Saint Sebastian
| Sebastian | |
|---|---|
| Martyr | |
| Born | unknown |
| Died | January 20, 287 (martyred) |
| Venerated in | Eastern Orthodox Church, Roman Catholic Church, Oriental Orthodox Church |
| Feast | January 20, (Catholic), December 18, (Eastern Orthodox) |
| Attributes | arrows |
| Patronage | Soldiers, plagues, arrows, athletes; (unofficially): youth, male beauty, male homosexuals |
Saint Sebastian (traditionally died January 20, 287) 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 depicted in art and literature as a beautiful, hairless youth tied to a post and pierced with arrows.
Etymology
Sebastian's name, though it receives an elaborately constructed etymology in Legenda Aurea, may actually derive from the cognomen "Sebastianus". Sebaste was a common toponym in Antiquity, the Greek equivalent of the Latin Augusta.[1]
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 that he was already venerated there in the fourth century.
According to Sebastian's fifth-century Acta,[3] still attributed to Ambrose by the seventeenth-century hagiographer Jean Bolland, and the briefer account in Legenda Aurea which is followed here, he was a man of Gallia Narbonensis who was taught in Milan and appointed as a captain of the Praetorian Guard under Diocletian and Maximian, unaware that he was a Christian. Sebastian was reportedly known for having encouraged in their faith two Christian prisoners due for martyrdom, who were bewailed and entreated by their family to forswear Christ and offer token sacrifice. His aura cured a woman of her muteness, and the miracle instantly converted seventy-eight people. The father of the two prisoners having been cured of gout was confronted by the provost, who was convinced to break the Cult idols. Diocletian reproached Sebastian for his supposed betrayal, and "he commanded him to be led to the field and there to be bounden to a stake for to be shot at. And the archers shot at him till he was as full of arrows as an urchin [hedgehog] is full of pricks."[4] and thus left him there for dead. Miraculously, the arrows did not kill him. The widow of St. Castulus went to retrieve his body to bury it, and found he was still alive. She brought him back to her house and nursed him back to health. The other residents of the house doubted he was a Christian. One of those people was a girl who was deaf and blind. Sebastian asked her "Do you wish to be with God?" he then made the sign of the Cross on her head and she then said "Yes", regaining at the same time her sight. Sebastian then stood on a step and harangued Diocletian as he passed by; the emperor had him beaten to death and his body thrown in a privy. But in an apparition Sebastian told a Christian widow where they might find his body undefiled and bury it "at the catacombs by the apostles."
Of the miraculous effect of the example of Sebastian, Legenda Aurea reports
- "And Saint Gregory telleth in the first book of his Dialogues that a woman of Tuscany which was new wedded was prayed for to go with other women to the dedication of the church of Sebastian, and the night tofore she was so moved in her flesh that she might not abstain from her husband, and on the morn, she having greater shame of men than of God, went thither, and anon as she was entered into the oratory where the relics of Saint Sebastian were, the fiend took her and tormented her before all the people."
Sebastian was accounted a defense against the plague. Legenda Aurea transmits the episode of a great plague that afflicted the Lombards in the time of King "Gumburt" and was stopped by the erection of an altar to Saint Sebastian in the church of Saint Peter, Pavia.
Location of Remains
The mortal remains asserted to be those of St. Sebastian are currently housed in a basilica that was built by Pope Damasus I 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.
Patronage
Though a protector from the Bubonic plague, Sebastian is not one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers. 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). Saint Sebastian is also the patron saint of the city of Palma de Mallorca (Spain), where on January 20th—a public holiday—there are street festivities and celebrations.
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.
Officially, Saint Sebastian is the patron saint of the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Informally, in the tradition of the Afro-Brazilian religious syncretism Saint Sebastian is often associated with Ogum, especially in the state of Bahia, in the northeast of the country, while Ogum in the southernmost state of Rio Grande do Sul is more likely to be associated with Saint George.
Equally, in the LGBT community many gay Catholics think of Saint Sebastian as their patron and intercessor saint before God.[1]
Saint Sebastian is also regarded as the Patron Saint of soldiers generally, of infantrymen particularly, of athletes generally, of archers particularly and of municipal police officers.
Depictions in art and literature
The earliest representation of St Sebastian is a mosaic in the Basilica of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo (Ravenna, Italy) dated between 527 and 565. The right lateral wall of the basilica contains large mosaics representing a procession of 26 Martyrs, led by Saint Martin and including Saint Sebastian. The Martyrs are represented in Byzantine style, lacking any individuality, and have all identical expressions.
Another early representation is in a mosaic in the Church of San Pietro in Vincoli (Rome, Italy), which probably belongs to the year 682, shows a grown, bearded man in court dress but contains no trace of an arrow"[5]
As protector of potential plague victims and soldiers, Sebastian naturally occupied a very important place in the popular medieval mind, and hence was among the most frequently depicted of all saints by Late Gothic and Renaissance artists. The opportunity to show a semi-nude male, often in a contorted pose, also made Sebastian a favorite subject. His shooting with arrows was the subject of the largest engraving by the Master of the Playing Cards in the 1430s, when there were few other current subjects with male nudes other than Christ. Sebastian appears in many other prints and paintings, although this was also due to his popularity with the faithful. Among many others, Sandro Botticelli, Andrea Mantegna, and Perugino all painted Saint Sebastians, and later El Greco, Gerrit van Honthorst and Gian Lorenzo Bernini. [6] The saint is ordinarily depicted as a handsome youth pierced by arrows. There were predella scenes, when required, often of his arrest, confrontation with the Emperor, and final beheading. The illustration in the infobox is the Saint Sebastian of Il Sodoma, at the Pitti Palace, Florence.
A mainly seventeenth-century subject was St Sebastian tended by St Irene, painted by Georges de La Tour, Jusepe de Ribera, Hendrick ter Brugghen and others. This may have been a deliberate attempt by the Church to get away from the single nude subject.
There exist several cycles depicting the life of Saint Sebastian. Among them, the frescos in the "Basilica di San Sebastiano" of Acireale (Italy) with paintings by Pietro Paolo Vasta.
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 luminous distinctions. This allusion to Saint Sebastian's suffering, associated with the self-defeating 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.
Egon Schiele, an Austrian Expressionist artist, painted a self-portrait as Saint Sebastian in 1915.
During Salvador Dalí's "Lorca (Frederico Garcia Lorca) Period", he painted Sebastian several times, most notably in his "Neo-Cubist Academy". For reasons unknown, the left vein of Sebastian is always exposed.
George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four makes a reference to Saint Sebastian when the protagonist, Winston, fantasizes about tying another character, Julia, to a stake naked and shooting her "full of arrows like Saint Sebastian".
In the novel Fabiola by Nicholas Wiseman, Sebastian is portrayed both in his glory days as a well-loved centurion and commander, and also in his days of martyrdom. He appears as a friend of the main character, the Roman lady Fabiola, and her father.
Notes
- ↑ For instance, compare the etymology of the Legenda Aurea with that found in the Online Etymology Dictionary: "masc. proper name, from L. Sebastianus, from Gk. Sebastianos, "man of Sebastia," a city in Pontus that was named for Augustus Caesar, first Roman emperor, from Gk. sebastos "venerable," a translation of L. augustus, the epithet of Caesar."
- ↑ Reliquary of St Sebastian. Metalwork. Victoria and Albert Museum. Retrieved 2007-08-17.
- ↑ Acta S. Sebastiani Martyris, in J.-P. Migne, Patrologiae Cursus Completus Accurante (Paris 1845), XVII, 1021-1058; the details given here follow the abbreviated account in Jacob de Voragine, Legenda Aurea.
- ↑ Legenda Aurea.
- ↑ Catholic Encyclopedia 1908.
- ↑ For a discussion of the image of St. Sebastian in the paintings of Ribera, see: Williamson, Mark A. "The Martyrdom Paintings of Jusepe de Ribera: Catharsis and Transformation", PhD Dissertation, (Binghamton, New York: Binghamton University, 2000).
ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
- Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine). The Lives of the Saints. With introduction and additional Lives of English martyrs, Cornish, Scottish, and Welsh saints, and a full index to the entire work. Volume I. Edinburgh : J. Grant, 1914.
- Butler, Alban. Lives of the Saints. Edited, revised, and supplemented by Herbert Thurston and Donald Attwater. Palm Publishers, 1956. The original version is accessible online at: the Global Catholic Network.
- Farmer, David Hugh. The Oxford Dictionary of Saints. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. ISBN 0192800582.
- Goldman, Jason. "Subjects of the Visual Arts: St. Sebastian" in The Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Culture. Retrieved August 24, 2007.
- Löffler, Klemens. "Saint Sebastian" in The Catholic Encyclopedia. Retrieved August 24, 2007.
- Parker, Brian. "Tennessee Williams and the Legends of St Sebastian." University of Toronto Quarterly Vol. 69 (Summer 2000), 634-660.
- Stechow, Wolfgang. "Terbrugghen's 'Saint Sebastian'." The Burlington Magazine. Vol. 96, No. 612 (March 1954). 70-74.
- Williamson, Mark A. The Martyrdom Paintings of Jusepe de Ribera: Catharsis and Transformation. PhD Dissertation. Binghamton, New York: Binghamton University, 2000.
External links
All external links retrieved August 24, 2007
- Patron Saints Index: Sebastian
- Legenda Aurea: Life of Saint Sebastian
- Iconography of Saint Sebastian
- Sebastian the Martyr, Greek Orthodox Church
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