Saint Sebastian

Saint Sebastian is among the most celebrated martyrs of the early Christian Church, yet almost every narrative particular of his life depends on later hagiography rather than on contemporary documentation. The principal literary source is the Latin Passio Sancti Sebastiani, a martyr act generally dated to the fifth century and sometimes loosely associated with the milieu of Saint Ambrose of Milan. According to that tradition, Sebastian was born at Narbonne in Gallia Narbonensis and was raised in Milan. He entered the Roman army, concealed his Christian faith, and rose to become a captain of the Praetorian Guard under the co-emperors Diocletian and Maximian in the late third century. The Passio presents him as using his office to visit imprisoned Christians, to confirm them in their faith, and to convert fellow soldiers and officials, including the twins Marcus and Marcellianus and members of their household.

When his Christianity was at last discovered, Diocletian is said to have ordered that Sebastian be bound to a stake or tree and shot with arrows by his own archers. Left for dead, he was found still alive by Irene of Rome, a Christian woman often identified as the widow of the martyr Castulus, who took him into her house and nursed him back to health. Once recovered, Sebastian did not go into hiding. He confronted the emperor publicly, denouncing the persecution of Christians. Enraged, Diocletian had him beaten to death with clubs, and his body was thrown into the Cloaca Maxima, the principal sewer of Rome. A Christian woman named Lucina recovered the remains and buried them in a cemetery on the Via Appia, at the site later occupied by the Basilica of San Sebastiano fuori le mura.

Independent of the legendary Passio, there is early evidence of a cult at Rome. The Depositio martyrum contained in the Chronograph of 354 already lists Sebastian among the martyrs commemorated in the city, and a basilica over his tomb on the Appian Way is attested by the later fourth century, in the period associated with Pope Damasus I. These facts support the conclusion that a Christian named Sebastian was martyred in Rome and venerated there from at least the mid-fourth century, even though the dramatic episodes of the Passio cannot be verified historically. Scholars have long noted chronological difficulties in the legend, above all the traditional death date of 288, which falls before the outbreak of Diocletian’s Great Persecution in 303. The year 288 remains the date given by the Roman martyrological tradition and by standard reference works, but it should be treated as conventional rather than as a securely documented year of death.

In the Middle Ages Sebastian’s intercession was widely invoked against epidemic disease, especially bubonic plague, an association that greatly expanded his cult across Latin Europe. He became one of the favourite subjects of Renaissance and Baroque painters, who typically depicted him as a youthful, nearly nude figure bound and pierced by arrows, a type that also made him a frequent subject of later academic and religious art. He is honoured as patron of archers, athletes, soldiers, and police, as protector against plague, and as patron of numerous cities, including San Sebastián in Spain and Rio de Janeiro. His principal feast in the Roman calendar is 20 January; some Eastern churches commemorate him on 18 December. He was never the object of a formal papal canonization of the later medieval or modern type; his cult is ancient and belongs to the pre-congregation era of the Church.