Sebastian, Roman martyr who suffered under Diocletian c.300. He was buried in a cemetery on the Appian Way close to the basilica which bears his name. His name is in the Depositio Martyrum (354). He was also connected with Milan, perhaps by birth or education. His Acts, wrongly ascribed to Ambrose, are a fiction of the 5th century. According to this, Sebastian was a soldier who enlisted c.283 at Rome, strengthened the confessors Mark and Marcellian in prison, and was created a captain of the pretorian guards by Diocletian, who did not know he was a Christian. After Sebastian had sustained other martyrs, Diocletian reproached him with ingratitude and ordered him to be shot to death with arrows. Sebastian recovered, confronted the emperor for his cruelty, and was beaten to death with clubs.
The earliest representations of Sebastian, as in mosaic in Ravenna and at the church of St. Peter's Chains, Rome (late 7th century) or in frescoes of St. Saba's church, Rome (early 8th century) depict him as an elderly bearded man holding a crown: there are also later examples of this type. But the more familiar one of his being pierced with arrows (notwithstanding the poor quality of the literary source) was extremely popular in the 15th century, supposedly because it gave Renaissance artists opportunities to portray a young and sometimes effeminate male nude in an ecclesiastical context. Sebastian was the patron of archers and, like George and Maurice, of soldiers; he also had a widespread patronage against the plague, due either to his invocation in a particular case of cessation of plague or to his courage in facing arrows which enabled him to immunize his devotees against it. He became one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers. Feast: in the West (with Fabian), 20 January; in the East, 18 December.
Bibliography
Click here for a list of abbreviations used in this bibliography.
- AA.SS. Ian. II (1643), 257–96
- B. Pesci, ‘Il culto di san Sebastiano a Roma nell' antichita e nel medioevo’, Antonianum, xx (1945), 177–200
- H. Delehaye, Cinq leçons sur la méthode hagiographique, pp. 35–7
- A. Ferrua, S. Sebastiano fuori le mura e la sua catacomba (1968)
- Bibl. SS., xi. 776–801
