
In the TV series Lost, the hospital in which Jack Shephard and his father, Christian work is named after the saint.
In the film V for Vendetta, V has a painting of St. Sebastian in his home, the Shadow Gallery, which could be interpreted as V, a former political prisoner who had been tortured, thinking of Sebastian as his "patron saint."